The
New York Times Co. has sold The Boston Globe to Boston Red Sox owner
John W. Henry for $70 million. The deal marks a big step in the Times Co.’s
sale of its noncore assets to focus on its eponymous New York Times brand. It
also underscores the deep drop in value that newspapers have seen since the
Times Co. bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993, a high water mark for
newspaper prices.
Along
with the rest of the U.S. newspaper industry, the Globe has suffered declining
advertising and circulation in recent years. Nonetheless, the Globe is still
considered a plum newspaper property, having had some success getting paying
online subscribers, and its sale attracted widespread interest from other
would-be buyers, including a group led by ex-Time Inc. CEO Jack Griffin that
included the Globe’s former owners and the owner of the U-T San Diego.
