Orleans Hub, Lake Country Pennysaver each have new owners

There are new owners of the Orleans Hub and Lake Country Pennysaver following the retirement of Karen Sawicz.

The Pennysaver has been in her family since 1960. Her parents, Vincent and Gwen St. John, were the owners until Sawicz took over in 1989. She has worked at the business for more than 60 years.

The Pennysaver will now be owned and run by Featured Media and Genesee Valley Publications, which owns about a dozen weekly pennysavers. The Lake Country Pennysaver will be delivered by mail beginning with this weekend’s edition.

Sawicz also has been owner and publisher of the Orleans Hub. The online news site is focused on Orleans County and started in April 2013.

“The community has been my life,” Sawicz said today. “That has been my focus.”

She has strived to serve the community through the businesses and her civic efforts. She is past president of the Albion Chamber of Commerce and was the first president of the merged Orleans County Chamber of Commerce. She also was a long-time member of the Albion Rotary Club.

Sawicz pushed to start the Orleans Hub to give the community “hyperlocal” news coverage that was focused on Orleans County. She resisted charging subscriptions or having paywalls to access the news.

“The Orleans Hub is something the community needed,” she said today.

The Orleans Hub is now owned by Brad London, who has been with the site selling advertising since it launched on April 1, 2013.

London began working for the Pennysaver in January 2010 after running Wiggly & Jiggly’s, an English pub in Albion. He also has owned Brad London Productions, a DJ business, for more than 30 years and runs the karaoke contest at the Orleans County 4-H Fair.

In recent years he has been the sales manager and general manager for the Pennysaver and Lake Country Media, which includes the Orleans Hub and a printing division based at the Pennysaver building, 170 North Main St. in Albion.

The Pennysaver site will continue to offer printing services for the community and serve as the office for the Orleans Hub.

“The Orleans Hub is a great product and it’s important to our community and I want to see it continue,” London said. “We have great relationships with our advertisers.”

Many of the advertisers have been with the Hub since it started. The news site last year topped more than 7 million pageviews.