Tab Communications Inc. , based first in Newton, Massachusetts, USA, then in nearby Needham, was a weekly newspaper publisher in Greater Boston before being bought by Fidelity Investments in 1992 and dissolved into Community Newspaper Company in 1996. The company, founded in 1979, steadily expanded from one newspaper to 14 and made one major acquisition, buying its competitor NewsWest in 1989. Most of the Tabs are still published by CNC, now a division of GateHouse Media, and are still named after their tabloid format, although they are now broadsheets. Three alternative weekly advertising... representatives formed their own company in 1979, publishing the Brookline Tab and Newton Tab as advertising-heavy community papers. Two years later, prompted by the closure of The Real Paper, the company expanded into Boston and Cambridge. At first, CEO Russel Pergament acknowledged that the papers gave softball coverage to some political topics, but said his papers were happy to "live on crumbs from The Globe's table" -- to report the local news the big-city daily was missing.
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