The ''Telegram & Gazette'' (and ''Sunday Telegram'') is the only daily newspaper of

Worcester, Massachusetts Worcester ( , ) is the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, second-most populous city in the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the list of United States cities by population, 113th most populous city in the United States. Named after Worcester ...

. The paper, headquartered at 100 Front Street and known locally as ''the Telegram'' or the ''T & G'', offers coverage of all of Worcester County, as well as surrounding areas of the western suburbs of

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

Western Massachusetts Western Massachusetts, known colloquially as "western Mass," is a region in Massachusetts, one of the six U.S. states that make up the New England region of the United States. Western Massachusetts has diverse topography; 22 colleges and univ ...

, and several towns in Windham County in northeastern

Connecticut Connecticut ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, New York (state), New York to the west, and Long Island Sound to the south. ...

History

On January 22, 1913, the ''Worcester Telegram'' ran a story ("Thorpe with Professional Baseball Team Says Clancy"), soon picked up by other papers, that led to

Jim Thorpe James Francis Thorpe (; May 22 or 28, 1887March 28, 1953) was an American athlete who won Olympic gold medals and played professional American football, football, baseball, and basketball. A citizen of the Sac and Fox Nation, Thorpe was ...

being stripped of his 1912 Olympic titles, medals and awards. Until the 1980s, two papers—the ''Worcester Telegram'' in the morning and the ''Evening Gazette'' in the afternoon—were published by the same company, with separate editorial staffs in some departments. The two were merged into a single ''Telegram & Gazette'' upon their acquisition by

Chronicle Publishing Company The Chronicle Publishing Company was a print and broadcast media corporation headquartered in San Francisco, California that was in operation from 1865 until 2000. Owned for the whole of its existence by the de Young family, CPC was most notable ...

, publishers of the ''

San Francisco Chronicle The ''San Francisco Chronicle'' is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern California. It was founded in 1865 as ''The Daily Dramatic Chronicle'' by teenage brothers Charles de Young and M. H. de Young, Michael H. ...

'', in 1986. The ''Chronicle'' sold the ''Telegram & Gazette'' to

The New York Times Company The New York Times Company is an American mass media corporation that publishes ''The New York Times'' and its associated publications such as ''The New York Times International Edition'' and other media properties. The New York Times Company's ...

in 1999 for $300 million. The paper's previous owners also owned Worcester

radio station Radio broadcasting is the broadcasting of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based rad ...

WTAG until selling it after the newspapers were divested, in 1987. The ''Telegram & Gazette'' moved its headquarters from a building on Franklin Street to the Mercantile Center in 2012. In October 2013, the ''Telegram & Gazette'' was bought from

by John W. Henry's Boston Globe Media Partners as part of his purchase of ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe,'' also known locally as ''the Globe'', is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes. ''The Boston Globe'' is the oldest and largest daily new ...

''. Only a month later, Henry announced his intention to sell the paper. From 2009 until March 2014, retired editor Harry Whitin and Ralph Crowley of Polar Beverages explored purchasing the paper. In May 2014, Boston Globe Media Partners sold the paper to Florida-based

Halifax Media Group Halifax Media Group was an American newspaper company owning more than 30 newspapers in five Southeastern U.S. States. It was founded on March 31, 2010, when a group of investors purchased '' The Daytona Beach News-Journal'' from the Davidson fam ...

for $20 million, who immediately laid off 20 of the ''Telegram & Gazette'''s 80 newsroom staff members. Halifax sold it along with all of their publications to

GateHouse Media GateHouse Media Inc. was an American publisher of locally based print and digital media. It published 144 daily newspapers, 684 community publications, and over 569 local-market websites in 38 states. Its parent company, New Media Investment Group ...

in January 2015. In 2018, owner

acquired Holden Landmark Corporation, owner of the alternative weekly '' Worcester Magazine''. Six positions at the ''Telegram & Gazette'' were cut in May 2019. Six more employees were laid off in August 2019, including the ''Telegram & Gazettes last long-standing columnist, as part of nationwide custs to GateHouse papers. In July 2019, ''Worcester Magazine'' began to be included as a weekly insert in the ''Telegram & Gazette'' to replace its arts and entertainment section. In late 2019, GateHouse purchased

Gannett Gannett Co., Inc. ( ) is an American mass media holding company headquartered in New York City. It is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher as measured by total daily circulation. It owns the national newspaper ''USA Today'', as well as several ...

and assumed its name. In late 2020, Gannett laid off about 500 employees nationwide, including a several longtime ''Telegram & Gazette'' reporters as part of cost-cutting measures. Some of these were replaced by new hires. Gannett has further gutted the ''Telegram & Gazette'', as it customarily does to its holdings. The ''Telegram & Gazette'' has been referred to as the

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

in Central Massachusetts. It has also been described as a ghost newspaper, a publication that continues publishing but is a shell of its former self. The ''Telegram & Gazette'' published over 2,400 articles in September 2011, and 506 in September 2023.

Circulation

* 1999: 107,400 * 2012: 74,563 (weekday) * 2013: 74,000 (weekday) and 78,000 (Sunday) * 2018: 22,400 (weekday) * 2023: 12,831 (8,698 print and 4,133 paid electronic, weekday), 16,457 (12,403 print, 4,054 paid electronic, Sunday)

Quality

A comparison of T & G reporting in 2019 vs. 2010 indicates a substantial increase in transcription journalism, while also affirming that the paper continues to practice accountability journalism. T & G based a quarter of its 2019 stories regarding a major construction project on press releases, in comparison to its coverage of a similar event in 2010 which did not use press releases for any articles.

Sections and features

The weekday ''Telegram & Gazette'' contains national, state and local news, as well as sports, business, and a feature stories. On Thursdays Worcester Magazine is inserted in the paper highlighting local artists and events in the area. The paper's regular reporters also contribute regular or occasional columns with names such as "Barnestorming", "City Hall Notebook", "Politics and the City", etc. The local news section also includes local news stories and obituaries. All editorials and letters to the editor appear in the regional opinion and

op-ed An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page," is a type of written prose commonly found in newspapers, magazines, and online publications. They usually represent a writer's strong and focused opinion on an issue of relevance to a targeted a ...

pages of the main news section. The ''Sunday Telegram'' includes the county's largest classified ad listings, Business Matters section, News, Local and Editorial pages, Living and Homes, and Cars sections, a tabloid-sized comic section and an in-house created Arts, Culture and Travel Section, which replaced similar sections that used to be reprinted in full from ''

.'' The Worcester Telegram & Gazette Corporation owns Coulter Press, which publishes several weekly newspapers in suburban towns northeast and east of Worcester. The ''Telegram'' staff also produces '' Worcester Living'' (formerly ''Worcester Quarterly''), a local lifestyle magazine. Before their sale to

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 proper ...

in 1993, the ''T&G'' also owned the ''Hudson Sun'' and ''Marlboro Enterprise'' daily newspapers and Beacon Communications Corporation weekly newspapers in western

Middlesex County, Massachusetts Middlesex County is a county located in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 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 the 22nd most populou ...

References

External links