The News Corporation, owner of The New York Post, bought two weekly newspapers in the Bronx yesterday, giving it a chain of neighborhood papers throughout three New York City boroughs that it hopes will complement The Post.

News Corporation did not disclose the price it paid to the owners, David Kiesman and John Collazzi, for The Bronx Times and The Bronx Times Reporter.

Although News Corporation has been in the limelight in recent weeks for its bid to acquire Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, the company also owns a number of small local papers. Yesterday, News Corporation said it would expand the reach of the Brooklyn and Queens newspaper chains it bought last September into more neighborhoods.

Including the two Bronx papers, the company’s weekly newspapers in New York have a combined circulation  some paid, but mostly free  of nearly 300,000.