Enterprise-Sun
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Enterprise-Sun | |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
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| Owner | Community Newspaper Company |
| Publisher | Asa Cole |
| Editor | Jon Towne |
| Founded | 1889, as Daily Enterprise |
| Ceased publication | September 1995 (converted to weeklies) |
| Headquarters | 230 Maple Street, Marlborough, Massachusetts 01752 USA |
| Circulation | 6,000 in 1995[1] |
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| Website: | |
The Enterprise-Sun, and its predecessors, the Hudson Daily Sun, Marlboro Daily Enterprise and Marlboro Enterprise, were daily newspapers covering the city of Marlborough and adjoining town of Hudson, both in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
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The combined paper folded in 1995, replaced by two weekly newspapers -- the Marlborough Enterprise and Hudson Sun -- and the west edition of The MetroWest Daily News, all of which are owned by Community Newspaper Company, now part of GateHouse Media.
[edit] History
The Daily Enterprise began publishing in 1889, one year after beginning as a weekly. Across the town line, the Hudson Daily Sun was founded in 1902. The Marlborough paper went through minor name changes, adding and dropping the words "Marlboro" and "Daily" in its name, in its century of publication.
By the 1980s, the papers were part of Beacon Communications Corporation, a chain of more than 50 weekly newspapers in Middlesex County, a division of one of the chief regional competitors of the Enterprise and Sun, the family-owned Worcester Telegram of Worcester, Massachusetts. In 1986, control passed to out-of-state interests for the first time, as the Telegram was sold to Chronicle Publishing Company of San Francisco, California.
In 1993, Chronicle, looking to concentrate on Worcester County, dealt the Beacon papers -- including the Hudson and Marlborough dailies -- to Community Newspaper Company, which would soon become publisher of the dailies' most direct competitor, the Middlesex News (later to be renamed The MetroWest Daily News).[2]
[edit] Demise
Throughout the early 1990s, the Enterprise and Sun reinvented themselves in an effort to turn around declining revenues.
Up to the 1980s, both papers came out in the afternoon on weekdays; by then, they were also printing Saturday morning editions. Under the Telegram's ownership, Marlborough and Hudson converted to all-morning publication July 9, 1990, echoing the Telegram's closure of its Evening Gazette sister paper in 1986. At the time, the papers' editor said the move reflected changing reader demographics and would allow for better coverage of state and business news.[3]
Shortly after being acquired by CNC, the papers were merged into a single Enterprise-Sun in 1993.[1] Later that year, only three years after touting increased space for state news, the paper's new editor dropped the Associated Press wire and began touting "All Local News" as a way to differentiate the Enterprise-Sun from its competitors.[4]
Despite these efforts, CNC closed the Enterprise-Sun in September 1995, reassigning its staff to the Middlesex News. Today the daily newspapers' names survive on the nameplates of weeklies published from CNC's Marlborough office, but most Marlborough and Hudson crime and political news appears first in The MetroWest Daily News, which shares an office and some staff with the weeklies, and publishes a separate edition for the Marlborough area.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Klarfeld, Jon. "Media Watch: A Local Newspaper Has No Substitute". Boston Herald, September 8, 1995.
- ^ Donker, Peter P. "T&G Parent Sells Beacon Newspapers". Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Mass. May 28, 1993.
- ^ "Enterprise, Sun Going to A.M. Format". Telegram & Gazette, Worcester, Mass. June 12, 1990.
- ^ Barker, Kim. "No Outside Distractions". American Journalism Review, July 1993.
