Changes in the Las Vegas media include the Review-Journal

Big media purchases — they’re not just for local TV stations.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal became a buyout target in March, when New York-based New Media Investment Group snapped up its parent company, Stephens Media.

The deal, worth $102.5 million, included seven other daily papers nationwide and solidified New Media’s status as the country’s biggest owner of dailies, with 125 titles. The Review-Journal, Nevada’s largest media outlet, is New Media’s biggest newspaper, with a Sunday circulation of 184,000 and an average of 10.5 million monthly Web page views.

How the Review-Journal’s sale will affect what you see in your daily paper and at reviewjournal.com isn’t clear yet, Editor Mike Hengel said. The sale closed just two weeks ago, so it’s too early to talk major changes.

But the newspaper sector remains an industry in flux, with print advertising revenue in a yearslong slide. New Media and its newspaper operating arm, GateHouse Media, have fresh ideas for added revenue streams, but operational changes won’t be immediate.

It’s easier to say what will stay the same. For now.

First, the Review-Journal’s core reporting philosophy will continue to emphasize “being aggressive in breaking news, as well as focusing on solid reporting that leads to in-depth enterprise work,” Hengel said.

Enterprise stories are exclusives and investigative pieces that reporters dig up on their beats.

“GateHouse emphasizes enterprise work, and so do we,” Hengel said. “That’s where we need to excel to differentiate ourselves in the market.”

The Review-Journal also is filling newsroom positions in core coverage areas. The paper hired an education reporter who’s scheduled to start in late April. It’s also looking to staff a data-reporting job and a features reporter.

Hengel also said he doesn’t expect changes in the Review-Journal’s “conservative-libertarian-leaning” editorial page.

“GateHouse has newspapers with editorial philosophies across the political spectrum, and no one has suggested any change,” he said.

Nor will there be a modification of the joint operating agreement that has the Review-Journal print and distribute the Las Vegas Sun as a daily insert — a relation­ship that has not always been harmonious.

Sun owner Brian Greenspun sued the Review-Journal in District Court in Clark County in March, alleging that the Review-Journal improperly deducted editorial costs from profits before paying the Sun the monthly stipend that supports its newsroom operations. Greenspun said the Review-Journal shorted his paper at least $6 million in the past decade. Stephens Media filed a motion Wednesday to compel arbitration in the matter.

Kirk Davis, chief operating officer of New Media and CEO of GateHouse, said in a recent staff meeting that he’s “very eager” to meet with Sun executives.

“GateHouse and New Media come in with a fresh start, and that means it’s an occasion for fresh dialogue,” Davis said. “But we do have to believe, underlying all of this, that we share a common bond, and that is doing well for Las Vegas.”

The Review-Journal’s sale comes amid challenging times for the newspaper business. U.S. print advertising revenue fell from $47.4 billion in 2005 to $17.3 billion in 2013, according to the Pew Research Center and the Newspaper Association of America. Revenue from website advertising isn’t even close to picking up the slack: It rose from $2 billion in 2005 to $3.4 billion in 2013.

But New Media, which arose in November 2013 from a restructuring of $1.2 billion in GateHouse debt, has been able to expand in recent quarters.

The company, publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange as NEWM, posted revenue of $186.8 million in the fourth quarter. That was up 16.5 percent from a year earlier. Just $16 million of the company’s quarterly revenue came from digital operations, although the digital side gained 14.2 percent year-over-year for online publications in operation a year or more.

New Media is investing some of that revenue in expanding non-newspaper platforms such as Propel, a digital marketing service for small businesses; car-sales website BestRide.com; A Sunday Select program that helps advertisers reach nonsubscribers; and a 140-employee Center for News and Design in Austin, Texas, where the company has centralized copy-editing and layout functions to streamline operations.

Davis said New Media is mulling a second center on the Review-Journal campus.

New Media has at least one important initiative that will soon affect the reporting you see in these pages.

“They have programs that we haven’t had access to in terms of training for editors and reporters, and tools for sharpening work on enterprise stories,” Hengel said.

New Media’s other dailies include the State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill.; the Providence Journal in Providence, R.I.; and the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass. Those papers use a similar template for their websites, so changes may be coming to reviewjournal.com, although Hengel said tweaks have not yet been discussed.

A change in the Review-Journal’s executive team was announced Thursday. Mark Ficarra will step down as publisher April 16, and continue part time as chief revenue officer until May 15. Davis said GateHouse is searching for a permanent publisher, and is expected to name an interim publisher Thursday.

The Stephens deal also netted New Media the Pahrump Valley Times, the Tonopah Times-Bonanza, the Boulder City Review, El Tiempo, Luxury magazine, the View newspapers and the Las Vegas Business Press.

Contact Jennifer Robison at jrobison@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4512. Find her on Twitter: @J_Robison1.