Salem News, Eagle-Tribune Sold To Retirement Fund

SALEM, MA -- Retirement Systems of Alabama agreed to acquire CNHI, a newspaper holding company with several papers in Essex County. The deal includes the Eagle-Tribune of North Andover, the Daily News of Newburyport, the Salem News and the Gloucester Daily Times, as well as several non-daily publications. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

In addition to its Massachusetts papers, CNHI owns newspapers in 21 other states. The company merged with Raycom Media in September 2017 and announced in June 2018 it was putting itself up for sale. The sale comes as Raycom is being acquired by a television company that wants to get rid of the newspapers.

Dan Kennedy, an associate professor at Northeastern University’s School of Journalism, who writes about local media issues on his blog, said in a blog post Thursday he sees the deal as "good news, with reservations."

"CNHI has run the papers on the cheap, but the quality remains good," Kennedy wrote. "I know that staff members were concerned that the papers might be sold to Digital First Media or GateHouse Media, hedge-fund-owned chains that slash their properties to the bone. So it could have been worse."

Never miss another local news story: Get free local news alerts right to your inbox.

Patch file photo via Shutterstock.

Dave Copeland can be reached at dave.copeland@patch.com or by calling 617-433-7851. Follow him on Twitter (@CopeWrites) and Facebook (/copewrites).