San Diego Union-Trib has space for sale

Voiceofsandiego.org reports that three floors of the San Diego Union-Tribune's five-story Mission Valley offices were posted available for rent Monday.
Following 192 layoffs in early May, the potential lease is the latest cost-saving move to come from new owners, Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity, which bought the Union-Tribune in March.
The paper's staff shrunk 40 percent in the last three years, dropping from 1,422 employees in 2006 to 850 this year. Newspaper staff is expected to consolidate to the remaining floors.

Platinum Equity has also listed for sale office buildings that belonged to Copley Press Inc., the newspaper's former owner.

View the story here.

Journalist sells Hollywood news site

Entertainment business writer Nikki Finke announced Tuesday that she has sold her news Web site, Deadline Hollywood Daily, to Mail.com Media Corp (MMC), The Wall Street Journal reported.

The sale is a move that may possibly hint at the growing value and popularity of small, online media outlets.

Finke, who has written for Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times and New York Magazine, is the founder and writer of DeadlineHollywoodDaily.com.

Finke has been the “Deadline Hollywood” columnist for LA Weekly since 2002, writing about the business, politics and culture of the infotainment industry. Together, her print column and her Deadline HollywoodDaily.com have won first place in major entertainment journalism contests, including the Southern California Journalism Awards' Entertainment Journalist Of The Year and the National Entertainment Journalism Awards, in which she swept every online category.
According to the Wall Street Journal story, neither Finke nor MMC Chief Executive Jay Penske, son of auto-racing magnate Roger Penske, would disclose the amount of the sale.

Playboy may be up for grabs

The New York Post reported today that Hugh Hefner's Playboy Enterprises is quietly for sale. The well-known empire is reportedly being shopped around for $300 million but no interested parties have stepped forward to make an offer, New York Post sources said.

The iconic brand has been doing a lot of cost cutting and in the most recent quarter, the company said it lost $13.7 million. Revenue is also down for Playboy.

From the article:

"The empire's iconic bunny ears are one of the most identifiable trademarks in the world, but the empire has fallen on hard times as the Internet and video-on-demand have eroded its core brand, the magazine."