The New York Times Company has agreed to sell the About Group, which includes the About.com network of topic sites, to Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp for about $300 million in cash, the company said on Sunday.
The deal, which is expected to close in the next several weeks, continues a corporate overhaul that is refocusing The Times on its core newspaper and Web site operations.
“This sale will allow the Times Company to focus on the development and growth of our core brands locally, nationally and on a global scale,†Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, said in a statement.
In May, the Times Company sold off the remains of its stake in the Fenway Sports Group, the owner of the Boston Red Sox. And in January, the company sold its regional newspaper group to Halifax Media Holdings for $143 million.
For Mr. Diller, the About acquisition is just the latest for a longt ime deal maker who built his company out of a collection of properties like Match.com, Newsweek and The Daily Beast. In making his bid, he topped an earlier $270 million offer for About by Answers.com, a question-and-answer Web site backed by two private investment firms, Summit Partners and TA Associates.
About's primary asset is About.com, a collection of sites devoted to specific topics handled by individuals, like cooking, travel and pregnancy. A primary goal is for content to appear high up in search engine results, the better to draw in advertising dollars.
The Times Company bought the business in 2005 for a little over $400 million, giving the news provider an asset whose profits drew in revenue as the publishing industry faltered.
But About suffered from a decline in online traffic last year. Changes to Google's search algorithm reduced the prominence of the group's content, which has sometimes been criticized for lacking in substance. Revenue at th e group tumbled 8.7 percent in its most recent quarter, to $25.4 million. That prompted the Times Company to disclose that it would write down the value of About by $194.7 million.
