Cuts expected at Telegram & Gazette after sale to Fla. group

WORCESTER, Mass. – Boston Red Sox owner John W. Henry, who purchased The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from The New York Times Co. for $70 million last year, has sold the Telegram & Gazette to Halifax Media Group of Dayton Beach, Fla., the paper reported Wednesday.

Halifax was one of three companies to make formal offers for the Telegram & Gazette, interim publisher James W. Hopson told the paper’s employees at a meeting on Wednesday. The sale price was not disclosed, but analysts’ estimates of the newspaper’s value have ranged from $7 million to $15 million, the Telegram & Gazette said. The sale did not include the newspaper’s printing plant in Millbury.

The Times Co. bought the Telegram & Gazette for $296 million in 2000.

The 148-year-old Telegram & Gazette is Halifax’s first purchase in the Northeast. The group currently owns 35 newspapers in five states in the southeastern United States.

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Hopson said that “most, but not all” of the Telegram & Gazette’s employees will be offered jobs, but that staff cuts will be made before the closing, which is expected June 1. The Telegram & Gazette currently employs 180 people, including 80 newsroom employees.

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