Somerville News renamed to Somerville Times. Who are the new owners?

[ron_newman]

Today, The Somerville News renamed itself The Somerville Times. An editorial briefly alludes to "new ownership" but provides no details. Anyone know more? ETA: Thanks to a little digging by sd210, we now know that the new owner is Ross Blouin of 87 Curtis Street. Anyone know more about him?

The masthead of the hardcopy PDF (page 2) says the publisher is now "Somerset Valley Publishing Inc.", but this means nothing to me. (The previous publisher was "Prospect Hill Publishing".) The street address is still 699 Broadway in Ball Square, which is still shared with Norton Realty.

Comments

[sd210.livejournal.com]

According to the Secretary of the Commonwealth's website, Somerset Valley Publishing, Inc., is a newly incorporated organization, formed this month. There is only 1 officer listed, a person named Ross Blouin with an address on Curtis Street in Somerville. Again, all this is public info on the Corporations searchable database.

[ron_newman]

Thanks. What page did you use to do this search?

[sd210.livejournal.com]

Here is the website. Very helpful for looking up who is "behind" a corporation or LLC in MA. Lawyers use it all the time because it tells you who the registered agent is for every company (i.e., who you need to serve to sue a company). It's all public info:

http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corpweb/corpsearch/CorpSearch.aspx

[ron_newman]

Thanks. Very useful link!

[sd210.livejournal.com]

No problem-o.

[laryu.livejournal.com]

According to this page (http://www.thesomervillenews.com/archives/10335) Ross Blouin is a real estate agent at Colony Real Estate.

[ron_newman]

That seems odd, for Norton Realty to sell the newspaper to a competing realtor, while keeping the newspaper headquarters at Norton's office.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

competing realtor

It's possible that the two realty operations have some sort of partnership going, and they don't compete with each other.

[laryu.livejournal.com]

By the way, they seem to be using the New York Times logotype for the Somerville Times logo. That can't be right, could it?

[ron_newman]

But lots of newspapers use that font, including the Globe (even before the NYTimes Company bought them).

[ilai]

I'm not the type fanatic that I used to be, but the Boston Globe's logo is in actually a quite different typeface from the NYTimes. And the Somerville Times' looks like a knock-off of (but not quite the same as) the NYTimes' font.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the switch is so Mr. Norton can seek appointments or public office.