This will be the largest acquisition yet for CherryRoad Media, a subsidiary of CherryRoad Technologies, a New Jersey-based technology company that provides technical solutions and system integration services to large enterprises, particularly state and local governments. CEO Jeremy Gulban said in a press release from media broker Dirks, Van Essen & April that the company decided late last year to look at the local newspaper industry because they felt there was a need for an infusion of technology from a supportive side as opposed to a competitive side.
Cherry Road bought the weekly Cook County News-Herald in Minnesota in late 2020. It has since acquired four papers in Arkansas, one in Alabama, and started the Rainy Lake Gazette in International Falls, Minn., in July.
Most the newspapers being acquired from Gannett are in Kansas: the Pratt Tribune, the Kiowa County Signal, the Hiawatha Penny Press, the Butler County Times-Gazette, the McPherson Sentinel, The Leavenworth Times, the Wellington Daily News, the Dodge City Daily Globe, the Newton Kansan, the Garden City Telegram, the St. John News, the Hays Daily News and the Ottawa Herald.
The Missouri acquisitions are the Independence Examiner, the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune, the Boonville Daily News and the Linn County Leader. Other papers being sold are the Nebraska City News Press, the Syracuse (Neb.) Journal-Democrat and the Hamburg (Iowa) Reporter.
I live in one of the cities affected by the change. The owners need to make a tour of the town to visit with us, since Gatehouse/Gannett has left the content nearly unreadable and its newsprint product delayed by days. We have no local reporters save a freelance sports reporter. It's sad as can be. We need to know what Cherry Road intends to do before local invest through subscriptions and advertisers.
ReplyDeleteLarry Dreiling
Hays, Kansas
ldreiling@aol.com