National Enquirer to be sold for $100 million
The tabloid that favored President Trump during the 2016 election has been sold to the CEO of Hudson News.
By Sarah EllisonWashington Post
Ending an association between a longtime friend of President Donald Trump and the tabloid that favored him during the 2016 election, American Media Inc. is selling the National Enquirer for $100 million to James Cohen, CEO of Hudson News.
The supermarket tabloid, along with two sister publications, will be purchased by the head of the travel retailer known for its airport newsstands, according to people familiar with the agreement.
The decision to sell came after Anthony Melchiorre, the hedge fund manager whose firm controls AMI, became dissatisfied with the reporting tactics of the Enquirer, which is overseen by David Pecker, Trump's confidant for many years.
AMI has been under intense pressure because of the Enquirer's efforts to tilt the 2016 presidential election in favor of Trump.
Pecker and his supermarket tabloid have also been embroiled in recent months in an unusually public feud with Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post.
The sale of AMI's newsprint tabloid business, which also includes the National Examiner and The Globe, is expected to reduce AMI's debt to $355 million, according to a person familiar with the company's finances.
The company has faced financial difficulty as it sought to refinance more than $400 million in debt this year and as the Enquirer's circulation declined. The paper sold an average of 516,000 copies per issue in 2014, but that number fell to 218,000 in December, according to data compiled by the Alliance for Audited Media.
In addition to its shaky finances, AMI faced significant legal risk owing to the efforts of Pecker and his chief content officer, Dylan Howard, and their "catch-and-kill" efforts during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that practice, the paper would buy the rights to stories with the intent to keep them from being published.
Pecker and Howard entered into nonprosecution agreements with federal investigators to avoid indictments for their role in buying and then burying the story of a former Playboy model who alleged having an affair with Trump.
In August, just as those top officers were finalizing their nonprosecution agreements, the company's board of directors started looking for ways to unload the tabloid business "because they didn't want to deal with hassles like this anymore," said a person familiar with the board's deliberations.
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