COLUMBUS, Ohio – After more than a century as a family-owned newspaper, the Columbus Dispatch has been sold, the Dispatch Printing Co. announced Wednesday morning.
The paper fell victim of the changing media landscape in which it has been difficult for locally-owned daily newspapers to remain economically competitive.
“The Dispatch Printing Company has reached an agreement to sell its print publications to the New Media Investment Group Inc.…which has 126 dailies in 32 states,” read the story on the newspaper’s website announcing the sale.
“After several years of operational adjustments and careful assessment of the factors influencing The Dispatch’s performance, we concluded the paper’s future success is most enhanced within a newspaper company that has both regional and national reach, as well as strong marketing and digital operations, providing the economies of scale essential for optimum efficiency,” wrote publisher John F. Wolfe, whose family purchased the newspaper in 1905, in a “letter to the community.”
In spite of trying to embrace technological advances through the past century, Wolfe says the newspaper found it difficult to achieve the “economies of scale” that make larger media companies more successful.
The sale includes The Dispatch, owned by the Wolfe family for 110 years; ThisWeek Newspapers, a collection of 24 suburban weeklies; and seven magazines, including Columbus Monthly, Columbus CEO and Capital Style, the newspaper’s parent company announced.
The sale also includes three commercial properties: The Dispatch printing plant at 5300 Crosswind Dr., a five-story office building at 62 E. Broad St., and ThisWeek’s offices at 7801 N. Central Dr. in Lewis Center.
The Wolfe family will continue to own and operate television and radio stations and commercial and agricultural real-estate enterprises, the company said.
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed.