GOP Mega-Donor Sheldon Adelson Is Nevada Newspaper’s Secret Buyer, Magazine Reports

Sources said to be familiar with the deal told Fortune magazine that the formerly anonymous purchaser of the Las Vegas Review-Journal is none other than casino mogul and conservative bankroller Sheldon Adelson.

Russ Choma reports at Mother Jones:

Speculation has been rampant since the newspaper’s management told staff last Friday that the paper had been sold for $140 million to a newly incorporated Delaware-based shell corporation. The paper had only just been sold by its longtime owner for $105 million in February to Gatehouse Media, a national chain that is publicly traded. The premium price paid by the new owner—at a time when print newspapers are seen as disastrous investments—raised red flags, as did the comments made to newsroom staff by a man named Michael Schroeder, who was introduced as a “manager” for the shell corporation.

Schroeder told the staff that the new owners were “undisclosed financial backers with expertise in the media industry,” but declined to specify. In the newspaper’s first story on the sale, an initial draft included a quote from Schroeder in which he appeared to dismiss concerns of the employees by saying, “They want you to focus on your jobs…don’t worry about who they are.” But the newspaper presses were literally stopped to edit the article and the quote was pulled, as were other critical comments, before a new version of the article was printed.

Today, the Review-Journal published its own front-page article highlighting the outrage in journalism circles over the mysterious sale—there are no other newspapers of any significance in the United States whose owners are not known—as well as clues that Schroeder has links to Adelson. The paper reported that Schroeder had worked with another man who now runs a news service that distributes content from one of the newspapers that Adelson owns in Israel.

Continue reading here.

— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.