Media Insider: Tegna Sells for $5.4B, Howard to Digitize Black Press Archive, Condé Nast Partners with TikTok

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s roundup of media news stories from the week.

AXIOS | KERRY FLYNN & SARA FISCHER
TV broadcaster Tegna sells in $5.4 billion cash deal

Tegna has sold to Standard General, one of its largest shareholders, in a $5.4 billion deal backed by private equity giant Apollo Global Management. The deal is the latest consolidation in local media, a trend that’s accelerated in recent years. Private bidders, including media mogul Byron Allen, have been eyeing Tegna, one of the largest local news broadcast companies in the U.S., for some time. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2022.

Axios also reported this week on the growing trend of digital giants acquiring and digitizing traditional print brands.

ASSOCIATED PRESS | TALI ARBEL
Howard gets $2M grant to digitize Black newspaper archive

Howard University has received a $2 million donation from the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation to digitize a major collection of Black newspaper archives. Howard’s Black Press Archive contains over 2,000 newspaper titles from the U.S. and countries in Africa and the Caribbean, but only a portion of them have been accessible to the public. “Once digitized, Howard’s Black Press Archive will be the largest, most diverse, and the world’s most accessible Black newspaper database,” Benjamin Talton, director of Howard’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, said. The Center for Journalism & Democracy at Howard, founded by Nikole Hannah-Jones, helped secure the grant.

Read next: The iconic Ebony test kitchen is reborn as part of an exhibition in Harlem celebrating the African American food experience.

DIGIDAY | SARA GUAGLIONE
Condé Nast inks deal with TikTok to monetize exclusive content

Under a new deal between Condé Nast and TikTok, Vogue and GQ will create exclusive content for the social media platform. Live streams, hashtag challenges and short-form video series will be created for topics like Fashion Month, style and shopping. Adam Puchalsky, global head of content at Wavemaker, described the deal as a combination of the “modern interpretation of programming and entertainment with shows produced in consumable formats for the platform, with trusted voices like GQ and Vogue who have been around for generations.” Since launching their TikTok channels in 2020, GQ and Vogue have amassed 410,000 and 675,000 followers, respectively. Terms of the deal were not shared.

In other social media news, LinkedIn is launching a podcast network with shows geared toward a professional audience.

NIEMANLAB | SHRADDHA CHAKRADHAR
Fewer people — especially younger Democrats — are paying a lot of attention to national news, according to a new poll

A new report from Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that only a third of the Americans polled said they pay “a great deal” of attention to national news. The figure is a notable drop from 54% who said the same in the year prior. The downward trend was consistent across a range of demographics, but the report’s authors found Democrats younger than 55 were the least likely to pay attention to national news. The authors note that this is the first time since they started measuring this trend in 2018 that Democrats overall reported paying less attention to national news than Republicans. However, Republicans also reported a small decrease in attention paid to national news. Some factors at play include the presidential election, COVID-19 news and general news burnout.

ICYMI: Former President Donald Trump’s new social media venture, Truth Social, launched in Apple’s App Store this week.

THE NEW YORK TIMES | KATIE ROBERTSON
The Wall Street Journal’s owner opts for a ‘flexible’ return to the office

Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, told staff on Tuesday that it would not be mandating a return to the office in March. Its “hybrid and flexible” approach will allow leaders to decide what kind of return works best for their teams. “We know that different teams have different needs — that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to how and where we work,” Almar Latour, the chief executive, and Dianne DeSevo, the chief people officer, said in their email to staff. The return plans will go into effect next month. Dow Jones also encompasses Barron’s, Financial News and MarketWatch.

Not only has the pandemic made an impact on where journalists are working from, but it’s also remade science journalism.

Bonus Reads

There was so much happening this week that we couldn’t fit the entire recap into just five stories. Check out these additional media news headlines from the week:

• The Atlantic welcomes Rappler CEO Maria Ressa as a contributing writer.
• Climate newsletter HEATED is going on hiatus as founder Emily Atkin focuses on her mental health.
• The 2021 George Polk Awards in Journalism were announced. Here are the winners.
• Joe Rogan’s deal with Spotify is said to be worth $200 million, more than was previously known.
• NBC’s ratings for the Beijing Olympics were a disappointment, but the network still has high hopes for future Olympics in Paris, Italy and Los Angeles.

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