(USA Today) – Kicked to the curb.
One by one, big media companies are splitting themselves in two, holding on to their sexier, more lucrative properties — broadcast, film, digital — and casting off their print operations to sink or swim.
The trend reached a crescendo in the past week. First, E.W. Scripps and Journal Communications entered into a deal in which Scripps will own both companies’ broadcast properties, and a new entity, Journal Media Group, will own the newspapers. On Monday, Tribune Co. completed the spinoff of its newspapers into a separate, stand-alone company. And on Tuesday, Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper company, and owner of USA TODAY, announced a similar plan.
The flurry of activity came after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. and Time Warner moved their newspapers and magazines respectively into separate operations.