Leesburg Today, Ashburn Today Up For Sale

American Community Newspapers – the parent company to Leesburg Today, Ashburn Today Loudoun magazine – has put those papers along with all of its Virginia-based newspapers up for sale.

ACN had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and sold to American Community Newspapers II in later that year for $32 million, essentially placing the company in the hands of the banks that held the loans. Speculation is that ACN II now hopes to unload its properties by the end of the year to clear its books and appear more profitable. Employees at the Virginia papers were notified of the plans during a Sept. 20 meeting.

The ACN website lists the individual news offices as contacts. Norman Styer, editor and publisher-in-chief at Leesburg Today, referred inquiries to ACN’s corporate offices. Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, a company that performs consulting and appraisals for newspapers as well as assists with sales and acquisitions, announced the sale of ACN’s Ohio division, Columbus Media Enterprises, in September. Representatives from the Dirks, Van Essen did not respond to inquiries before publication of this story.

Employees who attended the Sept. 20 meeting, but declined to be identified, said they were told the banks that own the company were not suited to own properties or businesses, and that recent positive performances made the time right for a sale. Employees also said they were not given any specific time or date for the sale of the Virginia division.

The deadline to bid on the Virginia division was estimated by those aware of the sale to be today, Oct. 14. Two media groups that could be pondering such a purchase include Arcom Publishing, which publishes the Loudoun Times-Mirror, and the Washington Post, which has forayed into Loudoun before and owns the Gazette community newspaper chain in Maryland. James Mannarino, the publisher at the Gazette, did not return a message.

Peter Arundel, publisher of the Loudoun Times-Mirror, declined to comment. In an article about the sale written by the LTM, he called the sale "a game-changer" and said he hopes the paper falls into the right hands, "preferably local hands." However, he also said he liked the idea of competing papers.

It’s unclear what the move means for Loudoun’s news world, which has changed considerably during the past decade.

• Loudoun Times-Mirror, which has retained the closest resemblance to an old newspaper. LTM owner Times Community Newspapers at one time also published the Eastern Loudoun Times before consolidating back to one paper. The paid weekly circulation paper is currently delivered free to selected Loudoun communities.
• The Loudoun Easterner served Loudoun since 1968 and eventually sold to Landmark before going out of business in 2009.
• Former employees at the Easterner started the Loudoun Independent after the Landmark purchase in 2005. The Independent eventually merged with the Times-Mirror and stopped posting to its website in December 2010.
• The Connection Newspapers, which also appears to be for sale, launched several Loudoun editions during the past decade, and still lists Loudoun communities online, but the Ashburn page’s most recent story was written in January 2010.
• WAGE radio recently built a new tower in Ashburn after years of silence, but the local format and the call letters no longer exist.
• For a while the Washington Post focused on Loudoun with its LoudounExtra section and website, but the company eventually withdrew that product. It still publishes an insert that’s somewhat local to Loudoun twice a week.
• There are a handful of newspapers covering Loudoun’s rural towns.
• The most recent entries into Loudoun were the two local Patch sites launched in 2010 – Ashburn Patch and Leesburg Patch. Aol owns Patch.

Brett Phillips launched Leesburg Today with the assistance of nearly 150 community investors in 1988. The paper remained community-owned until its sale, along with other publications under the Amendment One Inc. banner, in 2006 to ACN.

“Obviously, I would like to see it stay as a community-owned newspaper, but that’s up to the community,” Phillips said late Thursday. “I don’t know who, if anybody, is bidding on it."

Phillips said he started the paper in response to concerns from some local business people.

“I started it because a group of business people in Loudoun felt like there was a monopoly situation in terms of media,” he explained; at the time, the Loudoun Times-Mirror was the primary paper in Loudoun. “We put together a group of people to give the county an alternative. We dominated the county news at one point.”

Phillips said he thinks community-based journalism is where the biggest opportunities lie for the industry.

“I think it’s a grand a very sustainable enterprise,” he said, adding that primary problem for most local publications is a resistance, if not inability, to transition into the digital age. “I’m a very big advocate of community journalism. I hope Leesburg Today winds up remaining as a community newspaper.”

[Editor's note: I used to work for both Arcom and Leesburg Today.]