Gazette Publishing Agrees to Sell to Brown PublishingBack to News

BELLEVUE, OH September 28, 2007 – The Gazette Publishing Company, based in Bellevue, Ohio, announced today that it has sold its publishing and printing assets to Brown Publishing Company. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a newspaper merger-and-acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, represented Gazette Publishing in the transaction.

Gazette Publishing, one of the nation’s oldest family-owned newspaper firms, has operated in Bellevue, Ohio for over 130 years. The company has operations across northern Ohio consisting of one daily, eight weeklies, three shoppers and a twice-monthly that reaches 70,000 rural homes. Combined paid circulation is approximately 17,500.

“We are grateful to our subscribers, advertisers and especially to our past and present employees who for over 100 years have provided a quality product and served their communities well,” said the current owners, who are sons of the late Paul Callaghan, former publisher and owner.

Brown Publishing Company was founded in 1920 and has grown to be one of the largest independent family-owned newspaper publishing companies in Ohio. Originally founded with one weekly newspaper, the Company has expanded to publish 18 daily newspapers, 27 paid weekly newspapers, 15 Total Market Coverage ("TMC") newspapers, and 11 TMC shoppers in the south, central and west portions of Ohio, primarily in rural and suburban markets.

“We are excited to succeed to ownership of Gazette Publishing Company," said Roy Brown, president and CEO of Brown Publishing. "We look forward to working with Tom Smith and his team to build on the Callaghans’ long, successful history of dedication to the readers and advertisers of GPC’s publications.”