First Up: Miami Herald not for sale to media kingpin

An interesting tidbit was buried at the bottom of a New York Times story this weekend: media entrepreneur Jimmy Finkelstein wanted to buy The Miami Herald from its owner, McClatchy. And McClatchy told him, basically, to go pound sand. Finkelstein has been a part-owner of The Hollywood Reporter and The Hill, a D.C.-focused publication that was sold to Nexstar in 2021. 

Finkelstein and others now are trying to launch The Messenger, “a news site that will cover politics, business, entertainment and sports,” the Times reported. “Financed with $50 million in investor money, the site will start with at least 175 journalists stationed in New York, Washington and Los Angeles (and) plans to have around 550 journalists, about as many as The Los Angeles Times.”

But Finkelstein also “said starting The Messenger wasn’t his first idea after selling The Hill. He also tried to buy The Miami Herald, banking on Florida as an increasingly important state. But McClatchy, which owns the newspaper, wasn’t interested in selling to him. ‘I really want to do something that changes journalism a bit and changes America for the good,’ he said.”

The story didn’t make clear exactly when Finkelstein approached the newspaper company; he couldn’t be immediately reached Monday afternoon. A request for comment is pending with McClatchy spokesperson Julie Pendley. Meantime, CEO Mike Reed of Gannett, which says it owns 19 newspapers in the state, “said on last month's earnings call that the company ‘would entertain bids on any of our markets,’ ” Axios reported. 

– Jim Rosica