After 127 years, no Dix newspapers

Dix Communications,  whose newspapers included the Record-Courier in Ravenna, in my opinion the best smaller paper in the BJ’s 5-county area, has been sold to Pittsford, New York-based GateHouse Media for $21.2 million.

The Dix family has been in the business for a long time, and had staff members on many news-source boards and groups, which gave them an inside track of what was about to happen.

Also sold was Dix’s printing facility in Wooster and more than 30 daily and weekly newspapers, online-only publications and specialty publications. Its larger newspapers are the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier, The Daily Record in Wooster, the Ashland Times-Gazette, The Review in Alliance and The Daily Jeffersonian in Cambridge.

GateHouse Media owns The Columbus Dispatch, The Canton Repository and about 50 other Ohio publications and websites. It operates in more than 520 markets in 35 states and owns more than 125 daily newspapers and more than 300 weekly newspapers, along with other publications and websites.

Dix also owns four radio stations in Wooster and the Gainesville/Ocala area in Florida.

I am sorry to see the Dix family get out of the newspaper business. But, in these difficult times for newspapers all over America, I understand why.

Since 1890, five generations of the Dix family have handled their media holdings.