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Telegram & Gazette

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Telegram & Gazette
The September 11, 2008, front page
of the Telegram & Gazette
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Gannett
FoundedJanuary 1, 1866
Headquarters100 Front Street
Worcester, Massachusetts 01608, United States
Circulation25,073 (as of 2018)[1]
ISSN1050-4184
Websitewww.telegram.com

The Telegram & Gazette (and Sunday Telegram) is the only daily newspaper of Worcester, Massachusetts. The paper, headquartered at 100 Front Street and known locally as the Telegram or the T & G, offers coverage of all of Worcester County, as well as surrounding areas of the western suburbs of Boston, Western Massachusetts, and several towns in Windham County in northeastern Connecticut.

History

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On January 22, 1913, the Worcester Telegram ran a story ("Thorpe with Professional Baseball Team Says Clancy"), soon picked up by other papers, that led to Jim Thorpe being stripped of his 1912 Olympic titles, medals and awards.[2]

Until the 1980s, two papers—the Worcester Telegram in the morning and the Evening Gazette in the afternoon—were published by the same company, with separate editorial staffs in some departments. The two were merged into a single Telegram & Gazette upon their acquisition[disputed – discuss] by Chronicle Publishing Company, publishers of the San Francisco Chronicle, in 1986.[citation needed] The Chronicle sold the Telegram & Gazette to The New York Times Company in 1999 for $300 million.[3]

The paper's previous owners also owned Worcester radio station WTAG until selling it after the newspapers were divested, in 1987.

The Telegram & Gazette moved its headquarters from a building on Franklin Street to the Mercantile Center in 2012.[4]

In October 2013, the Telegram & Gazette was bought from The New York Times Company by John W. Henry's Boston Globe Media Partners as part of his purchase of The Boston Globe.[3][5] Only a month later, Henry announced his intention to sell the paper.[6][3] From 2009 until March 2014, retired editor Harry Whitin and Ralph Crowley of Polar Beverages explored purchasing the paper.[7][8] In May 2014, Boston Globe Media Partners sold the paper to Florida-based Halifax Media Group for $20 million,[9][3][10][11][12] who immediately laid off 20 of the Telegram & Gazette's 80 newsroom staff members.[3] Halifax sold it along with all of their publications to GateHouse Media in January 2015.[9][5][13][14][15][16] In 2018, owner GateHouse Media acquired Holden Landmark Corporation, owner of the alternative weekly Worcester Magazine.[17] Six positions at the Telegram & Gazette were cut in May 2019.[18][19] Six more employees were laid off in August 2019, including the Telegram & Gazette's last long-standing columnist, as part of nationwide custs to GateHouse papers.[18][19][20] In July 2019, Worcester Magazine began to be included as a weekly insert in the Telegram & Gazette to replace its arts and entertainment section.[18] In late 2019, GateHouse purchased Gannett and assumed its name.[4] In late 2020, Gannett laid off about 500 employees nationwide, including a several longtime Telegram & Gazette reporters as part of cost-cutting measures. Some of these were replaced by new hires.[4] Gannett has further gutted the Telegram & Gazette, as it customarily does to its holdings.[21][22]

The Telegram & Gazette has been referred to as the newspaper of record in Central Massachusetts.[20][21] It has also been described as a ghost newspaper, a publication that continues publishing but is a shell of its former self.[23]

The Telegram & Gazette published over 2,400 articles in September 2011, and 506 in September 2023.[3]

Circulation

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  • 1999: 107,400[24]
  • 2012: 74,563 (weekday)[citation needed]
  • 2013: 74,000 (weekday) and 78,000 (Sunday)[21]
  • 2018: 22,400 (weekday)[25]
  • 2023: 12,831 (8,698 print and 4,133 paid electronic, weekday), 16,457 (12,403 print, 4,054 paid electronic, Sunday)[21]

Quality

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A comparison of T & G reporting in 2019 vs. 2010 indicates a substantial increase in transcription journalism, while also affirming that the paper continues to practice accountability journalism. T & G based a quarter of its 2019 stories regarding a major construction project on press releases, in comparison to its coverage of a similar event in 2010 which did not use press releases for any articles.[3]

Sections and features

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Headquarters at 100 Front Street

The weekday Telegram & Gazette contains national, state and local news, as well as sports, business, and a feature stories. On Thursdays Worcester Magazine is inserted in the paper highlighting local artists and events in the area.

The paper's regular reporters also contribute regular or occasional columns with names such as "Barnestorming", "City Hall Notebook", "Politics and the City", etc. The local news section also includes local news stories and obituaries.

All editorials and letters to the editor appear in the regional opinion and op-ed pages of the main news section.

The Sunday Telegram includes the county's largest classified ad listings, Business Matters section, News, Local and Editorial pages, Living and Homes, and Cars sections, a tabloid-sized comic section and an in-house created Arts, Culture and Travel Section, which replaced similar sections that used to be reprinted in full from The Boston Globe.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corporation owns Coulter Press, which publishes several weekly newspapers in suburban towns northeast and east of Worcester. The Telegram staff also produces Worcester Living (formerly Worcester Quarterly), a local lifestyle magazine. Before their sale to Community Newspaper Company in 1993, the T&G also owned the Hudson Sun and Marlboro Enterprise daily newspapers and Beacon Communications Corporation weekly newspapers in western Middlesex County, Massachusetts.

