Renamed GateHouse Media Is Relocating, Too

By: Mark Fitzgerald Now that Liberty Group Publishing has a new name, it?s getting a new address, too.

In an interview Tuesday, Mike Reed, CEO of the newly renamed GateHouse Media Inc. confirmed that the big community newspaper publisher will be relocating its corporate headquarters this summer to Rochester, N.Y., from suburban Chicago.

?We?re not really moving a corporate office, because there really wasn?t ever a corporate office here,? Reed said with a laugh. Under the ownership of an investment group headed by former Hollinger International attorney Ken Serota, Liberty Group was headquartered in a small building located deep in a non-descript industrial park in Northbrook, Ill.

By contrast, the Rochester HQ will house an expanded corporate presence reflecting a little more centralizing. ?For instance, we?ll file all our tax returns for the paper, we?ll have an HR (human resources) department, and a couple of auditors working out of Rochester,? he said. ?Things that (GateHouse papers) can?t afford to do on a standalone basis.?

Much of that work has been outsourced, and would be cheaper done in-house, Reed added.

Reed said Rochester was chosen as the new headquarters mostly because he?s from upstate New York.

The Liberty name was jettisoned because ?there are so many ?Liberties? that when you hear the name you?re not sure what business it is,? Reed said, noting that banks, travel agencies, insurance companies and the media company controlled by Rupert Murdoch nemesis John Malone all brand themselves with the moniker.

Reed, the CEO who transformed Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. (CNHI) into giant chain, said the name reflects the idea that the group?s papers are the gatekeepers of local information. ?So we?re standing at the GateHouse at the walls of the town,? he said.

GateHouse is not changing Liberty?s business model of focusing on smaller-market monopoly newspapers that can offer unique local content. The only difference, Reed noted, is that while Liberty restricted itself to papers under 20,000 circulation, GateHouse will go after bigger fish--as demonstrated earlier this week by acquiring 54,039 Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., along with the rest of Enterprise NewsMedia Holding LLC and CP Media Inc., the subsidiary of Boston Herald publisher Herald Media Inc.