Acquisitions

Enghouse Systems Limited has acquired the business assets of Voiceport LLC, a provider of Saas automated solutions based in Rochester, New York. Voiceport’s products are designed to improve the customer experience for media companies with subscription-based customers. The company provides automated, configurable and integrated self-service software for its customers.

Cherryroad Media is buying The Millbury-sutton Chronicle, The Grafton News, The Landmark in Holden and the Leominster Champion from Gannett, which also owns the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The sale meant the company’s plans to close The Landmark and print its final edition Sept. 15 were scrapped.

Yahoo has acquired The Factual, an algorithm-driven news rating company. The Factual’s algorithm will provide Yahoo consumers with a first of its kind analysis of news stories by rating articles with a media bias and credibility score.

Crain Communications has acquired the Grand Rapids Business Journal. Headquartered in Detroit, Crain acquired GRBJ from Gemini Media, a regional publishing company in downtown Grand Rapids and part of the Hour Media portfolio. The company said the acquisition of GRBJ marks an expansion of coverage in Michigan as Crain looks to serve its growing audience outside of the immediate Detroit region.

Paxton Media Group has acquired the Cleveland (Tennessee) Daily Banner, the Herald-citizen (Cookeville, Tennessee), The Daily Tribune News (Cartersville, Georgia), The Chatsworth (Georgia) Times and the Daily Mountain Eagle (Jasper, Alabama).

The operations had been owned by Cleveland Newspapers, Inc. and Cookeville Newspapers, Inc. for more than 65 and 47 years, respectively.

J. Louis Mullen has acquired The Gladwin County (Michigan) Record & Beaverton Clarion from Adams Publishing Group. Established in 1877, The Gladwin County Record is the oldest continuously operated business in Gladwin County. In 1934, the Record merged with the Beaverton Clarion and in 1997 went online with one of the community news industry’s very first websites, Gladwinmi.com. The paper exclusively serves Gladwin County.

After a half-century of ownership of North Scott Press, Inc., the Tubbs family of Eldridge has sold three eastern Iowa newspapers to 37-yearold J. Louis “Louie” Mullen of Buffalo, Wyoming, according to John Cribb of Cribb, Cope & Potts who represented Bill and Linda Tubbs. Included in the sale are: the North Scott Press of Eldridge, Iowa’s largest paid circulating weekly newspaper, first published in 1968, where Bill Tubbs has been publisher since 1971; the Wilton-durant Advocate News of Wilton, the merged publication of the Wilton Advocate and Durant News, which has been publishing since 1894, and part of the Tubbs organization since 1980; and the West Liberty Index, the merged publication of the

West Liberty Enterprise and West Liberty Index, first published in 1868, which the Tubbses purchased in 2018.

After decades of Perlberg family ownership, Sunrise Printing & Publishing, Inc. has sold its three weekly newspapers, the Arenac County Independent in Standish, the Ogemaw County Herald in West Branch and the Oscoda County Herald in Mio, to Cherryroad Media.

Helena World Chronicle, LLC, owned by local businessmen Chuck Davis and Andrew Bagley, announced that it will purchase the assets of Hayden Taylor Publishing — publisher of the Monroe County Herald, the only newspaper in Monroe County (Arkansas). The company is rebranding the newspaper as the Monroe County Argus, a nod to the Brinkley Argus founded in 1883 and the Monroe County Sun in 1877.

Media and entertainment mogul Byron Allen believes the news and media industry needs more inclusion, an issue he will address now that he is the owner of the Black News Channel (BNC). The acquisition also brought a change to the network’s name: it now goes by Thegrio, the West African term for storyteller.

Nexstar Media Group, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a 75 percent ownership interest in

The CW Network, LLC. Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global, the current co-owners of The CW, will each retain a 12.5 percent ownership interest in The CW and will continue to produce original, scripted content for the network.

