Dow Jones Local Media Group

Dow Jones Local Media Group, Inc.

Type	Subsidiary
Founded	November 1936
Headquarters	Middletown, New York United States
Products	Daily and weekly newspapers
Employees	1,500
Parent	News Corporation
Website	Ottaway.com

Dow Jones Local Media Group, Inc., formerly Ottaway Community Newspapers, is a subsidiary of Dow Jones & Company, which is itself a subsidiary of News Corporation and owns newspapers, Web sites and niche publications in California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania. It is headquartered in Middletown, New York, and its flagship is the Times Herald-Record.

The Ottaway organization was founded in 1936 and grew to nine newspapers in the northeastern United States by 1970, when it was acquired by Dow Jones & Company, publisher of The Wall Street Journal.^[1]

Ottaway became part of News Corp. when News Corp. bought Dow Jones for $5 billion in late 2007. Dow Jones changed the Ottaway name to a Dow Jones variation in 2009.

Holdings

Dow Jones Local Media Group publishes eight daily and 15 weekly newspapers in seven U.S. states. Its circulation was given in 2005 as 282,000 daily, 316,000 Sunday and 119,000 daily unique visitors on newspaper Internet sites.^[2]

Daily newspapers are:

• Ashland Daily Tidings of Ashland, Oregon
• Cape Cod Times of Barnstable, Massachusetts
• Mail Tribune of Medford, Oregon
• Pocono Record of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania
• The Portsmouth Herald of Portsmouth, New Hampshire
• The Record of Stockton, California
• The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts
• Times Herald-Record of Middletown, New York

Weekly and twice-weekly newspapers include the following:

• The Barnstable Patriot of Barnstable, Massachusetts
• The Inquirer & Mirror of Nantucket, Massachusetts
• Hathaway Publishing, published alongside The Standard-Times:
  • The Advocate of Fairhaven, Massachusetts
  • The Chronicle of Dartmouth, Massachusetts
  • The Fall River Spirit of Fall River, Massachusetts
  • Middleboro Gazette of Middleborough, Massachusetts
  • The Spectator of Somerset, Massachusetts
  • The New England Business Bulletin of Southeastern Massachusetts
• Seacoast Media Group, published alongside The Portsmouth Herald:
  • The Exeter News-Letter of Exeter, New Hampshire (twice-weekly)
  • The Hampton Union of Hampton, New Hampshire (twice-weekly)
  • The Rockingham News of Plaistow, New Hampshire
  • York County Coast Star of Kennebunk, Maine
  • The York Weekly of York, Maine
• Hudson Valley Media Group, published alongside the Times Herald-Record:
  • The Gazette of Port Jervis, New York

History

James H. Ottaway, Sr., founded the company in November 1936, when he purchased the Bulletin, a semi-weekly paper in Endicott, New York, that he converted to a daily within a year. Ottaway added the Oneonta Star in 1944, followed two years later by the Pocono Record.^[1]

The company has been a seller more often than a buyer in the 2000s, however, and several observers—including the New York Post, The Boston Globe and Ottaway's own Cape Cod Times -- have speculated that News Corporation intends to sell all or part of the company in the near future.^[3]

Under Dow Jones' ownership, Ottaway sold several newspapers in recent years, however, most recently in December 2006, when the company dealt nearly half its daily newspapers to Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) for $287.9 million (including real estate).^[2]

Until December 2006, the following dailies and weeklies were also part of the Ottaway chain. They are all now part of CNHI.^[2]

• Santa Cruz Sentinel daily of Santa Cruz, California
• The News-Times daily of Danbury, Connecticut
• The Spectrum weekly of Milford, Connecticut
• Traverse City Record-Eagle daily of Traverse City, Michigan
• The Grand Traverse Herald weekly of Traverse City, Michigan
• Cooperstown Crier weekly of Cooperstown, New York
• Daily Star of Oneonta, New York
• Press-Republican of Plattsburgh, New York
• Daily Item of Sunbury, Pennsylvania
• The Danville News weekly of Danville, Pennsylvania

The following four daily newspapers were sold by Ottaway to CNHI for $182 million in 2002:^[4]

• The Independent of Ashland, Kentucky
• The Free Press of Mankato, Minnesota
• The Herald of Sharon, Pennsylvania
• The Joplin Globe of Joplin, Missouri

Also, Ottaway sold the three daily newspapers of Essex County Newspapers Inc. to The Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, Massachusetts, in 2002, for $70 million.^[5] The Eagle-Tribune, along with the Essex papers listed below, was later purchased by CNHI.

• Daily News of Newburyport of Newburyport, Massachusetts
• Gloucester Daily Times of Gloucester, Massachusetts
• Salem Evening News of Salem, Massachusetts

External links

• Ottaway Newspapers, Inc.

Footnotes

1. ^ ^{a b} DowJones.com Community Media, accessed January 8, 2007.
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Dow Jones Completes Sale of Six Local Newspapers." Dow Jones & Company press release, December 5, 2006.
3. ^ "Ottaway Papers Might Be Sold, Including 16 in N.E.". NEPA Bulletin (Boston, Mass.), December 2007, page 3.
4. ^ "Dow Jones To Sell Four Ottaway Newspapers", accessed January 8, 2007.
5. ^ "Bay State Paper Gets to Grow in Its Own Backyard". NewsInc, April 22, 2002. Accessed January 8, 2006.