Lee Enterprises - which in January agreed to buy Warren Buffett's BH Media Group's publications and the Buffalo News for $140 million - is to sell two daily and eight weekly newspapers.

Buying the Santa Maria Times and Hanford Sentinel and their companion weeklies in California is Santa Maria News Media, a new company led by a group of Canadian newspaper executives with newspaper assets throughout Canada and the US.

Their California newspapers include the Bakersfield Californian, Sonora Union Democrat, Porterville Recorder, Marysville Appeal-Democrat, Imperial Valley Press, Lodi News-Sentinel and the Antelope Valley Press.

The two dailies add a combined average circulation of 7200, while their websites reach more than 500,000 unique visitors each month.

Lee Enterprises bought the properties in 2005 as part of its Pulitzer acquisition.

Also this month, Paxton Media Group has acquired the 182-year-old Madison Courier in Madison, Indiana, which had been owned by the Garber family for six generations.

Media M&A company Dirks, Van Essen, Murray & April represented the sellers in both transactions.

Paxton Media, headquartered in Paducah, Kentucky, is managed by fourth and fifth-generation Paxton family members, and owns more than 70 newspapers across the Midwest and Southeast including 12 other dailies in Indiana.

Publisher Curt Jacobs told readers "we believe, now more than ever, in the work that newspapers do.

"A community without a newspaper is greatly diminished. The resource advantages a larger organization brings to the table makes continuation of the Courier more secure."

The Garber family's history with the Courier traced back to 1849 when Michael Christian Garber gave up his drygoods store in Rising Sun, Indiana, to become a small-town publisher in Madison.