One newspaper industry observer said Friday that the pending sale of Las Vegas-based Stephens Media LLC's 19 Arkansas daily and weekly newspapers to New Media Investment Group Inc. of New York "will change the landscape of the newspaper business in Arkansas."
Tom Larimer, the executive director of the Arkansas Press Association, said employees of the newspapers involved in the pending $102.5 million deal with New Media will be most affected. When contacted Friday, Mark Hinueber, vice president and general counsel of Stephens Media, would not say how many people are employed by the newspaper group.
The acquisition by New Media includes eight daily newspapers along with 65 weekly newspapers, niche publications and 50 websites in seven states, including Arkansas. The purchase does not include the Northwest Arkansas newspapers co-owned by Stephens Media and Little Rock-based WEHCO Media, Inc. WEHCO owns seven newspapers and other newspaper holdings in Arkansas, Tennessee and Missouri, including the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state's largest newspaper.
"Anytime there is a new owner of that many newspapers in our state, it becomes a concern for us, of course," Larimer said. "I look forward to working with these new owners just as we did the Stephens people before them."
The other Stephens Media properties being sold are in Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, Tennessee and North Carolina.
New ownership means a change in dynamics, he said. Management styles vary. Larimer said Stephens "has done a good job with those publications under some pretty trying circumstances in the last six to eight years, with the economy being what it was."
New Media is a new player in the newspaper industry, said Larimer. Late last year, the publicly traded company made some significant acquisitions, including Halifax Media, another group of publications owned in part by Warren Stephens, chairman, president and CEO of the Little Rock-based investment firm Stephens Inc. Stephens is co-owner of Stephens Media.
The Halifax transaction, which garnered Stephens $280 million, included 36 newspapers, primarily in the southeast United States.
"It didn't come as a big surprise that they were the one that acquired Stephens Media's properties," Larimer said of New Media. "It seems to be a natural fit there for them."
Also late last year, Stephens Media sold two daily newspapers and a weekly publication in Hawaii and a daily newspaper and three weeklies in Aberdeen, Wash., but not to New Media.
Before the Halifax deal closed, New Media listed its "core products" as 92 daily newspapers with total paid circulation of about 871,000 and 254 weekly newspapers (published up to three times per week) with total paid circulation of about 308,000 and total free circulation of about 711,000. It also produces 104 "shoppers," or advertising-only, publications with total circulation of about 2.5 million.
Some 372 locally focused websites and 365 mobile sites extend New Media's businesses onto the Internet and mobile devices with about 119 million page views per month, the company said in an Securities and Exchange Commission filing in the fall.
"We have a particular focus on owning and acquiring strong local media assets in small to mid-size markets," the company said in its filing.
Business on 02/21/2015