The New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, Denver Post and other papers filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in a New York federal court. "We've spent billions of dollars gathering information and reporting news at our publications, and we can't allow OpenAI and Microsoft to expand the Big Tech playbook of stealing our work to build their own businesses at our expense," said a written statement from Frank Pine, executive editor for the MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing. The other newspapers that are part of the lawsuit are MediaNews Group's Mercury News, Denver Post, Orange County Register and St Paul Pioneer-Press, and Tribune Publishing's Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun Sentinel. All of the newspapers are owned by Alden Global Capital. Microsoft declined to comment on Tuesday.

It looks like USA Today is officially not going to be the Los Angeles Times' tomorrow. During its annual shareholder meeting here Thursday morning, Tribune Publishing, the Times' parent company, won a key victory. Its tech-entrepreneur owner fended off two takeover attempts from Gannett, publisher of USA Today, and won approval of his board slate. Before the meeting, Bloomberg reported, Gannett was likely to pull out of acquisition talks pending the result of the vote, an outcome that seems almost perfunctory at this point. Now all Tribune chairman Michael Ferro has to do is make the futuristic vision he and the company's new vice chairman and second-largest investor, biotech billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, have for the company -- which includes artificial intelligence, "machine vision" technology and new bureaus from Rio de Janeiro to Lagos -- a promising story about the future of news.

The newspaper business is shrinking fast. Print ad revenues keep falling, and cost-cutting is the mantra of the day. So why is Tribune Publishing fighting so hard to avoid the embrace of USA Today owner Gannett? It may come down to a clash of bean-counters against visionaries--assuming, of course, it's not just about holding out for the best price. Gannett wants Tribune--the company behind the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and other major daily papers--because bigger is better in a shrinking industry.

The second-largest shareholder of Los Angeles Times owner Tribune Publishing said Wednesday that passing up a buyout offer from rival publishing company Gannett could "destroy enormous shareholder value." In a letter sent to Tribune's board and filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, downtown L.A. investment firm Oaktree Capital Management made clear it wants the board to reconsider selling to Gannett and raised serious concerns about the turnaround plans of new Tribune Chairman Michael Ferro. The board this month rejected an offer of 12.25 a share from Gannett, which responded this week by raising that offer to 15 a share. That's a 99% premium to Tribune Publishing's stock price before Gannett went public with its proposal last month. Oaktree, which owns 14.8% of Tribune Publishing's shares, this month urged the company's board to negotiate with Gannett.