Outlet profile

Anson Record

U.S. local community, center

Owned byChampion Media, a family-owned company headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, owned by Scott Champion and his son Corey Champion

FundingLocal advertising revenue and print/digital subscriptions; standard community newspaper model with centralized back-office support from Champion Media

On the administrationmostly neutral

Background

The Anson Record traces its roots to 1881 through predecessor papers including the Messenger and Intelligencer and the Ansonian. The modern Anson Record began publication on January 20, 1955, and merged with those predecessor titles in 1979. It serves Wadesboro and Anson County with a Wednesday print edition, daily email updates, and an online presence reaching an estimated 10,500 readers. Heartland Publications, a regional community-newspaper chain, acquired the paper in September 2006. In 2012, private-equity firm Versa Capital Management merged Heartland with several other newspaper groups to form Civitas Media. Champion Media—founded in 2017 by Scott Champion and his son Corey Champion specifically to acquire and preserve small regional papers—purchased the Record from Civitas Media that year as part of a deal covering five dailies and 17 weeklies in the Carolinas and Virginia. Champion Media's model centralizes accounting and administrative functions while leaving editorial and advertising decisions to local staff. The paper's stated mission is to provide news 'reported faithfully and fully, with respect for all and favor to none,' reflecting a community-service orientation rather than an ideological one. In 2025 the paper ran at least one opinion piece critical of the Trump administration's removal of federal public-health data, but the outlet does not carry a consistent national political voice.

Sources

Profile compiled 2026-07-16; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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