News Corporation Sells Group of Local Publications

In one of its first moves since a corporate spinoff in June, News Corporation said on Tuesday that it had sold 33 local publications to a private equity and hedge fund firm.

The collection of small newspapers and niche publications, known as the Dow Jones Local Media Group, will be owned by an affiliate of the Fortress Investment Group, News Corporation said in a news release. The publications will be managed by GateHouse Media, the newspaper publisher based outside Rochester.

The details of the transaction were not released, but the money involved was evidently relatively small, because if it had been bigger (or, in financial terms, material to the company) News Corporation would have had to disclose more financial information.

The company’s interest in selling the local publications was reported in April by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal and the collection of local publications were both included in the 2007 deal in which News Corporation acquired Dow Jones. Shortly afterward, News Corporation tried for the first time to sell the local media assets, but pulled back in 2008 because of unfavorable market conditions.

The same logic guided the decision to sell now: the community papers â€" like The Cape Cod Times, The Herald in Portsmouth, N.H., and The Daily Tidings in Ashland, Ore. â€" and the small magazines don’t fit into the company’s larger framework.

“We are confident that the papers will prosper under the new owners, but they were not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio of the new News,” Robert Thomson, the News Corporation chief executive, said in a statement.

In June most of News Corporation’s television and film units were split off into a separate company called 21st Century Fox, leaving News Corporation as the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.