Thursday, February 07, 2019

GateHouse, Lee buy Midwest papers


Two major newspaper chains have picked up new papers in the Midwest.
Pittsford, New York-based GateHouse Media is buying 20 regional papers and several special publications in Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Pennsylvania and South Dakota from Mishawaka, Indiana-based Schurz Communications. The purchase includes the South Bend Tribune (Indiana). The ownership change will happen in the first quarter, Schurz says.
The purchase involves all 20 Schurz publications, including the Herald-Times in Bloomington (Indiana), The Petoskey News-Review (Michigan), The American News in Aberdeen (South Dakota), and The Herald-Mail in Hagerstown (Maryland).
Schurz says it will continue investing in the areas of cloud and managed IT services and broadband operation.
Schurz’s tech focus began with the purchase of four broadband companies and the company is currently poised to complete the purchase of a fifth, the company says. In February 2018, Schurz announced that it had acquired hybrid cloud provider Online Tech. An additional investment in the cloud infrastructure assets of Neverfail was announced in December 2018 and highlighted the company’s interest in expanding Online Tech’s presence on a global scale.
Layoffs followed news of the purchase, the Herald-Times reported, with six employees at the Hoosier Times Group being cut. Eleven jobs at the South Bend Tribune were also cut by GateHouse, the paper reported.
Meanwhile Lee Enterprises is buying the daily Kenosha News and Lake Geneva Regional News (Wisconsin) from Kenosha-based media company United Communications Corporation.
Davenport, Iowa-based Lee has daily newspapers, digital products and nearly 300 weekly and specialty publications in 49 markets in 20 states.

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