New Worcester paper launching in 2012?

Plans are afoot to launch a bi-weekly print Worcester Progressive in 2012. Am I right in thinking this would be the first new media brand in the city since the experiment with a Worcester edition of Spare Change in late 2010, and Happiness Pony’s April 2011 launch?

While we’re thinking about dead trees, Acoustic Java now has an original copy of William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist newspaper The Liberator on display.

Jordan Berg Powers, via e-mail:

Small nonprofit Worcester community paper is looking for journalists, editors, photographers and cartoonists to start in early 2012.

Next meeting:

December 18th at 7:30pm
Community Realty
131 Highland St.

Worcester, MA

Why launch a paper?

Newsprint still remains the most effective means for communicating to the full breadth of Worcester’s many communities and to underserved constituencies. And certainly on-line content will also be part of this initiative.

Worcester deserves a multilingual paper that adequately reflects the city’s incredible diversity, real issues and vast potential. Worcester deserves a paper that uplifts, inspires and empowers us to be critical of where we are going.

The time is now to come together to speak for and to our community. The community paper has $3,000 for 3 months to get this bi-weekly paper off the ground.

This Bi-weekly paper will foster an advocacy journalism pioneered by Ida B. Wells, Upton Sinclair, Nellie Bly and Fredrick Douglas.

Statement of Purpose:

The Worcester Progressive (working name) is a nonprofit newspaper created to give voice to the majority of Worcesterites who are disaffected by the current power structure and its leaders. Its purpose is to bring light to the Wormtown that Worcsterites actually see and advocate for the people long forgotten by the city’s leaders.

This Bi-Weekly multilingual paper will be a voice to move this community forward. The Worcester Progressive will focus on substantial journalism that takes on decision-makers, empowers our community to be critical and inspires readers with the amazing work already being done.

Worcester is a great American city. But it needs YOU, the Worcesterites to take this city back, to be a partner in creating bold visions for its future, and to work together to make it happen.

We hope that The Worcester Progressive can be a place to start this much needed reform. Hope and vision, matched with strong advocacy and an unending love for our city can make Worcester a model for Massachusetts and the country as a whole. We just have to start believing that we the people can make it happen.

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