Taking a Shot But Losing the Battle

After just 19 issues, Cambridge’s newest newspaper broke some hard news — about itself. Colleen Walsh of the Boston Globe wrote about it today.

The avowed goal of Cambridge Day, an eight-page daily broadsheet, was to offer a mix of local news, comprehensive listings of goings-on about town, and a venue for residents to vent or share ideas. Publisher Marc Levy started the paper on Halloween.

”I felt like Cambridge just deserved more,” says Levy, 36, a former Boston Herald copy editor who sank $40,000 of his own money into the paper. ”If we just had a little more money, we would have gotten there.”

Levy ran the operation from his one-bedroom apartment in Porter Square, where he had a few desks, bookshelves, one full-time paid staffer (whom he had to let go), and a stable of volunteers who popped in and out.

The paper cost $5,000 a week to print. The money didn’t add up: Levy says he earned about $2,500 in ads, though he had about $7,500 pledged before he stopped publishing. He never found any investors.

“It’s my fault that I got impatient and decided to do it myself and essentially gamble and lose the gamble.” Levy said.