When the sale was complete in 1995, Fidelity made News-Transcript a division of Community Newspaper Company, which became the second-largest circulation publisher in Massachusetts, with 766,000 weekly copies.
Eleven reporters and editors at the Waltham paper were fired for refusing to cross a picket line; in all, about 60 Transcript employees were laid off for striking.
[5] Between August 1984 and March 1986, the company was sold four times: to Gillett Communications in 1984; then to Thomson Newspapers that December; in April 1985 to William Dean Singleton (head of MediaNews Group)[6]—and eventually, in 1986, to Harte-Hanks.
[7] Harte-Hanks' purchase of Century Newspapers in mid-1986 added six weeklies to News-Transcript Group, in suburbs north and west of Boston.
The Herald's editor, Robert Mead, urged Belmont residents to boycott his former paper, as the two "competitors" began collaborating their coverage and sharing staff, although initially they continued to publish separate editions.