References

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  1. ^ "2018 Legacy NEWM Annual Reports" (PDF). investors.gannett.com. 2018.
  2. ^ Golus, Carrie. Jim Thorpe. Twenty First Century Books, 2008: Minneapolis, p. 71.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g Hamilton, Katherine (May 13, 2024). "The new Worcester media, part 1: The downsizing of the Telegram". Worcester Business Journal. New England Business Media.
  4. ^ a b c Welker, Grant (December 2, 2020). "Telegram loses multiple longtime journalists as part of wide-scale Gannett buyouts". Worcester Business Journal. New England Business Media.
  5. ^ a b "Worcester Telegram & Gazette sold again". Worcester Magazine. Holden Landmark Corporation. November 20, 2014. ISSN 0191-4960.
  6. ^ Healy, Beth (November 26, 2013). "John Henry says he will sell Telegram & Gazette". The Boston Globe. Retrieved December 3, 2013.
  7. ^ Kennedy, Dan (March 7, 2014). "Local Buyers Exit Worcester Telegram Bidding". wgbh.org. WGBH Educational Foundation.
  8. ^ Chesto, Jon (May 22, 2014). "The Telegram & Gazette of Worcester is sold to a Florida firm and not a local buyer". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. ISSN 0746-4975. OCLC 423525229. Archived from the original on June 10, 2014.
  9. ^ a b Chesto, Jon (November 21, 2014). "Here's why GateHouse ended up buying the Telegram & Gazette after all". Boston Business Journal. American City Business Journals. ISSN 0746-4975. OCLC 423525229. Archived from the original on November 21, 2014.
  10. ^ McKenna, Brendan (November 21, 2014). "Worcester Telegram & Gazette changes hands again to fourth owner in a year". MassLive. Worcester, Massachusetts: Advance Local Media.
  11. ^ Healy, Beth (May 21, 2014). "Worcester Telegram & Gazette sold to Halifax Media Partners". Boston Globe. ISSN 0743-1791.
  12. ^ Sutner, Shaun (May 21, 2014). "Halifax Media of Florida to buy Telegram & Gazette". Telegram & Gazette. Retrieved June 13, 2014.
  13. ^ "T&G parent company sold to New Media". Telegram & Gazette. November 20, 2014.
  14. ^ Nicodemus, Aaron (January 9, 2015). "Sale of T&G to New Media is complete". Telegram & Gazette.
  15. ^ "New Media completes deal for Telegram & Gazette". Telegram & Gazette. January 9, 2015.
  16. ^ Yakin, Sara (November 20, 2014). "New Media Announces Agreement to Acquire Halifax Media Group for $280.0 Million" (PDF) (Press release). New Media Investment Group. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 7, 2016.
  17. ^ "GateHouse Media buys Holden Landmark Corporation". Worcester Magazine. Holden Landmark Corporation. February 22, 2018. ISSN 0191-4960.
  18. ^ a b c Welker, Grant (August 13, 2019). "Telegram lays off longtime columnist McFarlane, several others". Worcester Business Journal. New England Business Media.
  19. ^ a b Luttrell, Aviva (August 14, 2019). "'There is no more real newspaper in the city of Worcester,' Mayor Joseph Petty says after GateHouse cuts longtime Telegram & Gazette columnist Clive McFarlane amid series of layoffs". MassLive. Worcester, Massachusetts: Advance Local Media.
  20. ^ a b Faraone, Chris (November 1, 2019). "Without Local Papers, No News Is Bad News". Boston Magazine. Metrocorp Publishing. ISSN 0006-7989.
  21. ^ a b c d Kennedy, Dan (October 15, 2023). "Paid circulation of Worcester's daily newspaper has dropped by about 80% in 10 years". Media Nation.
  22. ^ McGrory, Brian (March 23, 2023). "Gannett's CEO is getting rich by gutting a newspaper near you". Boston Globe. ISSN 0743-1791.
  23. ^ Jonas, Michael (August 15, 2019). "'No more real newspaper' in Worcester". CommonWealth Beacon. Boston: Massachusetts Institute for a New Commonwealth.
  24. ^ "TIMES CO. PURCHASE OF PAPER RECEIVES NEWSROOM ACCOLADES Telegram & Gazette staff's relief may fade under new owner". The Free Library. Hoover's. October 25, 1999. Retrieved July 1, 2013.
  25. ^ "FAS-FAX Report: Circulation Averages for the Six Months Ended March 31, 2012". Arlington Heights, Ill.: Audit Bureau of Circulations. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  • Sit, Mary (February 10, 1989). "Publisher Resigns at Worcester Paper; 'Irreversible Difference' in Philosophy Cited". The Boston Globe. Economy section, p. 21.

Further reading

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