How the Medford Transcript Went from Bad To Worse - and the importance of having two print newspapers in town https://medford.wickedlocal.com/
A Joe Viglione Essay
Full disclosure, I have written for the Transcript or its affiliated newspapers over the past 25 years, my most recent interview with Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson published just around the time of the USA Today/Gannett takeover.
A two-paper city is more effective for the citizenry. No matter what you think of the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald - both having massive faults to go along with the great reporting that they do, The Fourth Estate is an important, though problematic, microscope or crystal ball, take your pick. And now Medford has another paper to give a different array of city hall press releases (perhaps I should say, a more complete listing...) and a different point of view.
A two-paper city is more effective for the citizenry. No matter what you think of the Boston Globe and the Boston Herald - both having massive faults to go along with the great reporting that they do, The Fourth Estate is an important, though problematic, microscope or crystal ball, take your pick. And now Medford has another paper to give a different array of city hall press releases (perhaps I should say, a more complete listing...) and a different point of view.
The Medford Transcript has repeatedly pushed the candidate that Mayor McGlynn wanted to rule the corner office. Be it himself or Stephanie Muccini-Burke it was so obvious to me when I worked for Nell Escobar Coakley that she - allegedly - wasn't on the up and up.
The Medford Transcript goes for an outrageous $2.00 on the newsstand and online has annoying pop-ups for you to register and log in. I told one of my colleagues at the paper when I would write regularly that he had to go to his (or "our" since I was an independent contractor there) bosses and tell them to give him a blog outside of the paper's umbrella so that people could tune in easily, as they do with the Medford Patch --- which also has Tom Brady's calculated press release as the top story today. https://patch.com/massachusetts/medford
The Medford Transcript goes for an outrageous $2.00 on the newsstand and online has annoying pop-ups for you to register and log in. I told one of my colleagues at the paper when I would write regularly that he had to go to his (or "our" since I was an independent contractor there) bosses and tell them to give him a blog outside of the paper's umbrella so that people could tune in easily, as they do with the Medford Patch --- which also has Tom Brady's calculated press release as the top story today. https://patch.com/massachusetts/medford
One would think that our articles on Somerville Media being removed from 90 Union Square, the L'Italien Report, Pat Gordon's failure to perform at the "new" TV3 (#1 story today - posted around 3 weeks ago on Feb 26 with huge public interest)
A November 18, 2019 Claire Hendrickson article in Brookings notes the toxic formula such a huge takeover has on writers in the U.S. of A.: Both Gannett and GateHouse have a reputation for cutting staff across their newsrooms. In the past two years alone, the number of employees at Gannett has fallen by one-fifth. The merger will likely entail another round of layoffs for local newspapers across the country to achieve the aggressive cost savings put forward by the companies’ executives. No one knows for sure just how many employees will be laid off in the wake of the merger, but estimates put the number between 3,500 and 4,000. There are 37,900 newsroom employees employed by U.S. newspapers today. If the expected layoffs occur, that will mean a significant reduction of the nation’s total newspaper workforce.
