Concord Monitor Parent Company Gets New CEO

CONCORD, NH — A long-time Massachusetts newspaper publisher and leader in the sector has been named the new chief executive officer of the parent company of the Concord Monitor.

Chuck Goodrich, who most recently was a publisher with GateHouse in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, was named CEO of Newspapers of New England late last month. He takes over the position from Aaron Julien who was moved up to chairman of NNE after the retirement of John Kuhns. The company also named Dan McClory, the publisher of the Valley News, to the CFO position.

"By adjusting responsibilities and spreading the work out, we can spend more time and attention on finding new funding solutions while also managing daily operations — without increasing management staffing," Julien said in an email to employees. "This past year has been our toughest ever, but the fact is we're in good shape thanks to your hard work, as well as the difficult choices we made to ensure our long-term success."

Newspapers of New England holdings in New Hampshire include the Monitor, the Valley News out of Lebanon, which covers Upper Valley communities in Vermont, too, and the Monadnock Ledger-Transcript in Peterborough. The company also has a number of newspapers in northern and western Massachusetts including the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Northhampton, the Recorder of Greenfield, the Athol Daily News, which was purchased by the company in 2017, and the Amherst Bulletin.

For close to four decades, Goodrich has been involved in newspaper acquisitions, publishing, and sales, mostly in Massachusetts.

He started his career at Harte Hanks as a publisher and marketing director and was involved in the company expanding into the newspaper sector, acquiring a number of independent titles, mainly in the Metro West and Northwest suburbs of Boston, in the early 1980s. He was instrumental in the growth of Community Newspaper Company — a division of Fidelity Investments, that purchased many more newspapers in Massachusetts, as the Johnson family attempted to build a media empire to rival the Boston Globe. The company, at one point, had close to 100 newspapers.

Pat Purcell, the owner of the Boston Herald, purchased the company and Goodrich stayed on, managing the company's North and North Shore titles. When Purcell sold the company to GateHouse Media, Goodrich became a regional president of the company, while still being involved in sales, for more than a dozen years. He was involved in overseeing a number of titles in Massachusetts and the Seacoast titles for the company in New Hampshire. Goodrich also worked as a consultant via Venture Growth Partners, a Boston-based firm which allows executives to connect with companies in need of leadership on a part-time or consulting basis.

"I'm excited to join the talented team at NNE and look forward to building on what has been accomplished," he said in a statement.

The leadership changes were implemented on Tuesday.

The Monitor has been publishing in the city, in some form, since the 1860s. The family that currently owns the company has owned it for about 60 years. As with a number of legacy media sectors, newspaper publishing has been in a volatile state. The Monitor moved its printing operations out of the building off Sewalls Falls Road, which has also been on the market for a number of years. Residents have been speculating for years about what could be developed on the 100-plus acre parcel — especially in the wake of the development at Exit 17, and a possible connector road between the two hubs.

The newspaper, which has always had a left-of-center editorial policy, often advocating for higher taxes on everyone, was granted a property tax abatement by the city in 2018, valued at around $14,000 annually.

The property has also been eyed by the Concord School District as a possible location for a new middle school even though it is located in the Merrimack Valley School District.

Editor's note: Goodrich was the publisher of newspapers I edited between 2007 and 2011.

Got a news tip? Send it to tony.schinella@patch.com. View videos on Tony Schinella's YouTube.com channel or Rumble.com channel.