By:Jeff Lipton
Richner Communications, Inc., publishers of the Herald Community Newspapers, announced last Wednesday that they have signed an agreement to purchase the Nassau Community Newspaper Group, publishers of the Record newspapers in southwest Nassau County, from News Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ).
The purchase is expected to become final by the end of April. Richner Communications is a privately held company and the terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The Nassau Community Newspaper Group had recently consolidated its 12 weekly papers into eight editions, all under The Record banner. Previously the papers, some nearly a century old, were published under a variety of names including the South Shore Record, which covers the Five Towns; East Rockaway Observer; Lynbrook USA; The Malverne Community Times; The Rockville Centre News & Owl; Valley Stream Maileader; Long Beach Independent Voice; Oceanside Beacon; Baldwin Citizen and The Record of Elmont, Franklin Square and West Hempstead. The group also publishes Long Island Lifestyles, a monthly tabloid distributed with the Record newspapers and at locations throughout Nassau County.
The purchase agreement was signed by Herald co-publishers Stuart and Cliff Richner late last Tuesday. The Nassau News Group employs about 50 people. How many will be employed by the merged company has yet to be determined, according to Cliff Richner.
"We have to look beyond our own home and try to continue building our [newspaper] family," Stuart Richner said in making the announcement to Herald employees last Wednesday morning. "This will allow us to do great things as well. Thank you all for making all this happen."
He said that even though the Nassau Newspaper Group was a competitor, the Herald would not lose its competitive edge in striving to be the best it can be. He said the Herald's quality is displayed in the number of New York Press Association awards it has won. Just last month, the Herald group received 12 awards for editorial and advertising excellence at the press association convention, more than all other papers in Nassau County combined.
"Having competition keeps us on our toes," Stuart Richner said. "There is still a lot of competition out there and we will continue to act like we are being chased by someone else.
"We will run just as hard as we were running in the past," he added.
Howard Swengler, publisher of the Nassau Community Newspaper Group, said the news of the move was broken to his employees last Tuesday. "They showed a range of emotions that they are going through like any human beings -- anger, disappointment, happiness -- it was all out there," Swengler said.
News Communications, Inc., a publicly-owned company listed on the NASDAQ system under the symbol NCOM, has been losing money on the Nassau News Group since it acquired the financially ailing papers from former publisher Barry Manning in December 1997, records indicate. The company, owns The Queens Tribune and Dan's Papers in the Hamptons, as well as other newspapers. News Communications stock reached its peak in December 1995 at $9 a share and declined to a low of 31 cents in December 2000. The stock closed last week at 33 cents. While the Dow Jones U.S. Advertising and Media Index shows that other media stocks declined about 20 percent over the past 12 months, NCOM stock value has dropped more than 70 percent in the last year.
Howard Swengler, publisher of the Nassau Community Newspaper Group for the past 10 months, conceded that the chain was losing money but added that it was headed in the right direction and was about to break even. "You've got to break even before you can start seeing a profit," Swengler said. "We were moving in a positive direction," he said.
Jerry Finkelstein, chairman, president and chief executive officer of News Communications, Inc., and Paul Mastronardi, vice president and chief financial officer, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The sale of the Record newspapers to the rival Herald chain did not come as a surprise to several employees who have worked for both. They said it was only a matter of time before the Record's poor financial status and revolving door management caught up with it.
Some said the South Shore Record--once a fierce competitor to the Nassau Herald in the Five Towns--took a turn for the worse when Florence Schwartzberg retired and sold the paper in 1997 after more than 40 years as editor, owner and publisher. Soon afterwards, others started to leave.
Promises were made to put additional resources into the papers. But besides going to a color format, little else in the way of new resources was seen, the Record's former employees said. Several South Shore Record employees ended up working for the Herald newspapers after the ownership change and many others wanted out, they said.
Martha Jacovides, who worked at the Malverne Times for 11 years and the Maileader for seven years before helping to launch the Valley Stream Herald in May 1990, said she went to the Herald because it produced a superior product.
Former employees agreed that it was a mistake when the name of all the papers were changed to the Record because subscribers identified with the original names.
"Changing the name was a very bad mistake," Jacovides said. "Some of these newspapers like the News & Owl have a reputation dating back to the turn of the century. Why take their names away? It made no sense what they did."
Schwartzberg did not want to comment on the deal, but wished the Herald well.
Rhonda Glickman worked for the Nassau News Group for 14 years as an advertising account representative, sales manager and associate publisher, before joining the Herald as vice president of sales more than a year ago. "They [the Record] did great things with color and their Long Island Lifestyles section. But it got to a point of how long could they stay in business if they did not make money," Glickman said.
The Herald publishers are still trying to determine whether to merge the papers in the many towns where they compete directly or whether the Record will continue to be published in certain of those areas.
"There is no doubt that significant changes are ahead for these papers," said Herald co-publisher Cliff Richner. "Both groups publish very locally focused papers, often covering the same relatively small communities. It just does not appear possible to have two economically viable newspapers in some of these towns."
The Herald Community Group, which traces its roots to the founding of the Rockaway Journal in 1883, currently publishes the Baldwin Herald, Bellmore Herald, Long Beach Herald, Long Island Graphic (covering Freeport and Roosevelt), Merrick Herald, Nassau Herald (covering the Five Towns community), Oceanside/Island Park Herald, Rockville Centre Herald, Valley Stream Herald, Village Herald (covering Lynbrook, Malverne and East Rockaway), the Rockaway Journal in Queens and the month-old East Meadow Herald, which is in the midst of a successful launch.
In addition, Richner Communications publishes PrimeTime, a free shopping and television guide mailed to 110,000 South Shore homes each week. The company also operates a commercial printing and mailing business.
The Nassau Newspaper Group purchased most of its papers in 1993 and others were started in 1996 and 1997. The oldest of the papers, The Rockville Centre News & Owl, has been in continuous publication since 1908.
