OXFORD — The two weekly newspapers in Granville County — The Oxford Public Ledger and Butner-Creedmoor News — have become one as of Aug. 8. Now called The Ledger News, the new brand launches after Restoration NewsMedia’s recent acquisition of the Ledger.
Wilson-based RNM has owned the Butner-Creedmoor News since 2019, and also publishes The Wilson Times, The Wake Weekly, Johnstonian News of Smithfield and The Enterprise of Spring Hope.
The Butner-Creedmoor News was founded and edited by Howard Jones, owner of the Warren Record, in 1965, and edited by Harry Coleman from 1974 until his death in 2012.
The Ledger News will operate from a leased office in the Next Door Radio building at 109 Hillsboro St. in downtown Oxford.
According to a release by Restoration NewsMedia, Ledger co-publishers Ronnie and Charles Chritcher announced the sale with RNM President and CEO Keven Zepezauer. The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
“The Ledger News will continue the Oxford Public Ledger’s 144-year history of independent journalism in the public interest,” Zepezauer said in the release. “For 93 years, this community institution has operated under the Critcher family’s stewardship. We congratulate Ronnie and Charles on a well-deserved retirement and hope the paper will continue to make them proud.”
According to reporting by Donna Perkins in the Aug. 7 edition, T.H. Collins and Company bought the News of Oxford in 1881 and changed the named to The Oxford Public Ledger.
John Britt, who was part of the 1881 acquisition, sold the paper to Dan Coble in 1915. Atlas Critcher, who worked for the Ledger in 1918 and went on to publish a newspaper in North Wilkesboro for several years, bought the business from Coble in 1932.
By the early 1950s, Atlas and Magdalene Critcher’s son Royster Critcher acquired an interest in the Ledger, local historian Lewis Bowling wrote in a column chronicling the newspaper’s history published earlier this year.
“Today, Ronnie and Charles Critcher continue the legacy of their parents, Royster and Margaret, and their grandparents, Atlas and Magdalene, as co-publishers of the Oxford Ledger. By my count, the Critcher family has published the Oxford Ledger for 93 years now,” Bowling wrote.
“Oxford and Granville County owe a lot to this family who has done so much, more than any other single source, to provide citizens with news,” the column continues. “Sometimes the news is bad — a murder, a robbery. Sometimes it is joyful — a wedding, a birth. But it’s there each week, one of the absolute best deals in the county...”
Oxford Public Ledger and Butner-Creedmoor News subscribers will receive The Ledger News by mail delivery starting on Thursdays, with each weekly edition printed under a Friday publication date.