Cox sells Austin American-Statesman to GateHouse Media

The Austin American-Statesman is being sold.

The newspaper reports Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, owner of the capital city daily for more than 40 years, is going to New York-based GateHouse Media for $47.5 million. The sale is expected to close early this spring.

The purchase includes Ahora Si, the Statesman's Spanish-language daily, as well as the Austin Community Newspapers group of suburban newspapers.

GateHouse owns 130 daily newspapers, 24 of them in Texas, including the Amarillo Globe-News and the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. The Statesman will be one of GateHouse's largest, with a daily print circulation of about 85,000 and almost 17,000 digital subscriptions.

GateHouse already has a central news and design center in Austin.

___

Information from: Austin American-Statesman, http://www.statesman.com