Episode description

Today Dan and Ellen talk to Anne Eisenmenger, who is president of Beaver Dam Partners and publisher of several weekly newspapers in southeast Massachusetts, including Wareham Week and Sippican Week. Anne has a laser focus on developing and operating hyperlocal for-profit newspapers.

Anne lives in Wareham, and she founded her community news company there in 2010 with the launch of Wareham Week. And, yes, it's an actual print newspaper, with a for-profit business model, and it's packed with ads. 

Dan dives into one of the best newspaper stories in the country, which is right here in our backyard, or at least in the western sector of our backyard. It involves the Berkshire Eagle, a daily based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, that was once regarded as one of the best small papers in the country. Then it fell into the hands of Alden Global Capital, so we all know what happened next. This story, though, has a happy ending, at least so far, and I’ll talk about it in our Quick Takes.

Ellen talked recently with Paul Hammel, a reporter doing a story on the loss of small-town newspapers across Nebraska. He focused on a couple who sold their paper, in a town of 1,000, but had to come back after retirement when the new owner quit in the middle of the night.