Gazette’s parent company announces formation of Civitas Media, LLC

Versa Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, LLC (Versa), a pri­vate equity invest­ment firm and the par­ent com­pany of The Delaware Gazette, today announced the cre­ation of Civ­i­tas Media, LLC (Civ­i­tas), a new com­mu­nity news media com­pany. Civ­i­tas, Latin for “com­mu­nity” or “cit­i­zen,” com­bines four media enti­ties owned by Versa: Free­dom Cen­tral, Heart­land Pub­li­ca­tions, Impres­sions Media and Ohio Com­mu­nity Media.

“We have assem­bled an excel­lent group of com­mu­nity news pub­lish­ers over the past 15 months and com­bin­ing them together under the Civ­i­tas umbrella is a log­i­cal and value-enhancing result,” Versa’s CEO Gre­gory L. Segall said. “Community-based media has remained prof­itable and largely avoided the level of finan­cial pres­sure expe­ri­enced by large daily met­ros in recent years. They are the prin­ci­pal source of infor­ma­tion and news con­tent as well as the pri­mary adver­tis­ing vehi­cles for their com­mu­ni­ties, whether in print or online, and we see a more sta­ble and resilient future for this sector.”

Civ­i­tas, which now employs 1,650 peo­ple at 47 loca­tions across 11 states in the Mid­west, Mid-Atlantic and South, serves its com­mu­ni­ties through its ded­i­ca­tion to the deliv­ery of local infor­ma­tion, includ­ing news and adver­tis­ing solu­tions, across a vari­ety of plat­forms. These com­mu­ni­ties are served by 36 local daily news­pa­pers includ­ing 19 with week­end edi­tions as well as 76 weekly prod­ucts. These papers have a com­bined aver­age weekly cir­cu­la­tion of 1.6 mil­lion. Civ­i­tas also serves these com­mu­ni­ties with numer­ous free, adver­tise­ment sup­ported pub­li­ca­tions and a grow­ing online pres­ence. In addi­tion, Civ­i­tas pub­lishes spe­cialty prod­ucts such as local com­mu­nity direc­to­ries, wine mag­a­zines, regional agri­cul­tural pub­li­ca­tions, realty pub­li­ca­tions, local enter­tain­ment guides and online mag­a­zines and SEO solutions.

The merged orga­ni­za­tion is led by CEO Michael Bush, for­merly the CEO of group mem­ber Heart­land Pub­li­ca­tions, and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer Scott Cham­pion, for­merly the CEO of group mem­ber Ohio Com­mu­nity Media. The cap­i­tal­iza­tion and work­ing cap­i­tal require­ments of the busi­ness are sup­ported by a new $62.5 mil­lion multi-bank senior term loan and revolv­ing credit facil­ity led by RBS Cit­i­zens, N.A.

“I am very excited to be work­ing with Versa Cap­i­tal, which has assem­bled a valu­able col­lec­tion of com­mu­nity media assets and has a rep­u­ta­tion for sup­port­ing its com­pa­nies both finan­cially and oper­a­tionally,” Bush said. “Civ­i­tas has a promis­ing future as a media com­pany, and is well posi­tioned to fur­ther ben­e­fit from the even­tual recov­ery of U.S. eco­nomic activity.”

Bush fur­ther noted “there are many oppor­tu­ni­ties for serv­ing the local com­mu­ni­ties as we real­ize syn­er­gies from our com­bined strength. At Heart­land, we suc­cess­fully imple­mented sim­i­lar pro­grams, and I look for­ward to work­ing with the entire Civ­i­tas orga­ni­za­tion to explore best-in-class prac­tices that can be uti­lized across many plat­forms. We have many excel­lent edi­to­r­ial and adver­tis­ing pro­fes­sion­als with valu­able, local com­mu­nity ties. Our empha­sis will always be on the com­mu­ni­ties we serve.”

While oper­a­tional improve­ments are antic­i­pated in the near-term, Segall said he plans to leave day-to-day con­trol of edi­to­r­ial con­tent in the hands of “the peo­ple who know the local mar­kets best.”

Posted by Gary Henery on Sep 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.