Herald-Dispatch sold again

For those who haven't heard, The Herald-Dispatch has been sold again. Yesterday afternoon, the announcement came that Champion Industries had agreed to acquire The Herald-Dispatch from GateHouse Media for $77 million.

The sale came as no surprise to some of us. Huntington is pretty far out of the GateHouse clusters of newspapers. The only options we saw were for Gatehouse to acquire other papers near us or for GateHouse to sell us again.

Check out this paragraph in the GateHouse announcement of the sale:

Mike Reed, Chief Executive Officer of GateHouse Media, commented, "While we are constantly evaluating investment opportunities in the local media sector and continue to have a very strong pipeline of future opportunities, we did not see the Herald Dispatch as a good strategic or geographic fit and felt we could redeploy the capital more effectively elsewhere. It was always our intention when we recently acquired several properties from Gannett to dispose of the Huntington Herald Dispatch, and I am delighted to announce the sale of this venerable publication to Champion Industries, a company with a strong presence and history in the local market."

Now check out this comment from a news release issued by Champion:

Marshall T. Reynolds, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Champion, said, "The Herald-Dispatch is a premier institution in West Virginia and the entire tri-state area. We believe this opportunity will generate numerous expansion and growth opportunities. We expect this acquisition to generate substantial earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to Champion and feel that a locally owned newspaper will provide important benefits to our communities as well as shareholders. I personally am excited to work with The Herald-Dispatch to better our communities and to create an entity to complement Champion Industries and to expand our revenue base and diversify our operations."

If your question is what happens with The Herald-Dispatch now, my answer is simply, "I don't know." Just as my response was when Gannett sold The Herald-Dispatch to GateHouse. But I do expect the best.

I'm supposed to be on the Tom Roten morning show, guest hosted by Alec Plymale, at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow to talk about letters to the editor. And right now, that's all I know.