CLAREMONT — A Portsmouth, N.H., business consultant who once ran for governor of New Hampshire has purchased the Eagle Times in Claremont, promising to invest resources in the struggling newspaper and “hold up old-style objective journalism” while also highlighting “positive news and events that people want to hear about,” the newspaper’s new owner said.
Jay Lucas, a Newport native and founder of the Newport Sunshine Initiative revitalization program, acquired the Eagle Times from Sample News Group, a Pennsylvania-based newspaper publisher that purchased the Eagle Times out of bankruptcy court in 2009.
The Claremont paper has seen a precipitous decline in circulation and advertising as readers flock from print to digital media. It currently publishes its print edition three days a week, although news on other days is reported on the newspaper’s website and Facebook page. The newspaper staff is now down to one reporter, a single editor and two employees on the business side, and prints “in the range” of 8,500 copies, according to Lucas, on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.
“We’d like to get it back to at least five days a week,” Lucas said in an interview with the Valley News.
As part of the purchase, Lucas also acquired the assets of the Argus Champion, a weekly newspaper in Newport that ceased publishing in 2020.
Sample News Group did not respond to messages left for comment.
Lucas, who said the Eagle Times is profitable, declined to reveal terms of the purchase.
The son of a waitress and a Newport small business owner who sold restaurant equipment, Lucas grew up in downtown Newport next door to the Richards Free Library. He graduated from Newport High School in 1972 before attending Yale and earning law and business degrees from Harvard. While a student at Yale, he was elected as a state representative to the New Hampshire Legislature and served two terms.
Despite the high-powered career in business that followed Lucas’ elite education — he worked eight years at consulting group Bain & Co. before opening his own firm in 1991 to advise clients in the private equity industry — Lucas maintains wistful images of growing up in Newport in the 1960s and 1970s, which he says underpins his motivation in seeking to save the institutions of small towns ravaged by the exodus of manufacturing.
“Main Street in Newport really was like a Norman Rockwell painting,” Lucas said of the town when he was growing up.
Lucas said he read both the Argus Champion and Eagle Times as a youth devotedly, getting a thrill each time he saw his picture in sports coverage or his name listed the student honor roll.
Those memories are key in shaping his purchase of the Eagle Times and what he hopes to see emphasized in the newspaper’s future, Lucas related.
“Our plan is to grow staff, particularly in the area of providing more content with a high degree of focus on local news, what some call ‘hyper-local,’ because people want to know about school graduations and how the sports team have done,” Lucas said.
Lucas declined, however, to specify how many employees he expected to add or how much money he was willing to put toward expanding operations in print and online as he intends.
“That’s a work in progress, to be determined,” he said.
But Lucas’ news release announcing his purchase of the Eagle Times hinted at one of his strategies he might employ at the newspaper: the Sunshine Report, Lucas’ own weekly blog/email newsletter sent to 30,000 subscribers and featuring such Lucas-bylined stories on “Why Fathers Matter,” “Kindness Wins the Day!” and “When Lightning Strikes … In a Good Way!”
Lucas “envisions featuring the Sunshine Report in upcoming editions of the newspapers and encourages others to contribute interesting, and especially upbeat, content. The Sunshine Report focuses on a message of ‘Positive Energy, Positive Change!’ the news release said.
An inveterate civic booster who liberally employs the word “positive” in conversation, Lucas said the Eagle Times under his control will not avoid reporting difficult topics. But at the same time, Lucas said he believes “the media” often dwells on negative news to the harm of readers.
“We are a journalistic organization and will report like newspapers do,” Lucas said. “Having said that, I also think there is a major complement by reporting positive news and events that people want to hear about.”
And although Lucas has long been active in the New Hampshire Republican Party, he said the Eagle Times will “not (become) a partisan effort.”
Lucas dipped his toe in the media business when he led a group under his Sunshine Initiative umbrella in launching Newport Times, a online community site “focused on positive news and profiles.”
If and how the online Newport Times and the dormant Argus Champion will be integrated remains to be seen, Lucas said.
Although one way many newspapers — such as the Boston Globe and Washington Post — have survived has been to have a moneyed owner swoop in to support their journalism mission, Lucas said he has not purchased the Eagle Times in a charity mission.
“I see this as a highly sustainable business we are going to build,” Lucas said, declining to elaborate other than to say it will entail “developing innovative approaches to local news communications.”
“I think the future is very bright for Newport and the whole Connecticut River Valley region,” he said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
CORRECTION: THE NEWPORT TIMES print publication is produced by Greater Good Media. Jen MacMilen is the publisher. Production and distribution of THE NEWPORT TIMES print publication is financially supported by the town of Newport. An earlier version of this incorrectly ascribed ownership and control of the print edition of THE NEWPORT TIMES.
