WPRIÂ | The Providence Journal
The Providence Journal has been sold to New Media Investment Group Inc. for $46 million, Ted Nesi reported Tuesday.
The deal, which includes the paper’s production facility but not its headquarters, is expected to close “sometime in the third quarter,” The Journal reports.
Longtime owner A.H. Belo Corporation put the paper up for sale in December, after substantial declines in both circulation and advertising, as Nesi reported. The Journal’s average Sunday circulation was 105,810 in September, down 11 percent from the previous year. And advertising revenue fell 66 percent since 2005, dropping to $46 million in 2012. In April 2013, Karen A. Bordeleau took over as executive editor, replacing Thomas E. Heslin, who resigned due to health reasons.
In December, Providence Journal Publisher Howard G. Sutton told employees that the A.H. Belo was exploring a sale of the publication, according to a report from Paul Edward Parker.
A.H. Belo previously said that selling the newspaper “would allow the Company to continue to focus resources and management time and attention on its core Dallas market,”  The company also owns The Dallas Morning News and the Denton Record-Chronicle.
New Media Investment Group, the parent company for GateHouse Media, is “one of the largest publishers of locally based print in online media in the United States,” according to The Journal.
