Lord Paluzzi visits Northeastern!

Jennifer Lord Paluzzi that is. She is the editor of centralmassnews.com, an online news community that currently services the towns of Grafton, Millbury, Auburn, and a few more Central Massachusetts towns.

Now while Paluzzi isn’t royalty per se, she does have a majestic story, a story that involves fighting the man (and winning!).  She started out as a journalist for a community newspaper that was, like most, owned by corporations.  Then, out of nowhere, she was laid off from her job.

But instead of spending her time collecting welfare checks, she decided to use her new found time to report on her community with a website that reports local activities, free from the pressures of corporate neck-breathers.

Paluzzi really saw the need for this site, however, with the onset of a tragic event.  Kevin Vulter, a former player for the Grafton High School football team, the Indians.  He tragically passed away in an automobile accident at the age of 20.

When Kevin’s uncle, Jack Schofield tried to get the local paper to print a memorial of Kevin and his proposition to put up lights on the football field in his honor.  The paper agreed, but hesitated for months and they never saw the memorial or the proposition printed.

Finally, Jack teamed up with Jennifer and got the ball rollin’.  They posted the memorial on Jennifer’s site, put up the proposition, and now the Indians have the honor of playing under the Friday night lights.

This inspired Jennifer and Jack to finally decide to start their own venture: and independent news website, free from the grip of corporate fists.

It all started with thegraftontimes.com (now thedailygrafton.com), which chose to cover everything (and more!) that’s in the local print edition (and in a timely manner, too!).

But Jennifer didn’t stop her entrepreneurship expedition there.  She continued to host news websites for amny of the surrounding towns in central mass, which expanded to the website you see today (with The Daily Northbourough coming soon!).

What Jennifer has done, in my opinion, anyway, is really shown the public where journalism is going, and the natural shift it is going to take: independent, citizen journalism that meets the demands of the public when they want it.  She gets great advertising on her website, and she also has a great method of reasearch:

We are probably the only business that encourages their employees to spend at elast 30 minutes a day on facebook. – Jennifer Paluzzi

All I can say is keep up the good fight, Jennifer; you are puttingt the news back where it belongs: in the public’s hands.