The News
Former Meet the Press host Chuck Todd is pivoting to local news.
The New York Times recently profiled his “quixotic” plan for a constellation of local sites owned by their communities” and said that he and his bankers are “eyeing a purchase that could cost up to $2 billion” — and is not a major newspaper publisher. So what could possibly cost that kind of money, in or around local news?
In this article:
Max’s view
Here’s a guess: Nextdoor, the platform whose founder and CEO acknowledged to Max last summer that the product was flailing. The company is in the midst of a yearlong transition and major relaunch slated for later this year that leans into more communities and will likely include some local news partnerships.
Todd declined to comment on the speculation, but said he thinks that consumers and advertisers alike would buy in to “coverage of youth sports and having a platform that helps a community knit itself back together via shared experiences.” Its stock, like most equities, is on sale this week, so Todd could snap the company up for a bargain $575.59 million. A spokesperson for the company said it had no comment on the speculation.
Notable
- Asked by Semafor’s Ben Smith why he was going local, Todd said: “I want my political news the way I want the ingredients used at my favorite restaurants: locally sourced. We have too many journalists in Washington and not enough everywhere else.”
- Todd is the latest in a line of former TV news anchors who’ve struck out to launch their own digital media ventures, though most of those — Jim Acosta and Mehdi Hasan on the left, Piers Morgan and Megyn Kelly on the right — have focused on national politics, rather than hyperlocal issues.