US: Dow Jones Sells Local Newspapers

Posted by Allie Judson on October 30, 2006 at 11:58 AM

Dow Jones & Co recently announced the future sale of 6 local newspapers. The papers are a part of the Ottaway community newspapers group, which owns a dozen local newspapers around the North Eastern United States, and are being sold to Community Newspaper Holdings, a private publisher located in Birmingham, Alabama. The sale is expected to cost $US282.5 million and will go towards the Dow Jones' purchase of Reuters Group's stake in the Factiva news archive service.

The Dow Jones is looking to sell because of dropping numbers in circulation due to increased Internet readership. While bigger companies serving larger papers seem to be struggling, more locally managed newspapers are getting larger. The Community Newspaper Holdings and other like companies seem to better manage local papers because of the smaller budget and market.

Currently the Community Newspaper Holdings runs 90 daily and 200 non-daily newspapers and after the sale will be adding: the News-Times in Danbury, Connecticut; The Daily Star in Oneonta, New York; the Press-Republican in Plattsburgh, New York; The Daily Item in Sunbury, Pennsylvania; and the Traverse City Record-Eagle in Michigan, all with a combined annual revenue of $93 million.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

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