I was fortunately not drinking coffee at the computer when I heard on the Bloomberg stream about the latest developments in the Washington Post Company's attempts to shop their money-losing Newsweek franchise.
If I had been, there might have been serious keyboard spoilage, because among the report's list of potential buyers of Newsweek was a certain toxic far-right propaganda and disinformation outlet.
Scary documentation below the jump......
Yes. It was NewsMax. A simple Google search picked up on the story, which I have refrained from labelling "breaking", in part because it's too easy to slap a "breaking" on a diary, but mostly because sometimes these rumored M & A balloons leak air quickly and go away.
Conservative news agency Newsmax Media Inc. is one of the parties that submitted a bid to acquire Newsweek magazine from Washington Post Co., the company confirmed Thursday.
OpenGate Capital, the private-equity firm that acquired TV Guide two years ago, is among other suitors for the venerable magazine, a representative confirmed.
Another bidder is hedge-fund manager Thane Ritchie, who tried to purchase the Chicago Sun-Times in 2009, according to a statement from his spokesman.
A Washington Post Co. spokeswoman declined to comment.
Newsweek has sometimes seemed to me part of the MSM miasma problem, other times a breath of fresh air compared to some other media. Jonathan Alter and Richard Wollffe are certainly recent Newsweekers who have added positive things to the national dialogue.
The big question, it seems to me, in a nation whose discourse has been seriously degraded by the Murdoch Influence and the Toxic Gusher that is FauxNews, is whether Newsweek becoming as fringey as the Washington Times would make things even worse, or whether a News-Max owned Newsweek would simply fade from having any influence at all.
Discuss, debate, ignore...whatever.