New WoMag Ownership Looks For 'Edge' | Newspaper group squares up to dominate Central Mass. community news
Photo/Christina H. Davis
Kirk Davis, left, and Gareth Charter, right, in Worcester Magazine's office on Water Street.
It wouldn’t be surprising if Kirk Davis felt like he has a split personality some days.
After all, his full-time professional gig is to oversee the substantial New England properties for New York-based Gatehouse Media. That includes daily papers – such as the MetroWest Daily News in Framingham and the Patriot Ledger in Qunicy – as well as numerous community weeklies such as the Marlborough Enterprise.
But Davis’ other role, although somewhat less public, is as owner and driving force behind Cracked Rock Media, which made its first foray into alternative news with its acquisition of Worcester Magazine in August.
Davis seems comfortable straddling both worlds and insists that his role overseeing Cracked Rock’s holdings – most notably the Holden Landmark and Worcester Magazine – is mostly hands off. He leaves the day-to-day management and decision-making to his business partner, Gareth Charter, who serves as WoMag’s publisher.
Into The Frying Pan
Today, Cracked Rock Media has eight titles including the Landmark, WoMag, the Leominster Champion, the Fitchburg Pride and the Millbury Chronicle. The company’s portfolio is mostly focused on community news, which made its acquisition of the “alternative” Worcester Magazine from Worcester Publishing and its owner Allen Fletcher (who also owned the Worcester Business Journal until April 2007) a bit of a head scratcher.
While the synergy isn’t immediately apparent from the outside, Davis said the acquisition, which was about a year in the making, fit into his company well.
“We just felt like it made sense for an awful lot of reasons,” Davis said. “Worcester is the capital of Central Massachusetts… We’ve got a lot of Worcester business in our suburban titles, so it’s not like this market was unknown to us.”
Davis also said that the weekly Worcester Magazine was a publication with a lot of potential, especially given the economic woes of the Telegram & Gazette, which is owned by the New York Times Co., and has recently shed jobs through buyouts, attrition and layoffs.
“We believe in the importance of local media for local marketers,” Charter added. “We don’t buy the notion that the way to build a daily the size of the T&G is to eliminate local coverage and local editions.”
In theory, weaker local coverage from a major daily, could open up more opportunity for small, community-minded papers. However, the T&G hasn’t entirely ceded local coverage to the Landmarks of the world. It’s launched community news products called the Flash in order to keep a small town presence in Fitchburg/Leominster and most recently, Holden. Both products seem aimed squarely at competing with Davis’ holdings, but he dismisses the effort as a “flash in the pan.”
Of course, the sale of Worcester Magazine was not necessarily smooth. The news led to fears from diehard Worcester Magazine fans that the change in ownership would result in the "suburbanization" of the alternative tabloid.
But the new owners say their intention has been to keep Worcester Magazine's edge, although Charter admits that in the first few weeks after taking over and hearing the word "edgy" so often that he couldn't help asking himself, "Where is this mythical edge?"
As a sign of that continued "edginess," the pair points to a cover story from the Oct. 22 Worcester Magazine where staff writer Scott Zoback and photographer Steven King followed cops during a violent night in the city.
"I think that kind of journalism shows how quickly we've adapted to this kind of publishing," Davis said.
Charter and Davis also admit that they were taken off guard by the backlash in the local media and the blogosphere once news of their buy of Worcester Magazine broke. What made the transition particularly difficult was the number of cuts - all but one editorial staffer was laid off.
Both acknowledge that the cuts were painful, but driven by economics. And they also point out that they've brought on qualified staff, including a new reporter and Editor Jim Keogh, who up until his latest appointment was editor-in-chief of Cracked Rock's portfolio of papers.
Both Davis and Charter boast lengthy newspaper pedigrees. Davis got his start in newspapers in his hometown in Ohio, working in circulation. He moved up around the U.S. newspaper industry eventually landing in Massachusetts in 1995 to run the Boston-area TAB Papers for Community Newspapers.
Charter got his start as a reporter and editor and met Davis while working for Community Newspapers.
Davis eventually left CNC in 2001 and bought the Holden Landmark. While he worked at growing his company's portfolio by acquiring new titles he also worked as a consultant with Turley Publications of Palmer. He was eventually recruited in 2004 by a private equity firm called Heritage Partners Inc. to run the Enterprise Media, which was eventually acquired by Gatehouse.
As for the potential conflict between owning a newspaper company that buts up against the market for another media company he helps manage, Davis said he's been clear from day one with Gatehouse about his ownership of Cracked Rock and that he's drawn the line for his media company at Worcester County's boundaries.
Today isn't a great time to be in business period, but it's particularly painful for newspaper companies. Even Gatehouse reported an $18.5 million loss for the most recent quarter. While dailies are struggling, Davis and Charter are both extremely confident in the importance of community weeklies.
"We certainly recognize the downward cycle, but it didn't dampen our enthusiasm for acquiring Worcester Magazine," Davis said. "We're long-term thinkers."
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