 Late in the 1970s the "Democrat-Herald" moved from individual to corporate ownership, when media giant Capital Cities purchased the paper from Grant Jackson's heirs.So-called CapCities would purchase the American Broadcast Company (ABC) in 1985, only to themselves be acquired in 1996 by the Walt Disney Company.Disney immediately began to divest itself of the newspapers acquired in the merger, with the "Democrat-Herald" sold to Lee Enterprises of Davenport, Iowa in 1998 — a media company which already owned the "Corvallis Gazette-Times," located approximately 10 miles away.