Non-dailies in Ga., Wash., acquired.

A semi-weekly in Georgia and two weeklies in Washington state were last week's newspaper acquisitions, with long-term owners selling to more corporate cousins.

A division of Boone Newspapers Inc. of Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Natchez, Miss., purchased Georgia's Bainbridge Post-Searchlight, it was announced last week. No terms for the deal were revealed.

Boone's Bainbridge Media LLC bought the 101-year-old, 7300-circulation semi-weekly paper and its printing operation from Sam and Mary Ann Griffin, who have been involved in the paper since 1963. The Griffin family started the Bainbridge Post in 1907 and in 1915 bought The Searchlight and merged the two papers.

The newspaper brokerage Dirks, Van Essen & Murray of Santa Fe, N.M., represented the Griffin family.

Boone Newspapers publishes 29 daily and weekly newspapers in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota.

The Natt family, longtime Washington state newspaper executives, said on Saturday that the deal to sell their Enumclaw Courier-Herald and its sibling paper in Bonney Lake to Sound Pubishing Inc. of Poulsbo, Wash., had closed. No terms for the deal were revealed.

Sound is a division of Black Press, based in British Columbia; Black owns more than 150 papers in Canada's British Columbia and Alberta and in Washington, Hawaii and Ohio. The largest papers in the group are the daily papers, Ohio's Akron Beacon and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Each edition of The Courier-Herald reaches about 31,000 homes and is distributed free to readers from Black Diamond to Bonney Lake, communities about 40 miles southeast of Seattle.

The Courier-Heralds had been owned by John Natt, David Natt and the estate of the late Ted Natt -- the former editor and publisher of the Daily News of Longview, Wash., who died in a helicopter crash in 2000 -- as well as Courier-Herald Publisher Bill Marcum. Under the new ownership, Marcum will remain publisher.

In these perilous times, perhaps David Natt said it best. "The newspaper industry is ever-evolving, and putting The Courier-Herald papers in Sound Publishing's hands equates to a life insurance policy for the weekly editions."