Along with the North Carolina newspapers already in hand, 1982 also saw papers in North Dakota, in Arkansas and another in Virginia joining the Park Group. In 1984, two more newspapers came aboard, one in New York and another in Indiana. Several more came aboard in 1985: two in New York, four in Kentucky and another one in North Carolina.
In 1986, the group picked up three newspapers in Pennsylvania, two in Iowa, one in Minnesota, and three in Oklahoma. In 1987, six more in Kentucky came in plus two in Idaho. In 1988, six more North Carolina newspapers came aboard, along with another in Kentucky and Indiana. The following year two more North Carolina newspapers were acquired, and finally in 1991, the group acquired its last newspaper, in Minnesota. This capped off his fourth career in communications, that of media baron fulfilling the prophecy of his 1931 college yearbook.
A chronology of his newspaper acquisitions and dates is also found in Appendix B, Building a Media Empire. By 1991, he owned 144 newspapers of which 41 were daily, 38 nondaily, and 58 controlled-distribution weeklies. Another seven were monthly tabloid magazines. Just as his broadcasting properties catered to medium-sized markets, the vast majority of my father’s newspapers, as I said, had circulations under 20,000. But by 1991, his newspapers combined reached more than one million American homes. Adding his broadcast holdings, his media properties reached nearly a fourth of all American households in twenty-three states.