PROVIDENCE – Robert C. Bergenheim, the former Boston Herald American publisher who co-founded the Boston Business Journal and Providence Business News, died on Saturday in Naples, Fla. He was 86.
Bergenheim, who retired in 1996, was a seasoned newspaperman when he founded the Boston Business Journal in 1981. Five years later, he launched Providence Business News with his son Roger, who remains the paper’s president and publisher.
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Robert Bergenheim was born in Boston on Jan. 19, 1924. A Navy veteran who served in World War II, he got his start in the newspaper business as a copyboy at The Christian Science Monitor in the 1940s, eventually moving up to become an investigative reporter and city editor. Harvard University awarded him a Nieman Fellowship, a prestigious honor given to experienced journalists, in 1954.
Bergenheim eventually served as manager for the Christian Science Publishing Society, the media arm of the Christian Science Church in Boston, which published The Monitor as well as some 20 magazines, books and recordings at the time.
After a period working for the McClatchy chain in the early 1970s, the Hearst Corp. hired Bergenheim in 1976 to revive its ailing Boston daily, the Herald American, which was getting crushed in a circulation war with The Boston Globe.
Bergenheim ran the paper until 1979, the year before media mogul Rupert Murdoch stepped in and bought the paper just minutes before it was due to shut down. Murdoch shortened the paper’s name to the Boston Herald.
Bergenheim then became vice president of legal affairs, human relations and public relations at Boston University, where he had previously served as a trustee, for three years. He negotiated a series of settlements with BU’s unions during a period of bitter labor strife at the school.
In 1981, Bergenheim launched the Boston Business Journal, seeing an opening for a weekly newspaper focused on the local business scene, and five years later he expanded the franchise to Providence.
In 1987, the Bergenheims sold the Boston Business Journal, Boston Business magazine – another Bergenheim startup – and half-ownership of PBN to a Minneapolis-based publishing company. They bought back full control of the Providence weekly in 1990. In 1995, they also founded the weekly Newport Observer, which closed down a year later.
Bergenheim is survived by his wife, Elizabeth; six children: Roger, Carol, Robert Jr., Kristine, Ronald and Michael; and five grandchildren: Sarah Bergenheim, Christopher Bergenheim, Timothy Chin, Erik Dinardo and Alex Dinardo. Another son, Richard, passed away in 2008.
A private memorial service is planned. In lieu of flowers, the Bergenheim family asked that donations be made to The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.
An earlier version of this story gave incorrect dates for the years during which Robert Bergenheim worked for Boston University and the year in which he sold his publications.
