FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP - The News Transcript, and other Monmouth and Ocean county weeklies owned by Newspaper Media Group, have published for the last time.

The Pennsauken-based publisher has shuttered its group of community newspapers it acquired from Greater Media Inc. in 2016.

Its Monmouth and Ocean county newspapers were: the News Transcript, which traces its roots in Freehold to about 1888, the Middletown Sun, the Tinton Falls-Eatontown Sun and the Jackson Sun, according to Mark Rosman, the newspapers' former managing editor.

With the exception of the News Transcript, Newspaper Media Group recently changed the names of some of the newspapers. Previously, they were the Atlantic Hub, Independent, Examiner and Tri-Town News. Several of its Middlesex County newspapers, including the East Brunswick Sun, formerly the Sentinel; the Old Bridge Sun, previously named the Suburban; and the Edison Sun, formerly Edison/Metuchen Sentinel also closed.

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"Suffice to say I am sad to see the News Transcript's historic run of more than 130 years end, but I wanted no one else other than myself to be the person at the helm who put the final issue to bed," Rosman wrote in a recent Facebook post. Rosman began working for the paper in July 1982.

The News Sentinel has a storied history in Monmouth County. The Freehold Transcript, which traces its history back to the 1880s, became the News Transcript in the early 1980s with its merger of the Colonial News, coming under Greater Media's ownership.

Executives from Newspaper Media Group, which owns other weeklies in New Jersey that continue to publish, including the Packet newspapers in Mercer County, could not be reached for comment.

David P. Willis: dwillis@gannettnj.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: News Transcript, other Monmouth, Ocean weekly newspapers shut down