SEATTLE — Seattle Weekly has been sold to the community newspaper company that owns the Peninsula Daily News.
Sound Publishing Inc. announced Wednesday that it had bought the free-distribution weekly newspaper from Village Voice Media Holdings.
Seattle Weekly was founded in 1976 and focuses on the Seattle region’s politics, culture, arts, night life and dining.
Seattle Weekly says it has 409,000 monthly print readers and thousands of online users.
It is distributed throughout Seattle, the Eastside and South King County.
In addition to the PDN, Sound Publishing operates 36 weekly and monthly community newspapers and magazines around Washington and northern Oregon including the weekly Sequim Gazette and weekly Forks Forum on the North Olympic Peninsula.
Sound Publishing is Washington state’s largest community news organization and has executive offices in Bellevue and Poulsbo.
The purchase of Seattle Weekly came in tandem with a separate purchase from Village Voice Media of the SF Weekly by the San Francisco Examiner, a daily newspaper owned primarily by David Black, chairman of Black Press, and other Black Press executives.
Black Press, which is based in Victoria, is the parent company of Sound Publishing.
It operates more than 170 newspapers in North America, most of them weeklies, in addition to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and Akron (Ohio) Beacon Journal.
Sound Publishing and Black Press bought the PDN from Horvitz Newspapers, and the Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum from their owner, Sequim businessman Brown Maloney, in October 2011.
Village Voice Media still owns 11 other weekly newspapers throughout the country, including the Village Voice in New York.
It did not disclose the sale prices of the SF Weekly or Seattle Weekly.
