The Harvard Press gained national attention this week, featured in an article by James Fallows in The Atlantic magazine’s online series “Our Towns.” Fallows is a longtime correspondent for the Atlantic and also writes for the New Yorker, NPR, and other national news organizations.
Fallows chose a quote from Harvard Press publisher Worth Robbins as the article’s title: “We’re Doing It For Love of Community.” Robbins said he spoke with Fallows in a lengthy telephone interview during which he could hear the writer pounding away on his keyboard. Fallows’ main interest, Robbins said, was in the financial side of the paper.
Looking at the plight of newspapers large and small across the country, Fallows writes, “The central message in all these reports has been that ownership structure matters.” If return on equity is the only measure of value, he says, very few aspects of a community’s social life would survive—not libraries, not parks, not museums, not schools, and not newspapers.
As a case in point, Fallows surveys the history of the Harvard Post, from its inception as a locally owned paper in the 1970s, to its purchase by Community News Company in 2003, its takeover by the private equity-based chain GateHouse Media, and its eventual closure in 2013.
The Harvard Press began publication in 2006, with the goal of being a locally owned newspaper once again covering local news. Robbins told Fallows of the current effort to put the paper on a sound financial base by seeking sustaining subscriptions and presenting fundraising events such as this weekend’s program by Globe journalist Tina Cassidy discussing her new book about the 19th Amendment, moderated by GroundTruth founder Charles Sennott. The goal, Robbins said, is to allow the Press to grow, not just survive.
In an overview of the “Our Towns” series, Fallows wrote, “The central premise is that the most positive and practical developments in this stage of American life are happening at the local and regional level—but that most Americans have barely heard of those developments except in the communities where they themselves live.” Fallows presented the Press as one of those positive and practical developments.
“Is the Harvard Press’s answer ‘the’ answer for all struggling local papers?” Fallows asks. “Of course not. It’s up to the people of Harvard, Mass. to see whether they can keep this model of journalism going even in their one community.”
Read the full article in The Atlantic’s “Our Towns” series HERE.
