Lincoln Journal absorbed by Concord paper as news industry continues to contract

By Alice Waugh

Lincoln no longer has a newspaper bearing the town’s name.

Subscribers to the Lincoln Journal were informed by letter late last month that GateHouse Media New England (GHMNE), which owns more than 100 weekly newspapers and several dailies in eastern Massachusetts, was merging the Concord Journal and Lincoln Journal into a single newspaper retaining the Concord Journal name.

It’s part of a broader consolidation whereby the company is merging 50 newspapers into 19 — in most cases removing local town names from the new titles. Three of the new publications combine four former newspapers into one, and another will cover five towns previously served by separate papers in Hopkinton, Shrewsbury, Northborough, Westborough, and Southborough. WickedLocal websites for the affected weeklies will not change.

“This consolidation will reduce production expenses and represents a necessary next step in our evolution, while creating a stronger product for both our subscribers and advertisers,” GateHouse Media New England executives Peter Meyer and Lisa Strattan said in a May 31 letter to company staff. “Our readers will continue to receive the same in-depth local news coverage of their town plus additional reporting from nearby communities, giving them up-to-date news on what’s happening in their region.”

Although the Lincoln Journal had its own print edition and website, it hasn’t had an editor or reporter devoted exclusively to the town for several years. Most of its recent coverage has consisted of regional stories and photos shared by several other newspapers in the area. The changes reflect a growing “ghost newspaper” trend in the economically distressed news business.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Lincoln and Sudbury were covered by the Fence Viewer. Some time later, the Concord Journal covered Lincoln until the most recent version of the Lincoln Journal came along. Papers in the region have changed hands numerous times in recent years as the newspaper business has been decimated by free or cheap online news and classified ads, the rising cost of newsprint, and other factors.

A note to readers in the June 6 edition of the merged Concord Journal observed that “from minimalist millennials to Marie Kondo’s tidying to the tiny houses trend, everyone nowadays seems to be distilling their surroundings to their most essential purpose, streamlining and focusing only on what matters most. We’d like to think that’s what we’ve done with the edition you’re holding right now.” The paper features one inside page of Lincoln material comprising reprinted press releases and other submissions with no original reporting. 

Lincoln Journal readers were told in the May 24 letter that their subscription balances would be transferred to the Concord Journal. When subscriptions expire, they will be renewed at a new unspecified rate. As of Tuesday night, the GHMNE web page for newspaper delivery subscriptions still offered the Lincoln Journal for $93 a year, almost twice the price of the Lincoln Squirrel.

The Concord-only Concord Journal had a circulation of about 3,600 and went to about 50% of households in that town, according to Pamela Calder, an advertising account executive with WickedLocal Media Solutions/GHMNE. Calder added that she did not know the circulation of the Lincoln Journal, but “I don’t think it was very high,” and added that she did not yet know how the merger would affect advertising rates.

Calls and emails from the Lincoln Squirrel to Strattan (the vice president of news for GHMNE and senior vice president, executive editor and publisher of Wicked Local, the company’s online division) and to Kathleen Cordeiro, regional director of news and operations for GHMNE, were not returned.