Taking the first cautious step toward what could be a major shift in policy, Community Newspaper Company (CNC) has decided to publish the union announcements of lesbian and gay couples in the CNC-owned Somerville Journal. A Boston Herald–owned operation that publishes more than 100 papers in Greater Boston and on Cape Cod, CNC has stopped short of allowing such announcements in the wedding pages of its other newspapers — but that too could change.

"We are doing it in Somerville for now, and we’ve had only positive feedback," says Kevin Convey, editor in chief of the CNC chain. "But we are reluctant to roll out a new policy across the map. Somerville was a place that was ready."

Convey says that since the beginning of the year, the Journal has run "six or so" gay-civil-union announcements. Community response to the inclusion of same-sex-marriage announcements has been almost completely favorable, he notes.

Convey credits the Somerville Journal’s editor, Kathleen Powers, with playing an instrumental role in CNC’s decision to alter its policy in Somerville. "[Powers] made a strong argument that a large number of readers in the Somerville community thought this was a good idea," says Convey. He then spoke with Herald publisher Pat Purcell, he says, and "we decided to give it a try."

CNC’s policy of rejecting same-sex-union announcements first came to light last year, when a lesbian couple submitted news of their ceremony and a photo to the Somerville Journal (see "Gay Unions and the Wedding Pages," This Just In, May 31, 2001). At the time, CNC decided not to run gay-union announcements because such relationships are not legally recognized — a policy followed by the Herald and numerous other papers, including the Boston Globe — even though the couple in question had been married in a religious ceremony. (Last year, Boston’s Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders filed a lawsuit against the state seeking legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.)

Convey acknowledges that the new policy at the Somerville Journal is the first baby step on a long road, but says CNC is willing to consider implementing the change at its other papers as well.

"We are going to take it slow. Somerville is not the same as South Boston or Franklin or Amesbury," he says. "I’d like to put an optimistic face on this, but I’ve learned that with 87 small papers and four suburban dailies, it can’t be one-size-fits-all. Every community is different."

For now, anyway, Somerville is the testing ground. And while gay and lesbian wedding announcements have hardly flooded the Journal’s editorial offices, the paper’s readers and the new policy seem to be a suitable match.