| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Gannett |
| Publisher | Lisa Strattan |
| Editor | Anne Brennan |
| Founded | 1897 (1897), asFramingham Evening News |
| Headquarters | 1 Speen St., Framingham,Massachusetts 01701,United States |
| Circulation | 6,769 (as of 2018)[1] |
| OCLC number | 40356496 |
| Website | metrowestdailynews.com |
The MetroWest Daily News is an Americandaily newspaper published inFramingham, Massachusetts, serving theMetroWest region ofsuburbanBoston. The newspaper is owned byGannett.
The newspaper covers several cities and towns inNorfolk,Middlesex andWorcester counties. Until 1998 it was named forMiddlesex County (most recently as theMiddlesex News) or for the then-town of Framingham (through most of the mid-20th century, as theFramingham News).
Originally a locally owned evening newspaper, theNews was purchased by theHarte-Hanks newspaper chain as its first foray into Massachusetts journalism, in 1972.[2]
By 1986, the paper sold 49,000 copies daily and 55,000 on Sunday,[3] and also published four Framingham-areaweekly newspapers: theTown Crier papers inSudbury,Wayland andWeston, and theTownsman inWellesley. That year, Harte-Hanks added theDaily Transcript ofDedham and theNews-Tribune ofWaltham, and 17 weeklies, to its holdings, and merged its Massachusetts properties into a single organization that became known asNews-Transcript Group.[3]
Around that time, amid a review of the four local newspaper companies competing in the Framingham area,The Boston Globe gave the paper credit for wide-ranging coverage of foreign, national, local, sports, arts and lifestyle news, butTab Communications publisher Russell Pergament said his daily competition left a niche for his community papers:[4]
There's an undercurrent of resentment toward theMiddlesex News. People are not getting enough local news. Well, we're going to give them local news like they've never had it before -- we're going to out-News theNews.
TheNews' weekly competitors were mostly bought out byFidelity Investments in the early 1990s, and became sister papers in 1994, when Harte-Hanks decided to sell its newspapers and Fidelity'sCommunity Newspaper Company announced it would buy the News-Transcript Group. Before purchasing News-Transcript, CNC's only daily was theNews rivalEnterprise-Sun ofMarlborough. TheNews' daily circulation at the time was given as 35,516, and 45,174 on Sunday.[5]
In 2000, after adding more weeklies to its fold, Fidelity sold CNC to the publisher of theBoston Herald.[6] The new owner instituted a content-sharing arrangement between CNC and theHerald, resulting in a regular stream ofDaily News stories appearing in the Boston newspaper.
That arrangement continued for a short while after theHerald sold CNC to Liberty Group Publishing (later renamedGateHouse Media) in 2006.[7]
The current name is the sixth for theDaily News. Known at the start of 20th century as theFramingham Evening News, it became simply theFramingham News in 1926 and carried that moniker until 1971, when theSouth Middlesex Daily News was adopted. Six years later, that name was shortened toSouth Middlesex News, then in 1979 toMiddlesex News, which remained its name until 1998.[8]
The regional termMetroWest was promoted to the nameplate October 19, 1998, as a response to the dissolution ofcounty government in Middlesex County, and a recognition of the newspaper's reach into Norfolk and Worcester counties.[8] The name had been coined and adopted by the newspaper in the 1980s as a means of giving its circulation area more of a shared identity than earlier alternatives -- "Greater Framingham" (which many towns in the paper's northern coverage area, western Middlesex County, did not feel they belonged to) and "South Middlesex" (which excluded towns in other counties). Reporter Greg Supernovich suggested the name—for which he received dinner for two.[9]
As befits a newspaper coveringMassachusetts' high-tech corridor—an earlier alternative to "MetroWest" was "Databelt"[9]—theDaily News was among the pioneers in electronic publishing.
Along with ten other members of theAssociated Press, theMiddlesex News in 1980 offered a digital text edition toCompuServe. The bulletin board service's subscribers could then, viadial-up, accessNews stories on their personal computers.[10]
In 1987, the paper debuted its ownBBS, called Fred the Computer. Subscribers could dial into Fred and see the next day's headlines, submit press releases and write letters to the editor. In 1993, theNews set up aGopher site, making it the first general-circulation United States newspaper on the Internet.
Theonline edition ofThe MetroWest Daily News was launched in September 2001. It shares templates and systems with other GateHouse New England properties' websites, at Wicked Local.[citation needed]