CentralMassNews.com, a network of 10 community news sites in suburban Worcester, has been acquired by Main Street Connect, according to an announcement made on Thursday. The company will soon comprise 52 sites in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Westchester County, N.Y.
Jennifer Lord Paluzzi, a GateHouse refugee whose initial project, the Greater Grafton Blog, grew into what is now CentralMassNews, spoke to my students in February 2010. Here’s an account of her talk by Mary Ann Georgantopoulos, who has since graduated from Northeastern.
Paluzzi and publisher Jack Schofield will hold significant positions in Main Street Connect. “And we’re hiring!” says Paluzzi.
Frankly, I’m always sorry to see a grassroots news organization give up some of its independence. But this may give CentralMassNews the critical mass it needs to compete with other corporate players, especially AOL’s Patch.com. Paluzzi and Schofield are both great examples of journalistic entrepreneurship, and I wish them success.
Congratulations to CentralMassNews.com, a network of hyperlocal sites in the Worcester area that is celebrating its second anniversary. With a reported 150,000 unique visitors a month, the sites are a locally owned journalism success story, and a tribute to the hard work invested by publisher Jack Schofield and editor Jennifer Lord Paluzzi.
Steve Garfield
We’ve been lucky to have some terrific guest speakers in my Reinventing the News class at Northeastern this semester.
On Monday we heard from Steve Garfield, one of the original video bloggers and the author of the just-released book “Get Seen: Online Video Secrets to Building Your Business.” I bought my signed copy from Garfield right after class and look forward to reading it.
Among other things, he’s got some information on how to use iMovie ’09, a great little video-editing program with a woeful lack of documentation. He also gave a demonstration of live video via Qik and showed examples of his citizen journalism, which have appeared everywhere from Rocketboom to CNN and the BBC.
Our other guest speakers have been Jennifer Lord Paluzzi, who became the editor of a thriving group of community Web sites called CentralMassNews.com after being laid off by the MetroWest Daily News, and Stephanie Miller, director of digital media for CBS Boston Television, who’s in charge of the Declare Your Curiosity project at WBZ-TV.
Media | Dan Kennedy | 
May 20, 2011 8:32 am | 
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