🔒From the Publisher: A look back, a look ahead – 35 years of covering Central Mass. business news

As a 1979 Holy Cross graduate, I returned to Worcester in September of 1980 to start my publishing career in advertising sales for the scrappy alternative weekly Worcester Magazine. For the next 44 years, I’ve watched our region go through ups and downs, grow, and evolve, with some amazing companies and individuals leading the way.

Worcester Magazine wasn’t a traditional magazine, but a tabloid alternative weekly. Nonetheless, its founders Dan Kaplan and Ryck Lent were real entrepreneurs, and five years after starting WM, they birthed in 1981 a monthly business magazine: Business Worcester. The inaugural issue featured the Business Leader of the Year. Our choice was the legendary head of Worcester’s Chamber of Commerce, Bill Short. Short practiced servant leadership and was long on humility, and he refused our request more than once to have his picture alone appear on the cover. We relented, and the photo ran with Short and his entire senior team.

Fast forward to 1989 and the real estate bubble had burst and a full-fledged Savings & Loan crisis ensued, dragging down banks, developers, and many others in its wake, including the then out-of-state owners of Business Worcester. With the company on the rocks, a white knight magically appeared on the scene.

Allen Fletcher, whose family owned the Telegram & Gazette, had moved back to Worcester from the West Coast, ostensibly to work at and eventually have a chance to run the paper of record. While he was a reporter who did time in the Fitchburg bureau, he was also on the board of directors. In 1986 however, the T&G was sold to the San Francisco Chronicle, ending that chapter of local ownership. So while Business Worcester was closing its doors in late 1989, Fletcher, with a heavy dose of encouragement from Paul Giorgio, was there to jump at the chance to recruit the remaining team to join a new venture, which was the birth of Worcester Business Journal, 35 years ago.

Our first offices were temporary space in a manufacturing building in a West Boylston industrial park owned by Arthur Chase, a businessman and state senator. Featuring orange shag carpeting and tightly sealed windows that did not open, the price was right. That makeshift office was a beehive of activity as the new company got on its feet.

WBJ was the founding publication in what would become Worcester Publishing Ltd. Like its early predecessor, the company was burgeoning with talent, and it rapidly expanded, founding the Hartford Business Journal in 1992, followed by the 1993 purchase of Worcester Magazine.

In 1998, the company added a third business publication with the purchase of the fledgling Mainebiz, which saw WBJ Associate Publisher Donna Brassard moving to Maine to run that division for what turned out to be the next 23 years. Ownership changed again in 2007, when Hartford Publisher Joe Zwiebel and I purchased the three business magazines from Allen Fletcher. In 2020, the latest ownership change saw current partner Tom Curtin take over Zwiebel’s interest. It’s been quite a ride.

Worcester County is a small market where, over time, you can get to know almost all the players. I remember as a young publisher in my late 20s getting to meet CEOs like Dick Nedder of Thom McAn, Herb Dunnington of Safety Fund Bank, and Paul Morgan, the legendary head of Morgan Construction, who were all open and encouraging. We’ve also witnessed some incredible entrepreneurs have their businesses grow like beanstalks in our backyard. Valentin Gapontsev, a Russian Immigrant who built his 1998 Oxford-based startup IPG Photonics into an industry-dominant $3-billion public company. At Milford’s Consigli Construction, fourth-generation brothers Anthony and Matthew Consigli took over the family business that had 15 employees in 1990 and grew the business to $3 billion in annual revenues with more than 1,800 employees across 16 offices in the Northeast. And I got to know dedicated community leaders that were huge difference makers, like the late Jack Healy, who for many years headed up Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership, championing the region’s manufacturing industry, and the late great Ted Coghlin, who tirelessly advocated for technical education and saw his decades-long effort pay off with the opening of the new Worcester Technical High School.

Sure, we have a few big egos and difficult personalities here, but overwhelmingly, the strong sense of community and common mission in our region seems to make people, even those in high places, more friendly and accessible. I often think the egos in a market are as big as the tallest office buildings in town: Boston and New York have some really big ones! Luckily Worcester never really built out its skyline with a bunch of office towers, which in today’s real estate market seems like a stroke of luck!

Periodically we all get asked: Why do you come to work every day? For me, it's pretty simple. I love the work, the creation of an issue and all its stories, data, and design elements made out of whole cloth, and the influential role we can play in the community. And I love working shoulder to shoulder with the smart, talented, and dedicated colleagues who make it happen every day.

Every organization needs the energy, ideas, and fresh perspectives new colleagues bring to the table, but you need continuity and those who know and can help maintain the culture and know-how. We’ve been blessed to have a number of long-time colleagues on the advertising, design, and event front, who’ve been a big part of our long-term success, among them Associate Publisher Mark Murray (40 years), General Manager Kris Prosser (29 years) and Production Director Kira Beaudoin (24 years).

In addition, the heart of our brand is its editorial content. Independent journalism is at the core of our value system, and we believe is the only way to produce trusted content our readers can rely on. While as publisher I head up the state, the church is led by our editor, and I have a profound respect for their central role in what makes our operation a success. WBJ’s founding editor was the estimable Mike Warshaw, followed by the long tenure of Steve Jones D’Agostino, who handed the baton to Christine O’Neill, followed by Christina Davis, Rick Saia, and today’s talented editor Brad Kane, who has been in the chair since 2015. Brad’s talents and the skills of his staff and freelancers are all over the pages of this and every edition we produce.

To the Central Mass. community: Thank you for your continued support, being readers, advertisers, and event attendees, for being a source for stories, for letting us know your opinion in a poll or survey, for being partners in our effort to make a positive difference here. We couldn't do it without you, and we aim to deliver the content you’ve come to rely on for many years to come.

Peter Stanton is publisher of the Worcester Business Journal and CEO & co-owner of its parent company, New England Business Media.