Remembering Stephen Mindich
• Stephen Mindich, the former owner and publisher of The Boston Phoenix and owner of the late, great, WFNX/Boston, died Wednesday, May 23 after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 74 and lived in Newton, MA.
Mindich traced his media roots back to 1966, when he was a graduate student at Boston University. He worked for WBUR-FM and began writing reviews for Boston After Dark, a four-page weekly that focused on arts coverage. He soon became a 50 percent owner of the paper, according to his biography on a website at Northeastern University, which holds the Phoenix‘s archives. Mindich became Boston After Dark‘s sole owner in 1972; that same year, he bought The Cambridge Phoenix and merged the two to form The Boston Phoenix. Mindich worked throughout the successive decades to expand the paper. His media company, Phoenix Media/Communications Group, established papers in other metropolitan areas including Miami, Portland, ME, Providence, RI and Worcester, MA. Mindich also returned to his radio roots with the 1983 acquisition of WLYN-FM/Lynn, MA and the launch of Alternative WFNX.
Much like his newspaper expansion, Mindich also grew his WFNX network on WWRX/Westerly-Providence, WPHX-AM & FM/Sanford, ME and WFEX/Peterborough, NH. He sold WWRX to Entercom in 2004, and in 2012 sold WFNX to iHeartMedia for $14.5 million. He also spun off the New Hampshire and Maine stations around that same time. In the face of a rapidly changing media landscape, Mindich shuttered The Boston Phoenix in March 2013. After the closure, Mindich worked to sustain The Providence Phoenix and The Portland Phoenix, but by the following year, The Providence Phoenix shut down and The Portland Phoenix was sold to Portland News Club LLC.
“The people around him and the company became what they became because of his relentless nature to do what he wanted to do, with the goal of making a difference in every aspect — in culture and politics and social initiatives,” said Brad Mindich, Mindich’s son and the former president of the company. “He had a relentless desire to achieve and do good. It’s a very powerful legacy.” In 2016, Mindich was inducted into the New England Newspaper Hall of Fame for having “shaped the course of New England media, culture, politics, and civic life.”
In addition to his wife, son, and daughter-in-law, Mindich leaves two stepsons, Michael Michaud of San Diego and David Michaud of Chicago; his brother, Bruce, of Ridgewood, N.J.; and two grandsons. A celebration of Mindich’s life will be held on Wednesday, May 30 at 4pm at Pine Brook Country Club in Weston, MA. The Boston Globe has a really nice retrospective of Mindich’s life and career.
