Companies

Newspaper publisher Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) beat forecasts with an 8 per cent rise in annual profit, but said it was contemplating the possibility of selling its regional newspaper business. Pre-tax profit before amortisation and impairment of intangible assets and exceptional items was �253.4 million for the year to October 2, up from �234.1 million the year before, a DMGT statement...

The US department of justice has approved New Times Media's purchase of Village Voice Media. The new company, to be called Village Voice Media, will publish free weekly papers in 17 of the largest US markets, the companies said Monday in a statement. The merger is expected to close in the first quarter of 2006. In a routine notice on the website of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the merger...

The story is this: Yahoo vs. The New York Times . . . or any major newspaper, for that matter. The most visited Web site has steadily morphed from an online directory/search service into a newspaperlike content provider. Eventually, the story line likely also will be Yahoo vs. broadcast media, but for now word content carries the day online. Yahoo has hired its own exclusive columnists and writers...

NEW YORK, Nov 29, 2005 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Lazard Ltd. (LAZ) and the Icahn Group announced today that the Icahn Group has retained Lazard to further analyze various strategic alternatives to maximize the value of all Time Warner Inc. (TWX) shareholders' interests. The Icahn Group is comprised of Icahn Partners, Icahn Partners Master Fund, certain other affiliates of Carl C. Icahn, Franklin...

It's come to this: A single wealthy investor is able to threaten the civic vitality of 32 American metropolitan areas by forcing the sale of their newspapers to new owners in order to satisfy his demand for larger profits. Because those higher returns almost certainly will come at the expense of investigative reporting, independence from advertisers and adequately staffed and skilled newsrooms...

Bruce Sherman, the money manager who has forced the Knight Ridder newspaper chain to put itself up for sale because its stock performance has been crummy, has performance issues of his own. In an irony that's simply wonderful, Sherman and his associates, whose firm is Knight Ridder's biggest shareholder, are virtually certain to get a $300 million performance bonus next summer even though their...

NEW YORK - Knight Ridder Inc., publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other newspapers, has hired Morgan Stanley to help advise it as it explores strategic alternatives, including its possible sale. Morgan Stanley will provide a second opinion to Goldman Sachs, financial adviser to Knight Ridder since its creation in 1974. Knight Ridder spokesman Polk Laffoon said Morgan Stanley had been...

When search giant Google asked for $85 per share in its initial public offering on Aug. 19, 2004, more than a few people thought its wunderkind founders had perhaps drunk a bit too much of their own Kool-Aid. Fifteen months later, it looks like, if anything, they underestimated investors' enthusiasm for their fast-growing company. Google's stock price continued its upward march Monday, finishing...

Al Jazeera International, the English language news channel to be launched from Qatar early next year, wants to break even within five years. But Nigel Parsons, managing director at the channel, admitted that while the station had secured advertising from day one, it could take many more years to reach the black. He said: "We are looking to create a significant revenue stream and we’d love to...

NEW YORK: For years, publishers have relied -- often to their detriment -- upon the metric of paid circulation. But circulation for the core product has been on a long, steady decline, causing some to suggest that print is on its way out. The industry has touted the notion of readership -- a metric that takes into account how many people read the paper whether they buy it or not -- for years, but...