Johnston Press

Johnston Press plc was a multimedia company founded in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1767. Its flagship titles included UK-national newspaper the i, The Scotsman, the Yorkshire Post, the Falkirk Herald, and Belfast's The News Letter. The company was operating around 200 newspapers and associated websites around the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man when it went into administration and was then purchased by JPIMedia in 2018.[2]

The Falkirk Herald was the company's first acquisition in 1846. Johnston Press's assets were transferred to JPIMedia in 2018, who continued to publish its titles.

Johnston Press announced it would place itself in administration on 16 November 2018 after it was unable to find a suitable buyer of the business to refinance £220m of debt.[3] It was delisted from the London Stock Exchange on 19 November 2018.[4] Johnston Press and its assets were brought under the control of JPIMedia on 17 November 2018 after a pre-packaged deal was agreed with creditors.

History

The Johnston family business was involved in printing from 1797, originally in Falkirk.[5] It bought control of its first newspaper, the Falkirk Herald, in 1846. The company would remain headquartered in Falkirk for the next 150 years. The family publishing company was renamed F Johnston & Co Ltd in 1882, a title it would retain until it was floated on the London Stock Exchange as Johnston Press (lse: JPR) in 1988.[6]

The company's first major acquisition came in 1970, when it took control of the Fife-based publishers Strachan & Livingston.[6] In 1978, it bought Wilfred Edmunds Ltd in Chesterfield, publisher of the Derbyshire Times and The Yorkshire Weekly Newspaper Group in Wakefield.[6] The company bought The West Sussex County Times in 1988, The Halifax Evening Courier in 1994 and the newspaper interests of EMAP plc in 1996.[6]

Operations

External links