Tag: Orange County Register

New York Times Co. puts the Globe up for sale — again

As some of you no doubt already know, the New York Times Co. announced earlier today that it is seeking to sell The Boston Globe and its affiliated media properties, principally Boston.com and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester.

When the Times Co. bought the Globe 20 years ago it paid $1.1 billion, a whopping half the company’s stock-market valuation at the time. When it tried and failed to sell in 2009, the only potential buyers interested in the Globe were reportedly offering pennies on those 1993 dollars.

We’ve been down this road before, and it’s hard to know whether the Times Co. has already lined up a buyer or if this is another fishing expedition. One name to keep an eye on, though: Aaron Kushner, a local guy who was spurned in his efforts to buy the Globe a couple of years ago and wound up with the Orange County Register instead.

Kushner is winning good marks for investing in the Register and for taking a counterintuitive print-centric approach. I can’t imagine him owning both the Register and the Globe, but might he engineer some sort of trade?

And don’t rule out another bid by the Globe’s former owners, the Taylor family — either separately or in collaboration with Kushner.

No sense delving in too deeply today. There will be much, much more to come in the days and weeks ahead.

Would-be Boston Globe owner goes all in on print

Here’s an interesting Associated Press story on Aaron Kushner, who made a run at buying The Boston Globe a few years ago and ended up with the Orange County Register instead. Kushner is betting the ranch on a print-centric approach, adding pages, improving color and — get this — pumping up the paper’s investigative-reporting capabilities.

People who wish to subscribe online will pay the same as print subscribers, Kushner says, because “the value of the journalism isn’t any less. The reporter isn’t paid any less. The photographer isn’t paid any less.” Well, OK, but the production and distribution costs are a lot less, aren’t they?

At a time when the newspaper business can’t find a way to fix itself, there’s no sense in mocking Kushner’s backward-looking approach. My suspicion is that he may enjoy some short-term success, though this is clearly no way to build for the future. But let’s see what happens. I doubt that he’s given up his hopes of buying the Globe some day, so this could be a rehearsal.