Observer Media Group LLC

New York Observer LLC is a privately-held company founded by Arthur L. Carter in 1987 and now owned and operated by real-estate heir Jared Kushner. (Its legal parent company is Observer Media Group.) New York Obsever LLC is based in New York City and its flagship property is the upscale weekly tabloid newspaper The New York Observer, which targets a relatively small but elite and wealthy audience. New York Observer LLC also operates multiple online blogs including Politicker, the Daily Transom, The Real Estate, and Media Mob, as well as a weekly business-to-business print publication, Commercial Observer, covering New York's commercial real estate industry. Jared Kushner bought New York Observer LLC in 2006 while he was a 25-year old law student (see PrivCo M&A Table: New York Observer LLC, for transaction details); Kusher is heir to the Kushner Companies, the family-owned New York and New Jersey real estate developer led by his father Charles Kushner, an ex-convict who served time in federal prison for his business dealings including tax evasion and for hiring a prostitute to videotape his own brother cheating (with her) on his wife, in order to use it as blackmail so they would stop cooperating with federal prosecutors. Jared Kushner's wife is Ivanka Trump, eldest daughter of billionaire developer Donald J. Trump. New York Observer LLC’s flagship property, The New York Observer newspaper, is distinctive for its salmon-colored oddly pink newsprint, its respected columnists (including former columnist Candance Bushnell, whose column Sex and the City, later turned by HBO into a hit TV series, in The New York Observer put the newspaper on the map). Despite its local prominence among New York's elite, The New York Observer newspaper's circulation remains small (just over 50,000 weekly as of 2011) and has been unprofitable since its founding (see PrivCo Financial Table: New York Observer LLC for this private company's financials). New York Observer LLC is increasingly focusing its efforts on its digital properties as it seeks profitability. New York Observer LLC's recent re-ficusing on shorter and more web-friendly pieces has led to much turnover among the Observer's old guard. 18-year veteran journalists Joe Conanson abrubtly resigned in February 2011, and telling did so in an email not to his Editor in Chief (nor even to Jared Kushner), but to his managing editor, tell her to simply "please tell Jared Kushner and Elizbaeth Spiers and and anyone else who kneeds to know" that he's now gone, according to an internal email obtained by PrivCo.

In March 2011, Observer Media Group launched Betabeat.com, covering the New York City tech world, part of a strategy of creating new vertical websites to diversify beyond the printed New York Observer newspaper (which had a circulation of about 50,000 per week in 2011). Consistent with this stragtegy Observer Media Grou palso launched GalleristNY.com in late 2011 to focus on the art gallery scene.

In December 2011, Observer Media Group hired away Peter Davis, a well known Editor at luxury publication Avenue Magazine and pop culture magazine Paper, to launch a new glossy magazine in 2012 covering the luxury segment.