Industry | Publishing |
---|---|
Founded | 1995-2005 |
Founder | Frank Homer Shepherd Goldman Sachs Capital Partners II, L.P. Kelso & Company |
Headquarters | , United States |
Area served | Michigan |
Key people | Frank Homer Shepherd, Chairman and CEO; Doug Haensel, President and COO |
Products | Newspapers, 129 newspaper titles including weeklies and dailies |
Revenue | $175,000,000 |
$35,000,000 | |
Subsidiaries | Heritage Newspapers |
21st Century Newspapers was a corporation owning newspapers in the state of Michigan and based in Pontiac, Michigan, and founded in 1995.
Frank Shepherd was born December 20, 1941, to Velma J.(Johnston) and Homer F. Shepherd in Port Huron, Michigan. Shepherd owned 21st Century Newspapers' and his first acquisitions were The Oakland Press and The Macomb Daily and The Royal Oak Tribune on August 21, 1997. They were purchased from The Walt Disney Company in Burbank, California. 21st Century under Frank Shepherd, president, chairman, and CEO, began a buying spree that eventually ended with approx. 129 newspaper titles. The company also acquired newspaper assets of Brill Media Company(purchased out of bankruptcy) in August 2002 including Morning Sun daily newspaper in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan, and newspapers in Traverse City, Charlevoix, Gaylord, East Jordan, Elk Rapids, Central Lake, Bellaire and Tawas City and other communities in central and northern Michigan. In addition, newspapers in "Downriver Detroit" were also purchased including newspapers in Wyandotte, Southgate, Dearborn, Lincoln Park, Melvindale, Allen Park, Taylor and Trenton [1] In September 2002, Booth Newspapers acquired 21st Century Newspapers Suburban Flint Newspaper Group which has nine local papers: The Clio Messenger, The Davison Flagstaff, The Fenton Press, The Grand Blanc News, Flint Township News, The Flushing Observer, The Holly Press, The Suburban Burton, and Swartz Creek News and included Suburban Flint shopper. All of which became part of the Flint Journal as the Community Newspapers. [2] on August 21, 2005, 21st Century was acquired by Journal Register Company. [3]
It has approximately 120 other newspaper titles. In addition, the acquiring company purchased The Greater Detroit Newspaper Network. This 21st Century Company operated as the major group selling arm of 21st Century Newspapers. They generated approx. $25. million of annual profit by selling to national companies with most revenue coming from pre-printed inserts. The sale of 21st Century Newspapers in August 2005 was the largest newspaper sales by dollar volume in the US for the year 2005. Shepherd remained a consultant for the purchasing company for a short period, then left and joined another newspaper company's Board of Directors. In 2012, he finally retired to Charlevoix, Michigan, where he still resides. He started a township newspaper in 2018 and it still is published monthly and has a website. Shepherd began his newspaper career in Port Huron, Michigan, as a carrier boy for The Port Huron Times Herald, owned by the "Weil Family". He rose to become Classified Manager, and then the company purchased a weekly Utica Sentinel in Utica, Michigan. Shepherd became General Manager and turned the weekly into a daily newspaper, The Daily Sentinel. It was sold to Gannett in the late 1960's. Shepherd previously worked for Scripps Howard Newspapers in Cincinnati, Ohio as VP of Operations from 1983 until 1991. He was recruited by Stauffer Communications in 1991 as President and CEO and a member of The Board of Directors. Stauffer owned 29 daily newspapers, 9 television stations, and 4 radio stations, as well as several magazines. Shepherd improved the finances of Stauffer dramatically and then sold Stauffer to Morris Communications, headed by Billy Morris of Augusta, Georgia. Previously, Shepherd also worked for Panax Corporation of East Lansing, Michigan, and was a member of their Board of Directors. He joined the company in 1968 and headed the sale of the company, in part to Rupert Murdock(Texas newspapers) in August 1980. Shepherd then moved to Houston, Texas where he founded the book publishing company, Pioneer Publishing Company. He sold that company to his partner and took a consulting job with a California publishing company headed by Charles Morris of Morris Publishing in Savannah, Georgia. After the consulting agreement, Shepherd joined Scripps Howard in Cincinnati as VP of Newspaper Operations, where he stayed from 1982 until 1992. His career spanned the 50s through the 2000s. From hot-metal days until offset and heat set printing. He mastered all 3 processes, but empire-building, buying, building, and selling, was his forte. His last venture was 21st Century Newspapers, Inc. which employed over 2,000 employees. He was considered an early pioneer in suburban journalism and a leader in "clustering" suburban newspapers into shared printing, sales, and accounting services. He studied rotogravure printing with Axel-Springer in Hamburg, Germany and built printing plants in South Africa at the behest of the South African Gov't.
