Brown acquires more publications, plans to expand in South Carolina

Ohio-based Brown Publishing Co., which has been acquiring business newspapers and magazines in the past year, has acquired two more in June, according to its CEO.

The private company purchased GSA Business, a bi-weekly newspaper that serves the Greenville, Spartanburg and Anderson area of South Carolina, for an undisclosed amount, said CEO Roy Brown.

It has also acquired the Business Ledger in Naperville, Ill., again for an undisclosed price. The company had previously announced an acquisition in June of Inside Collin County Business in Texas.

In South Carolina, the company also owns the Charleston Regional Business Journal, a bi-weekly, and SC BIZ, a bi-monthly magazine.

Grady Johnson, the CEO of Brown subsidiary SC Biz News LLC, tells Talking Biz News that the company is “in the final phases of our preparations to launch in Columbia and will publish our first issue of the Columbia Regional Busines Report in August as a bi-weekly tabloid with a daily component, the Daily Report.”

Added Johnson: “This puts us in a very exciting position from a journalistic point of view. To my knowledge we will be the only news organization to have fully staffed newsrooms in all three of the major metros in South Carolina. This will enable us to cover the state on a daily basis from each region and to share local business news with relevance to the other regions across all the platforms.”

In the past year, Brown Publishing has also acquired the Des Moines Business Record in Iowa, the Fort Worth Business Press in Texas and the Boulder County Business Report in Colorado. That acquisition included a majority ownership of the Northern Colorado Business Report in Fort Collins, the Wyoming Business Report in Cheyenne, Wyo., and DataJoe LLC, a research and online data e-commerce company.

In March, the company also took a position in Utah Business magazine.