Tampa Bay Times Buys Tampa Tribune
May 03 2016 - 5:40PM
Dow Jones News
The Tampa Bay Times said Tuesday it had bought the Tampa
Tribune, folding in its longtime rival to form the fifth largest
Sunday newspaper in the U.S. based on print sales, the companies
said.
Financial terms of the sale weren't disclosed.
The deal, announced Tuesday afternoon, is the latest
consolidation move in a fast-shrinking media market, saddled by
falling revenues.
"The continued competition between the two newspapers was
threatening to both," Tampa Bay Times Chief Executive Paul Tash
said in a news release. "There are few cities that can sustain more
than one daily newspaper, and the Tampa Bay region is not among
them."
The Tampa Bay Times has an average Monday through Friday
circulation of 227,000 and sells 368,000 copies on Sunday,
according to the Alliance for Audited Media. The Tribune had
circulation of 153,000 on weekdays and 234,000 on Sunday.
The Tampa Bay Times, Florida's largest newspaper and previously
known as the St. Petersburg Times, said it would continue to run
both papers' websites: tampabay.com and TBO.com. Subscribers of the
Tribune will begin receiving the Times starting May 4.
The 131-year-old Times, owned by The Poynter Institute for Media
Studies, has a storied journalism history, including 12 Pulitzer
Prizes, one of the most prestigious journalism awards in the
U.S.
This year, the Times received two Pulitzers for local and
investigative reporting, the latter shared with the Sarasota
Herald-Tribune for a joint probe into the violence and neglect at
Florida mental hospitals.
The Tampa Tribune had been owned by Media General Inc., which
operates a chain of local television states in the southeast. In
2012, it had sold 63 daily and weekly newspapers to Warren
Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., for $142 million, but retained
control of the Tampa newspaper as its only remaining newspaper
property.
Write to Maria Armental at maria.armental@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 03, 2016 17:25 ET (21:25 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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