Times Media Group has continued on its acquisition track, taking over Acorn Newspapers, a publisher of five brands serving more than 340,000 readers in Western Los Angeles and Eastern Ventura Counties. Terms were not disclosed. Included in the purchase are the weeklies The Acorn serving Agoura Hills, Moorpark Acorn, Simi Valley Acorn, Camarillo Acorn and Thousand Oaks Acorn, along with companion publications and websites. Last month, Times Media Group acquired Picket Fence Media, publisher of San Clemente Times and other Southern California titles. The company has more than 40 publications in Arizona and Southern California.

Savvas Learning Company is pleased to announce that CEO Bethlam Forsa has been selected for membership in the Newsweek Expert Forum, an invitation-only community for pioneering thinkers and cross-industry business leaders. As a member, Forsa will regularly contribute original articles for Newsweek.com on a diverse range of topics impacting the world of education. “I am excited by the many opportunities the Newsweek Expert Forum will provide to share my perspectives on the most pressing challenges, emerging trends and urgent issues facing education today,” said Forsa. “I look forward to fostering conversations about how to address those challenges, support educators, students and families, and build better, more engaging and impactful education solutions in the future.”

In PW’s annual salary and jobs survey, 25% of the 442 respondents picked flat sales as the #1 issue facing the industry in 2017. It narrowly edged out competition from other media, identified by 24% of respondents as the most important issue. While book publishing has fared better than some other media in the digital age, there has been no growth over the past five years. According to the Association of American Publishers’ recent StatShot report, total industry sales fell to $26.24 billion in 2016, down 5.1% from 2015. Between 2012 and 2016, sales fell every year except 2014, and over the five-year period sales dropped 5.3%. Within the trade segment, sales rose 1.5% in 2016 over 2015 and were up 1.3% in 2016 over 2012. The lack of real growth in the industry, in some ways, has likely been caused by the other issues highlighted in the survey. Certainly, publishers must compete with the many new entertainment options available to consumers to get attention for their books, and the explosion of video games and the growing use of social media has made reading books less popular. Click Read More below for more of the story.