Trib Total Media Consolidating Valley News Dispatch with Parent Paper
Trib Total Media previously announced the sale of the Leader Times to Sample Media Group in mid-October. Now the Valley News Dispatch will be merged with the Tribune Review.
The Pittsburgh Post Gazette broke the news yesterday that the Alle-Kiski Valley is losing its local newspaper.
The Valley News Dispatch will be absorbed into the Greensburg and Pittsburgh editions of the Tribune Review to form a regionalized newspaper.
The consolidation comes just weeks after the sale of the Leader Times and six other of its local newspapers to Sample Media Group that will operate the paper under the name West Penn Media.
The consolidation of the Greensburg, Pittsburgh and Tarentum papers will start on January 1, 2016.
According to the Post Gazette, the Trib plans to cut back on their home delivery in areas with “less subscriber density”.
Trib Total Media reportedly will expand its website. It recently purchased 40 percent of Newsmax Media located in Florida. Sources say the company will start 535 Media in a joint venture with Newsmax as well as unveiling a renovated TribLive.com website.
Trib Total Media has suffered the last few years, receiving a cash infusion of more than $450 million just before owner Richard Scaife passed away last year. Some business analysts were concerned about the viability of maintaining the Trib Total Media empire without Scaife’s future financial contributions.
Fourteen percent of its employees will be terminated as a result of the consolidation.
According to an unidentified insider, many of the local staff and reporters of the Leader-Times will not be retained by Sample Media when it takes over the operation in six weeks from now.
Regional News | KP NewsDesk November 11, 2015
No Comments
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Loading ...
