Four years before Cape Cod Publishing was formed,
Fidelity Investments had provided some financing in Cape publisher Barry Paster's successful bid for
North Shore Weeklies. The
North Shore papers eventually became the first component of Fidelity's newspaper chain, which came to be known as
Community Newspaper Company. In 1990, Paster sold his original paper,
The Register of
Yarmouth—to Fidelity, which also picked up
The Cape Codder of
Orleans, a twice-weekly covering the
Outer Cape, from longtime publisher Malcolm Hobbs. The company grew substantially in 1991 with the purchase of 12
weekly newspapers, known as ‘’Cape Cod Newspapers’’, from
Memorial Press Group, including the Yarmouth Sun, Dennis Bulletin,
Bourne Courier,
Cape Cod News,
Cape Cod Oracle (later, split into Oracles in Harwich, Brewster, Orleans, Wellfleet, Eastham and the ‘’Chatham Current’’),
Mashpee Messenger and
Village Broadsider. The combined circulation of
The Register and the
Cape Codder was given, at the time, as 27,000; the new additions—two paid weeklies and 10 free papers—added 60,000. Cape Cod Publishing held on to this core through the mid-1990s, until it was dissolved in early 1996. CNC realigned its operating units by geography, although the Cape papers were transferred wholesale to CNC's new "Cape Unit", a division of the South Unit. By 1999, several of the Cape papers had closed or been consolidated:
Cape Cod News was gone, and the company's Bourne, Mashpee and Sandwich properties were consolidated into one publication, the
Upper Cape Codder. Later separated, the Bourne and Sandwich newspapers were closed again by GateHouse/Gannett in the summer of 2021. == Properties ==