Owned by the Hathaway family until 1997, the company later partnered with its former competitor, the Ottaway daily The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., reportedly told investors before the deal that he would be "selling the local newspapers fairly quickly" after the Dow Jones purchase.
News Corp. CEO and former Wall Street Journal editor Robert James Thomson indicated that the newspapers were "not strategically consistent with the emerging portfolio" of the company.
[5] GateHouse in turn filed prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 27, 2013, to restructure its debt obligations in order to accommodate the acquisition.
[6] Hathaway published four newspapers at the time Ottaway bought it: The Advocate, The Chronicle, the Middleboro Gazette and The Spectator.