ALM – American Lawyer Media – close to being sold
Maybe Thomson-Reuters isn’t swooping in to buy ALM – American Lawyer Media – on the heels of Thomson’s acquisition of Reuters.
Mark Obbie, Director of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program at Syracuse University, picked up on the recent postings of Larry Bodine and Bob Ambrogi.
The two most intriguing (ominous?) aspects, if any of this is true: that Jimmy Finkelstein, former CEO of the National Law Journal side of the ALM marriage, is supposedly attempting a comeback; and that Reuters is toying with creating some sort of legal-news wire, which to my mind is a response to Bloomberg’s aggressive moves on that front over the last few years (with more than a few NLJ veterans).
Meanwhile, it’s hard not to recall the rumors during the sale of American Lawyer Media back in 1997, when everyone but the eventual buyer — Bruce Wasserstein’s private equity arm — was said to be winning the auction at any given moment.
Larry refers to the two other private equity firms who have an interest while Bob provides a nice explanation of Jimmy Finkelstein’s role, something Reuters blew in their explanation.
The Reuters report gets its facts skewed slightly, insofar as it says that Finkelstein was CEO of American Lawyer Media when investor Bruce Wasserstein and his partner Joseph Perella bought it in 1997. American Lawyer Media was the company founded by Steven Brill, who created the magazine The American Lawyer, the TV network CourtTV and the former Web service Counsel Connect. By the time Wasserstein and Perella bought it, Brill had sold the company to Time Warner, from which Wasserstein-Perella bought it in 1997. Finkelstein started New York Law Publishing, which published the New York Law Journal and the National Law Journal and had a Web site called Law Journal EXTRA! Wasserstein-Perella acquired American Lawyer Media first, then Law Journal Publishing not long after.
How ALM is run in the future is highly relevant to law bloggers who are in effect acting as news corespondents in this day of new media. In the near future law bloggers may well produce content of equal value to that of traditional legal reporters. Rather than a conflict between the two, synergies of mutual benefit are likely to develop.
If you haven’t seen Mark Obbie’s blog, check it out. Mark is Director of the Carnegie Legal Reporting Program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. The program is made possible by a grant from the Carnegie Journalism Initiative. This Carnegie Corporation of New York program is devoted to teaching future journalists more about the world they’ll report on.
Hopefully the school will teach its journalism students not only about the world they’ll be reporting on, but also what the world of journalism will look like.