The Daily Item (Lynn)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| The Daily Item | |
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| Type | Daily newspaper |
| Format | Broadsheet |
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| Owner | Hastings & Sons Publishing Co. Inc. |
| Publisher | Peter Hastings Gamage |
| Editor | Henry J. Collins |
| Founded | 1876, as Lynn City Item |
| Headquarters | 38 Exchange Street, Lynn, Massachusetts 01901  United States |
| Circulation | 16,100 daily in 2007.[1] |
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| Website: itemlive.com | |
The Daily Item is a six-day (Monday through Saturday) morning daily newspaper published in Lynn, Massachusetts, United States. The newspaper has been locally owned by Hastings & Sons Publishing since converting to daily publication in 1877.
In addition to its home city, The Daily Item covers the Massachusetts North Shore cities and towns of Nahant, Saugus, Swampscott, Peabody, Revere, Lynnfield, Marblehead, and circulates in several adjacent towns.
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[edit] History
Founded as the weekly Lynn City Item in 1876, the paper's publisher, Horace N. Hastings, began the Daily Evening Item December 8, 1877.[2] The weekly paper continued publishing until 1913.
It also also inspired a follower: when the Coulter family in Clinton, Massachusetts, started a daily newspaper in 1893, they named it the Daily Item in homage to the Lynn paper, whose founder Horace Hastings was born in Clinton. The Clinton paper no longer publishes daily but does print a twice-weekly called The Item.[3]
Peter Hastings Gamage, the current publisher in Lynn, is the fifth generation of his family to own and run The Daily Item. His father, Peter Gamage, retired as president of the company in 1997. His great-grandfather, Charles H. Hastings, was one of the "sons" in the company name Hastings & Sons Publishing Company.[4]
[edit] Competition
By 1996, the Daily Evening Item was the last family-owned newspaper on the North Shore, its chief competitor, The Salem Evening News, having been bought the year before by Essex County Newspapers, part of the Ottaway division of Dow Jones & Company, which already published four other dailies up the coast. Item Publisher Brian Thayer told employees the paper was "fac[ing] bankruptcy or failure".[5]
The Gamage family hired a new publisher, B.J. Frazier, and cut employee wages. Four years later, Frazier changed the paper's name to The Daily Item, introduced a morning edition and announced an agreement with Essex County Newspapers to print the Lynn paper on their presses. The Daily Item circulation at the time was little over 20,000.[6]
Contrary to reports in 1996 that the newspaper might be sold, possibly to Essex County Newspapers, Frazier in 2000 said the Beverly-based publisher would be treated as "a commercial printing company", not "a potential merger. ... The Daily Item is going to remain fully independent."[6]
[edit] References
- ^ Self-reported figure from The Daily Item Rate Card: Insert Target Market Coverage, accessed July 8, 2007.
- ^ Itemlive.com: About Us, accessed July 8, 2007.
- ^ Fitzsimmons, Karen. "Item Marks 100 Years". Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, Mass.) July 27, 1993.
- ^ "Peter Gamage, Was Publisher of Daily Item". Obituary. The Boston Globe, December 5, 2000.
- ^ Convey, Eric. "Lynn Daily Item Fights for Its Life". Boston Herald, January 16, 1996.
- ^ a b McCabe, Kathy. "New-Look Daily Item Set for Unveiling". The Boston Globe, October 29, 2000.
