KM Group in bid to buy the News from rival publisher

Kent’s indpendent media network the KM Group has launched a bid to buy several of one of it’s competitor’s titles, including Medway weekly the News.

The KM Group already operates several local titles across the county, with associated websites, and county-wide radio station KMFM, which includes a local breakfast show across several different regions of the county.

At the moment, the News is owned by Northcliffe Media, itself a subsidiary of national media conglomerate the Daily Mail and General Trust, who also own the Daily Mail publisher Associated Newspapers.

However, staff at both the KM Group and Northcliffe Media’s county body Kent Regional News & Media (KRN&M) were informed on Monday of the plans, which would also see the East Kent Gazette, Herne Bay and Whitstable Times, Faversham Times, Canterbury Times, Isle of Thanet Gazette, Thanet Times, Folkestone Herald and Dover Express bought out.

It is presently unclear whether the KM Group would keep the titles as a going concern or integrate them with their current titles, or how they would affect KRN&M’s current staff.

At present, the KM Group publishes the Medway Messenger on a Monday and Friday, whilst KRN&M recently merged it’s Tuesday title the Medway Standard, it’s Friday title the Medway News and it’s free paper the Adscene into the Thursday weekly News, which is still delivered free in some areas of Medway.

The KM Group announced that it would submit its proposals to the competition watchdog the Office of Fair Trading this week, who will then begin an eight week investigation in to the bid.