CherryRoad Media to buy Granite Falls, Montevideo and Redwood Falls newspapers and others in Minnesota | Brainerd Dispatch

CherryRoad Media announced Tuesday that it will acquire the Granite Falls Advocate-Tribune, Montevideo American News and Redwood Falls Gazette in west central Minnesota and four others papers in Minnesota — the Crookston Times, the Sleepy Eye Herald-Dispatch, the St. James Plaindealer and the Tri-County News in Cottonwood.

The sale will be effective Jan. 1, 2022.

All the papers acquired by CherryRoad were currently owned by Gannett and were part of the USA Today Network. Gannett and Gatehouse Media newspaper companies merged in August 2019 and the merged company assumed the better-known Gannett name.

CherryRoad Media has recently purchased papers in five other states from Gannett.

“We’re really excited to be working with the high quality of staff already in place in these communities,” said Jeremy Gulban, CEO of CherryRoad Media told the Montevideo American-News.

Gulban told the Granite Falls Advocate-Tribune that CherryRoad Media was willing to invest in local community newspapers because there was room for both print and digital resources in news coverage, especially in areas that focused on local news.

A special agreement was in place with Gannett ownership to allow for a relatively seamless transition to new ownership for the newspapers in question, Gulban told the Redwood Falls Gazette.

Cherryroad Media bought its first newspaper — the Cook County News Herald in Grand Marais in November 2020. The company launched a new Minnesota newspaper — the Rainy Lake Gazette — in July in International Falls. The Gazette was launched after the International Falls Journal was closed in June by the MediaNews Group. In addition to the nine Minnesota papers in the CherryRoad Media group, the company also owns newspapers in Arkansas, Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.

CherryRoad Media is headquartered in Morris Plains, New Jersey. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of CherryRoad Technologies, a Parsippany, New Jersey-based technology company that has been in business since 1983.