CAMDEN – Village NetMedia Inc. on Monday completed the asset purchase of six weekly newspapers in Maine from Courier Publications, a subsidiary of Crescent Publishing Co. LLC of Greenville, S.C.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Village NetMedia bought the tri-weekly Courier-Gazette in Rockland and the weekly Camden Herald, Republican Journal in Belfast, Waldo Independent in Belfast, Bar Harbor Times and Capital Weekly in Augusta. NetMedia also bought the company’s Rockland printing operation.

As a result of the acquisition, The Waldo Independent and the Waldo County Citizen, a NetMedia publication, will be folded into The Republican Journal, which will continue to serve the Belfast region as it has since 1829. The Knox County Times, also a NetMedia publication, will be folded into The Camden Herald and The Courier-Gazette.

Richard M. Anderson, chief executive officer and co-founder of Rockland-based Village NetMedia and VillageSoup Inc., announced Wednesday the editorial staff changes for the five surviving newspapers.

The new editor of the Republican Journal is Beth Staples, former editor of the Waldo County Citizen. Lynda Clancy has taken over as the new editor of the Camden Herald. Clancy has been with Village Soup since 1998, Anderson said.

Leanne M. Robicheau is the new editor of The Courier-Gazette in Rockland.

Greg Fish will remain editor of the Bar Harbor Times, and Joyce Grondin will stay on as editor of the Capital Weekly in Augusta.

Other staff changes include the appointments of Steve Betts and Amy Lea as reporters for the Camden Herald.

“We have a larger reporter staff than we were, by one person, in each of those offices,” Anderson said.

“This isn’t an attempt to scale back existing operations,” he said of the acquisition. “There were just too many operations for the market.

“We felt that it was important to reduce the number of the papers in the market, but that for each of the papers we were adding resources,” Anderson said.

“The surviving papers are stronger than they were before the acquisition, and we have more resources than they had,” he said.

Anderson said the reaction from the community has been highly favorable after the June 16 announcement of the acquisition.

“Many are glad to see that the papers are locally owned again,” said Anderson. “There also is a level of excitement and anticipation that these newspapers will be energized by solid local reporting and heavier community involvement. We’ve set the bar high, and we intend to fulfill those expectations.”

The acquisition melds VillageSoup’s online platform with some of Maine’s oldest and well established community newspapers and also expands its reach into Kennebec and Hancock counties, Anderson said.

Village NetMedia will continue to publish the Knox and Waldo County VillageSoup Web sites and will soon launch VillageSoup Web sites serving Kennebec County, where the Capital Weekly is located, and Hancock County, home of The Bar Harbor Times.

Anderson, 67, is a Camden resident who is active in the community, serving on a number of local boards. He founded VillageSoup with his son, Derek Anderson, in 1997.

gchappell@bangordailynews.net

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