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New York Digital First Media, owner of dozens of media properties including The Detroit News and detroitnews.com, announced Friday that it will evaluate and consider strategic alternatives that could lead to the sale of some or all of the company.

Digital First CEO John Paton said the company has retained UBS Securities to review a full range of alternatives including selling the entire company, selling regional clusters or doing nothing.

We believe we have many options available to us to maximize the value of our businesses for our stockholders and the board of directors has therefore decided to assess the full range of these opportunities, Paton said.

In a statement the company said there are no assurances that the process will result in a transaction or transactions or on the timing of any decisions. The company also said that it will not disclose developments in the process until the board decides how it will proceed.

Digital First, based in New York, was formed in December 2013 with the merger of MediaNews Group and the former Journal Register Company. It is the nations second-largest newspaper company, based on circulation, operating in 15 states, with 800 multiplatform news and information products, including 76 daily and Sunday newspapers and 160 weeklies. The company said it serves 75 million customers monthly.

Its other Michigan properties include the Oakland Press, Royal Oak Daily Tribune, Macomb Daily, Mount Pleasant Morning Sun and the Southgate News-Herald.

The company is controlled by the hedge fund Alden Global Capital.

The Detroit News is published by the Detroit Media Partnership under a joint operating agreement with Gannett Co., which exercises majority control of DMP.

Digital First has been approached by various interested parties over the past months, said Paton, but there have been no formal or serious discussions.

While the company could be sold in whole, or in regional chunks or expanded or not sold at all, one of benefits of making these announcements is you end up testing the marketplace for all of those options, rather than doing it theoretically, he said.

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Digital First Media, owner of Detroit News, to consider sale of properties