has lost one-fourth of its newspapers since 2005 and is on track to lose one-third by 2025, creating vast areas without local news coverage.

Paxton bought 55 papers, but also sold five and closed or merged 10. Most of the communities they served did not get a replacement in digital or print form.Īmong the regional media chains, several experienced considerable churn in their portfolios during the past two-plus years. All but 24 of those shuttered papers were weeklies, many in economically struggling markets. lost 360 newspapers between the pre-pandemic months of late 2019 and the end of May 2022. Community after community lost its access to traditional local news coverage - with the least affluent markets faring much worse than others. As COVID-19 disrupted life and work, the U.S. The merger-and-acquisition activity is a bright spot in an otherwise bleak marketplace for traditional local news. Three of those largest regional chains did not exist a decade ago, while the other three have been family-operated for generations. Six of the 10 largest newspaper owners in 2022 are regional chains - with between 50 and 142 papers apiece in their growing empires.

Two-thirds of the 82 papers Gannett sold in the past two years were bought by CherryRoad or Paxton.

The West Virginia-based Ogden Newspapers - founded in 1890 - owns 101 papers in 18 states stretching from New Hampshire to Hawaii.

The 125-year-old Kentucky-based Paxton Media owns 115 newspapers in 10 Southern and Midwestern states.

CherryRoad Media of New Jersey - a unit of CherryRoad Technologies founded in 2020 - owns 63 papers in 10 Midwestern states plus a publication serving Fort Leavenworth in Kansas.

Since 2020, three companies have led the way: At the same time, however, privately owned regional chains have snapped up dozens of newspapers shed by the mega-chains, as well as smaller family-owned operations. Recent headlines have focused on the strategic maneuvering of the biggest chains - Gannett, Lee Enterprises and Alden Global Capital, which own most of the newspapers in the country’s largest markets. Everything has been going in the right direction, for now.” “We’ll definitely look to expand again into the fall. There were some good values to be had,” Gulban said in an interview. “It was a good time to get into this business. In less than a year, with little fanfare, CherryRoad has gone from owning one newspaper to 63 - and counting. Gulban is one of several new “newspaper barons” aggressively buying dailies and weeklies in small and mid-sized markets. Jeremy Gulban of CherryRoad Technologies, on the other hand, mainly wants to use his dozens of newspapers to make a modest profit, build his company’s brand and find new customers for its technology services. This article was originally published on Northwestern University’s Medill Local News Initiative website and is republished here with permission.ĭuring the heyday of print newspapers, big-shot media moguls were practically kingmakers, using their resources to shape public opinion about everything from elections to wars.

Integrity plus property management