Companies

It's -30- for New City News Service, which in journalism parlance means the end of the story. The news service that had its heyday in the Front Page era of Chicago journalism will cease operations Jan. 1, with owner Chicago Tribune folding many of its news gathering activities into its own 24-hour Internet-based news operation. The Tribune's decision to eliminate the 19 City News positions was...

Knight Ridder, under pressure from three major shareholders to sell the San Jose company, has begun soliciting preliminary bids from potential purchasers in an attempt to determine who might be interested in buying it, and how much they'd be willing to pay, according to sources familiar with the process. The move does not mean the nation's second-largest newspaper group and owner of The Monterey...

The fog surrounding Time Warner (TWX:NYSE - commentary - research - Cramer's Take) continues to thicken. Just as the media giant and its peers were uniting Tuesday against the threat of regulatory action, activist shareholder Carl Icahn dropped his own bombshell, naming as his new brother-in-arms the hard-hitting Lazard banker Bruce Wasserstein. Icahn's group, which controls 2.5% of Time Warner...

Knight Ridder Inc., under pressure from its biggest shareholders to sell itself, has begun soliciting preliminary bids from potential buyers to determine who might be interested in buying it, according to people familiar with the process. The move does not mean the nation's second-largest newspaper group and owner of The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News has committed to a sale. Instead, the...

A trio of private-equity firms has formed an alliance to examine purchasing newspaper publisher Knight Ridder Inc., according to people familiar with the matter. The alliance -- consisting of the Blackstone Group, Providence Equity Partners Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. -- is in early stages of preparation, these people say. But the buyout firms remain wary that the $4 billion market...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Playboy (PLA.N: Quote, Profile, Research) is in talks to launch a men’s magazine in India, but one that does not include its trademark nudes or even its name, Chief Executive Christie Hefner said on Thursday. The top-selling men’s magazine in the world, which is rolling out an edition in Argentina soon, also wants to return to Italy and Australia, and is discussing joint...

(November 30, 2005) -- The sequence and scenario are increasingly familiar at newspapers from Los Angeles to New York. The script: newspaper revenue lags and the stock price dips, so expenses -- travel, training, newsprint and people -- are cut. All of these belt-tightening measures exact a toll on a newspaper's quality, but none more so than reduced staff. The observation by veteran editor Gene...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top media executives on Wednesday raised fresh doubts about the U.S. newspaper industry's future, saying the advertising climate remains depressed and publishers may be forced to look at sales. "There's a real question about what the sustainable model is in the newspaper business," David Sanderson, head of the global media practice at consulting firm Bain & Co., told the...

Bankers liken a potential acquisition of newspaper publisher Knight Ridder to buying beachfront property: It's a valuable, hard-to-come-by asset, but it's eroding. The question for private-equity firms, which typically like to exit their investments after about five years, is whether the San Jose, Calif., company's business will suffer more damage before they cash out. Like most newspaper...

The Orlando Sentinel on Tuesday laid off 21 employees throughout the company as it joined other U.S. newspapers struggling to cope with declining circulation and rising costs. The cuts came less than two weeks after the paper announced that it would need to eliminate jobs to improve its financial performance and adapt to market changes. In addition to the layoffs, 33 vacant positions won't be...