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.
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.