COVINGTON, Ga. - For the first time in more than three decades, The Covington News has a new owner.

Morris Multimedia Inc. today announced the sale of The Covington News and its related products to Patrick Graham, the owner and publisher of The Walton Tribune, a twice-weekly newspaper in nearby Monroe, Georgia.

Morris Multimedia Inc. of Savannah, which continues to own a myriad of print and broadcast properties all across the United States, had owned The Covington News since 1986. Graham, a veteran of the newspaper industry in Georgia for nearly a decade, has been the owner of The Tribune since 2014.

“Newton County is a tremendous community with a rich history and an even brighter future,” Graham said. “I can’t tell you how excited I am to have the opportunity to build on the solid foundation of service and leadership the Morris family and its company have provided here in Covington for so many years.”

Charles Hill Morris, Jr., of Morris Multimedia, said, “I have known Patrick Graham for the last 10 years, since I was a publisher at The News.  I have a lot of respect for him and came to know him as an outstanding person and community leader.  We could not think of a better leader to continue the tradition of family ownership of the newspaper other than the Graham family.”

Graham said The News has a long history of providing award-winning coverage for its readers and advertisers, and he looks forward to taking an already great product to the next level.

“Simply put, I want to put out the very best newspaper of its size in the state of Georgia,” Graham said. “We have a community that deserves that kind of quality coverage, and we have the kind of staff that can deliver that kind of quality coverage.”

Graham said community newspapers like The News are succeeding while others in the industry are struggling because community newspapers continue to focus on local coverage, and he plans to increase that local emphasis even more moving forward.

“Community newspapers have been able to stay relevant in the lives of readers by providing information about the community that readers can’t get anywhere else,” Graham said. “That is why the platform readers are consuming the information in — whether it is print, online or mobile — isn’t as important as the type of information they are consuming, and time and again readers are telling us they want local, local, local, and that is exactly what we intend to give them.”