Brookline.News finds its place in the long history of local news in Brookline. It starts with The Young American, founded by two teenage boys, and includes The Cypress (formerly The Sagamore), the Brookline High School student newspaper founded in 1895 that remains the town’s oldest and longest running local news outlet.
Take a look at the history below. Thanks to Ken Liss, president of the Brookline Historical Society, for this history. Images via the Public Library of Brookline and other sources.
1855-1858: The Young American Two teenage boys, Frederick O. Wellman and William G. Wilson, produce Brookline’s first known newspaper, a monthly four-page publication with local, national, and international news items, poetry, puzzles and games, advertisements, and more.
October 1870: Brookline Transcript Bradford Kingman, a lawyer and chronicler of local history, began publishing the weekly Transcript, citing “the need of some means of making known our wants, and some method of receiving and communicating information upon the topics of the day.” It would last through May 1873.
July 1873: Brookline Independent The Independent, first published two months after the last issue of the Transcript, took a strong stand against the proposed annexation of Brookline to Boston. (The Transcript had been neutral on the question.) The paper ceased publication in November, a month after the town’s voters overwhelmingly rejected annexation. In the image above, the Independent crows of the defeat of annexation.
May 1874: Brookline Chronicle Brookline’s long-running newspaper, the Chronicle, began publishing out of offices in the Colonnade Buildings in Brookline Village. It would continue, through different owners, mergers with other papers, and other changes, until its final issue (as the Chronicle-Citizen) in March 1994. Image is of the offices of the Chronicle: upstairs at Harvard Hall, corner of Harvard and Washington Streets in 1901, left, and at 306 Harvard Street in Coolidge Corner in 1936.
August 1886 and May 1899: Brookline News and The Suburban These two short-lived newspapers – the News (1886-1888) and the Suburban (1899-1901) – each ran for less than three years as competitors to the Chronicle.
January 1895: The Sagamore, Brookline High School’s newspaper, renamed the Cypress in 2023, is the oldest and longest-running newspaper in the town. The first editor-in-chief, Arthur Spencer, was the son of the longtime publisher and editor of the Brookline Chronicle. He later joined his father at the Chronicle.
November 14, 1903: Brookline Press The Press introduced new features to Brookline’s newspapers, including photos and illustration, as well as special articles and sections aimed at woman readers. In 1913, under a new publisher, it was renamed the Brookline Townsman.
October 4, 1919: Merger of Chronicle and Townsman The acquisition by the Chronicle of the 16-year-old Townsman led to a new paper (keeping the Chronicle name). The first issue of the new paper was longer, at 32 pages, than the previous length of the two papers combined.
December 5, 1930: Brookline Regent / News / Journal News / Tribune The first new Brookline newspaper in 27 years, this paper operated (with multiple name changes) for a little more than three-and-a-half years. It started as the Regent in December 1930; changed to the News one month later; shut down in March 1932; re-appeared as the Journal News three weeks after that; and, after another brief hiatus, ran as the Tribune from August through December 1932.
March 14, 1935: Brookline Citizen The Chronicle faced its first real competition in years with the debut of the Brookline Citizen. The new paper – the publisher also had papers in Allston and Brighton – was supported entirely by advertising. (The subscription-based Chronicle had lowered it price during the Depression from 10-cents to 5-cents per issue and from $3 to $1 per year.)
July 2, 1959: Brookline Chronicle-Citizen G. Russell Phinney, publisher of the Citizen papers, purchased the Brookline Chronicle in 1951. He continued to publish the Chronicle and the Citizen as separate papers (with much of the same content) until 1959, when they were merged into the Brookline Chronicle-Citizen. (It was renamed the Brookline Citizen in 1984.)
April 25, 1979: The TAB Three former employees of Boston alternative weeklies the Real Paper and the Phoenix – two had worked in advertising and one in graphics – launched a new tabloid newspaper called the TAB, with Brookline and Boston editions. The advertising-driven paper was distributed to local households at no cost.
May 17, 1984: Brookline Standard The publishers of the Brookline TAB launched a second, more news-driven paper in a broadsheet format. One critic told the Boston Globe that “a town which could barely support one good paper now has three mediocre papers.” The Standard would last just over a year and a half.
October 18, 1990: Brookline Journal The Brighton Messenger Company, publisher of the Allston-Brighton Journal, added a new Brookline Journal to the company’s roster of weekly papers. The first issue included a pledge “to bring a better understanding of the needs of the diverse groups who make up the community,” including different ethnic groups, children and seniors, businesses and community activists.
January 21, 1994: Final issue of Brookline Citizen The newspaper that began as the Brookline Chronicle in 1874 ended its long run as the owner – the paper’s third in a decade – shut it down amid declining circulation and revenue. The assets of the paper were purchased by the Journal, which renamed that paper the Brookline Citizen-Journal. It folded in December 1995.
November 6, 2003: Brookline Bulletin The Bulletin Newspapers group’s entry into the Brookline market was another short-lived one, published only until May 2005.
2006 and 2010: Wicked Local Brookline and Brookline Patch Changes in ownership, financial woes, and the growth of online media all affected the state of Brookline’s last remaining newspaper, the Brookline TAB. In 2006, the TAB papers, including Brookline, introduced an online component under the Wicked Local banner. Four years later it was joined by a Brookline version of the online-only news site Patch.
Spring 2022: End of the Brookline TAB The Gannett Company announced it was shutting down 19 eastern Massachusetts newspapers, including the Brookline TAB. (A Northeastern University journalism professor noted that “In fact, many of these titles have been zombie papers for quite some time, carrying little if any local news.”) The move left Brookline without its own local newspaper for the first time in nearly 150 years.