Oakland News Now – East Bay Express To Get Oakland Latino Buyer?
A long-time friend called to inform this blogger they put “an offer down to buy the East Bay Express. I think it’s about time a person of color owned it. I took them seriously when they said they wanted to sell it, so we’ll see. It’s a good offer,” my friend said.
The East Bay Express was officially put up for sale earlier this year. The reasons for it would seem to have to do with the reported controversy surrounding racism in it’s workplace, but the fact is the publication has been struggling to make money for some time.
In 2016, Oakland Post Owner Paul Cobb specifically told me that he was planing to merge his legendary African American news publication with the alternative-weekly East Bay Express, which was about to “close its’ doors, according to Cobb.
Then, in 2017, a listing for the East Bay Express turned up in the “PitchBook”, a publication that lists businesses that seek angel investors and corporate and venture capital investors. You can read the listing at this link here.
PitchBook lists the East Bay Express as “Corporate Backed or Acquired” under financing status. It went under three financing rounds. Kathleen Richards is listed as the Editor in Chief and Jay Youngdahl as a Columnist with a board of director’s seat.
The media organization is listed as an “operating subsidiary” of Telegraph Media. Now, the East Bay Express reports Telegraph Media is the owner of the publication and points to one person, but here’s an interesting and important note, per Crunchbase.
Crunchbase, which list a who’s who of entrepreneurs that form a history of tech in the San Francisco Bay Area (even I’m listed in it), explains that the East Bay Express is owned not by “Telegraph Media” but by “Telegraph Media Group.”
Telegraph Media Group on Crunchbase is not one person living in the East Bay and said to be ” is a multi-media news publisher behind The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph newspapers,” and based in London. Crunchbase shows that Telegraph Media Group has gained $471.4 million in revenue on an annual basis. Have a read of the news here.
The date of acquisition is said to be Jul 19, 2017.
My friend said he didn’t know about the Pitchdeck listing, so this is going to be interesting.
Stay tuned.
Oakland News Now Note: this post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest version of an experimental mobile media video-blogging system network that’s part of a new approach to the production of media. The uploaded video is from a vlogger with the Zennie62 onYouTube Partner Channel, then uploaded to and formatted automatically at the Oakland News Now site and social media pages. The objective is real-time on the scene reporting of news, interviews, observations, and happenings anywhere in the World and within seconds and not hours. We are constantly working to improve the system network coding and also seek interested content and media technology partners.