BELLEFONTAINE, Ohio — CherryRoad Media has announced that the Bellefontaine Examiner, a foundational part of the Bellefontaine, Ohio, community, has returned to serve the community after a more than six-month hiatus, with its initial return edition publishing on Monday, Aug. 3.
The Examiner will publish three days a week, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Long tied to the Hubbard family, the Examiner has been chronicling the history of Bellefontaine and Logan County, Ohio, in one form or another since Thomas A. Hubbard Sr. founded The Weekly Examiner in 1871. His sons, Edwin “E.O.” Hubbard and Horace “H.K.” Hubbard, later founded The Daily Examiner in 1891. In 1949, the paper’s name changed to the Bellefontaine Examiner.
The Hubbard family continued to publish the paper until December of 2025, when economic challenges forced the closure of the institution, leaving Bellefontaine without a local newspaper for the first time in over 150 years.
To rectify that loss, CherryRoad Media worked with the Examiner’s most recent publisher, T.J. Hubbard, to transfer ownership of the paper to CherryRoad, leading to a re-established Bellefontaine Examiner dedicated to covering the local community as it has for most of the town’s history.
“We are thrilled to see CherryRoad revive the Examiner,” T.J. said. “We hated having to make the choice we did last year to close this historic newspaper. My family has always prided ourselves in our involvement with the Examiner and its service to our hometown. We are happy a company as dedicated to community newspapers as CherryRoad has decided to bring the paper back, and we know Logan County is going to be better for it.”
Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Media, said, “We are happy we can restart the Bellefontaine Examiner. Community newspapers are essential to civic life and local democracy. Our goal is patient, responsible ownership, supporting strong local reporting and building sustainable operations so papers like the Bellefontaine Examiner can continue serving their communities for generations.”
Said CherryRoad Media Deputy Publisher Jen Fischer, “Our mission is to restore hyper local news coverage and the community conversations that come with it. We believe that every community deserves a platform for its stories.”
CherryRoad owns over 100 newspapers in 19 states.
CherryRoad’s approach to local journalism emphasizes keeping local voices at the center. That means supporting local reporters and editors, amplifying community stories and investing in technology and operational tools that help small newspapers remain viable in a rapidly changing media landscape.
CherryRoad Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of CherryRoad Technologies, a Parsippany, New Jersey–based technology company founded in 1983. CherryRoad Technologies provides complex technology solutions and system integration services to large enterprise customers, with a particular focus on state and local government. Gulban said the company’s expansion into local news was driven by a belief that community journalism needs supportive, technology-enabled solutions — not extractive or disruptive ones — to survive and thrive.
About CherryRoad Media:
CherryRoad Media is a newspaper ownership and management company dedicated to sustaining and strengthening community journalism through responsible ownership, operational support and thoughtful use of technology. CherryRoad Media is a wholly owned subsidiary of CherryRoad Technologies.
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