Ownership of The Enumclaw Courier-Herald, which has served Plateau readers for more than 107 years, officially changed hands last week.

An agreement had been announced in late February in which The Courier-Herald, along with a 4-year-old sister publication that serves the Bonney Lake/Lake Tapps area, would be purchased by ever-growing Sound Publishing Inc. The deal was consummated June 3.

Sound Publishing, with headquarters in the Kitsap County community of Poulsbo, is a subsidiary of Black Press, based in British Columbia. The parent organization owns more than 150 newspapers in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, along with Washington, Hawaii and Ohio. The largest papers in the chain are the Akron (Ohio) Beacon and Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

Sound Publishing has newspapers situated throughout the Puget Sound region.

The Courier-Herald newspapers have been owned a group that includes the estate of Ted Natt; other owners are John Natt, David Natt and current publisher Bill Marcum.

Readers will not see any immediate changes. Marcum remains at the helm, the editorial staff is unchanged and the same sales representatives will be calling on clients.

“The Enumclaw and Bonney Lake area fit very nicely with what we're doing,” Manfred Tempelmayr, president of Sound Publishing, said when the sale was initially announced.

Each edition of The Courier-Herald newspapers reach approximately 32,000 readers, distributed free to readers from Black Diamond to Bonney Lake.

Sound Publishing has busily been making inroads throughout the Puget Sound region in recent years. Sound launched newspapers in Sumner, Covington/Maple Valley and Issaquah after purchasing a group of 10 publications from Horvitz Newspapers in November 2006; that large purchase included seven bi-monthly papers, two weekly papers and the daily King County Journal, which was halted. Sound did, however, expand its reach by expanding the smaller, community papers that came with the purchase.