Joy Bai has joined The New York Times’ Data, Insights and Growth team in a newly created role, SVP of audience and engagement. She will coordinate work across the Audience, Subscriber Experience, Storytelling & Publishing, Cooking, Games and Audio missions, developing consistent analytical approaches to how the paper measures engagement. She will also help test and deploy new product features across all of the paper’s products.

Anatoly Kurmanaev has joined The New York Times’ Russia team in Berlin to help propel its deep coverage of the war in Ukraine. He has spent most of the last 12 years working in Latin America, first in Venezuela and then in Mexico.

From the moment Russia’s military invaded Ukraine, the West has scrambled to arm Ukrainian forces and train them to fight back. The New York Times recently decided to look for a reporter to focus on the crucial topic of weapons — from politics to production, from military readiness to secret supply lines. After a five-and-a-half-year run as a reporter and editor in Washington, Lara Jakes has joined The Times’ Ukraine team to take on this important assignment.

Azmat Khan, whose reporting was part of The New York Times Pulitzer Prize win this year for reporting on civilian casualties from airstrikes, has been named an investigative reporter for both the magazine and newsroom. She previously was a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Emily Baumgaertner, who led The Los Angeles Times’ coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and wrote enterprising stories on a wide range of public health issues, is The New York Times’ new roving national health correspondent. She previously spent two years as a news assistant in The New York Times’ Washington bureau.

Adam Entous, who has covered national security, foreign policy and the intelligence agencies for more than a decade, is joining The New York Times as an investigative reporter. He has been a staff writer for the past four years at The New Yorker, where he wrote about the secret history of Israel’s relationships in the Gulf, the diplomatic failure in Afghanistan, Havana Syndrome and assassinations in Damascus and Baghdad.

Chang Che has joined The New York Times as an Asia technology reporter, focusing on the corporate, social and political side of tech in China. He joins the staff from Supchina, a Chinafocused news publication, where he was a staff writer, covering everything from Beijing’s tech crackdowns to the rise of Greek and Latin courses in Chinese higher education. He was also a prolific freelance writer with pieces on geopolitics, business and books.

Abby Goodnough has joined the editing ranks at The New York Times to take over Felice Belman’s portfolio of regional coverage in the South, Florida, the Mid-atlantic and New England. She got her start at The Times in the mid-1990s, when she replaced a news assistant named Cliff Levy (now deputy managing editor) on the International desk.

Ken Bensinger has joined The New York Times to pioneer a new beat covering right-wing media as part of the democracy team on the Politics desk. He joins the staff from Buzzfeed News, where he was a charter member of its investigations team, reporting on campaign finance, the perils of Amazon’s delivery network and political disinformation.

Christopher Orr has joined The New York Times in a new role in Opinion: signature voices editor. He brings decades of experience in idea-driven journalism and commentary. Orr joins the staff from The Atlantic, where he was a senior editor from 2010 to 2019 and a contributing writer in the years since.

The New York Times’ new Live editor is Julie Bloom. Her mission will be to build on the successes of Live over the last two years and, by working with leaders across the newsroom and in Product, to help better define live journalism at The Times and create an even more reader-friendly live experience. She began at The Times in 2007 after freelancing for a year.

Sports Reporter Ben Shpigel is joining Live at The New York Times as a reporter and editor. In announcing his latest appointment, the paper noted: “Over the last 17 years at The Times, Ben has reported on more sports than Tom Brady has played Super Bowls, all with elegance and expertise.”

Cat Baldwin has joined The New York Times as the studio manager for New York Times Cooking. She has more than 12 years of experience as a studio manager in New York City.

Jonathan Bang has joined The New York Times as a video journalist for NYT Cooking. He will create videos that bring cooking to life across the spectrum of what the paper publishes: service journalism, entertainment and visual storytelling. He joins the staff from Conde Nast, where he was a creative producer at Bon Appetit.

Bill Pennington, who over a quarter century has covered baseball, football, golf, skiing, the Olympics and more, has retired from The New York Times. However, he plans to continue to contribute to the Sports report. “I’m just downsizing,” he announced.