Newhouse Plays Ball

VULCAN DEATH GRIP Allen Paul Allen has found someone to take the Sporting News off his hands. Employees of the St. Louis-based title—known chiefly as "that sports magazine that's not SI or ESPN"—learned Monday that they have been acquired by American City Business Journals, part of the Newhouse-owned Advance Publications. (Advance also owns Condé Nast, Golf Digest and various newspapers and cable companies.) The news came down in the form of a not-terribly-reassuring internal memo, which raised the issue of layoffs without really addressing it.

"There are no plans to make immediate changes to our overall workforce; all aspects of our business will be evaluated in the ordinary course to determine how Sporting News can begin to grow again," it said.