Tidewater Publications LLC was formed to acquire and publish The Tidewater News. It is majority owned by Todd H. Carpenter, president and COO of Boone Newspapers Inc. (BNI). Others with ownership are BNI and its key personnel, including a publisher who will succeed Hanes Byerly, long-time Tidewater News publisher and owner of Byerly Publications. The new company will be managed by BNI, who for the past five years has managed The Suffolk (Va.) News-Herald, The Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald in Ahoskie, N.C. and The Gates County (N.C.) Index.

Carpenter lives in Natchez and in addition to his BNI corporate role is publisher of the BNI-owned daily newspaper there, The Natchez Democrat. He is a native of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and he and his wife, Emily, have three children. They are both graduates of the University of Alabama.

“I deeply appreciate the opportunity Hanes Byerly offers our company and me in the opportunity to succeed him with The Tidewater News,” Carpenter said. “He has provided us with an excellent newspaper and strong foundations to build upon as Franklin and Southampton County grow and develop. His successor as publisher of The Tidewater News will be named very soon, will be a person who will live in Franklin and contribute to this community as to meeting civic and business responsibilities while producing a quality newspaper. That is our obligation to the community and to Hanes, and we will work hard to measure up with the help of some fine people already working with The Tidewater News.

“I look forward to getting to know The Tidewater News people, and to working with them,” Carpenter said. In his 46 years as owner, Byerly published 4,772 issues of The Tidewater News. “Many good friends contributed,” he said.
“We have been through a lot over the years — a little problem here and a big problem there — but one thing for sure, we shared some happy days. It has been five decades of good memories.”

Byerly said the very core of a newspaper’s strength is “the readers’ feeling of identification with a paper that belongs to them and represents their community. Jim Boone, who is owner of BNI, and Todd Carpenter share this view,” Byerly said. “The Tidewater News is in good hands.”

Byerly will maintain his office in the newspaper building at 1000 Armory Drive.

“I share Todd Carpenter’s appreciation for the opportunity Hanes provides him and us,” Jim Boone said. “Hanes and I have been friends since 1962, when I came to Suffolk for seven wonderful years as publisher of The Suffolk News-Herald. He and I have shared the same values and the same publishing philosophy for all those years. When the Suffolk, Ahoskie and Gates County newspapers began to be managed by our company in July 2000, Hanes and I renewed our friendship. He is an editor and publisher I have admired and respected for some 45 years, and he is most deserving of the esteem in which his fellow newspaper publishers hold him,” Boone said.

Boone’s son and daughter, Buford Boone and Martha Cobbold, own the Suffolk, Ahoskie and Gates County newspapers. Buford is an FBI agent who works at the FBI Academy at Quantico, Va., and Cobbold lives with her family in England and manages Knebworth Estate there. Those newspapers are managed by BNI.

The roots of BNI go back to The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News, which was published by Jim Boone’s father from 1947 until 1968. Jim Boone succeeded his father there in leaving Suffolk in 1968. The first acquisitions of newspapers in what is now BNI occurred in 1970, and the company now operates newspapers in more than 30 communities in Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, Minnesota, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina. Boone and his five children are owners of BNI.

Sam Mitchell of Media Services LLC served as broker in the transaction. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.