TheStreet parent received PPP loan

The parent company of TheStreet Inc., a financial news website co-founded by media personality Jim Cramer, received a $5.7 million loan as part of a program aimed at helping U.S. small businesses weather the pandemic, reports Matt Townsend of Bloomberg News.

Townsend reports, “The loan was included in documents released by the federal government on Monday chronicling the $669 billion Paycheck Protection Program. A spokesman for TheMaven Inc., which acquired TheStreet in 2019 for $16.5 million, said that for ‘ease-of-process’ reasons the borrowing was taken out under TheStreet’s name, but that it was for the entire consolidated company, which owns media properties such as Sports Illustrated.

“Cramer, who still supplies content to TheStreet under a deal that followed its acquisition by TheMaven, has been critical of how banks handled the Paycheck Protection Program. In April, he slammed financial institutions for approving loans to larger companies than should have been allowed. A spokesperson for CNBC, where Cramer hosts a TV show, declined to comment.”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.