GBN News To Acquire NY Times

July 18, 2008 (GBN News): In a surprise move, GBN News announced today that an agreement was reached yesterday for the upstart news service to acquire one of the nation’s oldest and most venerated newspapers, the New York Times. GBN News, which despite its brief existence has gained a reputation for being the gold standard in education reporting, will be taking over the Times as of next Monday.

It is unclear just what effects this takeover will have on the Times reporting, or their staff. GBN News is a shoestring operation, run off a single computer in a small house in Bellerose, NY, while the Times has hundreds of employees and numerous facilities all over the world. Whether the newly merged news organizations will be headquartered in the Bellerose facility or the Times building in Manhattan has not been announced.

Also unclear is just how such a small news organization with virtually no assets was able to take over such a renowned industry giant. However, GBN news was recently awarded an exclusive no-bid contract as the sole distributor of NY City Department of Education press releases. Given the size of the DOE public relations budget, industry experts speculate that this contract alone could have financed GBN’s takeover of the Times.