Seibel said he was approached by a newspaper broker out of Santa Fe a couple of years ago as Gannett had begun divesting from smaller titles like the Sun-News and the Headlight. Gannett previously owned its Texas and New Mexico newspapers in partnership with MediaNews successor Digital First Media. Since the surprise resurrection of the Daily Press, the Silver City Sun-News has also changed hands and seen even more corporate downsizing, and Seibel ultimately bought the paper from its most recent owner, the Gannett Co. The deal went through the day before the Daily Press was to shutter forever, and the next morning an obituary for the Daily Press ran in the Silver City Sun-News. In 2014, the Elys were forced to sell the Daily Press - not to Singleton or his company, but to Silver City native Seibel. Ely said the Sun-News gave out free subscriptions and free advertising, using company money to undercut the Daily Press, and eventually advertisers were wooed over to the Sun-News. MediaNews Group then opened their own paper in Silver City as a satellite of the Las Cruces Sun-News, and the Silver City Sun-News was born in August 1996. They offered me $9 million, and I told them it wasn’t for sale.” They took me for a ride in their leather-covered Cadillac - thought they’d wow the little country girl. “They promised my mom she could have whatever ranch she wanted in the Mimbres. They offered a large amount of money to the Ely family to buy the Daily Press.”įormer Daily Press publisher Tina Ely remembers Singleton well. Dean Singleton of MediaNews Group was a pioneer of buying a cluster of newspapers in a region and centralizing the backend, so you didn’t have to have a full staff in every community.”Īccording to Seibel, MediaNews Group acquired papers in Carlsbad, Ruidoso, Alamogordo, Deming and Lordsburg - “basically all of southern New Mexico. “The Sun-News has meant a lot to this community at points in its history,” Seibel said, “but the initial genesis of it really was to put the Daily Press out of business, and I don’t think any bones were made about it. In many ways, the publication has epitomized the relentless national saga of media consolidation - but in its heyday, the Sun-News provided benefits for journalists, advertisers and subscribers.Īnd in the process, it almost choked out the locally owned competition - now the unlikely survivor and beneficiary. The demise of the Silver City edition of the Las Cruces Sun-News puts an endcap on a mixed legacy. The company will also acquire the Deming Headlight, which will continue publishing. Today is the last edition of the Silver City edition of the Sun-News, following its purchase by the Silver City Independent Publishing Co., LLC, owned by Daily Press editor and publisher Nickolas Seibel. Its owner, USA Today publisher Gannett Co., has sold it and the Deming Headlight to its former competitor, the Silver City Independent Publishing Company, which owns the Daily Press and Independent. Today’s Silver City Sun-News will be its last edition.
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