Mike Reed is the CEO of GateHouse Media.
GateHouse Media (formerly Liberty Group Publishing Inc.) of Downers Grove, Illinois, is one of the largest publishers of community newspapers in the United States. The company publishes 77 daily newspapers, 271 non-daily newspapers and 136 shoppers and other publications, in 17 states. GateHouse specializes in publications with daily circulation of less than 20,000.
In May 2006, GateHouse bought the Community Newspaper Company (CNC) unit of Herald Media for $225M. CNC publishes over 100 daily and weekly newspapers in Massachusetts with a combined circulation of about 600,000. At that time GateHouse also acquired Enterprise NewsMedia LLC, the publisher of the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, the Enterprise of Brockton, and a number of South Shore weeklies.
Liberty Group Publishing emerged in the late 1990s when it purchased more than 160 US papers from Hollinger International Inc., a Canadian media company. Since then, the company has been acquiring small-market papers.
In 2005, Liberty was bought by a New York private equity firm, Fortress Investment Group LLC. Fortress Investment Group is a global alternative investment and asset management firm founded in 1998 with approximately $20 billion in equity capital under management.
GateHouse is led by Michael Reed, who, before joining the company in January 2006, was the CEO of Community Newspapers Holdings Inc. (CNHI), an Alabama firm that publishes newspapers in small and mid-size markets.
