Bay State Newspaper Company, based in

Somerville, Massachusetts Somerville ( ) is a city located directly to the northwest of Boston, and north of Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 United States Census, the city had a total population of 81, ...

, United States, was a publisher of

weekly newspaper A weekly newspaper is a general-news or Current affairs (news format), current affairs publication that is issued once or twice a week in a wide variety broadsheet, magazine, and electronic publishing, digital formats. Similarly, a biweekly new ...

s in

suburb A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

s north of

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

. It was formed in 1991 by

Fidelity Investments Fidelity Investments, commonly referred to as Fidelity, earlier as Fidelity Management & Research or FMR, is an American multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company was established in 1946 and is on ...

after it bought Dole Publishing from its longtime owner, William P. Dole. Bay State Newspaper was folded into the Metro Unit of Fidelity's

Community Newspaper Company Community Newspaper Company, or CNC, was the largest publisher of weekly newspapers in eastern Massachusetts in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. It also published several daily newspapers in Greater Boston. The company's propertie ...

in 1996. CNC is now owned by GateHouse Media. Bay State's properties were assembled by the Dole family, which ran the ''Cambridge Chronicle'' from the 1930s to early 1990s. The ''Chronicle'',

newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major national newspaper with large circulation whose editorial and news-gathering functions are considered authoritative and independent; they are thus "newspapers of record by reputation" and include some of the o ...

for the city of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, has published since 1846 and, under the Doles, was combined with the rival ''Cambridge Sun''. The Doles also acquired the main weeklies in two other

an cities north of

, as well as printing other publications (such as

shoppers Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. (named Pharmaprix in Quebec) is a Canadian retail pharmacy chain based in Toronto, Ontario. It has more than 1,300 stores in nine provinces and two territories. The company was founded by pharmacist Murray Koffler in 196 ...

)."Dole Publishing Is Sold". ''The Boston Globe'', April 19, 1991.

Properties

At the time of its sale to Fidelity in 1991, Dole Publishing (renamed Bay State Newspaper Co.) consisted of three weeklies, all in

Middlesex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County is located in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 1,632,002, making it the most populous county in both Massachusetts and New England and ...

and also the Merrimack Valley Advertiser which published in Tewksbury, Wilmington, Billerica, Chelmsford, and part of Westford.: * ''Cambridge Chronicle'' of

(founded 1846) * ''Somerville Journal'' of

Somerville Somerville may refer to: *Somerville College, Oxford, a constituent college of the University of Oxford Places *Somerville, Victoria, Australia * Somerville, Western Australia, a suburb of Kalgoorlie, Australia * Somerville, New Zealand, a subur ...

* ''Watertown Press'' of

Watertown Watertown may refer to: Places in China In China, a water town is a type of ancient scenic town known for its waterways. Places in the United States *Watertown, Connecticut, a New England town **Watertown (CDP), Connecticut, the central village ...

All of these papers still publish as part of CNC's Metro Unit. Bay State also published a shopper serving the Lowell area, called the ''Merrimack Valley Advertiser''. That publication was later converted to two ''Advertiser'' weeklies in Tewksbury and Wilmington, now published by CNC's Northwest Unit as ''The Tewksbury Advocate'' and ''The Wilmington Advocate''.

References

{{CNC Mass media in Middlesex County, Massachusetts Newspapers published in Massachusetts Defunct newspaper companies of the United States Defunct companies based in Massachusetts