Home News Enterprises sells to Texas group

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The Texas-based company buying Home News Enterprises newspapers said not much would change about the day-to-day operations of the properties.

Home News Enterprises, based in Columbus and owned for six generations by the Brown family, reached an agreement to sell its newspaper, online and commercial printing properties to AIM Media Indiana.

An affiliate of AIM Media Texas, the company owns community newspapers in the Lone Star State. Both companies are managed by AIM Media Management of Dallas, where Jeremy L. Halbreich serves as chairman and CEO and Rick Starks is president and CFO.

AIM said all HNE employees will be hired and continue in their respective jobs and positions with the new company.

Jeffrey N. Brown, HNE president and chief executive officer, will remain with the company and retain his current responsibilities.

Jeffrey Brown and his father, Robert N. Brown, turned The Republic (Columbus), a small, central Indiana newspaper, into a corporate entity publishing newspapers in several other Indiana communities, expanding its commercial printing operations, developing magazine and specialty publications and creating a robust online and digital presence.

Halbreich has a rich newspaper background. He leads daily and weekly newspapers in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and purchased those online and print assets in 2012 from Freedom Communications Inc.

Before establishing AIM Media Texas, he was at the helm of major U.S. media companies, including Sun-Times Media in Chicago and American Consolidated Media in Dallas. During his tenure at the Chicago Sun-Times, the newspaper won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting.

– The Republic (Columbus)