An auction to sell West Virginia’s largest newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail, is scheduled for today, the Associated Press reported. The Gazette-Mail reports bankruptcy court filings show a second company, HD Media of Huntington, W. Va., has placed a bid. A subsidiary of Wheeling, W. Va.-based Ogden Newspapers was the highest bidder Jan. 30, when Charleston Newspapers, owner of the Gazette-Mail, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and issued a 60-day layoff notice to employees. The amount of HD Media’s bid wasn’t disclosed. But to push the sale to an auction, HD Media had to bid $500,000 more than Ogden’s $10.911 million by a March 6 deadline under the bankruptcy court’s order.
