Former Telegram & Gazette publisher departs executive role days after high-profile buyouts
Photo | Grant Welker
The Telegram & Gazette office (right) in Mercantile Center in Worcester
The former publisher of the Telegram & Gazette, who was more recently elevated to a regional executive role with the newspaper's parent company, has departed Gannett the same week as many of its newspapers announced buyouts.
The Telegram reported Friday that Paul Provost, the senior vice president of multimedia strategy and sales for Gannett New England, is leaving Gannett after five years. Most of that time came as the company was known as GateHouse, which bought Gannett late last year and took over the USA Today publisher's name.
Provost joined the Telegram in 2015 and helped oversee the newspaper after a period of major transitions, including being sold three different times in a little over a year. The most recent sale was to GateHouse, a transaction that brought the newspaper under common ownership with daily newspapers across Central and Eastern Massachusetts, including the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham and the Milford Daily News.
"I am incredibly proud of our accomplishments over the past five years and thankful to all of the employees, past and present that I had the privilege to work alongside," Provost said, as reported by the Telegram. "I believe the business is strongly positioned for the immediate future notwithstanding the challenges we face within the industry and that local journalism is as critical to our community as it is our democracy."
Provost's departure came the same week the Telegram accepted buyouts of six journalists, mostly longtime reporters.
Gannett owns 10 daily newspapers in Massachusetts and 75 weeklies, along with three other dailies in Connecticut and Rhode Island. Nationwide, the Virginia-based company, the country's largest newspaper chain, includes 261 dailies and 302 weeklies.
Buyouts locally have included the executive editor of The Providence Journal, along with journalists who've announced their buyouts at daily newspapers in Quincy, Brockton, Fall River and New Bedford. Nationally, more than 500 Gannett workers took buyouts in the latest round of cuts, according to the industry publication Poynter, coming months after employees were required to take a three-week furlough.
The Telegram's daily circulation was reported last year by the company at 25,073. MetroWest Daily News' was 6,769. Those are down from 46,634 and 11,783, respectively, three years earlier.
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