Big Sandy News, a weekly that expanded to serve several Eastern Kentucky counties, is sold

Eastern Kentucky's Big Sandy News, which expanded its coverage and circulation area, its publication frequency and its accountability journalism far beyond the normal bounds of a Kentucky weekly newspaper, has been sold to a Central Kentucky publisher who is rapidly expanding his holdings.

"Businessman Chris McGehee has purchased the BSN from Sandy Valley Press Inc.," the newspaper reported. "McGehee, a Brandenburg native, owns several newspapers in Kentucky, including the Bath County News-Outlook, the Carlisle Mercury in Nicholas County and the Herald-News in Breckinridge County." The short story did not note that McGehee only recently bought the Bath and Nicholas papers, in the Bluegrass region. It concluded, "McGehee said he anticipates no major changes with the BSN," and quoted him as saying, "I'm pleased with the paper and its operation."

The Big Sandy News was once a typical county-seat weekly, based in Louisa, at the confluence of the Levisa and Tug forks of the Big Sandy River, which flows into the Ohio River one county downstream. It is based in Lawrence County, the northernmost county on the map in its logo above. In 2001, the paper bought the Martin County Sun (upstream on the Tug and easternmost on the map) and opened a bureau in Paintsville in Johnson County (upstream on the Levisa and central on the map). It became truly regional when Publisher Scott Perry brought Susan Allen back from the daily paper in the state capital of Frankfort to run a bureau in Floyd County, southernmost on the map, where they had previously worked together. The paper also expanded circulation and coverage into Magoffin County, westernmost on the map, and began publishing twice a week.

Allen told University of Kentucky student Leah Rowland in 2004 that Perry, who had died several months earlier, wanted a regional paper “willing to tell things like they are – what really goes on” in counties not regularly covered by any daily paper and often dominated by the coal industry. “There are a lot of serious issues that must be told. The community deserves that from their local paper,” Allen said. “You have to step on toes,” Allen said. “Our ad girl Becky has a tough life because of our reporting.” But the paper grew to become one of Kentucky's largest weeklies, with a circulation of 12,000.