The Globe is 135 today. What do you think the corporation should do to ensure it thrives for another 135 years?
Personally, I think they should try to remake themselves into an internet-based news community supported by a mix of advertising and subscription revenues: a New England-focused combination of Boston.com, Facebook.com, BlueMassGroup.com and Monster.com, just to name a few potential constituent elements. Or maybe they should think bigger, and try to be a worldwide leader in the areas we are best at, for example biotech and education — not necessarily incompatible with my initial suggestion. In the largest sense, I think their future is on the internet, and it is interactive (many to many) not broadcast (one to many). They need to invest as much in web technology as they did in printing presses in an earlier time. But those are just my ideas, and what do I know. Anyway, Happy Birthday Globe! Political discourse in Massachusetts would be far less interesting without you: live long, and prosper.
The backstory: On this day in 1872, according to the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, “a brand new newspaper hit the streets of Boston. Costing four cents, the Globe had twice the number of pages as most competitors for the same price. But even at a bargain price, the “semi-literary” paper with reports on Sunday church sermons, art exhibits, and new books attracted few readers. Within a year, only one of the six original investors remained- Eben Jordan, founder of the Jordan Marsh Department Store. Believing the paper could be a commercial success, he hired Charles H. Taylor to make it into one. With financial backing from Jordan and the ability to respond to changing trends, Taylor turned the paper around. By the 1890s, it had become the dominant paper in New England.”
So it took almost 20 years of indipendent financial backing to make the Glob a success. Hmmmm….
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The most apt contemporary counterpart to Eben Jordan would be…..Jack Welch? Naaahhhh….