The local newspaper mogul who operates the Examiner, Bay Guardian and SF Weekly on behalf of Canadian publishing investors, is—along with a partner—taking a 49 percent stake in the Bay Area Reporter, the region’s leading LGBT publication. The Reporter’s current owner, the Bob Ross Foundation, together with the paper’s general manager, Michael Yamashita, will retain a 51 percent controlling interest.
A Bay Area Reporter piece says that Vogt and a partner, San Francisco Newspaper Company executive Pat Brown, are doing the deal on their own and not as as part of the company. While not technically part of the newspaper group, the Reporter will nonetheless share in production, advertising and distribution with the Ex and the alt-weeklies. Robert Gammon at East Bay Express blogs about it. From the Reporter:
"We're not being bought out," said Yamashita, 47, who will own 31 percent of the new company and will become the paper's publisher. The foundation will own 20 percent. Vogt and Brown will own 49 percent, collectively.
Because of tax regulations, the nonprofit Bob Ross Foundation is legally required to divest 80 percent of its ownership interest by 2016. The foundation is named after the B.A.R.'s founding publisher, who started the paper in 1971.
