The April 6, 2007 front page of The Enterprise |
|
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | GateHouse Media |
| Publisher | Rick Daniels |
| Editor | Chazy Dowaliby |
| Founded | ca. 1881 |
| Headquarters | 1324 Belmont Street, Brockton, Massachusetts 02303 United States |
| Circulation | 31,352 daily, 36,824 Sunday in 2007[1] |
| Official website | enterprisenews.com |
The Enterprise is an afternoon daily newspaper published in Brockton, Massachusetts, United States. The newspaper is considered a newspaper of record for Brockton and several suburban communities of northern Bristol and Plymouth counties, and southern Norfolk County, Massachusetts. Its office is at 1324 Belmont St., Unit 102, Brockton, MA 02301.
Owned in common for a decade with one of its chief competitors, The Patriot Ledger of Quincy, The Enterprise in mid-2006 was purchased, along with The Patriot Ledger, by GateHouse Media, which also owns several nearby weekly newspapers and later purchased The Enterprise's other local competitor, the Taunton Daily Gazette.
The Fuller-Thompson family owned The Enterprise for 115 years prior to its 1996 sale to joint venture headed by incumbent president Myron F. Fuller and new majority owner James F. Plugh, who was said to have paid between US$20 million and US$30 million. Plugh formed a new corporate parent for the paper, Newspaper Media Corporation, and expressed a desire to buy other New England newspapers. The newspaper's circulation at the time was 50,000, daily, and 62,000, Sunday.[2]
After unsuccessfully pursuing the Gazette, Plugh in 1997 purchased The Patriot Ledger and its chain of weeklies, Memorial Press Group, paying an estimated US$60 million to US$70 million.[3] As newspapers moved to the Internet, the two afternoon dailies—whose reporters competed in 12 suburban towns—established a common Website, southofboston.com.
Six years later, however, Plugh yielded a majority stake in what was now known as Enterprise NewsMedia to Heritage Partners Inc., an investment firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. Heritage was said to have paid US$113 million to buy into The Enterprise, The Patriot Ledger and Memorial Press Group.[4] Plugh remained on board as publisher until 2004, when he became vice president of Enterprise NewsMedia and hired Kirk A. Davis as publisher.[5]
In 2006, Enterprise NewsMedia was sold to Liberty Publishing, which changed its name to GateHouse Media, as part of a massive, US$225 million deal including Community Newspaper Company and its four Massachusetts dailies.
The New England Newspaper Association named The Enterprise as its Newspaper of the Year for 2007 among papers with daily circulations of 22,500 to 35,500. The Enterprise received the same honor for 2006 from the New England Press Association, and managing editor Steve Damish was named Journalist of the Year for his drug addiction series titled "Wasted Youth." [6]
In January 2009, Kirk Davis was named president and chief operating officer of GateHouse Media. Rick Daniels is publisher of the Ledger and the Enterprise and chief executive officer of GateHouse New England.
Chazy Dowaliby is the editor of The Ledger and The Enterprise.