KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A group that publishes the Emporia newspaper once edited by late journalism icon William Allen White has bought two family-owned newspapers and a weekly in Kansas.
John Montgomery says he plans to retire and has sold the Junction City Daily Union, Abilene Reflector-Chronicle and the weekly Wamego Smoke Signal to Chris Walker’s White Corp.
The deal took effect Tuesday. Though financial terms were not disclosed, Montgomery said he plans to keep a Daily Union office and remain in an advisory capacity.
Seventy-five-year-old Montgomery is a fourth-generation newspaperman in a family that has been in publishing for 134 years. He’s also a 2012 inductee into the Kansas Newspaper Hall of Fame.
Walker is the great-grandson of Pulitzer Prize-winning Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White, who bought the newspaper in 1895.
