Media General Sells Its Media General Financial Services Subsidiary.

Entertainment Editors/Business Editors

RICHMOND, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2003

Media General, Inc. (NYSE: MEG) today announced it has sold its wholly-owned subsidiary, Media General Financial Services, Inc. ("MGFS"), a leading provider of financial information on public companies, to CenterPoint Data, Inc. Terms were not disclosed.

CenterPoint Data is a new company formed by an experienced team of financial information industry professionals and VS&A Communications Partners III, L.P., a private equity fund affiliated with the media merchant bank Veronis Suhler Stevenson LLC ("VSS").

"Media General Financial Services and Media General have enjoyed a long and mutually rewarding relationship," said J. Stewart Bryan III, chairman and chief executive of Media General. "The financial services group initially published its proprietary data in a newspaper and later focused on providing its data to online publishers. As our company has grown, Media General Financial Services has become less central to our long-term strategy to provide high-quality news, information and entertainment over multiple media platforms to meet local community needs. Accordingly, we believe that MGFS can position itself more competitively for future growth through ownership by a firm that is committed to the diversified financial information services business," Bryan said.

Renny Ponvert, chief executive officer of CenterPoint Data, said, "Media General Financial Services has built a premium data service. We are pleased to own one of the most well-respected providers of financial data. It is our intention to devote capital and resources to grow the MGFS business, and we are enthusiastic about the opportunity to build upon its position as one of the pioneers of the financial information industry. Over the past several years, MGFS has expanded the breadth of its U.S. coverage and has developed fundamental databases covering U.K., Canadian and Latin American companies. We plan to continue to expand this international coverage and remain committed to flexible licensing terms for our distribution partners," said Ponvert.

"CenterPoint's acquisition of MGFS is the first step in creating a significant independent provider of global financial data," said Scott J. Troeller, general partner of Veronis Suhler Stevenson. "MGFS represents a highly attractive platform from which to grow both organically and through selective acquisitions in a sector populated by numerous independent data providers that, if combined, could benefit greatly from cross-selling opportunities and cost synergies. In order to execute this strategy, we have aligned ourselves with a highly experienced management team."

The members of the management team have extensive experience in operations, sales and marketing, product management, technology and strategic planning at many of the leading companies in the financial information industry, including MGFS, FactSet, Worldscope, Disclosure, Thomson Financial, and NASDAQ.

Media General was assisted in this transaction by the Richmond investment banking firm Ewing Bemiss & Co.

About Media General

Media General is an independent communications company situated primarily in the Southeast with interests in newspapers, television stations and interactive media. The company's publishing assets include The Tampa Tribune, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Winston-Salem Journal and 22 other daily newspapers in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina, as well as nearly 100 other periodicals and a 20 percent interest in The Denver Post. Media General's 26 network-affiliated television stations reach more than 30 percent of the television households in the Southeast and nearly 8 percent of those in the United States. The company's extensive interactive media offerings include more than 50 online enterprises. Media General also has a 33 percent interest in SP Newsprint Co., which operates newsprint mills in Dublin, Ga., and Newberg, Ore.

About Media General Financial Services, Inc.

Media General Financial Services, Inc. builds and maintains databases of fundamental and technical information on over 12,000 U.S. and Canadian publicly-traded companies and 200 industry groups and major markets. Its databases contain annual and quarterly financial information, split-adjusted price and volume data, earnings estimates, institutional and insider statistics, and hundreds of financial and performance ratios. MGFS data are available through its proprietary products and through strategic affiliations with nationally known online information systems and Internet sites that reach institutional investors, major corporations, academics, and sophisticated individual investors. For more information visit its web site http://www.mgfs.com.

About Veronis Suhler Stevenson LLC

Veronis Suhler Stevenson is a leading independent merchant bank dedicated to the media, communications and information industries. VSS has completed over 600 transactions since its inception in 1981, including numerous transactions in the Business Information Services sector. VS&A Communications Partners III, L.P. is the third private equity fund managed by Veronis Suhler Stevenson. Capitalized at $1 billion, it is one of the largest private equity funds dedicated exclusively to investments in the media, communications and information industries. Together with Fund III's predecessor funds, VS&A Communications Partners has invested in over 30 platform companies across numerous media segments; the realized and unrealized enterprise value of these investments total approximately $6 billion.