Dammit, MNG
Just as The Commercial Appeal seemed to be recovering from years of layoffs and quantities of talent lost to the new, all-digital Daily Memphian, news arrives that should cast a chilling shadow across any burgeoning optimism.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, MNG Enterprises, Inc., a hedge-fund-backed media group better known as Digital First Media,”has quietly built a 7.5 percent position in Gannett’s stock and is urging the McLean, Va., publisher to review its strategic alternatives, including a potential sale.”
Digital First Media’s largest shareholder is Alden Global, a hedge fund known for buying troubled newspapers and “cost-cutting and job-slashing.”
Maybe this goes nowhere. Or perhaps, like this Pennsylvania couple featured in Homes of the Mid-South, who fulfilled a “dream with move to Southaven,” it’s time to right-size our expectations. Again.
Still WATN
When it showed the potential for controversy, WATN, Local 24 quietly deleted a tweet about Cyntoia Brown, the teenage sex trafficking victim who killed a john when she was 16.
WATN’s original tweet stripped all complexity from Brown’s case reducing it to the most sensational elements: “Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s decision to grant clemency for a former prostitute and convicted killer is getting national attention.”
