Gatehouse Media

GateHouse lays off local publisher, vice president

adamg — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 20:34:33 +0000

Dan Kennedy reports GateHouse Media has "streamlined" Greg Reibman out of his job as publisher of its 17 Boston-area newspapers and Wicked Local sites and vice president of its 160-site Wicked Local online network. Kennedy writes:

This strikes me as an incredibly shortsighted move.

The Boston Business Journal says GateHouse is somehow convinced that ditching Reibman will help it become as successful as Apple did after Steve Jobs returned.

Patch grabs another staffer from GateHouse Media to start West Roxbury site

adamg — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 22:12:03 +0000

David Ertischek, editor of GateHouse's West Roxbury and Roslindale Transcript, is leaving to become editor of Patch's soon-to-emerge West Roxbury site. He joins Neal Simpson, who stopped covering Brookline for GateHouse so he could start covering it for Patch.

Ed. note: You have to read the Transcript's story about Ertischek leaving. Seems nobody else was available to do it, so he wrote it himself.

AOL goes where boston.com fears to tread

adamg — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:50:09 +0000

AOL's Patch hyperlocal network is advertising jobs for editors of new sites in Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Charlestown and the South End, as well as all of Boston, according to postings on the AOL corporate site.

The incursion is a full scale attack on, well, almost nobody, since boston.com has yet to set up a single Your Town hyperlocal site in the city it's named for. The South End News does have a longstanding site, unlike the Back Bay Courant, which doesn't get this InterWebs thing.

In addition to these jobs, Patch is also advertising for editors in the sort of suburban towns now the domain of GateHouse Media's Wicked Local sites. And it's advertising for a Boston-specific ad director.

Lost Remote takes a look at Patch's massive expansion in metro areas across the country.

NOTE: AOL uses some furshlugginer token system to keep you from bookmarking specific job postings. If you want to see where Patch is hiring locally, go to the AOL careers page, click on Search Openings, then select Patch as the brand and United States - Massachusetts - Boston as the location.

Thank God Needham is a three-site town

adamg — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:05:33 +0000

Patch, AOL's attempt at a national network of community sites, recently went live in Needham, giving that town's online news consumers three different places to read about Peter Smulowitz and the guy charged with trying to kill his young child - whom Wicked Local says is a girl, Boston.com's Your Town says is a boy and Patch says is a child.

All three sites are very similar in what they seem to be doing: News, sports, calendar listings, information about the town (Patch helpfully notes which officials are "important officials"). In other words: Recreating a traditional weekly community newspaper, from back in the day when stuff like that was called "local" insteady of "hyperlocal." Wicked Local and Your Town have more depth at this point, having been around longer, and their writing is a lot more polished. Wicked Local is bloggier, Patch makes its employees volunteer in the town and is encouraging local folks to generate some user content (i.e., write for free), Your Town links to stuff on other sites (and has what appears to be dead forums - the most recent post was from almost two months ago).

Ultimately, of course, the question is whether even a well off town like Needham can support three full-time Web sites - are there enough advertisers who want to reach those 30,000 people?

If you live in Needham, how do you get your local news these days?

Carr writes about annoying rich people

adamg — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 18:05:57 +0000

Yeah, so? We're talking about Kathy Carr, wife of Man of the People Carr, who penned a hate letter to Wellesley parents. Why Wellesley? Oh, that's where the Carrs live. What? You expected they lived in Dorchester or Chelsea? The Swellesley Report notes the absence of any reader comments on the online version of the column; there apparently were a ton, but they were so negative GateHouse took them down and told people to write a letter to the editor on paper. Presumably with a quill pen.

Newspaper publisher: No more liquor ads plastered on photos of convicted drunken politicians

adamg — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 23:02:15 +0000

Greg Reibman, publisher of GateHouse New England's Boston-area papers, explains how the chain is trying to prevent a recurrence of last week's Cambridge Chronicle front page. He says it was strictly unintentional, but that he's looking at just banning certain types of sticky-note ads, including those from liquor stores.

He blows his chance to be quoted in the Globe

adamg — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:22:35 +0000

Greg Reibman tweets he was in Sugar in West Roxbury while a Globe reporter was doing a man-in-the-street interview about what people think about Menino (because, apparently, last month's results weren't enough):

I decided to be nice and passed.

Which is probably just as well, since a) Reibman lives in Newton and b) He's publisher of GateHouse Media New England's Boston-area newspapers.

GateHouse editor can have her baby in peace now

adamg — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:25:52 +0000

You may recall how Kat Powers pleaded with Deval Patrick's schedulers to get him to meet with GateHouse reporters before she had her baby in March. They delivered.

Video challenge to Gov. YouTube

adamg — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:33:40 +0000

Please, Mr. Patrick, get your schedulers to get on the ball so you can see the reporters and editors at GateHouse New England before March 9:

GateHouse goes after online cop forum

adamg — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 00:08:36 +0000

Alleges copyright infringement for posting whole copies of articles from GateHouse sites.

Local newspaper chain rescinds pay cuts

adamg — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:34:30 +0000

Dan Kennedy posts a memo from GateHouse Media New England CEO Rick Daniels announcing the end of cuts put into place over the summer:

... We are in a position to restore the cuts because GHMNE is again generating sufficient cash flows to be clearly and safely in the black. ...

However, he cautioned the chain is not out of the woods yet because the economy continues to suck.

Daily News Transcript to become weekly News Transcript

adamg — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:07:12 +0000

The Globe reports the Dedham newspaper is going from five days a week to one in October.

GateHouse cuts salaries, coverage south of Boston

adamg — Thu, 28 May 2009 14:39:56 +0000

Dan Kennedy reports the suburban media chain is cutting staff salaries by an average of 7.75% (with the cuts increasing up the corporate ladder) and dramatically reducing the number of towns the Quincy Patriot-Ledger covers (including Plymouth where, ironically, the chain's Wicked Local strategy was born).

Is Maureen Dowd advising a weekly paper in Somerville?

adamg — Wed, 20 May 2009 23:42:43 +0000

The Somerville Journal accuses the Somerville News of plagiarism. And the News wonders just how low the Journal can get - in a comment on the Journal post.

GateHouse layoffs today

adamg — Fri, 15 May 2009 13:39:28 +0000

Dan Kennedy provides initial sketchy reports, including the end of free obits - and the people who used to typeset them.

Chad Finn reports among those let go: Longtime MetroWest Daily News sportswriter Lenny Megliola.