The homepage of Alaska Dispatch.com on the day it bought ADN.com. The building has since been sold to GCI, Inc., and the new ADN.com is suing The McClatchy Co., the former owner of the newspaper.
Updated Monday May 9, 2016 – Hopfinger sold Dispatch Publishing shares
Given the interest generated by Alaska’s major news operation — ADN.com — suing the state’s formerly major news operation — ADN.com — craigmedred.news is posting two Anchorage Superior Court filings here.
The first is a copy of the stock purchase agreement that transferred ownership of The Anchorage Daily News, owned by McClatchy Newspapers Inc., to Alaska Dispatch Publishing LLC for $34 million on April 8, 2014:
ADN Stock Purchase Agreement – 5-6-16, 12-47 PM-1
Alaska Dispatch Publishing at that time operated Alaska Dispatch.com, the state’s most successful, online-only news site. Majority owner Alice Rogoff in 2014 merged Alaska Dispatch.com and Anchorage Daily News (adn.com) into a new entity publicly branded as Alaska Dispatch News (ADN.com), and owned by AK Publishing LLC.
Alaska Dispatch Publishing minority owner and Alaska Dispatch.com co-founder Tony Hopfinger was named president of the new ADN. He is now gone from Alaska. His departure from the company he and ex-wife Amanada Coyne started and struggled to maintain until Rogoff provided financial backing was unannounced and remains something of a mystery.
Not long after he left, Alaska Dispatch Publishing sued McClatchy for breach of contract. Hopfinger now lives in Chicago. In a telephone interview Monday, he said that although state records still show him as owning 5 percent of Alaska Dispatch Publishing, that is not the case.
He sold his 5 percent share in the company to Rogoff at the time of the Daily News purchase, he said. He didn’t know why McClatchy was sued in the name of Dispatching Publishing instead of AK Publishing LLC, the company set up to run the Alaska Dispatch News. And he said he couldn’t talk about his current relationship with Rogoff for legal reasons.
The full Dispatch claim against McClatchy can be viewed here:
AKDispatch v McClatchy – 5-6-16, 12-45 PM
Categories: News, Uncategorized
If Ms. Rogoff was an astute business person, she would stop with the lawsuits and buy craigmedred.news for $4-5 million.
Sounds like Tony is also under a gag order….Alice is obviously terrible at legitimate business practices & she has been working to dissolve both news sources since her hedge fund hands have entered our state.