Local Media Group, Inc., formerly Dow Jones Local Media Group and Ottaway Newspapers Inc., owned newspapers, websites and niche publications in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It was headquartered in Campbell Hall, New York, and its flagship was the Times Herald-Record, serving Middletown and other suburbs of New York City.
The Ottaway organization was founded in by James H. Ottaway Sr., owner of the Endicott Daily Bulletin of Endicott, NY, in 1936. It had grown to nine newspapers in the northeastern United States by 1970, when it was acquired by Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and later a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Following the 2013 split of News Corporation into 21st Century Fox and News Corp, News Corp sold the Dow Jones Local Media Group to Newcastle Investment Corp., an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, which placed the holdings in the GateHouse Media portfolio of its New Media Investment Group, renamed Gannett following that company's 2019 acquisition by New Media Investment Group.
History
Ottaway newspapers
James H. Ottaway Sr. founded the company in November 1936, when he purchased the Bulletin, a semi-weekly paper in Endicott, New York, that he converted to a daily within a year. Ottaway added the Oneonta Star in 1944, followed two years later by the Pocono Record.
The company was a seller more often than a buyer in the 2000s (decade), however, and several observers—including the New York Post, The Boston Globe and Ottaway's own Cape Cod Times—speculated that News Corporation intended to sell all or part of the company in the near future.
Dow Jones Local Media Group
Under Dow Jones' ownership, Ottaway sold several newspapers in recent years, however, most recently in December 2006, when the company dealt nearly half its daily newspapers to Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) for $287.9 million (including real estate).
Until December 2006, the following dailies and weeklies were also part of the Ottaway chain. Other than the California and Connecticut newspapers, they are all now part of CNHI. Santa Cruz Sentinel daily of Santa Cruz, California The News-Times daily of Danbury, Connecticut The Spectrum weekly of Milford, Connecticut Traverse City Record-Eagle daily of Traverse City, Michigan The Grand Traverse Herald weekly of Traverse City, Michigan Cooperstown Crier weekly of Cooperstown, New York Daily Star of Oneonta, New York Press-Republican of Plattsburgh, New York Daily Item of Sunbury, Pennsylvania The Danville News weekdays only, of Danville, Pennsylvania
These four daily newspapers were sold by Ottaway to CNHI for $182 million in 2002: The Herald of Sharon, Pennsylvania The Independent of Ashland, Kentucky The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota The Joplin Globe of Joplin, Missouri
Also, Ottaway sold the three daily newspapers of Essex County Newspapers Inc. to The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Massachusetts, in 2002, for $70 million. The Eagle-Tribune, along with the Essex papers listed below, was later purchased by CNHI. Daily News of Newburyport of Newburyport, Massachusetts Gloucester Daily Times of Gloucester, Massachusetts Salem Evening News of Salem, Massachusetts
Sale to Newcastle
On September 4, 2013, News Corp announced that it would sell the Dow Jones Local Media Group to Newcastle Investment Corp.—an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group, for $87 million. The newspapers will be operated by GateHouse Media, a newspaper group owned by Fortress. News Corp. CEO and former Wall Street Journal editor Robert James Thomson indicated that the newspapers were "not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio" of the company. GateHouse in turn filed prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations in order to accommodate the acquisition. Newcastle combined Local Media Group with the post-bankruptcy GateHouse Media later in 2013 to form New Media Investment Group.
Holdings
Holdings by frequency of publication
Dow Jones Local Media Group published eight daily and 15 weekly newspapers in seven U.S. states. Its circulation was given in 2005 as 282,000 daily, 316,000 Sunday and 119,000 daily unique visitors on newspaper Internet sites.
Daily newspapers are: Ashland Daily Tidings of Ashland, Oregon (sold) Cape Cod Times of Barnstable, Massachusetts Mail Tribune of Medford, Oregon (sold) Pocono Record of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania The Portsmouth Herald of Portsmouth, New Hampshire The Record of Stockton, California The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts Times Herald-Record of Middletown, New York