By my count, the Globe has mentioned Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui 15 times this year - but of those, only a handful are what I would consider local stories about Cambridge, as opposed to regional stories that mention Cambridge as one example among many. The Boston Globe pokes its head in every so often, but it’s the sort of local coverage you’d expect from a major regional daily hoping to expand its reach across New England - it’s sporadic and attuned to stories that will have a wider interest region-wide. To be fair, Cambridge isn’t exactly a news desert. (A drive from Lexington to Cambridge city hall is 25-30 minutes in ideal conditions, 45 or more in traffic.) Eventually, there was only one journalist left at the Chronicle, Saltzman. Then the office got moved to neighboring Somerville, then not-so-neighboring Lexington. By 2013, that was down to 1.5 reporter FTEs and 1 editor. Ten years ago - by which time there had already been plenty of cuts from the good ol’ days - the Chronicle had three full-time reporters and an editor, a Cambridge office, a full-time assistant, and “ plenty of freelance cash” for stories and photographers. Gannett now publishes something like a thousand daily and weekly newspapers nationwide, including 90 here in Massachusetts.Īll that conglomeration means a corporate quest for efficiencies, a.k.a.

Finally, in 2019, GateHouse bought (and assumed the corporate identity of) Gannett, creating by far the largest newspaper company in America. After that, Community was sold to the parent company of the Boston Herald, which then sold it to what became GateHouse Newspapers. A few years later, Bay State became part of the larger Community Newspaper Company. Fidelity then conglomerated it and some other local papers into something called the Bay State Newspaper Company. The Chronicle was owned by the local Dole family for more than half a century, until 1991, when it was sold to the financial firm Fidelity. And quite possibly not a single full-time reporter in any medium.

The Chronicle last tweeted 10 days ago.īut at least at the moment - and someone correct me if I’m wrong - I believe that leaves Cambridge without a single full-time newspaper reporter dedicated to covering it. (At this writing, its most recent “local” “Somerville Journal” story is “ Zodiac Killer(s): What do astrological signs and murderers have to do with each other?”) In its most recent circulation filing with the Alliance for Audited Media, the Cambridge Chronicle claimed a total of 365 paid subscribers the Somerville Journal has all of 400. Or maybe it’ll use the occasion to shrink further, perhaps smooshing it together with the Somerville Journal most of that paper’s recent stories are republished from other Gannett weeklies. It’s possible Gannett will hire a replacement for Saltzman. Chronicle offices moved to Somerville and then Lexington, by which time Saltzman was the paper’s only full-time employee. Saltzman had been at the Chronicle for nearly a decade - since November 2012 - as the paper went from one corporate owner to another, seeing its staff shrink from the levels it saw under Dole family ownership until 1990. The Cambridge Chronicle has been the city’s weekly newspaper since May 1846, and claims for itself the mantle of being the oldest surviving weekly newspaper in the United States. City councillors paid tribute Monday to Amy Saltzman, as of Friday the ex-editor of the Cambridge Chronicle, and expressed sorrow that corporate ownership of the paper had hollowed out its staff over the years.

Spellcaster university desert