Johanna Alonso at Inside Higher Ed:
Jason Brummond is the publisher of one of the largest newspapers in Iowa, The Daily Iowan, an independent student newspaper with an audience of about 50,000 that is run by 100 student employees and a small professional staff. Still, it never occurred to him to acquire other publications in the state until local publisher Woodward Communications approached him last fall, looking for someone to take over two weekly newspapers it had purchased in 2017.
“It was not something that was on my radar, not something I would’ve necessarily thought to do, but when the question got posed, it was interesting,” said Brummond. “We thought about it and talked about it, and as we did the due diligence and kind of examined what this would look like and how this would look, we became increasingly interested in the acquisition.”Student Publications Inc., the nonprofit that owns The Daily Iowan, eventually decided to purchase the two papers, The Mount Vernon–Lisbon Sun and The Solon Economist. Last week both published their first issues under the new owners. Brummond would not disclose the terms of the agreement but said the price “wasn’t significant” and came out of the Iowan’s operating budget.