BOSTON (AP) — Herald Media Inc., publisher of the Boston Herald daily newspaper, is buying Community Newspaper Co. in an effort to counter rival Boston Globe's recent expansion into the suburbs.
Herald Media is buying the weekly newspapers from Fidelity Capital Inc., a unit of mutual fund company Fidelity Investments.
The sale, announced Thursday, is representative of an industrywide trend toward consolidation, whereby newspaper chains that ring a metropolitan area seek to offer wide geographical coverage to advertisers and to pool resources and, thereby, reduce costs.
The planned acquisition would give Herald Media control of 88 weekly papers in suburban Boston; four dailies, including The MetroWest Daily News, Neponset Valley Daily News, The Daily News Tribune and The Milford Daily News; and 15 shoppers. The acquisition is expected to be complete by Nov. 1. The newspapers, whose circulation is about 900,000, will continue to operate independently.
The sale price was not disclosed.
Herald Media President Patrick Purcell estimated the company's newly combined circulation at about 1.2 million, and readership at 2.4 million. Those figures include suburban readers that the Herald, which has daily circulation of 266,000, has been unable to reach but the larger Globe, with daily circulation of about 475,000, has long tapped.
"It makes us the real local entity in the market," Purcell said. "The ability to generate ad revenue is enormous."
"Let the battle be joined," he added.
Boston Globe spokesman Richard Gulla said he wasn't surprised by the move. He said the acquisition would not affect the Globe's circulation or advertising revenues.
On Thursday, the Globe began publishing a weekday section for the western suburbs in the first step to increase its news and advertising presence in Boston's outlying suburbs. And in January, The New York Times Co., which owns the Globe, completed its acquisition of the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, the state's third-largest daily.