Cape's weeklies sold again, this time for $225 million

The Cape Codder, Register, become part of a 270 newspaper Illinois group
Patriot Ledger, Brockton Enterprise, MPG also part of the $400 million deal

Four CNC mastheads are what's left of a once mighty media group on Cape Cod which included a dozen others before the 1990's media melt-down.

By Walter Brooks

For the third time in five years, Cape Cod's weeklies will be run by a new owner, this time, an Illinois investment group which already owns 270 small newspapers, but none in New England.

Liberty Group Publishing (soon to be renamed Gatehouse Group) paid $225 million for the Herald Media's five small suburban dailies and 100 weeklies known as the Community Newspaper Company (CNC). The latter includes The Cape Codder, The Register, the Upper Cape Codder and the Harwich Oracle.

Before this double purchase Liberty/Gatehouse owned over 270 publications, including 64 daily newspapers, and employed approximately 3,200 people at 126 locations in 15 states.

Group buys rest of South Shore newspapers at the same time

Liberty/Gatehouse, whose new CEO Mike Reed is moving at lightning speed for a man on the job only three months, also paid $175 million for two dailies and a group of weeklies owned primarily by Heritage Partners, a Boston Investment group. This second part of the deal includes the 55,000 circulation Quincy Patriot Ledger, the 33,000 circulation Brockton Enterprise and MPG Communications which is comprised of weeklies like the Plymouth Old Colony Memorial, Wareham Courier and over a dozen other South Shore weeklies.

The completed deal establishes Liberty/Gatehouse as a major player in Eastern Massachusetts.

The sale leaves the 230,000 circulation Boston Herald (which reportedly lost about $2 million last year) a distant second to the 413,000 circulation Boston Globe in the metro Boston daily market.

The Community Newspaper Company is reported to have made a $20 million profit last year, money which has been keeping the Herald afloat. For several years local CNC executives have fretted over their profits being squandered on a failing metro daily instead of buiding the weekly franchise.

Read previous Cape media columns by scrolling down here.
Read Columbia Journalism Review report on Liberty here.
Read the Globe report here or here.
Read the Herald Media's report here.
See the Liberty Group Publishing site here.
Read the Yahoo Finance report on Liberty here.
Read the Community Newspaper Company site here.