Worcester Is, Apparently, The Worst Place In U.S. For Marriage

WORCESTER, MA — Take this one with a grain of salt, or maybe a blade of grass.

A lawn care company on Wednesday released a list of the 150 "best cities to get (and stay) married" in the U.S., and Worcester came in dead last.

Wormtown scored so poorly, according to the company, due to the low number of wedding planners and venues, and rates of divorces, separations and unmarried people.

The authors say they used data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Yelp to create the ranking. But without being able to examine the exact data points, it's difficult to verify if Worcester is actually the worst place for marriage (or, alternately, if Fremont, Calif., is the best).

Lists like this aren't meant to be scrutinized, just republished as clickbait. In exchange, the lawn care company hopes to get its name seen by thousands of eyeballs — basically, free advertising. This isn't the company's first ranking. It has recently produced eye-catching rankings on the "horniest" and "most relaxed" cities.

Pitching local news reporters on wacky data stories is part of a larger strategy used by thousands of companies across the country to get free publicity. Every day, public relations workers send mass emails to local reporters hoping to get a press hit. Here's a sampling of some weird email subject lines sent to Patch just in the last few days:

• "Young Americans Rushed to Buy Life Insurance During COVID, Over 20% Regret It"
• "story idea: rise of tech-enabled, remote mechanics changes the car repair game"
• "Expert available-- The art of negotiating, from the man who made deals with Fidel Castro"
• "1 in 5 Bay Staters have already given up on 2021 New Year’s resolutions (poll)"
• "Yes, Russian Ransomware Attackers ARE Coming For Your Passwords"

Most journalists send these emails to the trash folder. But sometimes a local reporter will see a city or town they cover ranked as the best or worst by some measure, and that ends up as a fun little story that gets a lot of clicks.

Sometimes the pitches are almost dangerously tone-deaf. On May 27, a home security company sent out a list of the 100 safest cities in the U.S., and named Hopkinton as No. 1, unaware of the recent tragedy that rocked the town. Also in May, a Dutch website drove residents of Texas and North Carolina bonkers when it ranked the best BBQ cities in the U.S.

As far as the marriage situation in Worcester, the U.S. Census American Community Survey (ACS), which only looks at the wider Worcester, MA-CT Metro Area (population: about 947,000) shows divorces and separations didn't change too much in five-year estimates from 2014 and 2019:

• 2019 share divorced: 11 percent
• 2019 share separated: 1.7 percent
• 2014 share divorced: 10.6 percent
• 2014 share separated: 1.7 percent

The share of married people did drop from about 48.8 percent in 2014 to 47.6 percent in 2019. The share of unmarried people rose slightly from 33 percent in 2014 to 34 percent in 2019.

Sprinkling in data on the rate of wedding planners per 100,000 people and the number of chapels (which the lawn company did) makes the calculations more exotic, but doesn't necessarily mean Worcester is worse or better for married people than Atlanta, Los Angeles or Toledo, Ohio, which is apparently the second-worst city for marriage.

Patch asked the lawn company for comment on why it created the marriage list besides just the publicity. A spokesperson said weddings sometimes take place on lawns, therefore it's relevant for people visiting the website.

"Our main goal is to find relevant topics that our readers will find interesting and timely. And with wedding season coming back in full swing — outdoor weddings (on lawns and gardens) are trending this year — we thought that this might be helpful to anyone planning a wedding or at the least, something to keep in mind for our readers," the spokesperson said.