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Updated September 11, 2025, at 2:55 p.m.
The Cambridge Day announced it is hiring former Nieman Fellow and Boston Globe articles editor Michael F. Fitzgerald as the newspaper’s editor-in-chief, the first leadership shake-up since the paper was acquired by a nonprofit last year.
The paper was acquired by Cambridge News Inc., a local nonprofit, in November of 2024. The Day was previously run by Marc Levy — the founder and the publication’s only full-time staff member. Now, Cambridge News Inc. has hired a fundraising consultant and plans to hire new writers and editors, while keeping Levy on as a paid staff member.
Fitzgerald said his primary focus will be on widening the depth and scope of the Day’s coverage, including of sports, universities, and Cambridge businesses.
“I’m trying to figure out how to expand our coverage and do it in a way where we are consistently covering issues that we think matter to community residents,” he said.
Fitzgerald’s hiring is an early step in revamping and expanding the paper. He is an award-winning reporter and editor who has been published in the New York Times, the Economist, MIT Technology Review, and Fast Company. A press release from the Day boasted endorsements from his peers from the Globe, the Wall Street Journal, and the Chicago Tribune.
“Michael Fitzgerald is a talented editor and a very solid news pro,” Richard J. “Dick” Tofel ’79, assistant publisher of the Wall Street Journal, said in the press release. “Cambridge Day is lucky to get him.”
Fitzgerald worked with Tofel during his time as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Public Health Magazine. After it was shuttered in February due to budget cuts, Fitzgerald worked in freelance journalism and held an interim communications position at the Yale School of Public Health.
Levy, who was the only full-time writer for the publication until the acquisition, told The Crimson in March that he was “burnt out.” After running the paper for 15 years, Levy said he was not a member of the leadership team involved in making the final decision on Fitzgerald’s hiring.
Richard A. Harriman, a board member of Cambridge News, said that the board took care to find a candidate who would work well with Levy, and that the senior editor gave the “green light” on the editor-in-chief after meeting to discuss their visions for the paper.
“If he had had serious reservations and thought this was the wrong person, that would have been a very, very serious part of our process, and we may well not have continued forward,” Harriman said.
The Day has struggled alongside other local newspapers as the medium has turned digital, slashing revenue for smaller businesses. The Cambridge Chronicle, once the oldest weekly newspaper in the United States, shut its doors in 2022.
Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab classified Cambridge as a “News Desert,” as there is no full-time professional newspaper in the city. Coverage is limited to student newspapers like The Crimson, in addition to The Boston Globe’s “Camberville” section and smaller-scale local papers like the Day and Spare Change News.
Fitzgerald is the first full-time hire that the board has made since its purchase of the Day, making him one of two full-time employees, including Levy, who will stay on as the paper’s senior editor.
Levy said he hopes Fitzgerald’s hire will help even out his workload and believes it will allow the paper to cover the city more extensively.
“As far as I know, we want to do more, not less,” Levy said.
—Staff writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com.
