Unidentified buyer paid $140 million for newspapers

Editor's Note: The Pahrump Valley Times, The Mirror and Tonopah Times-Bonanza & Goldfield News were also part of this sale.

The Dec. 10 sale of the Las Vegas Review-Journal left staffers, and readers, with a lot of questions.

Perhaps foremost among them: Who now owns Nevada's largest newspaper.

Answers remain unclear.

What is known: News + Media Capital Group LLC — a newly formed Delaware-domiciled company backed by "undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry" — paid $140 million for the Review-Journal and its sister publications, which include the Pahrump Valley Times and the Tonopah Times-Bonanza & Goldfield News.

That's around $38 million more than New Media Investment Group paid for the all of Stephens Media LLC, a national chain of newspapers that included the Review-Journal, eight other dailies and 65 weekly newspapers. The amount points to investors with deep pockets and a perhaps even deeper desire to own Nevada's biggest newspaper even though the paper's revenues, like those of all print publications, have been in decline.

Who was willing to buy remains a secret.

News + Media manager Michael Schroeder has declined to disclose the company's investors, as has Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher Jason Taylor. Pahrump Valley Times Publisher Noah Cusick said he has not been told the identity of the new buyers.

Schroeder said he publications were acquired by News + Media Capital Group LLC is backed by "undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry," Schroeder said Thursday at an employee meeting in Las Vegas.

In discussions with Review-Journal employees, Taylor has said only that News + Media has multiple owner/investors, that some are from Las Vegas, and that in face-to-face meetings he has been assured that the group will not meddle in the newspaper's editorial content.

Cusick relayed a similar message to the Pahrump staff on Monday.

"I know this sale comes on the heels of a transition from (Stephens) Media to Gatehouse and I know that transitions aren't always an easy thing to handle, but I can assure you, as I have been assured, that we are in very good hands and we shouldn't see any major changes as Gatehouse will continue to manage all the properties," Cusick said in an email to staff.

New Media Investment Group acquired the Review-Journal's parent company, Stephens Media LLC, for $102.5 million in cash in March. GateHouse Media LLC, a subsidiary of New Media, will continue to operate the Review-Journal and associated publications under a management agreement.

Schroeder said the investment group had been looking to buy the Review-Journal "for six to eight months."

The Review-Journal is Nevada's largest media outlet with a Sunday circulation of 184,000 and an average of 10.5 million monthly Web page views. The transaction also includes five weekly newspapers: Boulder City Review; Pahrump Valley Times; Tonopah Times Bonanza; Las Vegas Business Press; Luxury Las Vegas Magazine; Best of Las Vegas; and the lasvegas.com website.

A trio of media watchdogs contacted by the Review-Journal expressed concern over the newspaper's shadowy new owners.

Not disclosing ownership, they said, raises ethical questions about how reporters can possibly disclose conflicts of interest with the company that signs their paychecks.

The timing of the transaction might also raise a question about the new owners' possible political motivations.

"One of the first thoughts I had was: Nevada is an early primary state. The Review-Journal is the largest newspaper in the state. Was it sold to a player in that event, or people who want to be players?," asked media critic and New York University professor Jay Rosen. "That slightly conspiratorial thought may be way off base. Of course, there is no way to know as long as the ownership remains hidden. That's the point."

Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said you may have to go back a century or so to find an example of a similar nondisclosure in newspaper ownership.

"I believe it happened, for example, with Hearst papers, when Hearst (was) moving into a city (where it) might face public opposition, e.g.," Benton wrote in an email Friday. "But I think you're right to raise the ethical question. The decisions of any newspaper should be open to judgment by readers and the public, and those judgments are hampered if the public doesn't know who the owners are.

"Journalists should be able to evaluate whether their ownership is having an influence on the paper's content."

Contact reporter James DeHaven at jdehaven@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3839. Find him on Twitter: @JamesDeHaven. Review-Journal staff also contributed to this report.