{"id":26792,"date":"2014-09-25T17:02:34","date_gmt":"2014-09-25T09:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=26792"},"modified":"2014-09-25T12:37:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-25T04:37:57","slug":"as-los-angeles-newspaper-folds-philanthropist-seeks-to-turn-san-diego-newspaper-non-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2014\/09\/25\/as-los-angeles-newspaper-folds-philanthropist-seeks-to-turn-san-diego-newspaper-non-profit\/","title":{"rendered":"As Los Angeles newspaper folds, philanthropist seeks to turn San Diego newspaper non-profit"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo from concettaantico.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SAN DIEGO\u2014An octogenarian philanthropist launched a bid to buy San Diego\u2019s dominant newspaper and turn it into one of the nation\u2019s largest non-profit\u00a0news\u00a0organizations, while another major Southern California publisher shut its short-lived Los Angeles newspaper.<\/p>\n

Malin Burnham, a prominent San Diego businessman with a background in commercial real estate and insurance, said Douglas Manchester, the current owner of U-T San Diego, has encouraged him to seek non-profit status from the Internal Revenue Service, which may take about 90 days.<\/p>\n

Burnham, 86, said he and Manchester exchanged proposed prices and that he believes his offer can be \u201cin the ballpark.\u201d He declined to be more specific.<\/p>\n

Manchester would remain owner of the U-T San Diego headquarters building and lease offices to the newspaper, Burnham told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

Manchester, also a prominent San Diego businessman, who bought the newspaper in 2011, said he was ready to talk with Burnham after he gets non-profit status but that a deal was long way from being completed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have always admired and respected all that Malin has done for our community and continues to do,\u201d Manchester wrote in a brief statement in response to a list of questions.<\/p>\n

News\u00a0of the bid came as Freedom Communications Inc. announced it was closing the Los Angeles Register only five months after launching it as a challenger to the Los Angeles Times. Freedom also said it sold the Santa Ana headquarters building of its flagship newspaper, the Orange County Register, for $27 million and will lease space there.<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Register\u2019s demise was another setback for owners Aaron Kushner and Eric Spitz, who bought Freedom in 2012 and vastly expanded staff with a contrarian, print-centric strategy that has yet to win followers in the industry.<\/p>\n

Freedom said it will focus on markets in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. It owns the Riverside Press-Enterprise, which it bought in November for more than $27 million.<\/p>\n

A memo to employees from Kushner and Spitz on Monday night said there will be \u201cstaff changes,\u201d but it did not give specifics or mention layoffs.<\/p>\n

\u201cPundits and local competitors who have closely followed our entry into Los Angeles will be quick to criticize our decision to launch a new newspaper and they will say that we failed,\u201d they wrote. \u201cWe believe the true definition of failure is not taking bold steps toward growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In San Diego, Burnham is quick to say he is new to the\u00a0news\u00a0business and has no easy answers for a struggling industry, though he said the migration of readers online will greatly reduce costs. He said he could see reducing daily print editions in two to five years and going to a Sunday-only print edition in 10 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody is predicting there will be less\u00a0news\u00a0in the\u00a0world,\u201d Burnham said. \u201cWe believe the delivery of\u00a0news\u00a0is a long-term prospect.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SAN DIEGO\u2014An octogenarian philanthropist launched a bid to buy San Diego\u2019s dominant newspaper and turn it into one of the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":26793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","mauthors-elliot-spagat","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}