“I’m sad to say goodbye to those people and to a great brand — it’s done wonders for us
and our family,” Gus Wenner, the chief digital officer at Wenner and the son of the company’s founder, Jann S. Wenner, said in an interview.
On Wednesday, American Media Inc., publisher of the National Enquirer and Radar Online, announced
that it had reached an agreement to acquire Us Weekly from Wenner Media, which has owned it since 1985.
Us had a rough start as a weekly, however, and in 2001, Wenner sold a 50 percent
stake in the magazine to the Walt Disney Company for about $40 million.
For Wenner Media, which also publishes Rolling Stone and Men’s Journal, the sale of Us Weekly represents a further paring of assets.
(Wenner used $25 million from the $40 million Rolling Stone deal last year for a special payment on its loan, according to credit reports.)
