May 14, 2025 (Nieman Journalism Lab) –
The sell-off came as an unpleasant surprise to those in Colorado.
The nonprofit National Trust for Local News announced on Tuesday that it was selling most of its community newspapers in Colorado — including Arvada Press, Englewood Herald, Littleton Independent, and Parker Chronicle — to the Arizona-based media company Times Media Group. The Trust will retain seven newspapers and its community printing press in Colorado.
News of the sale arrives soon after a series of departures, layoffs, and cuts at Trust-owned newspapers and one day into the tenure of the Trust’s new CEO Tom Wiley. The newspapers changing hands are clustered around the Denver metro area. The Trust has said it is focused on saving local newspapers whose disappearance would create news deserts. Most of its local newsrooms are based in communities with fewer than 50,000 residents.
“The acquisition will allow the National Trust to invest in serving seven communities in Adams, Weld, and Jefferson counties where the organization believes it can have a unique and sustained impact,” this week’s announcement read. “These communities have fewer alternative sources of local news, tend to be more rural and diverse, and are farther from Denver’s city limits. The organization will expand its local journalism there while driving digital audience and revenue growth.”
National Trust for Local News chief growth officer Will Nelligan noted that the Times Media Group is making “a major commitment” to the Trust’s community printing press and will provide shared services for the Trust’s remaining newspapers in Colorado. The Trust believes the sale will ultimately reduce their expenses while increasing their “operational capabilities” in communities where its nonprofit model is needed most.
“If you look at where local news is most threatened in Colorado, it’s in the rural places and small cities where a for-profit operator wouldn’t go and where a traditional non-profit news model can’t work,” Nelligan said. “Those are the communities the Colorado Trust needs to focus on serving.”
The new owner
The Times Media Group is, to put it mildly, an odd choice of buyer for the mission-driven National Trust for Local News. The Trust is a nonprofit that has emphasized the importance of local control for local newspapers and describes community newspapers as “vital civic assets.” The Times Media Group is an out-of-state, for-profit media company with a history of reducing local newsrooms.
“It’s difficult to see how this turns out to be good news for two dozen Colorado newspapers, their employees and their readers,” Mark Harden, a former editor of Colorado Community Media, told Inside the News in Colorado.
Times Media Group was founded by accountant-turned-news-entrepreneur Steve Strickbine in Scottsdale, Arizona in 1997 and has since expanded to include more than 60 titles in Arizona and California. With the acquisition of 21 local publications — 19 newspapers and two “direct-mail shopper publications” — from the National Trust for Local News, the Times Media Group will now operate local outlets across three states. The National Trust’s press release emphasizes the new owner’s local “roots” in Colorado, noting Strickbine was born in the state and “enjoys spending time at his summer home” in Colorado.
The fate of the Colorado newspapers and their employees remains uncertain. In the Tuesday announcement, Strickbine said the right words about “the great journalism ahead” and understanding “how much community news means in this state.” The Times Media Group also said “the majority of Colorado Community Media’s employees were offered positions with TMG.” But the Arizona-based group has repeatedly “gutted” staff at the local newspapers it has acquired. (In one case, it also closed a local publication; the 17-year-old alt-weekly newspaper San Diego CityBeat was shut down and its editor was laid off without severance within a month of being acquired by Times Media Group.)
When asked about pre-sale conversations and any measures taken to protect local journalism jobs in Colorado, Nelligan said the Trust had done “deep diligence” on Times Media Group and “found an organization committed to local journalism and building a sustainable local business around it — with deep enthusiasm for serving Colorado.”
“They devastated the newsrooms”
A survey of Times Media Group news sites and weekly newspapers turns up original local journalism. It also reveals a pattern of a small number of journalists writing across several publications. Front-page stories frequently appear without bylines. (The Times Media Group did not respond to questions regarding the number of full-time journalists, unbylined pieces, or any AI usage at the company.)
Jim Nintzel spent more than three decades as a reporter and editor for the Tucson Weekly covering everything from Arizona politics to rock ’n’ roll. After a series of local news shuffling and ownership changes, Nintzel found himself overseeing Tucson Weekly, four separate community newspapers, a business publication, and a number of advertiser-friendly special sections with a five-person staff and some contributors.
Nintzel made it work — sometimes on a shoestring budget. Then, Times Media Group purchased the outlets, including Tucson Weekly, in 2021.
“They devastated the newsrooms that I worked in, and I had to quit after a year because I couldn’t put out a product I could be proud of,” said Nintzel, who now covers politics for the independent nonprofit Tucson Sentinel.
According to the masthead in the Tucson Weekly’s most recent issue, the five-person editorial team has been whittled down to one reporter writing for seven Tucson-based publications and executive editor Christina Fuoco-Karasinski, who is responsible for running editorial across seemingly all Times Media Group outlets. (Fuoco-Karasinski did not respond to a request for comment.)
A “news mirage”?
Most of the Times Media Group’s growth has come through acquisitions of local media groups, but when the company launched a new free weekly, the Queen Creek Tribune, Strickbine promised the Arizona town (population 68,000) that “a full-time reporter will report on town happenings, ranging from public safety and education news, to local events and obituaries.”
Three years later, the Queen Creek Tribune masthead does not list any dedicated local reporters. Instead, “the news department” is listed as Fuoco-Karasinski as executive editor, a photojournalist who contributes to 19 different publications in the Phoenix area, and a circulation director. Of the five stories on the Queen Creek Tribune homepage on Tuesday, four appear with “Tribune Staff” bylines and one, on a local musical performance, is bylined by the executive editor.
Another Times Media Group newspaper, the Ventura County Reporter, had 11 local employees when it was acquired in 2019. One employee departed immediately and questions about his replacement were rebuffed. Today, the masthead lists the editorial department as the Arizona-based Fuoco-Karasinski (with her last name misspelled), a freelance arts reporter, and one columnist. Of the five other names listed on the Ventura County Reporter masthead, at least three are based in Arizona.
More recently, in July 2024, the Times Media Group acquired the southern California-based Century Group Media and its four weekly community newspapers. Days later, the Times Media Group laid off several of the Century Group’s 26-person staff, including three of the four weekly editors, and limited spending on freelance articles.
The situation — along with four Alden-owned dailies that print matching issues across cities like San Bernardino and Riverside — prompted California State University media studies professor T.C. Corrigan to dub the Inland Empire region a “news mirage.”
“Now, the editor at the Yucaipa/Calimesa News Mirror works double-duty at the Redlands Community News, the Fontana Herald News and Banning/Beaumont Record Gazette are produced by TMG’s Arizona-based staff, and the company is closing three of its four local offices,” Corrigan wrote in August 2024. “Meanwhile, these papers all use the slogan, ‘Your Community, Your Newspaper.’ Just don’t try to find them at the office.”
Looking through the dozens of outlets bought by the Times Media Group in recent years, nearly all remain open and publishing. The shrinking mastheads, though, are less than encouraging. If Times Media Group’s track record in Arizona and California serves as any indication, Colorado’s newly acquired community newspapers may survive but with fewer local journalists and an out-of-state chain newspaper owner calling the shots — precisely the outcome the National Trust for Local News was founded to prevent.
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