If there were prizes for newspapers that have been sold the most times, the Las Vegas Review-Journal might get the gold medal. Schroeder has been the publisher of a very small chain of newspapers in CT and declined to tell the Review-Journal who the new bosses were, other than to say they were “undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry”, a description that does little to narrow down the field.
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The timing of the purchase of the most dominant media outlet in Nevada, an early-voting swing state, along with the high price paid, is fueling speculation that the mystery buyer might be a wealthy conservative.
On Monday Bush visited the newspaper’s office for a meeting with the editorial board, a common practice for presidential candidates.
Its sale to News + Media Capital Group LLC involves just the Review-Journal and affiliated publications in Nevada. It is a publicly traded company, which netted $37.5 million in accepting News + Media’s offer of $140 million. The secretive transaction has left the newspaper in an odd position being unable to tell people who own it. The first name that came to mind, said University of Nevada, Las Vegas, associate history professor Michael Green, was the casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who also owns a newspaper in Israel. That included one in which the new company’s manager, Michael Schroeder, implored staff to focus on their jobs and not worry about the new owners. Harry Reid might have given a clue when he said: We have a few rich people in Las Vegas, one of whom is well known, so we’ll see.
News + Media Group was incorporated as a domestic corporation on September 21 in Delaware.
“At 4 p.m. EST on Monday, around two dozen Review-Journal staffers began tweeting links to the Society of Professional Journalists” Code of Ethics, which includes a section on being “accountable and transparent, ‘” the Huffington Post reports. “In discussions with employees, [Mr.] Taylor has said only that News + Media has multiple owner/investors, that some are from Las Vegas, and that in face-to-face meetings he has been assured that the group will not meddle in the newspaper’s editorial content”. The mystery has also kicked off a new parlor game in the newspaper business. Nevada is fourth in the presidential primary process with balloting in February. Adelson representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
David Folkenflik, media correspondent at NPR, tweeted Tuesday that the involvement with the Sun may trigger a Department of Justice investigation because of the federally sanctioned joint-operating agreement that the Review-Journal has with the Sun. “The reporters are kind of curious who they work for”.
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“In addition, there’s increasing uncertainty about what the Review-Journal can, and cannot, report about itself”. Bush joked that it might be GOP hopeful Donald Trump.
