LOS ANGELES â€" In a show of new media force, the owner of a collection of entertainment news blogs said on Tuesday that it had completed a deal to buy the venerable Variety for about $25 million.
Penske Media, which owns sites like Deadline.com, a ferocious breaker of movie and television news, teamed with the hedge fund Third Point to make the purchase from Variety's British owner, Reed Elsevier.
The deal was essentially a fire sale. Peter Bart, who remade Variety as its editor and remains a vice- resident and editorial director, noted that the paper at one point “was doing so well that Reed turned down a couple of offers of between $300 million and $350 million.â€
This time around, bidders included the billionaire Ron Burkle and Avenue Capital, which controls the National Enquirer.
Penske intends to continue to operate Variety, which has a staff of about 120, and Deadline, with fewer than a dozen, as distinct publications, although some staff members, including the Deadline founder Nikki Finke, may contribute to both. Variety has about 28,000 daily subscribers, according to the research firm BPA Worldwide.
Variety.com has about 320,000 monthly unique visitors, according to ComScore; Deadline has about 2.4 million.
Variety, with its tongue-twister headlines and florid green masthead, was once Hollywood's bible, a must read every morning for the lowliest of agency assistants and the mightiest of moguls. Studios, campaigning for Oscars or Emmys, spent lavishly on ads. For generations, Variety's critics had a clout that far outweighed their number of readers, providing early readings on films and Broadway shows to powerful industry insiders.
But the trade newspaper has been dying a slow death for at least a decade, bleeding from layoffs, vanishing advertisers and sharply diminished relevance in a media hierarchy now dominated b y Deadline and a rejuvenated Hollywood Reporter. Variety still lands scoops, but even some major producers no longer subscribe to the newspaper's daily print edition. Variety.com operates behind a pay wall known for infuriating log-in glitches.
To some degree, Variety's problems are the same as any newspaper these days: digital delivery is becoming more vital but doesn't generate enough money to pay the bills. But Variety has deeper problems. Movie and television companies - making fewer films, battling a sharp decline in DVD sales, watching digital video recorders erode ad sales - have been slashing trade ads.
Moreover, there is a nettlesome big picture question: Does Variety's style of classic trade publishing still serve a need? The newspaper's bread-and-butter news (casting decisions, ratings and box office analysis, agent comings and goings) has become ubiquitous and free across the Web, offered by sites like Deadline, Hollywood.com, TMZ.com, theWrap.com and IndieWire.com.
Variety has also retained a benign quality in its coverage - it is reliant on studios for its livelihood, after all - that Web rivals have exploited.
The Hollywood Reporter, once an also-ran competitor, almost vanished a few years ago but found a way to survive by transforming itself into a glossy weekly magazine. The revamped Reporter, owned by e5 Global Media and edited by Janice Min, is a hit with readers and not only because it looks pretty. Ms. Min has delivered a more relevant, provocative style of journalism, albeit one heavily reliant on anonymous sources.
Variety, founded 107 years ago, has been owned by Reed Elsevier, a Dutch and British conglomerate, since 1987. Reed previously sought to sell Variety and a cluster of other trade publications in 2008, but was unable to find a buyer, in part because of that year's financial crisis.
Neil Stiles, Variety's president, has successfully buttressed the newspaper with side businesses like databases and conferences. But Mr. Stiles, a British import, has also made questionable decisions that were unpopular in Hollywood and resulted in a deeply demoralized staff, like the 2010 cost-cutting move to lay off two of Variety's most prominent critics. Both started writing for Ms. Min in short order.
Mr. Stiles, who oversaw the sale, will leave the paper.
