Connie Wimer Buys Des Moines Business RecordBack to News

DES MOINES, IA, November 8, 2010 – The founder of the Des Moines Business Record and dsm magazine has acquired her old publications back.

Connie Wimer, who started the weekly Business Record in 1983, bought the publications and associated print and online products from Ohio Community Media LLC. Wimer also started dsm, a quarterly lifestyle magazine launched in 2003. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a newspaper merger and acquisition firm in Santa Fe, New Mexico, represented Ohio Community Media in the transaction.

Wimer sold the publications to Brown Publishing Co. in 2007. Brown acquired several other business publications that year. OCM, formed by Brown’s senior lenders, took ownership of the publishing assets through a court-ordered Section 363 bankruptcy sale of the Brown Publishing Company’s assets earlier this year.

“The company has done very well during this difficult economy. Janette Larkin, the publisher, has done an absolutely incredible job of managing it,” said Wimer, 78. “I am absolutely thrilled. Each day, I was more eager for it to come back. I intend to own it for a long time.”

Larkin will remain publisher, and no changes are expected. The new company will operate as Business Publications Corporation Inc.

Ohio Community Media owns and operates a large portfolio of daily and weekly newspapers in western Ohio, in addition to business publications located throughout the country.