Former longtime KOIN owner (and current multiple Oregon newspaper operator) Lee Enterprises is selling off a bunch of properties, including Portland/Seattle's Nickel Ads:
Lee's Eastern Washington publications and commercial printing operation will be sold to Target Media Partners of Los Angeles. That includes six publications based in Spokane, two in Kennewick, two in Moses Lake, two in Wenatchee and one in Walla Walla, along with some Web sites and other printing operations.
It also will sell the Little Nickel and Nickel Ads Classified, which has offices in Seattle and Portland, to an affiliate of British Columbia's Black Press.
Lee, based in Davenport, is also selling the twice-weekly Newport News-Times in Oregon to News Media Corp.
Lee will continue to operate four daily newspapers in Oregon and Washington. They are the Albany Democrat Herald, the Corvallis Gazette-Times and The World in Coos Bay in Oregon, and The Daily News in Longview, Wash.
that Lee would sell off the rest of those papers to someone who actually cared about the product they turn out. It's almost a guarantee that if Lee buys a paper, layoffs, crappy printing and inexperienced staff will be the norm.