T&G experiences another ownership shift
The Telegram & Gazette will soon have its third owner in a little more than a year after its parent firm, Halifax Media Group, announced it’s being acquired by the parent of GateHouse Media, which owns the MetroWest Daily News and other notable media properties in Massachusetts.
New Media Investment Group, a publicly traded company, is paying $280 million cash for Halifax, which added the T&G to its portfolio of 36 newspapers in June.
The deal announced Thursday is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.
New Media is acquiring substantially all of Halifax’s assets, New Media said in a statement. The T&G is Halifax’s only Bay State paper. Twenty-four of the remaining newspapers, which are mostly in the Southeast, are dailies. New Media said Halifax papers have a total daily circulation of approximately 635,000, and 752,000 on Sunday.
In August 2013, the T&G was sold, along with the Boston Globe and other New York Times holdings in the region, to Boston Red Sox owner John Henry in a $70 million deal. Although Henry, in a visit to the T&G newsroom, told staff he hoped to sell the paper to a buyer with strong local ties, he sold it last spring to Halifax, which is based in Daytona Beach, Fla.
Michael E. Reed, New Media’s president and CEO, said in the statement released by New Media, “This is a very exciting day for our company. Halifax Media is one of the premier, locally oriented media companies in the United States whose business fits extremely well within New Media.” He praised the journalistic excellence of Halifax’s publications.
“Additionally,” Reed said in the statement, “the acquisition further diversifies New Media’s business from both a geographic and customer standpoint. These markets also present a tremendous opportunity for New Media to expand its digital businesses … as these markets expand our footprint of small and mid-size businesses we will be able to reach.”
Halifax has been a relatively recent player in media, having been formed by a group of investors about four years ago.
New Media and especially the GateHouse name have been familiar to New Englanders for some time. It’s one of the largest U.S. publishers of locally based print and online media, with 450 community publications and more than 370 related websites, the T&G reported.
In Massachusetts, GateHouse owns the MetroWest Daily News, the Cape Cod Times, the Inquirer and Mirror of Nantucket, the Standard-Times of New Bedford, the Taunton Daily Gazette, the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the Milford Daily News, the Herald News of Fall River, and the Enterprise of Brockton, among others. GateHouse CEO Kirk A. Davis is also president of Worcester Magazine.
In September, New Media bought the Providence Journal from A.H. Belo Corp. of Dallas.
James F. Normandin, the T&G publisher hired by Halifax, said he looked forward to the opportunities that will come with new ownership, and that the paper would continue to focus on comprehensive local news coverage, the T&G reported Friday.
(Disclosure: The writer is a former Telegram & Gazette employee.)
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