POLITICO Screen grab 'Human Events' for sale, may close

Human Events — the venerable, but struggling, conservative weekly revered by generations of Republicans — has been put up for sale, and may close entirely if a buyer can’t be found, POLITICO has learned.

“We’re trying to figure out the right thing to do with a property that is sort of the cornerstone of the conservative movement,” Joe Guerriero, an executive at Eagle Publishing, the parent company of Human Events, said Thursday.


“We have a number of parties that are really interested in its property,” he added. “I mean, I have literally been on a couple calls today with potential buyers of Human Events.”

Guerriero would not identify the potential buyers, but he did not reject characterizations that the journal is struggling financially and could fold if a buyer isn’t found.

“Boy, that would be a really emotionally difficult thing for us to do,” he said. “There are too many conversations right now ongoing with potential buyers, so to even go in that direction right now, I don’t think it would be fair to a potential buyer, or us, either.”

Human Events — which has a full-time staff of about 15 and distributes 40,000 copies, 44 times a year — was described by a biographer as Ronald Reagan’s “favorite reading for years” and still holds sway in some conservative quarters.

But it’s also seen its market share eroded by the addition of edgy new Web-based conservative outlets like the Free Beacon, the Daily Caller and Breitbart.

Eagle Publishing also counts among its many properties RedState.com, a leading conservative blog, and Guerriero suggested its rise may have made Human Events expendable.

“We have a property in Red State that we’re very excited about,” he said. “It’s grown in influence. It is sort of the quick, essential new media property — tons of contributors, [editor-in-chief] Erick Erickson is a rising star in conservative media. And sometime, it’s tough to support a number of different initiatives, so I think that’s one of the things that may have led to it.”

The efforts to save Human Events come at a time of great tumult, both for the media, as a whole, and the conservative movement.

Just as tea party activists and groups have challenged the GOP establishment, the new online media outlets have challenged legacy newspapers and television networks. On the right, Human Events and other traditional conservative print stalwarts like National Review and The Weekly Standard have invested heavily in websites and blogs, and Human Events last year overhauled both its print and online editions in an effort to keep up.

FishbowlDC reported last March that Human Events was in the midst of a shakeup including layoffs and a possible shift to a more centrist positioning. It followed with a December report that Eagle was in talks about selling the publication to the conservative nonprofit Young America’s Foundation, though Guerriero cast the possibility as “a strategic partnership” and told FishbowlDC “in the end it didn’t work out.”

As for the current talks, Guerriero told POLITICO a resolution could come “tomorrow. It could be next week, week after. I really don’t know. We just want to do what’s right.”

He added, “We’re actually relatively hopeful that we’ll be able to find Human Events a new home. It means so much to the conservative movement.”

It’s just a coincidence that Human Events is being put up for sale as the Republican Party is struggling to reinvent itself, Guerriero said.

“There is no connection. We understand the challenges that some say exist in the Republican Party, and the bit of a divide,” he said. “This is totally a macroeconomic newspaper issue. It’s got nothing to do with that, whatsoever.

“It’s the newspaper business,” he added. “And you know what? We believe in our message, we believe in our cause, we believe in what we do. We’re in a new age and, unfortunately, we are getting hit with the very same challenges that just about any major daily is.”

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated Erick Erickson founded RedState.com.

CORRECTION: Corrected by: Andrea Drusch @ 02/21/2013 08:19 PM CORRECTION: A previous version of this story indicated Erick Erickson founded RedState.com.

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