Newspaper owner and editor Parry Teasdale has agreed to sell The Columbia Paper, a weekly in the town of Ghent, New York, and the news website www.columbiapaper.com to Capital Region Independent Media, LLC for an undisclosed amount. Capital Region is headed by Mark Vinciguerra, a veteran media executive.
The agreement includes having Managing Editor and Deputy Publisher Emilia Teasdale take similar positions under the new ownership. She is Parry Teasdale’s daughter.
Teasdale said that by taking positions with the Capital Region group they could help the transition and allow the company to prosper. “That’s the challenge of these lean times,” Teasdale said. In addition, he noted, “Mark has assured us that there will be no changes in staffing or in news content for the time being.”
With the acquisition of The Columbia Paper, Vinciguerra now owns newspapers in three locations in the Hudson Valley. He already has a partner in his company’s expansion, Capital Region Independent Media Vice President Warren Dews, Jr., who also serves as publisher for the other two papers, The Ravena News-Herald and The Greenville Pioneer. In addition to the printed products the company also owns The UpStater.com. Dews will take over as publisher of The Columbia Paper.
“My thanks to Parry for establishing a trusted product that Columbia County and surrounding communities rely on. As we move into this new and exciting chapter, I look forward to building on this solid foundation and will continue to deliver content that matters to the communities that we serve,” said Dews, Jr.
Asked what kind of benefit he and Dews expect to gain from The Columbia Paper, Vinciguerra said, “The Columbia Paper is a true local treasure and one of the best community media outlets in the nation. I am extremely proud to become its new steward and carry the company into its next iteration. We will be continuing to provide the same in-depth coverage of the issues important to Columbia County as Parry and his team have done so well over the past 14 years.”
The Columbia Paper almost exclusively covers news from Columbia County, which stretches from the Massachusetts and Connecticut borders to the Hudson River. The county’s population is 60,000 but it is easily reached from New York City by Amtrak or car.
The Columbia Paper has a weekly circulation of 2,100. Google Analytics reported that 22K “visitors” used the website at www.columbiapaper.com in the last 28 days.
Parry Teasdale will stay on with the new owners with a job description of “publishing consultant.” “We’re still in the process of figuring out exactly what that means in addition to continuing to write editorials in The Columbia Paper on a regular basis,” he said.
The Columbia Paper has over a dozen regular contributors and has won 20 state news awards, including three for First Place: “Spot News Photos” (David Lee, 2015); “Front Page” (design staff, 2013); “Editorials” (P. Teasdale, 2016).
The paper was founded in 2009 by Teasdale with support from colleagues laid off after The Independent, a twice-weekly paper in Hillsdale was closed by its corporate owner, a chain then called The Journal Register.
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