News-Press & Gazette Co. Acquires American Community Newspapers’ Sun PublicationsBack to News

OVERLAND PARK, KS, December 16, 2005 – NPG Newspapers, a division of News-Press & Gazette Co., of St. Joseph, Missouri announced today its purchase of Sun Publications, a division of American Community Newspapers, LLC, of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

The Sun newspapers include 10 suburban Kansas City publications – six in Missouri and four in Kansas – with a combined weekly circulation of more than 150,000 copies. The sale also includes three other non-daily niche publications.

Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a newspaper merger-and-acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, represented American Community Newspapers, LLC in the transaction.

In announcing the acquisition, David R. Bradley, News-Press & Gazette president said, “Sun Publications and its related niche publications are well-established, landmark newspapers that have proudly served Johnson County and the North Kansas City metropolitan area for over 50 years. Our goal is to use our combined resources to bring out new and better newspapers in all of the communities we serve.”

Gene M. Carr, American Community Newspapers chief executive officer, added, “We have worked hard to build Sun Publications in to the fine publications they are today. We believe Kansas City is a great newspaper market, but it has become apparent to us that we were not going to be successful in this market as the consolidator of community newspapers with the same strategic and critical mass that we have in our other three markets.”

In addition to its Kansas City publications, News-Press & Gazette publishes two daily newspapers in the region, the St. Joseph (MO) News-Press and the Atchison (KS) Globe, in addition to four weekly and twice-weekly newspapers in Kansas. News-Press & Gazette is a family-held, multi-media company controlled by the Bradley family for more than 50 years. The company owns cable television systems serving more than 100,000 subscribers in Missouri, Arizona, and California. The company also operates network-affiliated television stations serving five markets in the Western United States. It owns Hispanic radio and television stations in some of those markets.

American Community Newspapers is a group of three daily and 60 weekly newspapers and two niche publications that reach approximately one million households. The company’s core operations serve the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, with other principal publications in the Dallas-Fort Worth and Northern Virginia metropolitan areas.