Worcester Business Journal

8 Worcester Business Journal | May 13, 2024 | wbjournal.com Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University in Boston. "e rise of hedge-fund and private-equity ownership squeezed the remaining life out of newspapers, taking the remaining revenues and using them to enrich their owners and pay down debt." e result is fewer journalists, which has hit smaller, non-metropolitan com- munities the hardest. Prior to Henry's sale, the T&G included local sections focused on six Central Massachusetts regions outside Worcester. "e Telegram & Gazette is a news- paper, but if you look back 10 or 15 years ago, it was seven newspa- pers," Nordman said. ose locally zoned sections were eliminated over the years starting around 2010, and Worces- ter Magazine – a weekly alternative media publication – was pulled under the same umbrella as the T&G in 2020, resulting in a cut of its five editorial staff members down to one. Gannett owned a number of other local papers not directly affiliated with the T&G, including the Millbury-Sutton Chronicle, Graon News, e Clinton Item and e Landmark, which covers the Wachusett area north of Worcester. Aer Gannett announced it would lay off the editors of those four publications, CherryRoad Media, a New Jersey-based company founded in 2020, bought them and they have continued to run, in many cases with a single editorial staffer. "Worcester has a ghost paper, and it happens to be owned by Gannett," said Walter Robinson, an editor-at-large at the Boston Globe. "Gannett's not into journalism at all anymore. ey're into making as much profit as they can for as long as they can before they get out." Filling the gap Smaller media organizations emerged since Henry's sale to try to make up for reporters bleeding out of the T&G. "I do feel that there is still news cov- erage, just in different forms," said Andy Lacombe, news director of Spectrum News 1, which provides broadcast jour- nalism in Worcester. In Central Mass., those new outlets included statewide organizations that began focusing on the region, like the Springfield-based MassLive and Boston-based WGBH, which started designating reporters to the Worcester area in 2013 and 2020. Online-only startups like is Week In Worces- ter launched in 2017, and local cable provided Spectrum, which expanded its Spectrum News 1, partnered with the national Spectrum brand to provide 24/7 coverage starting in 2017. "e quality of journalism in the city of Worcester right now is better on a day-in and day-out basis than it has been for 20 years," said Henderson. "at gets lost in the fact that it's not just happening because of one entity." Others are more pointed in their criticism. "Since the Telegram has been in decline … there is a space here, and that's what MassLive advertised itself as filling back when it launched," said Bill Shaner, au- thor of the Substack newsletter Worcester Sucks and I Love It. "But they're not acting like the Fourth Estate. ey're just doing essentially PR work for the city." Even with its reduced staff of 20 edito- rial employees, the T&G remains the larg- est newsroom in Central Massachusetts by a good margin. Spectrum News 1 has seven staffers who focus primarily on the greater Worcester area, per its website. "Journalism has to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. You can't do that with one or two reporters," Robinson said. MassLive, the digital statewide arm of the Springfield Republican, based 35% of its cover- age of Polar Park on press releases or events in the first three months aer the stadium's groundbreak- ing, and 42% of Spectrum News 1's coverage was based on these. Both are more likely to rely on press releases than the T&G, which used original reporting for 25% of its Polar Park stories in this time period. Noah Bombard, the former editor for MassLive Worcester, said he took accountability journalism very seriously during his tenure, which included the aforementioned Polar Park coverage. He now heads communications for the Mas- sachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities under former Worcester City Manager Ed Augustus. Compared with the T&G and MassLive, Spectrum had the most variety of voices in its coverage. More than 40% of its quoted sources for Polar Park were people outside the city government and development team behind the project. About a third of the T&G's quoted sourc- es were non-government, non-develop- ment folks. Less than 20% of MassLive's sources came from outside that circle. "You aren't getting any stories about issues that the people we cover don't want us to know," said Robinson. "Watchdog journalism does not exist in most cities in Mass. and that would include Worcester." Continued from previous page Andy Lacombe, news director of Spectrum News 1 W Walter Robinson, editor-at-large for the Boston Globe The new Worcester media: Part 1 E X P E R T I S E M A K E S A L L T H E D I F F E R E N C E When you arrive at a certain size, your banking needs become more complex. With Country Bank's commercial banking team, you get customized problem-solving, higher lending limits, industry expertise, and highly responsive service.

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