NEWSPAPERS: LI publisher buying 3 local weeklies

The weekly newspaper wars are heating up.

Steven Blank of East Hills just inked a deal to buy three weekly papers from Litmor Publications of Hicksville and plans to buy four more of the company's papers next year.

Blank, who in 2006 sold the TimesLedger Newspapers to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., said his chief competitor is the 18-newspaper chain Anton Community Newspapers in Mineola. Anton officials did not return a call seeking comment.

Blank's company, Blank Slate Media, acquired the Great Neck News, the Williston Park Times and the New Hyde Park Herald Courier from Litmor. Terms of the deal were not announced.

"We're going to have a redesign," Blank said. "We're going to update the look rather dramatically."

He also said he will add sports, entertainment and business sections and increase coverage of local government and politics.

Meg and Ed Norris, Litmor's owners, will remain owners and operators of the Litmor flagship paper, The Garden City News. The Litmor papers were started by Meg Norris' father, Robert L. Morgan, in 1953.

"We think that he's going to really bring a lot of energy to the papers and he's going to make them better," Meg Norris said. "It's a little bit the end of an era. It's sad, but things have to move on," she said.