The Journal Register Co. yesterday announced that it is selling all nine of its Rhode Island newspapers for $7.6 million to R.I.S.N. Operations Inc., a Delaware corporation with ties to an Illinois-based newspaper group.

The sale includes four dailies and five weekly or twice-weekly newspapers. The dailies include: The Call, of Woonsocket; The Times, of Pawtucket; the Kent County Daily Times and the Warwick Daily Times. The weeklies, all members of the Southern Rhode Island Newspaper Group in Wakefield, include: the Chariho Times, the Coventry Courier, the East Greenwich Pendulum, the Narragansett Times and the Standard-Times in North Kingstown.

Pennsylvania-based Journal Register had little to say about the sale, which follows last month’s sale of its seven Southeastern Massachusetts newspapers.

“We thank all of our talented employees at our Rhode Island newspapers for their contributions over the years and wish them well,” said Robert M. Jelenic, the Journal Register’s chairman and chief executive officer, in a written statement.

While the company has been shopping its New England properties for months, its employees here were caught off guard by yesterday’s announcement.

“I haven’t heard anything,” said Larry O’Brien, president of the Woonsocket Newspaper Guild, which represents workers at The Call.

Michael Moses, publisher of The Call and The Times, and David R. Dear Jr., publisher of the Kent County Daily Times and the Warwick Daily Times, both referred questions to Jelenic, who did not return phone calls for comment.

Incorporation papers filed in Rhode Island on Monday list Melanie Radler, of Chicago, as president of R.I.S.N. and Roland McBride, of Marion, Ill., as the corporation’s vice president and treasurer.

McBride is chief financial officer of Horizon Publications Inc., a Marion, Ill.-based community newspaper group that owns newspapers in 16 states and in Canada. Reached by telephone yesterday, McBride acknowledged he has a part in R.I.S.N. but would not elaborate on whether Horizon is directly connected to the company or what its plans are for the Rhode Island properties.

He said he could not comment until after the sale closes, which he said he expects to happen by the end of business Wednesday.

“We haven’t got our ducks all in a row,” McBride said.

Radler is the daughter of F. David Radler, a close business associate of former media magnate Conrad Black, who once controlled the Hollinger International Inc. media chain. At one time, Horizon Publications was controlled by Black and Radler, who was Hollinger’s chief operating officer. It’s unclear if the two men are still connected to Horizon.

A message left at the phone number of the only Melanie Radler listed in Chicago was not returned before The Journal’s deadline. The address listed for Radler on the incorporation papers is on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University. She is a 1999 graduate of Northwestern’s law school. A university operator could not find a listing for her.

What R.I.S.N. intends for its properties here is as unclear as who controls the newly formed corporation.

UNDER PRESSURE to lower its debt, the Journal Register Co., of Yardley, Pa., put the newspapers up for sale in August, along with its Massachusetts newspapers.

At the time, Jelenic said the company was looking to divest itself of its “New England cluster” to focus on other regions and online operations.

Journal Register’s debt totaled $740 million as of last June. Together, the Massachusetts and Rhode Island newspapers it put up for sale last year generated about $8.9 million in operating cash flow on $39.9 million in revenues for the 12 months ending June 25, 2006. Jelenic told the Associated Press last year that the Rhode Island and Massachusetts newspapers had not been growing as quickly as others. “When we evaluated our portfolio of newspapers, this cluster exhibited slower growth characteristics over our other clusters,” he told the AP.

The company announced last month that it had sold its seven Southeastern Massachusetts newspapers to GateHouse Media, of Fairport, N.Y., for $70 million in cash. The deal included The Herald News, of Fall River, the Taunton Daily Gazette, as well as three weekly newspapers and two shopper publications.

That deal left the future of the nine Rhode Island publications hanging.

The newspapers generated interest from some Rhode Islanders looking to bring their control back to the state, several sources said, but those discussions did not produce a deal.

“I had expressed an interest, with a group, in the Kent County Daily Times,” said J. Michael Levesque, the former mayor of West Warwick.

Journal Register was not interested in breaking up the newspapers, Levesque said.

Daily circulation at The Call, The Times and the Kent County Daily Times has been falling for years, from a combined 32,244 at the end of 2001 to 22,235 at the end of September, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The Call has a Sunday circulation of 14,575, down from 19,620 in 2001.

No figures were available for the Warwick Daily Times.

The weeklies have fared better, with combined circulation holding fairly steady in the last two years at around 13,000. Combined circulation was 16,140 at the end of 2001.

Also unclear is whether the buildings that house the nine newspapers are included in yesterday’s transaction.

Shares in the Journal Register (JRC:NYSE) closed yesterday at $6.88, up 11 cents on the day.

With reports from staff writer Timothy C. Barmann

pgrimald@projo.com