Indie weekly debuts in Harvard
Harvard is about to get its own independent weekly again, when the premier issue of The Harvard Press lands on the doorsteps of Harvard residents this coming Friday, Nov. 17. Backed by four dedicated staffers, $30,000 in patron support and a like amount in pledges for next year, it’s going up against CNC-owned competitor, the formerly independent Harvard Post.
The Harvard Post had served the town for 30 years, before media giant Community Newspapers Corp. purchased it in 2003. Last year, CNC changed the paper to a four-color broadsheet, and added a lot of regional, rather than local news, says Editor Laura Andrews. "It misses a lot of the details that are important to people," she says. The company behind the Press is a for-profit LLC, staffed by four equal members, Harvard residents Andrews, Julie Moberly, Lisa Aciukewicz and Worth Robbins. Andrews, who previously spent 20 years as a financial director for Gillette Corp., says the group considered putting out a non-profit, ad-free newspaper, but found that their audience wanted the ads, "an essential part" of a small newspaper, she says.
The group consulted with the Small Business Development Center office at Clark University before the launch. Their advisor, Senior Management Counselor Michael Holbrook, says they were very organized and methodical in their research and approach, and willing to listen to advice.
The Harvard Press will be sent to all of Harvard’s approximately 2,000 households free for three months before subscriptions kick in at $35 per year, and $50 for out-of-town subscribers, whose copies will be mailed first-class. A long-term goal is to establish an interactive web site as well as the print medium.
Andrews notes that Harvard’s population has changed considerably in the last 10 to 15 years. The Press will carry local personality profiles "so new people know and have the same vocabulary as those who have been here" for a long time. She sees the paper as an arena for in-depth discussion of town issues. But she takes gentle exception to a comment that it could deliver the people of Harvard to an advertising market. "We don’t want to deliver the people of Harvard to anybody," Andrews says. "We want to deliver the advertisers to the people of Harvard."
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments