Online competitor purchases Anchorage Daily News from McClatchy

This is a HUGE surprise here in Alaska, a real holy shit development:

http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140408/alaska-dispatch-purchase-anchorage-daily-news

http://www.adn.com/2014/04/08/3415599/alaska-dispatch-to-buy-anchorage.html?sp=/99/100/&ihp=1

For Outsiders, the Dispatch is famous for having a reporter handcuffed by U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller's security detail a few years ago.

I was part of the first bloodletting of employees at the ADN back in 2008, which was the year the Dispatch was founded, so to see the old publisher and editor "retire" warms my cold, dead heart.

Still a stunner, though.

 

Is this the first print publication they have purchased? What, if any, significant changes are you expecting?

 

The Dispatch has been an exclusively online publication since it was founded, with no acquisitions, print or otherwise, I am aware of.

I have no idea what to expect as far as changes. I've been out of the industry for almost four years now. I do know ADN staffers are stunned. Until the announcement was made today, I would wager that every single one of them thought that if anybody was buying anything, it was the Daily News buying up the Dispatch.

 

So how does the Dispatch have enough profits to acquire the Anchorage Daily News? The site must be popular in Alaska.

 

The Dispatch has an angel investor who is a billionaire serving as its publisher.

 

Very interesting, Whiskey River ... thanks for posting.

And frankly, I hope the Juneau Empire is next to find a local buyer. Morris has turned it into a glacier-sized turd of a newspaper.

 

I think the more accurate description is the Dispatch's publisher, Alice Rogoff, is a millionaire (with a bit of an Alaska fetish, it seems) married to a billionaire, financier David Rubenstein.

To my knowledge, and it is admittedly limited, the Dispatch has never made a penny in profit.

MileHigh, I don't know the specifics of the Press-Enterprise deal, but the Daily News acquisition price includes the ADN building, which will immediately be sold off to GCI, the local cable company. GCI recently purchased the Anchorage CBS affiliate (as well as other stations around the state) and spent a lot of money building new studios in that building. Basically it's a role reversal -- ADN becomes tenant, GCI becomes landlord.