The Westfield news has an office staff of 25 and about a dozen motor-route drivers, and some 80 schoolchildren still deliver the afternoon daily paper in their neighborhoods.
Patrick BerryWESTFIELD –The Westfield News has a new owner, a new look and has taken a new name.
“It’s a great opportunity,” says Patrick R. Berry, now president of the Westfield News Group. “The community-news business is not only surviving, but it is thriving.”
The six-day-a-week newspaper, which has a circulation of 4,500, is now printed by The Republican in Springfield and includes color photography for the first time.
Berry also dropped the word “Evening” from the paper’s name, he said because news is an all-day, every-day business now. To that end, he’s promising a new website and new outreach efforts using social media like Twitter and Facebook.
Berry, 43, is a Westfield native who worked for the Neilsen Co. in its television-ratings business and also as the advertising sales manager for WGGB Channel 40 television in Springfield for five years.
Berry didn’t disclose the purchase price in an interview last week, but said he’d been negotiating with the newspaper’s previous owners, Allbritton Communications, of Arlington, Va,. , since the summer of 2009.
E. Carol Mazza, who served as publisher of the Westfield Evening News for Allbritton Communications, died in October of 2008.
Allbritton owns television stations in eight markets including Washington, D.C., and the Politico.com website, according to an online corporate profile. It also owned the former Washington Star back in the 1970s.
“This was the last of their newspapers,” Berry said.
His purchase deal also included The Pennysaver, a free shopper-type publication, and two weeklies, The Longmeadow News and Enfield Press.
The sale became official on June 24, and the first edition under Berry’s leadership was the following Monday.
Berry said the paper’s existing 1971 Goss Community Press was outdated, couldn’t print in color and will be sold.
“The facility at The Republican was already set for the future,” Berry said. “Print media needs to print color photos and color ads. It was paramount.”
The Westfield news has an office staff of 25 and about a dozen motor-route drivers, and some 80 schoolchildren still deliver the afternoon daily paper in their neighborhoods.
“I think that’s what makes us unique,” Berry said. “Those kids do a fantastic job.”
