As the hardreading staff noted earlier today, Digital First Media – the hedge-fund-fueled conglomerate that strips newspapers like cars left overnight on the Cross Bronx Expressway – has stepped up its news sharing among the chain’s Massachusetts dailies.
Yesterday it was Lowell Sun reporter Rick Sobey’s heart-rending front-page story of Anna Aslanian’s taking her own life to escape bullying. That piece wound up on Page One of the Boston Herald as well.
Today the papers criss-crossed: Herald reporter Alexi Cohan’s Special Report on bullying and the nine-year anniversary of South Hadley High student Phoebe Prince’s suicide migrated from the splicey local tabloid to the Sun’s front page.
Cohan’s reporting also appeared in Fitchburg’s Sentinel & Enterprise, another DFM kissin’ cousin.
Given Digital First Media’s neutron bombing of its newsrooms and recent consolidation of its “Northeast Cluster” under a Regional Editor in Chief, it’s fair to assume that we’ll be seeing a lot more of this carbon copycatting in the future.
Not sure, however, that we’ll keep our subscription to the Eastern Massachusetts Herald-Sun-Sentinel.
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 