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| Press front door at 5 Littleton Road. |
We took a planned break in July and early August, with no paper published for four weeks. We moved into our new space before we left.
When we returned, we began a period of change, as Laura Andrews stepped down as editor, and later decided not to continue as an owner/partner. Two months later Julie Moberly decided not to continue as owner/partner, although she continued to participate as a contributing editor and writer. During this time, we published the paper with editing help from Bill Latimer and Connie Larrabee (a former reporter, writer, and editor for the old Harvard Post), while we recruited a new editor.
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Editor Lynda King
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| Laying out the paper in the Littleton Road office |
On Oct. 1, Lynda King (who had been editor of CNC's Harvard Post) joined us as our first full-time employee, serving as editor. Commenting about the move, King said, "There seemed to be a lot of possibility here. I liked the autonomy and freedom that an independent newspaper offers." The remaining owners/partners continued, at the same token compensation, and that's the how the Press operated until the end of 2008.
The Harvard market was now covered by three newspapers— the Press, the Post, and the Harvard Hillside, part of a chain of papers north and west of Harvard, owned by Nashoba Publishing, which is part of the Lowell Sun empire. In October, when papers are required by postal regulations to report their circulation, we were delighted to see the comparison of paid local subscribers for the three Harvard newspapers—Harvard Press: 999, Harvard Post: 659, Harvard Hillside: 151. Clearly the Press was winning the circulation battle, and advertisers were responding by increasing their placements with us.
Our original estimate of startup costs and first-year operating deficit was for a larger loss than actually occurred, due mostly to the fact that we didn’t incur full rent until we moved to our town center location until July, and we deferred adding more employees. We finished 2007 with a balance in the bank of just over half of the original support contributions.