Community Newspaper Company, or CNC, was the largest publisher of

weekly newspaper 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 newspap ...

s in eastern

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

in the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century. It also published several

daily newspaper A newspaper is a Periodical literature, periodical publication containing written News, information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as poli ...

s in

Greater Boston Greater Boston is the metropolitan region of New England encompassing the municipality of Boston, the capital of the U.S. state of Massachusetts and the most populous city in New England, and its surrounding areas, home to 4,941,632. The most s ...

. The company's properties were assembled by Fidelity Investments in the 1980s; Fidelity founded the company and then sold it to the ''

Boston Herald The ''Boston Herald'' is an American conservative daily newspaper whose primary market is Boston, Massachusetts, and its surrounding area. It was founded in 1846 and is one of the oldest daily newspapers in the United States. It has been awarde ...

'' in 2001. Five years later, the chain was purchased by, and immediately became the largest single component of,

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 ...

. GateHouse gradually phased out CNC branding in favor of "WickedLocal.com", the company's website, and GateHouse Media New England; this process was complete by 2011, when staff email addresses dropped the "@cnc.com" domain.

Holdings

CNC's flagship publication was '' The MetroWest Daily News'', based in

Framingham, Massachusetts Framingham () is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, United States. Incorporated in 1700, it is located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County and the MetroWest subregion of the Greater Boston ...

. In 2011 it also published '' The Milford Daily News''. It had also published, and closed, three other daily newspapers: '' The Daily News Transcript'', '' The Daily News Tribune'' and the '' Enterprise-Sun''. The GateHouse purchase in mid-2006 included CNC as well as Enterprise News Media, publisher of two dailies and several weeklies that competed with CNC's South Shore holdings. The weeklies were incorporated into CNC and the company also forged close ties with its new sister dailies, '' The Enterprise'' and '' The Patriot Ledger'', although they—and later GateHouse Media Massachusetts acquisitions '' The Herald News'' and the '' Taunton Daily Gazette''—retained their own editorial hierarchy, however, and were not considered part of Community Newspaper Company. CNC's holdings, as well as its Massachusetts sister papers and '' The Bulletin'' in Connecticut, now constitute GateHouse Media New England.

Weeklies

CNC published more than 100 weeklies, semiweeklies and monthly publications. Each publication was classified in one of five or six semi-autonomous units (Cape, Metro, North, Northwest, South, West), each with its own editor-in-chief, covering distinct geographic areas of eastern

and named for its location with respect to Boston. The West Unit included oversight over all the daily newspapers, in addition to most of the CNC weeklies that complement them; at times, the Cape Unit properties were considered part of the South Unit.

References

External links

''The MetroWest Daily News''

WickedLocal.com, Website of the CNC weeklies
{{Gannett Publishing companies established in 1991 Companies based in Massachusetts Newspaper companies of the United States Newspapers published in Massachusetts Mass media in Norfolk County, Massachusetts Gannett publications Local mass media in Massachusetts 1991 establishments in Massachusetts