Mercury News sold
April 27, 2006The San Jose Mercury News, the paper of record for the Silicon Valley, was sold yesterday. It’s a kinda complicated deal, not as bad as some of the multi-team trades in pro sports but close. Newspapers will be changing hands, percentage of ownership will change, tons of moving parts in the deal.
In the end, a single company will wind up owning most of the major papers in the Bay Area. Except for the San Francisco Chronicle, which remains part of the Hearst Corporation. But the papers that surround San Francisco–in Contra Costa, Oakland, San Jose–will now be part of the MediaNews Group.
Could be bad for journalism and competition in the Bay Area. And it’s somewhat ironic given what Hearst themselves did a few years back–they effectively bought up and killed their only competitor in San Francisco, the old Examiner. For much the same reason that MediaNews has now locked up newspapers in all the areas surrounding San Francisco–to secure economies of scale and pursue bigger ad buys.
In a way I’m glad somebody did this–Hearst needs the deep-pocketed competition in the Bay Area. But this new attempt at monopoly could end up being far worse than Hearst’s own attempt at building a monopoly. We’ll see, I guess.
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