VAN WERT, Ohio - July 21, 2019 - Editor's note: Portions of the article below by Bret J. Schulte appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review in its May/June 2011 edition. I have excerpted his portion in regards to Delphos Herald Media. The complete article can be found: https://archives.cjr.org/reports/the_family_owner_rises_again.php

The Family Owner Rises Again

["The people buying today are the little guys who were squeezed out in the go-go days of yesteryear and didn't bury themselves in debt. Murray Cohen, who claims a constellation of small papers across the Midwest, is one of them.

For years, he coveted the county-seat paper in Van Wert, Ohio, next door to his flagship paper, the Delphos Herald, but it belonged to the muscular Brown Publishing. Last year, Cohen finally got the Van Wert Times Bulletin—and two others—at Brown's auction.

Aside from a small paper in Michigan, the Times Bulletin was his first significant acquisition in twelve years. "We bid on a number of papers and we were the unsuccessful bidder," Cohen says, "so when the recession hit, the prices became more realistic."

Cohen is eighty-one years old. He's ridden out more high times and more low times than just about anyone in newspapers. "There hasn't been a recession yet that has bothered us," Cohen says. "Including the last one." That can be said of a lot of small papers...

The 'adoption' legalized

It was on July 20, 2010, when a federal district judge in New York awarded Cohen the Ohio assets of the Van Wert Times Bulletin, Putnam County Sentinel, Putnam County Vidette and the Ada Herald, including their electronic websites, weekend community shopping guides, several local/regional periodicals and special publications for $3.59 million bid from the Brown Publishing Company Chapter 11...

For the complete article, see:
http://www.northwestpassagerecord.com/2019/07/a-nonagenarian-is-an-icon/