Times-Journal purchases Morgan County Citizen
Times-Journal Inc. has purchased the Morgan County Citizen weekly newspaper in Madison, Ga., it was announced Jan. 6 by owners of the two publishing companies.
“We are excited to welcome another fine community newspaper to our group of publications,” said Otis Brumby III of Times-Journal Inc. “The Citizen has long been a part of Morgan County and top on our priority list is to continue that legacy that began with its launch in 1846.”
Morgan County Citizen Publisher Patrick Yost called publishing the local paper a “gratifying experience.”
“Dianne (Yost) and I have relished the time we have served Morgan County and the Lake Oconee area,” said Yost. “We will always be indebted to our friends and business partners.”
The Yosts founded Main Street Communications Inc., the parent company of the Morgan County Citizen and Lake Oconee Living, in 1997. In 2001 the couple purchased The Madisonian and merged the two newspapers. Since that beginning, the Yosts have been active in the Georgia Press Association, with both serving on the Board of Directors and Patrick Yost serving as the association’s president, vice-president, treasurer and secretary. Both Dianne and Patrick have also served on several local non-profit boards in Morgan County.
The Citizen newspaper publishes each Wednesday and is online on a 24/7 basis at morgancountycitizen.com. The staff also produces the award-winning quarterly Lake Oconee Living magazine and several other special publications throughout the year. The purchase includes all publications. In the past 20 years the Citizen has been named the best weekly in the state of Georgia 10 times and has consistently garnered countless awards through the Georgia Press Association Better Newspaper Contest.
Marietta-based TimesJournal publishes daily and weekly newspapers, magazines and operates news websites in central and north Georgia, including the Marietta Daily Journal, the Rome News-Tribune, Cherokee Tribune/Ledger news and two dozen more weeklies.
“It is an honor and a privilege for my sister Lee and I to be the third generation of managers of a family-owned newspaper business,” Brumby said. “Growing up, our father taught us the value of hard work, faith, family and integrity. We take our new responsibility to the people of Morgan County seriously and look forward to getting to know, working with and serving the people in those communities.”
Times-Journal’s roots begin with the Marietta Daily Journal, first printed in 1866 by Robert McAlpin Goodman on a hand press left behind by Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman’s army after the Civil War and converted from a weekly paper to daily publication in 1935.
Otis Brumby III’s grandfather, Otis A. Brumby Sr., started rival newspaper The Cobb County Times in 1916 and purchased the MDJ in 1951, merging the two publications. Otis Brumby Jr. took over as publisher in 1967, and Otis Brumby III succeeded him in 2012.
The Brumby family ties to newspapering in Madison do not begin with the recent purchase of the Citizen. The Brumbys’ uncle, Earl Leonard Jr., owned the Madisonian in the 1940s and 1950s before selling to the Ponder family in 1952. Leonard purchased The Madisonian from Belmont Dennis in the late 1940s following WWII.