Who Owns Your News? The Acme 100 Digital News Outlets and Their Buying

A deep analysis of America's top 100 news sites reveals key shareholders, parent companies, and commonalities.

We prepare out to answer the question, "Who owns the news media online?" While many panic at the shrinking earth of broadcast, print, and radio news, a ascension number of people (about one in every iv Americans) become their news online. Nosotros wanted to observe out who owns the Internet'due south top news networks, considering, surely, the "wild west" of the Web would be less consolidated, correct?

Well, yes and no … our research has shown us that a few of the companies that own everything have made their manner into the online news scene as well. This chart of news sources shows clearly who owns what, and some of the biggest media companies also happen to own the most successful and prolific online newspapers and news websites. The wild space of digital news has produced a adequately worrying concentration of media ownership. Chart these media conglomerates and run into how small the world of online news has become.

Who Owns Your News

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Who Owns Your News? Transcript

The Meridian 100 Digital News Outlets and Their Ownership

Site Ownership Specific Person/Notes
Uproxx.com Admission Industries Leonard Blavatnik
AccuWeather.com AccuWeather Inc.
Cleveland.com Advance Publications Newhouse Family
NJ.com
DallasNews.com A.H. Belo Corporation
DenverPost.com Alden Global Capital Owns more than fifty daily newspapers, including ones under the Digital First Media brand
MercuryNews.com
OCRegister.com
TwinCities.com
News.Google.com Alphabet Inc. Owner of America'south principal search engine, Google
CNN.com AT&T Inc. Multimedia conglomerate and parent of WarnerMedia making roughly $170 billion in acquirement
TMZ.com
BusinessInsider.com Axel Springer SE German parent of Insider Inc., making $3.3 billion in revenue
BuffaloNews.com Berkshire Hathaway U.S. bank making $247 billion in acquirement
BuzzFeedNews.com BuzzFeed Inc. (one/tertiary Owned by Comcast)
StarAdvertiser.com Black Printing Group Ltd. David Holmes Black (eighty% share)
Postal service-Gazette.com Block Communications
Bloomberg.com Bloomberg L.P. Michael Bloomberg
BostonGlobe.com Boston Earth Media Partners LLC
Breitbart.com Breitbart News Network LLC
Bustle.com Bustle Digital Group The group backside Hurry, Romper, Elite Daily, and The Zoe Report
EliteDaily.com
Politico.com Capitol News Company Robert Allbritton
CNBC.com Comcast Owner of MSNBC, NBCUniversal, Xfinity, DreamWorks Animation, and more than, earning $94 billion in revenue Roberts Family (33% share)
NBCNews.com
AJC.com Cox Enterprises Inc. Cox Family
DrudgeReport.com Matt Drudge
DigitalTrends.com Designtechnica Corporation
Economist.com The Economist Group Owned by the Cadbury, Rothschild, Schroder, Layton, and Agnelli families
HollywoodReporter.com Eldridge Industries LLC
TheAtlantic.com Emerson Collective
Forbes.com Integrated Whale Media Investments Chinese investors who afterward were sued when portions of the initial payment to the Forbes family went missing
USAToday.com Gannett Co. Inc. The largest U.S. newspaper publisher by daily circulation
AZCentral.com
Cincinnati.com
Courier-Journal.com
Freep.com
IndyStar.com
JSOnline.com
Dispatch.com GateHouse Media Inc. Publishes 144 daily newspapers
Oklahoman.com
Upworthy.com Good Worldwide Inc.
Thrillist.com Group Nine Media Inc. (35% Owned by Discovery Inc.) Possessor of Thrillist, NowThis, The Dodo, and Seeker
ElNueVodia.com Grupo Ferré-Rangel
Chron.com Hearst Communications Owned by the Hearst family unit, grandchildren of William Randolph Hearst
SFGate.com
MySanAntonio.com
TheDailyBeast.com IAC (InterActiveCorp) Owner of numerous online entities, such as Match.com, CollegeHumor, Ask.com, HomeAdvisor, and more
Investopedia.com
Weather.com IBM Computer company that's ane of the world'southward largest employers
Wunderground.com
IBTimes.com IBT Media
Mashable.com J2 Global Inc.
STLToday.com Lee Enterprises Publisher of 46 daily U.Southward. newspapers
Fourth dimension.com Marc Benioff
KansasCity.com The McClatchy Company Operator of 29 daily U.S. newspapers
SacBee.com
Star-Telegram.com
LATimes.com Nant Capital Patrick Shortly-Shiong
SanDiegoUnionTribune.com
WashingtonPost.com Nash Holdings Jeff Bezos
CBSNews.com National Amusements Inc. (80% Share in CBS Corporation) Sumner and Shari Redstone
CNET.com
TheHill.com News Communications Inc.
WSJ.com News Corp Murdoch Family unit (39% voting power)
NYPost.com
FoxNews.com Fox Corporation Murdoch Family (39% voting ability)
Newsday.com Newsday Media Patrick Dolan
Newsweek.com Newsweek Media Group Was owned by both IBT and IAC but is now an contained company
NYTimes.com The New York Times Visitor Sulzberger Family unit
Variety.com Penske Media Corporation Jay Penske (threescore% share)
BGR.com
Philly.com Philadelphia Foundation A customs foundation, rather than a company
Refinery29.com Refinery29 Inc.
TheGuardian.com Scott Trust Limited British company that also owns the Observer
SeattleTimes.com The Seattle Times Visitor Blethen Family
Slate.com The Slate Group
StarTribune.com Star Tribune Media Company Glen Taylor
SunTimes.com ST Acquisition Holdings Edwin Eisendrath
TampaBay.com Times Publishing Company
Topix.net Topix LLC
BaltimoreSun.com Tribune Media Company A massive media conglomerate owning 39 television stations and numerous newspapers
ChicagoTribune.com
Courant.com
NYDailyNews.com
OrlandoSentinel.com
PilotOnline.com
Sunday-Sentinel.com
Gizmodo.com Univision Communications Inc. Mega-media visitor with 61 TV stations every bit well as online properties like Lifehacker, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and io9
Jezebel.com
USNews.com U.S. News & World Report L.P. Mortimer Zuckerman
QZ.com Uzabase Inc. Japan-based investment company
News.Yahoo.com Verizon Communications Possessor of AOL, Yahoo!, a massive fiber-optic network, and numerous other major properties, making $130.86 billion in revenue
HuffingtonPost.com
TheVerge.com Vox Media Inc.
Voice.com
ABCNews.Get.Com The Walt Disney Company A massive media visitor that owns Curiosity Studios, Walt Disney Studios, Disney Parks, ESPN, FX, A&Eastward Networks, ABC Broadcast Networks, and more than
NationalGeographic.com The Walt Disney Company (73% share)
ArkansasOnline.com WEHCO Media Inc.
Reuters.com The Woodbridge Company Limited (59.half-dozen% share of Thomson Reuters Corporation) Thomson Family

