Job Cuts, Acquisitions and Paywalls: Media News Recap for September

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of media news stories from the month.

September was a pivotal month for the media industry, with notable developments spanning nearly every facet of the business. Layoffs and strikes dominated headlines, reflecting a workforce in flux. Meanwhile, major acquisitions and deals made waves, with Forbes, Telegraph and other media companies changing hands or exploring new partnerships. Amid the upheaval, fresh publications emerged, adding new voices and perspectives to an evolving landscape.

Read on for a full breakdown of the month’s top stories.

WaPo lays off 54 people at publishing tech arm Arc XP

The Washington Post has laid off 54 people across its publishing tech arm, Arc XP. Despite growing its customer base consistently over the past decade, Arc XP is still losing money.

The job cuts span several departments, including sales, engineering, marketing, technology and product. Prior to the layoffs, Arc XP employed approximately 300 people.

Originally launched in 2015 under the name “Arc,” Arc XP’s goal was to create a software arm that could drive a new revenue stream for The Post as the newspaper entered the digital era. The Post tried to expand Arc XP’s functionality to meet the broader array of web publishers during the pandemic as more businesses were coming online, but eventually refocused its efforts on serving mostly media firms.

The Post has explored selling Arc XP, which would give the company cash to infuse into its newsroom and news products, but a sale never came to fruition. (Axios)

These developments are part of a broader wave of turbulence in the media industry, as numerous other companies also contend with job cuts and labor disputes:

• The Sun and Daily Mail are cutting staff in their U.S. operations (MediaPost)
• Scripps is eliminating 200 jobs after scaling back its national news efforts (Variety)
• Gannett is laying off 74 employees in Massachusetts as it prepares to shut down its consumer site (Media Nation)
• Law360’s editorial workers union secured a new contract, ending a weeklong strike (The NewsGuild)
• New York Times tech employees are threatening to strike during a critical Election Day period (Semafor)
• The unionized editorial staff at Forbes overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence against CEO Mike Federle and chief content officer Randall Lane (Talking Biz News)
• WLRN staffers have announced their intent to unionize (Current)

Koch Eyes Forbes Deal

Koch Inc.’s private equity arm is in talks with media entrepreneur Divyank Turakhia to partner on a bid for Forbes that would value the company at roughly 10% less than the $630 million valuation it received for its blank check merger in 2021.

Koch Equity Development (KED) has a history of successful media investments, including its 2017 deal to back Meredith’s acquisition of Time Inc. with $650 million and its 2018 and 2019 investments in Getty Images worth $550 million.

Forbes’ current owner has been seeking a sale for years, but concerns about foreign ownership stymied two previous efforts. (Axios)

Meanwhile, several other media companies have made headlines recently through acquisitions and new partnerships:

• Dovid Efune, publisher of the New York Sun, has emerged as a serious bidder for the UK publication The Telegraph (Semafor)
• Carpenter Media Group acquired 16 community newspapers from Phillips Media Group (Editor & Publisher)
• GB News investor Paul Marshall secured a £100m deal to buy The Spectator (The Guardian)
• Gannett formed a multi-year strategic partnership with BetMGM to feature sports betting content across the USA Today Network (MediaPost)
• The Guardian is in talks to sell The Observer, the UK’s oldest Sunday newspaper, to digital startup Tortoise Media (New York Times)
• Private equity firm KKR and Axel Springer reached a deal to separate Axel Springer’s classifieds business from its media properties (Reuters)

Coming Up Next on CNN: A Paywall

The most-visited news website in the United States is trying out a paywall. Beginning in early October, CNN will begin experimenting with charging some readers for digital access as part of a bid to shore up its business as cable television erodes industrywide.

The network plans a metered model that requires the site’s habitual users to pay after reading a certain number of articles. Many other publishers, including The New York Times and The New Yorker, have used metered paywalls to generate subscriptions over the past decade. (New York Times)

CNN launched the paywall this week with a price tag of $3.99 a month to gauge customer demand. (CNN)

More developments in the paywall sector:

• Reuters has launched digital subscriptions for $1 per week for access to its website (Reuters)
• New York Times will sell audio subscriptions through Spotify and Apple (Axios)
• The Salt Lake Tribune, profitable and growing, seeks to rid itself of its paywall (NiemanLab)
• Civil Eats,a nonprofit site focused on the relationship between food and social and political issues, will remove its paywall for one year (MediaPost)
• The Forward has eliminated its paywall and reported a 37% increase in revenue (journalism.co.uk)
• The Washington Post tests flexible payments (NiemanLab)

Media Vets Launch LGBTQ-focused Outlet

Two media veterans are launching Uncloseted Media, a non-partisan, LGBTQ-focused outlet aimed at spotlighting issues affecting the community.

Founder Spencer Macnaughton, a longtime journalist and LGBTQ professor at NYU, will serve as the publication’s editor-in-chief, while Charles Kaiser, a prominent writer and journalist, will take on the role of managing editor. Together, they plan to build a newsroom of investigative journalists to cover LGBTQ-specific issues, such anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures.

The outlet has secured nearly half a million dollars in verbal funding pledges from philanthropic backers, including Paul Grossinger, co-founder of the venture firm Gaingels, and investor Paul Austin of the P. Austin Foundation. Last month, Uncloseted Media announced separate business and media advisory boards, including heavy hitters in the LGBTQ media and business industries, such as Jackson Block, co-founder and CEO of LGBT+ VC, and Brody Levesque, formerly the top editor of the Los Angeles Blade. (Axios)

Other recent media launches include:

• Heatmap News, a media company that covers climate change and clean energy, launched a weekly newsletter called The Fight (MediaPost)
• Rocky Mountain Reader debuted to report on the literary scene in Colorado (Editor & Publisher)
• Offball introduced itself as a new sports culture brand (Semafor)
• Vox launched a new multimedia podcast series titled “Explain It To Me” (MediaPost)
• A free bilingual newspaper launched in Denver Harbor to engage the Latino community (Houston Landing)
• Oprah Winfrey and Hearst debuted The Oprah Insider Community, a social app and digital experience tied to the Oprah Daily website (MediaPost)

BuzzFeed Settles Privacy Lawsuit for $9M

BuzzFeed has agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of sharing visitor information with Facebook, in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act. The settlement includes a $9 million payment by BuzzFeed, according to a page set up for consumers who accessed a video through a BuzzFeed website between May 2021 and November 2023 and might be entitled to a payment.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this year, alleges that BuzzFeed “disclosed its subscribers’ personally identifiable information (PII) to Facebook, without consent of subscribers, thus violating the Video Privacy Protection Act.”

A court hearing has been set for October 18 to approve the settlement. (MediaPost)

Other news you might have missed:

• The California Google deal could leave out news startups and the smallest publishers (NiemanLab)
• BDG, the owner of Bustle, Nylon and other women-focused media brands, has secured a growth investment from Medici Capital Partners (Axios)
• Russia plans to impose domestic restrictions on U.S. media in response to Washington’s sanctions on the Russian state-funded outlet RT (DW)
• The New York Times has established a bureau in Vietnam (New York Times)

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