Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | May 13, 2024 | Worcester Business Journal 7 Worcester-based media outlets The Telegram & Gazette remains Worcester's largest and oldest operating media organization, by far, but a number of smaller outlets have opened in the market in the last 10 years. Year founded/ Frequency & when Worcester Publication publishing platform coverage began Audience scope Notes Sources Worcester Telegram & Gazette Daily print & online 1866 Print: 15,900 total Sunday The Worcester Evening Gazette, Telegram & Gazette; subscriptions (~11,000 paid) founded in 1866, merged with the U.S. Postal Service and 11,600 total daily Worcester Telegram, founded in statements of subscriptions (~8,000 paid), as 1888, to become the T&G in 1989. ownership of October 2023; Digital-only Sunday circulation exceeded subscriptions are ~22,000. 116,500 as recently as 2004. Worcester Business Journal Bi-weekly print & online 1989 7,100 print subscribers, Founded in 1989, serves audience WBJ 31,776 social media followers, of business owners and senior 85,000 unique website visitors executives in companies throughout Worcester County and Metrowest MassLive Online only 1998/2013 6 million unique visitors monthly MassLive was launched online MassLive to statewide website in 1998 by the Springfield Republican, but began covering Worcester on a daily basis in 2013. Patch Worcester Online only 2016 105,758 visits in the last 30 days Viewership numbers (as of 2/1/2024) posted on top of website This Week In Worcester Online only 2017 10,300 Facebook followers Facebook Spectrum News 1 Television & online Spectrum moved Did not disclose, but said there Spectrum into Worcester in are more than 329,000 Spectrum 2017, taking over customers in Massachusetts; Charter TV3 Spectrum News 1 has ~29,000 followers on Facebook and X. Talk of the Commonwealth Radio/online 2017 294 followers on Soundcloud, Airs on WCRN, among Soundcloud, X 3,681 followers on X other platforms The 016 Online only 2018 ~25,000 emails subscribers; 21,070 registered users The016.com Worcester Sucks and I Love It Online only 2020 3,293 subscribers (671 paid) as of October 2023 Bill Shaner The Worcester Guardian Online only 2023 7,000 subscribers to email list The Guardian Manny Jae Media Online only 2023 1,600 Facebook followers Facebook *WGBH of Boston, which was founded in 1951, announced in 2020 it would begin coverage of Central Massachusetts and has a studio space in Worcester, although the news outlet covers the region infrequently. Looking at each story from Polar Park's groundbreaking in June 2019 to Sep- tember 2019, WBJ quantified how many sources were quoted, who those sources were, and where the news came from. A quarter of the T&G's stories during this time were based on press releases or events. at marks a de- crease in original reporting. In 2010, when covering the $565-million CitySquare devel- opment, the T&G did not use press releases to report any of the stories in the three months aer CitySquare's groundbreaking. Instead, reporters based their articles on city government meetings, construction updates, and exclusive news from sourc- es. ese primary sources avoid the vetted narrative of press releases, which can favor those who issue them. "You have a lot of transcription journalism," said Mark Henderson, former T&G reporter who runs news aggregator The 016.com. "They didn't realize that they were really doing transcription journalism; they were just trying to file their stories and go home." Even with its reduced staff, the T&G has pro- vided important accountability journalism. e paper has won awards for its lengthy battle to obtain police records from the City of Worcester and expose misconduct in the department. "For more than 150 years, the Telegram & Gazette has been the most trusted source for local news in Worcester," said T&G Executive Editor Michael McDermott. "We continue to emphasize accountability reporting." Still, the paper has to carefully pick its spots, as the capacity to do this kind of time-consuming reporting is con- strained by limited resources. Decades of downsizing Like many local papers, the T&G has struggled to maintain subscriptions, a primary source of media revenue. Paid print subscriptions for the Sun- day T&G had fallen in half before John Henry came onto the scene, from more than 116,500 in March 2004 to around 57,700 in March 2014, according to audited circulation reports shared with WBJ. As of October 2023, Sunday T&G paid print subscriptions were 11,000. e drop in circulation and advertis- ing dragged down the paper's value as it changed hands. In the mid-1980s, the T&G's local owners sold the paper to the San Francisco Chronicle, a then-family owned and operated publisher. Aer a little more than a decade, in 1999, the Chronicle sold the T&G for $300 million to e New York Times Co. is had fol- lowed e Times purchase of the Boston Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993. With the purchase by the New York Times Co., there was much initial enthu- siasm in the newsroom about the sale, according to a 2016 T&G article reflect- ing on that period at the paper. Indeed, a partnership between the Globe and T&G was blossoming, but those hopes fizzled in 2013, Nordman said. Henry bought the Globe and T&G for $70 million in 2013, approximately two cents to the dollar compared with the $1.4-billion combined price tag paid for the two dailies in the 1990s. It wasn't a problem unique to the T&G. In the same decade before Henry bought the T&G, circulation for daily newspapers across the country fell by about 26%, according to Pew Research Center. Since 2005, the country has lost 2,900 daily and weekly newspa- pers, putting the nation on track to lose a third of its papers by the end of 2024, a Northwestern University study from 2023 found. A number of outside forces factored into this decline. "Craigslist came along and started publishing classified ads mostly for free, thus taking 40% of newspaper revenues almost overnight. Google and Facebook took most of the rest," said Continued on next page Dave Nordman, former Telegram & Gazette executive editor Mark Henderson, owner of The 016.com Michael McDermott, Telegram & Gazette executive editor The new Worcester media: Part 1

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