Pluria Marshall, Jr. And the Wave Community Newspapers

Pluria Marshall, Jr., president of Marshall Media, is offered an opportunity to purchase a chain of 13 newspapers called the Wave Community Newspapers. The Los Angeles Times had decided to pass on the deal, which bothers Marshall. He had thought that the Times' strategy was to merge the Wave with the Times' own weekly neighborhood paper to better serve the ethnically diverse and segregated neighborhoods of greater Los Angeles. The trigger issue focuses on whether Marshall Media is capable of competing against the resources of the much larger Los Angeles Times to capture the market share of L.A.'s Latino and African American communities. This case allows an exploration of the challenge of creating and sustaining entrepreneurship in the very competitive newspaper industry. The case also affords a discussion of techniques for managing costs in urban environments.