A little background.

As I said a bit ago, Macquarie Media out of Australia owns 100 percent of American Consolidated Media, which apparently has even more recently been on a huge buying binge for local newspapers around the country. Here's an article from last week about a newspaper, the Athens Messenger, in Ohio (I went to college there).  Title of the article is "Local Paper Added to Growing Chain Owned by Aussie Bank"

The recently announced sale of the Athens Messenger newspaper appears to be the local fallout of an Australian mega-bank's move into the U.S. print media market.

Last week the Messenger announced that, along with 10 other area papers owned by the Ohio-based Brown Publishing Co. chain, it has been sold to American Consolidated Media, LLC, a chain based in Texas.

Brown, based in Blue Ash, Ohio, is selling off three dailies in Athens, Logan and Circleville, as well as weeklies in New Lexington, Jackson, Waverly and Vinton County, and four "shopper" publications. Brown will retain 16 daily papers and 60 weeklies and shoppers across the state.

Based on reports in industry publications, it would appear that the new owner, ACM, has been on a bit of a buying spree lately. It is gobbling up small-market U.S. daily newspapers, weeklies and shoppers on behalf of the giant Australian financial-services company that owns it.

The article goes on to say that Macquarie has bought chains in Kansas, Missouri, Delaware and Maryland

Why would Macquarie, which is bank based, be buying up American newspapers? Especially local ones?  Profit, baby, profit. And, more darkly, Cintra/Macquarie, for example, happen to be leasing the Indiana Toll Road, which a lot of people are completely against. How convenient if they own all the local newspapers that might otherwise talk about stuff like this.

MMG also owns electronic media in Australia and Asia. The company is described by the Australian Financial Review as the "media investment vehicle" of the Macquarie Bank, a giant financial-services corporation based in Australia.

The article goes on to say that Macquarie posted a big profit jump because of its assets sales and offshore expansion, with a view to consolidating the *fragmented* US Newspaper industry.

I don't know about you, but I LIKE local newspapers that are locally owned and I don't think they're *fragmented*. I am also against the media consolidation rules that the FCC passed AGAIN the other day.

Harvey "said there were 8,000 newspapers in the U.S. and huge opportunities to achieve economies of scale," the Review reported.

How do they do that? By getting rid of people working at the paper. And also probably by doing what the Cleburne and Weatherford papers did (which are run by a different media consolidation company).

Who's the guy that is running this (well, at least running the token corporation UNDER Macquarie.)
Jeremy Halbreich is the president of ACM-Macqaurie paid 80 MILLION dollars to buy out the company.  He was president of the Dallas Morning News before, apparently is a Republican since most of his campaign contributions have gone to (gag) the Republican National Committee, John Cornyn and George Bush (although he did do a couple of campaign contributions for Ron Kirk in 2002).  He lives in a posh neighborhood in Dallas (probably in the Highland Park area.) He's married to Annette Straus's daughter-wasn't she mayor of Dallas at one point?

Here's what he said in January when Macquarie bought out ACM

"ACM founder and Chief Executive Officer Jeremy Halbreich has over thirty years experience managing newspaper businesses, including 12 years as president and/or general manager of the Dallas Morning News," Harvey said.

"The entire ACM management team eagerly looks forward to our new affiliation with MMG as we execute continued growth and expansion of our local community newspaper platform," Jeremy Halbreich said.

Here's his opinion on *advertorials*.

Mr. Halbreich said that in its research, the paper had found its readers were not confused into thinking advertorials were news, rather than advertising. Indeed, the research shows that readers valued ads in a legitimate news environment over ads in a calculatedly positive one. 

But he said certain subjects lent themselves to advertorials, such as a section sponsored by local hospitals trying to attract people to nursing, which would include descriptions of the benefits of the profession and the joys of life as a nurse. He said the paper's news department was unlikely to assign such articles on its own, but that the material could appear in an advertorial "without damaging the tender franchise with our readers."