| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Community Newspaper Company |
| Publisher | Asa Cole |
| Editor | Jon Towne |
| Founded | September 4, 1889 (1889-09-04), asDaily Enterprise |
| Ceased publication | September 14, 1995 (1995-09-14) (converted to weeklies) |
| Headquarters | 230 Maple Street, Marlborough,Massachusetts 01752,United States |
| Circulation | 6,000 in 1995[1] |
| OCLC number | 34945395 |
TheEnterprise-Sun, and its predecessors, theHudson Daily Sun andMarlboro Enterprise, weredaily newspapers covering the city ofMarlborough and adjoining town ofHudson, both inMiddlesex County, Massachusetts.
The combined paper ended in 1995, replaced by twoweekly newspapers—theMarlborough Enterprise andHudson Sun—and the west edition ofThe MetroWest Daily News, all of which are owned byCommunity Newspaper Company, now part ofGateHouse Media.
Thomas Hayden began publishing theDaily Enterprise in 1889, one year after beginning it as a weekly. Across the town line, theHudson Daily Sun was founded by William H. Murphy 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.[2]
Enterprise owners Dustin Lucier and Charles H. Toby bought theDaily Sun in 1922, but the combined Marlborough newsroom continued to publish two separate newspapers until 1993. Grace Mada Lucier, Dustin's widow, sold the paper to the rivalWorcester Telegram in 1969.[2]
In 1984, the papers were transferred toBeacon Communications Corporation, a chain of a dozenweekly newspapers in western Middlesex County, which was purchased that year by the family-ownedTelegram. In 1986, control passed to out-of-state interests for the first time, as theTelegram was sold toChronicle Publishing Company ofSan Francisco, California.[3]
In 1993, Chronicle, looking to concentrate onWorcester County, dealt the Beacon papers toCommunity Newspaper Company, which would soon become publisher of the dailies' most direct competitor, theMiddlesex News (later to be renamedThe MetroWest Daily News).[4]
Throughout the early 1990s, theEnterprise andSun 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 theTelegram's ownership, Marlborough and Hudson converted to all-morning publication July 9, 1990, echoing theTelegram's closure of itsEvening 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.[5]
Shortly after being acquired by CNC, the papers were merged into a singleEnterprise-Sun in 1993.[1] Later that year, only three years after touting increased space for state news, the paper's new editor dropped theAssociated Press wire and began touting "All Local News" as a way to differentiate theEnterprise-Sun from its competitors.[6]
Despite these efforts, CNC closed theEnterprise-Sun in September 1995, reassigning its staff to theMiddlesex News and the new weeklies. 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 inThe MetroWest Daily News, which shares an office and some staff with the weeklies, and publishes a separate edition for the Marlborough area.