Newsquest started life in 1995 when US private equity partnership Kohlberg Kravis Roberts funded a £210 million management buy-out

Newsquest started life in 1995 when US private equity partnership Kohlberg Kravis Roberts funded a £210 million management buy-out of the Reed Regional Newspapers group of British papers from Reed Elsevier.

In 1996 Newsquest swapped its Yorkshire titles for Johnston Press’s Bury, Lancashire area titles and £9.25 million, sold some of its titles in the English Midlands to Midland Independent Newspapers and bought the Westminster Press local newspapers group for £12.3 million from Penguin Books-to-Financial Times publisher Pearson, doubling in size. The next year, the company floated on the London Stock Exchange realising a market capitalisation of £500 million. In 1998, Newsquest added the Sussex-based Contact-a-Car, the London Property Weekly titles, two titles in the North West of England, and three Review Group titles in Hertfordshire.

In 1999, The US Gannett media group's newly-formed UK subsidiary paid £922 million (about US $1.5 billion) for Newsquest and took on the company’s debt.[2] In 2000, Gannett paid £525 million for Southampton-based News Communications and Media’s South Coast dailies and weeklies – and its Southernprint magazine printing division – to add to Newsquest’s portfolio. It also picked up the regional newspapers business – outside Manchester – of the Guardian Media Group, a takeover that the Competition Commission cleared as there was 'no overlap, in the companies' circulation areas.

In 2001, Newsquest bought Surrey and Sussex Publishing and Horley Publishing, publishers of Gatwick Life and Horley Life and the Dimbleby Newspaper Group’s nine Greater London weeklies, including the Richmond & Twickenham Times for a reported £8 million.

In 2003, Gannett UK paid £216 million for the Scottish Media Group’s three newspapers – Glasgow’s Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times– 11 specialist consumer and business-to-business magazines and an online advertising and content business. The competition Commission again inquired into this purchase but cleared it all the same.[5] In 2005, Newsquest’s Exchange Enterprises division paid £50.25 million for Exchange & Mart and Auto Exchange from United Advertising Publications after the small ads weeklies' publisher's US parent, United Business Media, decided to concentrate on its 'core activities'.[6] Newsquest also owns the formerly named Brentford Chiswick and Isleworth Times, which is now known as the Hounslow and Brentford Times.

Gannett had on 11 December 2006 said it had no plans to sell Newsquest, contradicting a story in the previous day's Sunday Express that claimed the media giant is carrying out a company review with the Credit Suisse investment bank, and could sell Newsquest for up to £1.5bn. Gannett had replied by saying: "There is no truth in the report. Newsquest is a valuable part of the Gannett company."

In early July 2007, Newsquest’s staff pension scheme was ‘£65 million in deficit’, a company memo to its employees had said, media analyst Roy Greenslade wrote in his 2 July 2007 blog at The Guardian’s website. Members of the company’s workforce, management could, the company had said, increase their contributions (from 6% to 10%) to keep the same final salary scheme; they could pay in less for an inferior version; they could opt for a ‘money purchase’ scheme; or ‘ditch’ their pension altogether.

The company’s US parent Gannett had on 18 June reported that revenues from its newspapers and broadcasting had fallen – but, the US press release said: ‘Newsquest experienced higher national advertising revenue’. It was “hardly a picture of a company suffering from poor health”, commented Greenslade.