Paul Allen has found someone to take the Sporting News off his hands. Employees of the St. Louis-based title—known chiefly as "that sports magazine that's not SI or ESPN"—learned Monday that they have been acquired by American City Business Journals, part of the Newhouse-owned Advance Publications. (Advance also owns Condé Nast, Golf Digest and various newspapers and cable companies.) The news came down in the form of a not-terribly-reassuring internal memo, which raised the issue of layoffs without really addressing it.

"There are no plans to make immediate changes to our overall workforce; all aspects of our business will be evaluated in the ordinary course to determine how Sporting News can begin to grow again," it said.

Sporting News has been on the block since February, when Allen, a Microsoft co-founder and the head of Vulcan Ventures, announced plans to sell. The memo didn't say how much Advance was paying for the purchase, but it's a fair guess it's nothing close to the $100 million-plus Allen forked over six years ago to buy the title from the Times Mirror Company. Published reports have put its value in the $35 million-$40 million range. Considering Forbes placed Allen's net worth at $22.5 billion last year, we're guessing he'll take the loss in stride.