Wehco Media Sells Three Missouri Newspapers After Years of Losses

(Shutterstock)

For nearly half of the years that Wehco Media Inc. of Little Rock owned the Jefferson City News Tribune, the Fulton Sun and the California Democrat, all in central Missouri, the newspapers didn’t turn a profit.

So Wehco, chaired by Walter E. Hussman Jr., sold the papers at the end of the year. The News Tribune and Fulton Sun are daily papers; the California Democrat is weekly.

The buyer was Faughn Media LLC of Jefferson City, led by Scott Faughn, former Poplar Bluff mayor. No sale price was made public.

“Despite our best efforts, these papers have not been profitable for the past seven years,” Wehco Publisher Eliza Hussman Gaines told Arkansas Business. “One reason is that the iPad model that was successful in some of our other markets was not feasible in Missouri.”

Wehco kept ownership of the newspapers’ production facility, all commercial printing customers and the Flypaper digital marketing agency in Jefferson City, Gaines said.