The Port Arthur News and Orange Leader sold to Boone affiliate

We look forward to becoming a part of the community and county served and will work hard to meet our every obligation to readers, customers, employees and all who have a stake in the future of these communities.”

Todd Carpenter, Boone Newspapers

Port Arthur Newsmedia, LLC and Orange Newsmedia, LLC, affiliates of Boone Newspapers, Inc. (BNI) and Carpenter Newsmedia, LLC with offices in Natchez, Miss., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., completed the purchase Saturday of The Port Arthur (Texas) News and The Orange (Texas) Leader from Community Newspaper Holdings, Inc. of Montgomery, Ala.

Majority owners of the newly formed companies are BNI key people and Carpenter Newsmedia, LLC (CNL), a company owned by BNI's president and chief executive officer, Todd H. Carpenter of Natchez.  The newspapers will be managed by BNI.

Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a merger and acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, N.M., represented CNHI in the sale.

"It has been a privilege to be associated with the hard working teams in Port Arthur for the past decade.  We wish Todd Carpenter, Jim Boone and their companies all the best as they move forward in these communities," said CNHI Executive Vice President and COO Steve McPhaul.

Carpenter said he and Boone are "deeply appreciative of the confidence CNHI has placed in us as their successors, and we will work hard to merit that confidence." 

Rich Macke, who has published the newspapers for the past two years will continue to lead the newspapers. "We are pleased Rich Macke will remain as publisher," Carpenter said. "His steady leadership and knowledge of community newspapers will be important to us during the transition and thereafter.  We look forward to becoming a part of the community and county served and will work hard to meet our every obligation to readers, customers, employees and all who have a stake in the future of these communities."

BNI and Carpenter Newsmedia, along with members of BNI's management team, own and BNI manages 61 newspapers, 27 community magazines and related websites in similar-sized communities in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Virginia. 

BNI has a rich history of quality newspapers and other publications in the communities it serves, explained in part by Boone's corporate philosophy: "We seek to produce the highest quality product the economics of the community served can support. And then, by ingenuity and imagination, we strive for a higher quality in an effort to serve and build that community."

Terms of the sale were not disclosed. The newspaper will continue to operate its offices and production facility from its current location at 916 Jackson Ave.