Sale of Coos Bay (OR) World AnnouncedBack to News

COOS BAY, OR – January 24, 2020 – The sale of the Coos Bay (OR) World, the Western World in Bandon and the Umpqua Post in Reedsport to Country Media, Inc. was announced yesterday. Country Media president Steve Hungerford said the transaction will close Jan. 31.

The newspapers are being sold to Country Media by Southwest Oregon Publishing Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Lee Enterprises Incorporated, which has owned the Coos Bay newspaper since 2005 when it acquired Pulitzer, Inc.

Country Media is a 20-year-old, family-owned company with its central office in Salem, Oregon. The company bought the Del Norte Triplicate and Curry Coastal Pilot last July. Country Media also owns non-daily community newspapers serving Lincoln City, Tillamook, Manzanita, Cannon Beach, Clatskanie and St. Helens, Oregon; Langdon and Bowman, North Dakota; and Baker, Montana.

Dirks, Van Essen, Murray & April, a media merger and acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico represented Lee Enterprises in the transaction.

Lee Enterprises is a publicly traded media company headquartered in Davenport, Iowa that also owns dailies in Corvallis and Albany, Oregon.

 Steve Hungerford said, “We certainly had not set out to buy additional newspaper companies so soon after settling into Brookings and Crescent City. But when approached with the opportunity to purchase The World and its two sister publications, it was a logical fit with our other news media on the Oregon coast. We’ll now have more people and resources available to make our individual publications here even stronger.”

No terms of the transaction were announced.