Gatehouse Media sells Grand Island Independent to Omaha World-Herald
The Associated Press reported Thursday:
The employee-owned Omaha World-Herald Co. has bought The Grand Island Independent and the York News-Times from GateHouse Media Inc.
…Fairport, N.Y.-based GateHouse had owned the two newspapers only since last fall when it bought 14 daily papers from Morris Communication Co.
The Independent’s Mark Coddington reported:
Both [Independent Publisher Don Smith] and [Terry Kroeger, publisher and chief executive officer of the World-Herald Co.] said they expect no immediate changes at The Independent.
Kroeger said the World-Herald Co. has a long history of allowing independence among its newspapers.
“Decisions about Grand Island coverage are best made in Grand Island,” he said.
So why do we mention it? Only because our good friend Josh Awtry — now an AME for the Salt Lake Tribune — worked for the Independent. And the former AME for visuals of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Bill Dunn, is the editor there.
Not surprisingly, the Independent — daily circulation 20,500 — is one of the better-designed small papers you’ll find anywhere. But they haven’t been posting their fronts regularly lately.
The York News-Times of York, Nebraska, is even smaller: 4,700. I don’t know much about that paper, however.
Read the Independent’s story here. Read the full AP story in Editor & Publisher.
August 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Charles,
I can tell you a little about the York News-Times…. Greg Awtry (my father) became the publisher there a few years back.
That aside, I can say with the most honest of opinions that, while under Morris Communications’ watch, the York News-Times had one of the best (and most understated) Web operations in the entire country. Their little paper of 4,700 circulation posted breaking, live video faster than I’ve seen the largest papers in the nation do it. Their newsroom staff shows a tireless devotion — I honestly don’t know where they find the time to sleep — to produce rapid-fire, high-quality online work. As the overseer of an online division of a paper nearly 30 times York’s size, I’m jealous of what they’ve been able to accomplish. The move to the Omaha World-Herald’s ownership will mean great things for them.
There aren’t many papers left that size today that are still publishing dailies; it’s a testament to the quality of their work that they’re still going strong.