GateHouse Media Inc. snatched up another Southern New England newspaper this week with its purchase of the Newport Daily News. This adds to more than 100 publications in GateHouse’s portfolio, including The Providence Journal, The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, The Fall River Herald and The New Bedford Standard Times.
Newport Daily News employees met with GateHouse officials on Thursday and heard from the chair of the newspaper’s board of directors.
“Today is one of the saddest days of my life — a day I have always hoped would never come,” Albert K. “Buck” Sherman Jr. told the employees, according to an account published in The Newport Daily News.
Sherman, a former publisher of The Daily News, is a member of the family that has owned the paper for nearly a decade through its company Sherman Publishing.
Although the sale price remains unknown, it includes Sherman Publishing’s other media properties, such as Newport Life Magazine, South County Life Magazine and the weekly alternative Mercury.
GateHouse has not yet announced any layoffs or other changes as a result of the deal, expected to become final November 1st. But the company has a reputation for shaving newsroom budgets. A series of layoffs and buyouts followed GateHouse’s acquisition of The Providence Journal in in 2014.
