The Daily Item of Lynn has been sold to an investment group led by local businessman Ted Grant, a former editor at the newspaper, ending 137 years of ownership by the Hastings family.

Grant said he is likely to take over as publisher when the deal is finalized next month and warned that staff cuts will be necessary to stabilize the struggling business. He plans to meet individually with each of the paper's three to four dozen current staff members on Thursday.

"I'm going to be perfectly honest and tell them I don't know what the new staff will look like — but the staff will certainly be smaller," said Grant, a former news and sports editor who left the Item in 1992 to launch a marketing firm, Grant Communications Consulting Group. "I want each of them to have an opportunity to be part of the new staff. I owe that to them."