Charter: Fitchburg weekly will showcase region's upside
A new weekly newspaper is set to debut in Fitchburg, aiming to cover stories not seen in the city’s daily paper, the Sentinel & Enterprise, and showcase the positive attributes of the region.
"We expect the content in the Fitchburg Pride to be very, very different from the daily," says Gareth Charter, publisher of the Holden Landmark Corp., the publisher of the Pride and several other regional papers. "I don’t see a lot of coverage of the people, the neighborhoods, the businesses, and the positive things going on in Fitchburg. I see crime stories, 10-part series on drugs, and city council bickering."
The Fitchburg Pride will launch on January 26 with a mix of shared staffers and new hires, says Charter, writing stories focusing on news and events that will shape the future of the city. The paper will feed a circulation of roughly 9,000 readers, similar to that of the Leominster Champion, the company’s weekly that created a stir among Fitchburg residents wanting one of their own. That gives the Fitchburg Pride 60 to 70 percent household penetration, and far more than the city’s daily newspaper, says Charter.
Charter notes that the weekly paper is backed by a budget that will allow the paper to grow, though as a small, family-owned company publishing a free paper, it is totally reliant on advertisers.
The paper hopes to attract businesses throughout Fitchburg, or in the entire North County region as advertisers, and also to show potential vendors that the readers will include a broad base, including those not local to Fitchburg. With plans to distribute the paper on the campus of Fitchburg State College, including an insert of the campus paper The Point, Charter says advertisers will be exposed to students and faculty .
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