Many residents joke about the City's only real newspaper and condemn it as dealing with old news and flower shows. However compared to equivalent papers elsewhere in Britain, it's lively and informative (yes, really!). However the one thing that is missing is investigative journalism.
Its Community Challenge and Shop A Pusher initiatives have been big successes: it's made a difference to the community.
As regards the Internet, it's no surprise the Web site is in association with UUNET Pipex, since they have such a cozy relationship. Almost every bit of UUNET Pipex news is covered in the CEN, yet they rarely cover other Internet Service Providers. In 1996 the Business News section ran an Internet Q&A column, provided by Pipex. Pipex's founder Peter Dawe left it in 1996 and the CEN has followed his career and pronouncements since. In 1999 they switched allegiance to PSINet and launched a free Internet dial-up service.
Every minor snippet about Cambridge University gets plenty of column inches, whereas the community university, Anglia, rarely gets more than an afterthought mention except for controversial matters such as planning permission, though the balance has been improving since 1996.
Similarly, the paper seems keen to side with big commercial employers, such as Philips, rather than the City residents they employ.
Founded in 1888, the CEN moved to Newmarket Road in 1962 from cramped St Andrews St. offices next to the New Theatre. It was the Cambridge Daily News and the Cambridge Independent Chronicle weekly then. There was quite a community based on the Fountain pub: the Police & Fire HQs and the GPO (BT) HQs were all nearby.
In the nineteenth century the Cambridge Chronicle and University Journal was distinctly pro-University, for instance siding with it around 1860 in a series of disturbances, University arrests and subsequent court cases.