Newspaper & Mailroom

News Corp Sells Community Newspaper Group

Tuesday 15. July 2014 - News Corp announced today an agreement to sell its Community Newspaper Group (CNG) to Les and Jennifer Goodstein.

CNG, headquartered in Brooklyn, is a network of 11 community newspapers and web sites, including Caribbean Life, The Brooklyn Paper, The Bronx Times Reporter, Bay News and Bay Ridge Courier, Bayside Times and TimesLedger. CNG also publishes specialty magazines, including Family magazines, the Wedding Guide and Sweet Sixteen Magazine. CNG distributes over 235,000 newspapers each week in Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx and Manhattan.
“This sale, like our divestiture of the Dow Jones Local Media Group, helps us reshape the News Corp portfolio as we achieve greater globalization and digitization of our businesses with an eye towards long-term growth,” said Robert Thomson, Chief Executive of News Corp. “We’re confident that these newspapers and magazines will prosper under the leadership of Les and Jennifer Goodstein.”
“Besides my love of newspapers, it was an honor to complete this transaction with News Corp. I look forward to the continued success of the Community Newspaper Group,” said Les Goodstein. “Both my wife and I are members of the community and are pleased to continue serving the readers of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. We plan to expand local coverage with local news important to the neighborhoods we serve.”
The Goodsteins also own NYC CommunityMedia, publisher of The Villager, Downtown Express, Gay City News, East Villager News and Chelsea Now. Les Goodstein is a former News Corp executive who ran CNG between 2006 and 2013.
News Corp sold the Dow Jones Local Media Group, which operated 33 publications, to an affiliate of Fortress Investment Group LLC last September.
Financial terms of the agreement, which is expected to close next week, were not disclosed. News Corp launched its CNG business in 2006.