Cookes expand newspaper holdings from Fla. Keys by buying 13 Cox papers in North Carolina

In a testament to the relative health of the community newspaper business, Cox Enterprises Inc. will sell three daily and 10 weekly newspapers in North Carolina to Cooke Communications LLC, a privately held firm headed by John Kent Cooke, son of the late billionaire Jack Kent Cooke, for an undisclosed price. (UPDATE, July 27: Tom Heath of The Washington Post estimates a sum of $30 million to $35 million.)

The dailies are The Daily Reflector of Greenville, circulation 21,000; the Rocky Mount Telegram, 14,000; and The Daily Advance of Elizabeth City, 10,000. The weeklies are the Beaufort-Hyde News of Bellhaven, the Bertie-Ledger Advance of Windsor, The Chowan Herald of Edenton, the Duplin Times of Kenansville, The Enterprise of Williamston, the Farmville Enterprise, Perquimans Weekly of Elizabeth City, the Standard Laconic of Snow Hill, the Times-Leader of Ayden-Grifton and the Weekly Herald of Robersonville.

Cooke's eldest son, John Kent Cooke Jr., "will move to the Greenville area to become president of Cooke Communications North Carolina and publisher of The Daily Reflector," the Telegram reports. His company "owns The Key West Citizen – 8,900 circulation daily, 9,749 Sunday – a number of weekly newspapers stringing the Florida Keys and Internet publishing business floridakeys.com." The elder Cooke was "part owner of the Los Angeles Daily News, the Washington Redskins and The Chrysler Building in New York City, among other businesses."

(Neil Johnston of Cox, John Kent Cooke and John Kent Cooke Jr. in the Reflector newsroom. Reflector photo by Greg Eans) The elder Cooke told Reflector employees, "Newspapers are not dead. They’re not even ill. ... I’m not worried in the least about the future of this business, particularly here in North Carolina. It’s going to be difficult at times, but we will be successful because we have the same attitude that the Cox people have and that is we’re going to concentrate on our local news,” the Reflector reports. Meanwhile, "Paul A. Clarin, who has served as Cooke Communications corporate chief financial officer since 2001, has been named publisher of The Key West Citizen and accompanying weekly community newspapers in the Florida Keys." Heath writes, "Because there are no local TV stations, Cooke has the turf to himself. He said his 425 employees, including reporters and editors, can outhustle the radio stations and anyone else trying to muscle in." And he quotes leading industry analyst John Morton: "Going forward, it's going to be the smaller papers that do reasonably well."

Atlanta-based Cox said last year that it would sell most of its newspapers in Colorado, North Carolina and Texas, The Associated Press notes. The company announced last week that it would sell the Grand Junction Sentinel and the Waco Tribune-Herald, and is still trying to sell others in Texas. It previously sold the Lufkin Daily News and The Daily Sentinel of Nacogdoches. UPDATE, Aug. 5: Cox takes its Austin paper off the market.