Akron paper, Black had bid unsuccessfully on two Philadelphia dailies and a group of weeklies published by the Boston Herald. Black later sold the paper in 2018 to GateHouse Media and acquired the Juneau Empire and two other papers in Alaska from GateHouse. Black Press and Sound Publishing in 2009 had a collective annual revenue in the $500-million range, Black said interview. In 2011, Black was one of several newspaper industry veterans who joined together as investors in the San Francisco Newspaper Company to buy the former Hearst flagship The San Francisco Examiner. Media outlets initially reported the paper was purchased by Black's company Black Press, but Black only participated as a private investor and holds shares in the Examiner separately from Black Press. In 2013, Black purchased The Everett Herald, a daily newspaper near Seattle. It had previously been owned for 35 years by the Washington Post Company. In March 2021, Black purchased Northern News Services Limited of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, which publishes five newspapers in the Northwest Territories and two in Nunavut. Oil refinery On August 17, 2012, Black announced he is putting forth a proposal to build a $13.2 billion oil refinery in Kitimat with his company, Kitimat Clean Ltd. The refinery would turn bitumen from the Alberta oil sands into solid pellets for shipment by train to the refinery north. At full capacity, 400,000 barrels of petroleum products would produced a day and hen be loaded onto tankers for shipment to markets globally. In March 2013, Black said he had teamed with Oppenheimer Investments Group, a Switzerland-based firm, to raise the funds to proceed. At that time the original price tag of the refinery itself had risen to $16 billion due to switching to new technologies to reduce greenhouse gases. Other factors raised the total cost for the Kitimat Clean Refinery Project to $22 billion. In April 2013, Black said the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China had agreed to become an investor and financial advisor for the project. In 2016, Black submitted a 129 page project description to federal and provincial regulators for the environmental assessment process. On October 2, 2016, the federal environmental assessment of the project was suspended at the request of the proponent. Personal life Black resides in Victoria, British Columbia. In 1970, Black married Annabeth Cote. The two first met while they were students at the University of British Columbia. The