Superlative 100 news sites were compiled using Pew Research Centre's list of newspapers by average Lord's day circulation, co-ordinate to the Alliance for Audited Media information, Pew Research Center's listing of digital-native news outlets by comScore categories (not including the sports category) with at lease 10 1000000 average monthly unique visitors, and Alexa'south top sites nether the category of news.

Sources:

  • https://www.alexa.com/topsites/category/News
  • https://www.journalism.org/2018/07/25/state-of-the-news-media-methodology/
  • https://nypost.com/2017/01/24/forbes-family unit-finally-gets-paid-after-legal-battle-with-new-forbes-media-owners/

These top 100 news sites were compiled using the post-obit:

  • The top newspapers by average Sun circulation according to the Pew Inquiry Center, which used Alliance for Audited Media data
  • The top "digital-native" news outlets past monthly unique visitors co-ordinate to the Pew Research Heart, which used comScore data (non including those in the sports category)
  • Alexa'southward top sites nether the category of news (not including user-generated and/or international sites)

While diving into our online media nautical chart, let's talk virtually who owns the major news networks. Media consolidation has been a huge issue offline as well equally on, and so we'll bespeak out some cardinal players.

Who Owns the Media in the U.S.?

About 15 billionaires and six corporations own nigh of the U.S. media outlets. The biggest media conglomerates in America are AT&T, Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, National Amusements (which includes Viacom Inc. and CBS), News Corp and Flim-flam Corporation (which are both owned in part by the Murdochs), Sony, and Hearst Communications. All of them save for Sony make an appearance in our online news sources nautical chart.

Who Owns CNN?

The ultimate owner of CNN is AT&T. The CNN parent company is Warner Media LLC, which besides owns HBO, Otter Media, Warner Brothers, and Turner Broadcasting Organisation. Warner Media is and so owned past parent visitor AT&T.

Who Owns the Fox News Network?

Fox News is owned by the Pull a fast one on Corporation, which is owned in part by the Murdoch Family unit (39% share). Information technology's too important to betoken out that the same person with Flim-flam News ownership, Rupert Murdoch, owns News Corp with the same 39% share, and News Corp owns the New York Post, HarperCollins, and the Wall Street Journal.

Who Owns NBC News?

The owner of NBC and MSNBC is Comcast. NBC'southward parent company is NBCUniversal, an umbrella visitor that likewise owns Fandango, Hulu, Universal Pictures, and Telemundo. NBCUniversal is and so owned by parent visitor Comcast.

Who Owns ABC News?

ABC News is a branch of ABC, which is a branch of Walt Disney Television, which is a branch of Disney Media Networks, which is part of The Walt Disney Visitor. Disney owns well-nigh too much to mention hither; nosotros've fabricated a nautical chart of what companies are endemic past Disney previously.

Who Owns CBS?

CBS News, owned past the CBS Corporation, is in turn endemic by National Amusements. National Amusements has an 80% voting majority and besides owns the major company Viacom, the company backside Paramount Pictures, One-act Central, MTV, Nickelodeon, BET, CMT, and VH1.

Who Owns Mainstream Media Newspapers?

According to advancement grouping Free Press, these are the major publicly traded newspaper companies with the highest acquirement and number of daily papers:

  • Gannett Co. Inc.
  • Tribune Media Company
  • Digital First Media (endemic by Alden Global Capital)
  • New Media Investment Group
  • The McClatchy Company
  • Advance Publications
  • Berkshire Hathaway
  • Lee Enterprises
  • Community Newspaper Holdings Inc.
  • Black Printing Group

Which Online News Sources Are Largely Unaffiliated?

The following are not owned by ane of the big six, a major corporation, or any company that owns multiple newspapers on this top 100 list. They are generally independent:

  • AccuWeather.com
  • ArkansasOnline.com
  • TheAtlantic.com
  • BostonGlobe.com
  • Breitbart.com
  • DrudgeReport.com
  • TheHill.com
  • Mashable.com
  • Newsday.com
  • Newsweek.com
  • NYTimes.com
  • Philly.com
  • Politico.com
  • Refinery29.com
  • Reuters.com
  • SeattleTimes.com
  • Slate.com
  • StarTribune.com
  • SunTimes.com
  • TampaBay.com
  • Topix.net
  • Upworthy.com
  • USNews.com

While information technology'south important to consider who controls the media, it's also important to remember that many media owners are hands-off in terms of content, but some are quite invasive. Will news companies run a story that paints their umbrella corporation in a negative light? It depends on the publication, the parent company, and the ethics of their journalists.

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