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LAKE CHARLES, La. – Shearman Company, LLC announced today it has an agreement to sell the assets of the daily Lake Charles American Press and weekly Sulphur Daily News to Carpenter Newsmedia (CNL), an affiliate of Boone Newspapers (BNI). The assets include its print publications, websites and commercial printing business.

BNI owns The Natchez Democrat.  Todd Carpenter, a former Democrat publisher and Natchez resident, is CEO of BNI and CNL.

Dirks, Van Essen & April, a media merger and acquisition firm based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is representing Shearman Company in the transaction. Terms were not disclosed.

BNI and CNL own and/or manage 74 related newspapers along with websites, shopping guides and magazines in communities in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Texas.

In addition to The Democrat, Mississippi newspapers include The (Brookhaven) Daily Leader, The Vicksburg Post, The Oxford Eagle, The Picayune Item, The Prentiss Headlight and The Poplarville Democrat.  Louisiana newspapers include the Bogalusa Daily News and L’Observateur in LaPlace.

The Shearman family has owned the American Press since 1943. “It has been an honor for our family to serve the community for so many years,” said American Press Publisher Tom Shearman. “BNI shares our commitment to local journalism and represents everything we had hoped to find in the next steward of our newspapers.”

”We are pleased and humbled to succeed the Shearman family in responsibility for The American Press and the The Daily News,” said Todd Carpenter, president and CEO of BNI and owner of CNL.  “We will work hard to meet our every obligation to the communities served and to build on the strong foundations put down by the Shearman Family, generations of journalists and good newspaper people who have been part of those newspapers over the years.”