Shepherd sold 21st Century in August 2005 for $415,000,000 cash, then retired to Charlevoix, Michigan. He is married to the former Beth Louise Lyons(Shepherd) for the past 41 years. In total, his newspaper career spanned 5 decades from the early 1960's until 2005. Shepherd has a son, Jim Shepherd, who is a successful executive with Snapchat. Jim was born in Newhall, California, and lives in Beverley Hills, California. Jim was an outstanding basketball for the Charlevoix Rayder(Charlevoix, Michigan) team who lost to the State Champs two years in a row. Jim held the High School "Breslin Center"(Michigan State University) record for the most 3-point baskets in one game(9) and was an MVP player at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
Shepherd was previously married and divorced in 1978. He had five children from that previous marriage.
Shepherd says he will be cremated and scattered to the winds upon this death.
Macomb County is a county located in the eastern portion of the U.S. state of Michigan, bordering Lake St. Clair, and is part of northern Metro Detroit. As of the 2020 Census, the population was 881,217, making it the third-most populous county in the state. The county seat is Mt. Clemens. Macomb County is part of the Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city of Detroit is located on the county's southern border. Macomb County contains 27 cities, townships and villages, including three of the top ten most-populous municipalities in Michigan as of the 2020 census: Warren (#3), Sterling Heights (#4) and Clinton Township (#8). Most of this population is concentrated south of Hall Road (M-59), one of the county's main thoroughfares.
The Thumb is a region and a peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan, so named because the Lower Peninsula is shaped like a mitten. The Thumb area is generally considered to be in the Central Michigan region, east of the Flint area and the Tri-Cities and north of Metro Detroit. The region is also branded as the Blue Water Area.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company was an American subsidiary of the Grand Trunk Railway, later of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971, the railroad has been under CN's subsidiary holding company, the Grand Trunk Corporation. Grand Trunk Western's routes are part of CN's Michigan Division. Its primary mainline between Chicago and Port Huron, Michigan serves as a connection between railroad interchanges in Chicago and rail lines in eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. The railroad's extensive trackage in Detroit and across southern Michigan has made it an essential link for the automotive industry as a hauler of parts and automobiles from manufacturing plants.
Grit is a magazine, formerly a weekly newspaper, popular in the rural U.S. during much of the 20th century. It carried the subtitle "America's Greatest Family Newspaper". In the early 1930s, it targeted small town and rural families with 14 pages plus a fiction supplement. By 1932, it had a circulation of 425,000 in 48 states, and 83% of its circulation was in towns of fewer than 10,000 inhabitants.
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MLive Media Group, originally known as Booth Newspapers, or Booth Michigan, is a media group that produces newspapers in the state of Michigan. Founded by George Gough Booth with his two brothers, Booth Newspapers was sold to Advance Publications, a Samuel I. Newhouse property, in 1976.
21st Century Media was an American media company. It was the successor of Ingersoll Publications and Journal Register Company, and it was succeeded by Digital First Media.
The Holland Sentinel is a newspaper published six days a week in Holland, Michigan, United States, founded in 1896. It is published by Gannett.
Journal Media Group was a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based newspaper publishing company. The company's roots were first established in 1882 as the owner of its namesake, the Milwaukee Journal, and expanded into broadcasting with the establishment of WTMJ radio and WTMJ-TV, and the acquisition of other television and radio stations.
Area code 810 is a telephone area code in the North American Numbering Plan for the east-central part in the U.S. state of Michigan. The numbering plan area (NPA) comprises the cities of Flint, Lapeer, Port Huron, and the southern portion of the Thumb.
Stauffer Communications was a privately held media corporation based in Topeka, Kansas, that owned many publications and broadcast outlets, including the Topeka Capital-Journal and WIBW, WIBW-FM, and WIBW-TV. The company operated from 1930 to 1995.
The Oakland Press is a daily newspaper published in Oakland County, Michigan with headquarters in Troy. It is owned by 21st Century Media, with which its parent company merged in 2013 after filing for bankruptcy. The local historical society traces its origins to The Pontiac Gazette, founded in 1843. The paper has been published under various names, including The Pontiac Press, until it was renamed The Oakland Press in 1972. Original editorials and reporting, including major-sport beat writers, are also carried in the sister paper The Macomb Daily.
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The 1968 United States presidential election in Michigan was held on November 5, 1968. All 50 states and The District of Columbia, were part of the 1968 United States presidential election. Voters chose 21 electors to represent them in the Electoral College, who voted for president and vice president.
John P. McGoff was an American conservative newspaper publisher. He was the founder of the Panax Corporation and Global Communications, and the owner of "over seventy newspapers across the United States." His ties to the apartheid-era South African government drew attention from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Michigan State University community, but his 1986 charges were dropped due to a five-year statute of limitation. He filed for bankruptcy upon his retirement.
George F. Lewis was a nineteenth-century American journalist and proprietor of several newspapers. He helped in the printing of the first time news of presidential election results were published. He was involved in determining there was copper ore in Michigan to be mined. He was also mayor of Saginaw, Michigan.