Old Colony Memorial (newspaper)

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Old Colony Memorial, 1824 1824 OldColony Plymouth Oct9.png
Old Colony Memorial, 1824

The Old Colony Memorial (est.1822) is a semiweekly newspaper published in Plymouth, Massachusetts. [1] USA Today Co. owns the paper; [2] previous owners include the George W. Prescott Publishing Co. [3] and the Memorial Press Group.

Contents

History

19th century

The Old Colony Memorial began in 1822. [4] Publishers have included George F. Andrews, Winslow W. Avery, Allen Danforth, James A. Danforth, Charles Carroll Doten, William T. Hollis, John Morisey, Thomas Prince, James Thurber. [5] [6] Among the editors: Joseph Francis Bittinger. [7]

In the 1830s, "connected with the printing office [was] a newspaper reading room where intelligence from various quarters [were] daily received, and [was] a pleasant resort for the reading gentlemen at their leisure hours. Under the same roof [was] a book-store and bindery, and a circulating library." [8] In the 19th century its main competitor was the Plymouth Rock newspaper. [9] In the 1880s the O.C. Memorial office stood on Court Street near Shirley Square, [10] and by the 1900s on Middle Street.

20th–21st century

K. Prescott Low, whose family had published The Patriot Ledger for a century, purchased Memorial Press Group (MPG) in 1979 and incorporated it into the privately owned George W. Prescott Publishing Company. Thirty years later, however, in 1997, Low found that "mega-players competing with us" made family ownership of the Ledger and MPG uneconomic, and sought to sell them. [11]

A buyer quickly emerged: James F. Plugh, owner of The Enterprise , the Brockton daily newspaper that competed with the Ledger and several MPG papers. Plugh's Newspaper Media LLC, later renamed Enterprise NewsMedia, bought the Prescott Publishing for an estimated US$60 to US$70 million. [12]

Liberty Publishing purchased Enterprise NewsMedia in 2006 as part of a mammoth deal that also included Community Newspaper Company (CNC) – then owned by the Boston Herald – and a new name for the parent company, GateHouse Media. [13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Directory of New England Newspapers". New England Newspaper and Press Association. Archived from the original on July 19, 2012. Retrieved April 23, 2012.
  2. ↑ Rowland, Christopher. Can suburban newspapers deliver? Boston Globe, May 16, 2006
  3. ↑ Boston Globe, May 24, 1997
  4. ↑ Old Colony Memorial, and Plymouth County Advertiser, Vol. 1, no. 1 (May 4, 1822). Library of Congress. "About Old Colony memorial, and Plymouth County advertiser. (Plymouth, Mass.) 1822-1827". Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Retrieved April 22, 2012.
  5. ↑ Davis, William T. (1885), History of the town of Plymouth, Philadelphia: J.W. Lewis, OCLC   1805660, OL   6905684M
  6. ↑ John Joseph May (1902), Danforth genealogy: Nicholas Danforth, of Framlingham, England, and Cambridge, N. E. [1589-1638] and William Danforth, of Newbury, Mass. [1640-1721] and their descendants, Boston: C. H. Pope, OCLC   1668736, OL   6924981M
  7. ↑ Ayer newspaper directory, 1921
  8. ↑ James Thacher (1835), History of the town of Plymouth, from its first settlement in 1620, to the present time, Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon, OCLC   2717953, OL   14013347M
  9. ↑ Richard Swainson Fisher (1855), A new and complete statistical gazetteer of the United States of America, New York: J. H. Colton and company, OL   6928733M
  10. ↑ Old Plymouth: a guide to its localities and objects of interest. Plymouth: Old colony memorial press, 1886
  11. ↑ Stewart, Colin. "Ledger Owner Explains Decision". The Patriot Ledger (Quincy, Mass.), page 21, May 24, 1997.
  12. ↑ Blanton, Kimberly. "Low Family Will Sell Patriot Ledger to the Owners of Brockton Enterprise". The Boston Globe, October 4, 1997.
  13. ↑ Gatlin, Greg. "Herald to Sell Suburban Papers". Boston Herald, May 6, 2006.

Further reading

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