DG opens in Pennville

Pennville residents have a new place to shop.

The Dollar General store just north of Pennville town limits at 116 E. Monroe St. is now open.

The new store is expected to have six to 10 employees.

The store is open daily from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Dollar General also has stores in Portland, Redkey, Fort Recovery, Geneva and Ridgeville.



Ardagh partnering

Ardagh Group, which operates glass container manufacturing plants in Dunkirk and Winchester, announced this week that it is partnering with Plata Wine Partners.

Through the partnership, Ardagh will manufacture all of Plata’s wine bottles. Plata is the largest independent coastal grape grower in California.

“Ardagh is proud to partner with Plata Wine Partners to provide consumers with high-quality, American made glass wine bottles while helping the winery meet their sustainability goals, which in turn helps reduce their carbon footprint to align with their vineyard operations,” said Ardagh North America’s chief commercial officer John T Shaddox in a press release.



Lehman joins board

Dr. Scott Lehman has been named to Adams Memorial Hospital’s board of trustees to fill the seat vacated by Dr. Robert Judge.

Lehman is an optometrist in Berne.



Herald sold

The Rumbach family has sold The Herald (Jasper) to Paxton Media Group.

The Rumbachs, who had owned the daily newspaper in southern Indiana for more than 100 years, recently announced the move that went into effect Aug. 1.

“Ultimately, The Herald no longer had enough subscribers or local advertising revenue to support the quality community newspaper and website that our readers were accustomed to — and producing a quality newspaper has always been our priority,” said publisher Justin Rumbach and co-presidents John and Dan Rumbach in a letter announcing the sale.

The Herald has since announced that it is cutting immediately a day of publication, reducing to five days.

Paxton, based in Paducah, Kentucky, publishes more than 70 newspapers, including a dozen dailies in Indiana.



Byju buys

Byju, which recently received funding from Portland native Mary meeker’s fund BOND Capital, announced the purchase of WhiteHat Jr., CNBC reported this week.

The educational technology firm’s purchase was reported at nearly $300 million.

Whitehat helps children ages 6 to 14 with coding to build commercial-ready games, animations and apps.

"With coding fast emerging as a key skill for the future, this integration will help Byju's further expand its offerings in India,” said Byju in a press release. “This acquisition will also accelerate Byju's US expansion plans.”

BOND Capital valued Byju at more than $10 billion.



Getting screened

Walmart is planning to turn 160 of its store parking lots into drive-in movie theatres this month in partnership with Tribeca Film Festival.

The effort will run from Aug. 14 through Oct. 21 with 320 showings of movies, including “Friday Night Lights,” “Blake Panther” and “Cars.”

Locations nearest to Jay County that are participating are in Muncie and Richmond, though all tickets for those are already sold out.



Cutting, merging

Four Indiana newspapers recently announced changes to their formats.

The Herald-Press (Huntington), Wabash Plain Dealer and Peru Tribune have all cut to two days of publication. Formerly daily newspapers, they will now be published on Wednesday and Saturday only. All three are owned by Paxton Media Group.

Meanwhile, The La Porte County Herald-Argus and The News-Dispatch (Michigan City) announced that they would be merging into a single paper — The La Porte County Herald-Dispatch. The change was effective this week, with the paper now delivered Tuesday through Saturday via the U.S. Postal Service.

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