I love the way he's thinking about this. I think the subscription estimates are a little optimistic and the payroll is too high but overall it makes sense.

I grew up in Manchester, NH where the Manchester Union Leader was run by a right wing fanatic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Loeb_III

and then his wife Nackey (Larouchites learned to rue leaving a dead cat on her doorstep) and then by the McQuaid family which was another old rich family long associated with the paper. My understanding is that it is still a stable business and that the folks involved have some spunk and integrity (they are still conservatives but the backed Gary Johnson in 2016 and Biden in 2020 because they don't think Trump is conservative)

I live close to Ithaca, NY now where the Ithaca Journal has been run by Gannett for more than a century, frequently the headlines have nothing to do with our community and people might laugh at you if they see you with a paper because the paper seems to be a page shorter every time you see it. It used to be you'd see local election results in the Journal the next morning, but the Journal didn't post them until 2:30 pm the next day and got scooped by all the weekly papers. There's a movement to get the legal filings out of the Journal because it is doing much less for the community than the weeklies.