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Dayton Business Journal...
Local community
newspaper chain sold
by DBJ Staff
Friday, May 20, 2011
The assets of Ohio Community Media LLC have been purchased by an
affiliate of Versa Capital Management Inc.
The affiliate, OCM LLC, on Friday purchased substantially all of the
assets of Tipp City-based Ohio Community Media, which owns and operates
14 daily news pa pers, 30 week lies and a number of shop pers and niche
pub li ca tions, as well as var i ous online applica tions in north
ern, cen tral and west ern Ohio.
Terms of the sale were not dis closed.
“The future of news is local, and these media out lets have a long tra
di tion of serv ing their com mu ni ties with locally-focused con
tent,” said Scott Cham pion, pres i dent and CEO of OCM. “We see great
oppor tu nity in OCM and the com mu nity news pa per indus try, and are
pleased to con clude this trans action.”
Champion joined OCM effective with the closing.
Ohio Community Media’s holdings include the Fairborn Daily Herald,
Piqua Daily Call, Xenia Daily Gazette and Bellevue Gazette, among
others.
Ohio Community Media was formed by lenders to the former Brown
Publishing Co., a family business that was broken apart in a Chapter 11
bankruptcy auction in 2010. According to news reports, much of Brown’s
holdings were sold for $21.8 million last September. Brown’s
publications on Long Island, N.Y., were sold for an estimated $1.8
million.
Philadelphia-based Versa Cap i tal Man age ment is a pri vate equity
invest ment firm with $950 mil lion of cap i tal focused on con trol
invest ments in spe cial sit u a tions involv-ing mid dle mar ket com
pa nies in a wide vari ety of indus tries through out the United States.
Read the story with links at Dayton Business Journal
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