Lee gets the Pulitzer prize

Lee Enterprises says it has reached a deal to buy Pulitzer for $1.46 billion, or $64 a share. This will add some heft to Lee. From the release

Pulitzer operates 14 daily newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, founded by legendary publisher Joseph Pulitzer in 1878. Others are the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson, Ariz.; The Pantagraph, Bloomington, Ill.; The Daily Herald, Provo, Utah; the Santa Maria Times, Santa Maria, Calif.; The Napa Valley Register, Napa, Calif.; The World, Coos Bay, Ore.; The Sentinel, Hanford, Calif.; the Arizona Daily Sun, Flagstaff, Ariz.; the Daily Chronicle, DeKalb, Ill.; The Garden Island, Lihue, Hawaii; the Daily Journal, Park Hills, Mo.; The Lompoc Record, Lompoc, Calif.; and The Daily News, Rhinelander, Wis.

Pulitzer also has more than 100 weeklies and other niche publications.

It will be interesting to see how Lee goes about operating a couple of papers -- the Post Dispatch and the Daily Star -- that are much larger than its current crop.

Lee says the acquisition grows the company's revnue by 60 percent and circulation by 50 percent.

Orangeburg, S.C., in my neck of the woods, is a Lee paper, and folks there seem fairly happy. It still remains a Southern "outpost," with not much else close, which leads one to wonder if Lee is in the market for anything in this area.