When New Media Investment Group announced its latest deals, the public attention focused on its sale of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. It's not hard to see why, given the strangeness involving casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and the effort to hide his involvement in the paper's purchase.
But there was another deal, one with bigger ramifications for the Boston area. New Media - known around here as GateHouse Media, a New Media subsidiary and predecessor - expanded its fast-growing empire by agreeing to buy the Dolan business and legal publications for an undisclosed amount. The national group includes the Boston-based Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly and Rhode Island Lawyers Weekly.
This is a huge prize for Kirk Davis, the Massachusetts-based COO of New Media and CEO of GateHouse, because it makes his company one of the largest publishers of business journals in the country overnight. Davis says this expansion into business-to-business media represents an important effort to diversify New Media beyond the community publishing it's known for - local papers such as the Telegram & Gazette, The Patriot Ledger, and the MetroWest Daily News, to name just a few.
Davis sees Dolan's readers and advertisers as a natural audience for Propel Marketing, New Media's Quincy-based digital services business, and for his newly created events business, called GateHouse Live. More
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