Pennsylvania company buys the Citizen

Employees of the The Citizen of Laconia were informed on Tuesday that their newspaper had been sold to Eagle Publishing of Claremont. The paper has been owned by the George J. Foster Company of Dover since 1991.

Eagle Publishing is a part of the Sample News Group of Huntingdon, PA, which purchased the Claremont Eagle Times through federal bankruptcy court in September of last year. The Eagle-Times has ceased publication several months earlier.

Sample News Group is a family-owned business that owns more than 30 newspapers and magazines, including two daily newspapers in Maine, the Journal Tribune in Biddeford and the Times-Record in Brunswick. The company's CEO, George "Scoop" Sample III, also serves as publisher of the Huntingdon paper.

The Foster Company bought what was then called The Evening Citizen from Lawrence J. Smith and Alma Gallagher Smith, both now deceased. Alma Smith was the daughter of former Laconia mayor Edward J. Gallagher, who founded The Citizen in 1925.

The Citizen is published Monday through Saturday mornings and is supplemented by a Sunday paper that shares content and a circulation base with the Foster Company's Foster's Daily Democrat newspaper of Dover. There was no immediate word as to how the sale of The Citizen would affect the normal publishing schedule.

The sale of The Citizen does not in any way involve the newspaper's chief competitor, The Laconia Daily Sun, which is independently owned by a closely-held corporation headed by Laconia resident Ed Engler.