Herald-Standard purchases Greene County Messenger
Val J. Laub, publisher and vice president of the Herald-Standard-Uniontown Newspapers Inc., an affiliate of Calkins Media, has announced the purchase of the Greene County Messenger, a weekly newspaper based in Waynesburg. The purchase for an undisclosed amount was concluded on Sept. 4.
Laub said all present staff at the Messenger will be retained and that Daniel I. Morris, former president and publisher, will continue to write his weekly editorials and columns. Daniel V. Morris, former production manager and vice president, will become general manager.
The Messenger will also continue as a weekly publication, Laub said.
“We bought the newspaper because we felt it was a good fit for the goals we have at present,’ Laub said.
“About 12 years ago, the folks in Greene County asked to meet with me and Mike Ellis (Herald-Standard executive editor) to discuss the possibility of expanding our coverage in Greene County. They asked us to create a daily zoned page but we were unable to do that at the time,’ Laub explained.
“The people there were looking for more of a community product. We have always had several thousand subscribers in the eastern part of Greene County. We have been looking for a way to increase our circulation there and grow our advertising base. We can do that now with our combined resources,’ he said.
“The Morris family and employees have done a marvelous job providing an excellent community newspaper,’ Laub said.
“I am pleased with the progress Waynesburg, the county seat, has made along with developments. It is a great place to live and work and raise a family. The Herald-Standard is looking forward to playing an important role in the future of the county,’ he said.
“We plan to keep the Greene County Messenger name, its Web site and its offices at 107 E. Roy Furman Highway in Waynesburg,’ Laub said.
“I think it’s an excellent opportunity to broaden our base of support in a neighboring county,’ Gary K. Shorts, Calkins Media president and chief executive officer, said.
” Over the years a lot of people in Greene have expressed a desire to increase our presence and this is a good way to do that. We think the Greene County Messenger has a solid readership and advertising customer base and we think we can add to that.
“It’s a very viable business and we have watched it with great interest as it has grown over the years.’
Shorts said the purchase also fits well with Calkins Media’s strategic plan.
“The strategic plan calls for us to grow both revenues internally and through acquisitions and this clearly fits our acquisition strategy. We think in the long term we will look for opportunities to buy in contiguous markets as a way to grow what we already own. We think in many respects weeklies compliment larger daily publications that are bordering one another,’ he said.
“We have extended the full cooperation and resources of the entire Herald-Standard News Department to our new partners at the Greene County Messenger,’ Ellis, Herald-Standard executive editor, said.
“The Messenger staff has won several awards for its hard-hitting public service journalism in Greene County. We look forward to working with them in continuing that commitment to the community for many years to come.”
The Messenger has about 5,000 subscribers.
Morris said he decided to sell the Messenger for several reasons.
“We had the paper for 12 years. It seemed like a good time to sell. I’m 65 and I wanted to reduce the workload a bit,’ he said.
Morris has found the work rewarding. He added that when the Messenger began, “We were on the crest of the high technology wave. Without computers and all the rest of the technology available, we would not have been in business.
“Keeping abreast of technology today will take more and more resources. I have taken this about as far as I can and it needs someone now to take it ahead for the kind of newspaper Greene County and Waynesburg deserve,’ Morris said.
“I feel I have done this for the benefit of the community.’
“We think we have been a real service to the community. The community has grown by leaps and bounds since we went into business and we’d like to take some of the responsibility for that.’
A retired Waynesburg College professor, Morris became involved in the Messenger when a consortium of business people raised money to start the newspaper.
“I had a graphic design business at the time and was approached and asked if I wanted to design the front page for a prospective newspaper.
“I got to know Jim Moore (a former Democrat Messenger employee) and we sat down and talked about some of the things that might be workable in a newspaper.’
The first edition of the Greene County Messenger was published July 20, 1990, a “Rain Day’ special. A few weeks earlier, Moore and Morris, both of Waynesburg, organized the newspaper under a partnership agreement. On Feb. 5, 1991, the partners agreed to incorporate under subchapter “S.”
The organizing offices were at a residence at 1078 Eighth St. in Waynesburg, but the partners soon arranged a move to the Blair Hotel at 141 E. High St. where the operation remained until a 1995 fire. Fire damage in the upstairs hotel forced a move to the paper’s present location.
0n Dec. 2, 1995 Morris entered into an agreement with Moore in which Morris purchased all of Moore’s stock in the newspaper. Moore remained as editor until his death in 1998.
In 1999 75 percent of the shares of stock were transferred to Barbara S. Morris, wife of Daniel I. Morris, who retains the remaining 25 percent of the stock.
The fire in 1995 almost halted publication, Morris said.
“What was amazing about that there was a hardware and sporting goods store next door. Some of the people in the community got together and took all the inventory of the store and our equipment and put it in a parking lot, setting it out in the open. Out of all that stuff, not one paperclip was missing,’ Morris said.
Approached by a local businessman, Shirl Headlee, Morris said he was asked what he was going to do.
“I said we might try to find a garage or something to store the equipment in until we got started again. He owned a plaza and handed me a key telling me there was an empty storefront we could move into and one next door for our equipment. I was publishing a corporate newsletter, magazine and the newspaper at the time and we never missed one edition.’
Morris has found the time rewarding.
“I think one of the things that served us well was we rejected many of the things traditional newspapers were doing. Instead of selling advertising by the column inch, we sold it by the module.
“We also did some things with ad sales and circulation that were innovative in their day,’ he said.
Morris said that from its inception, the newspaper has been published using the four color process. Initially, the publication was tabloid-size but within the past four years it has become a full broadsheet.
From its beginning the paper has been fully paginated and the staff has led the way in fully paginated four-color newspaper technology for community newspapers, advising other paper across the nation and Australia. The Messenger was among the first weeklies to use full color throughout, to employ digital photography, and was one of the first of a handful of newspapers to have a site on the World Wide Web. Except for a slight glitch of a $1,200 downturn in 1999, due to losing a key person, the paper has seen yearly increases in gross income since its beginnings.
The Messenger is a member of the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association and has received awards each year in the categories of Special Projects, Family Life, Sports Photography, Page Design, Graphic and Photo Illustration, Series Writing, Graphic Illustration, Headline Writing, and Feature Writing.
Other members of the Greene County Messenger staff are Cindy Bailey, editor; Barbara S. Morris, accounts payable, newspaper sales and vending; Tara Kinsell, sports and general news; Pam Blaker, retail advertising, and Kelley Morris, advertising design.
In addition to the Herald-Standard and the Greene County Messenger, Calkins Media owns three other daily newspapers in Pennsylvania: The Beaver County Times, The Doylestown Intelligencer and the Bucks County Courier Times; the Burlington County Times newspaper and TAPCO Inc., a commercial printing company in New Jersey; the South Dade News Leader newspaper in Homestead, Fla., and an ABC affiliate television station in Sarasota, Fla.