Jack Welch toyed with buying it in 2006 for $550 million. (How happy is he that he never pulled the trigger?)
At some point, the NY Times will sell the paper. Maybe. Who will buy it? What could be done to save it? Does it matter?
I am of the belief that local papers play a really big role in setting the city and state political agenda.
Who cares, you say?
The decline hurts reporting — basically, well-monied interests with full-time publicists gain the upper hand, because veteran reporters take buyouts.
The forces of status quo get more traction. Upstarts can be targeted as publicists feed scoops to younger reporters who lack experience or their own contacts. Under pressure to file several stories to contribute to the website, stuff gets rushed into print.
Change becomes harder.
Complex, in-depth reporting becomes less and less frequent. The check and balances get waaay out of whack.
Since the local TV news, which is much more powerful than the paper itself, simply scoops up the days headlines from the newspaper, the decline in reporting ripples through the whole regional media.
1. Do you see a change in Globe reporting?
2. Do you care about the decline of the local paper?
3. Would you like to see a local owner of the Globe?
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p>2. As a subscriber to the Boston Globe & Boston Herald I am very concerned. I blame my generation (Y) and Generation X for the decline in subscriptions. My generation, more than others, has grown up in a world where there is an endless amount of information available – most of it free. Unless you’re plugged into the local scene you probably get most of your local news and information from national outlets, too.
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p>3. I am eagerly looking forward to a state bailout package for the Boston Globe. How many more Mistah Speakah?! How many more papers must fail!
It seems a little amazing that newspapers have been handed a delivery system that is essentially FREE and they can’t figure out how to make it work.
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p>I know, that’s trivializing things, but think about the alternative. Newsprint costs money. Ink costs money. Giant printing presses cost money. Delivery persons cost money. The internet can serve far more people with at a far smaller expense.
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p>I think that the dirty little secret isn’t that newspapers can’t make money with advertising on the internet – I think that the secret is that advertisers continued to support them as long as they did. I think a large part of the “readership” claimed went largely unread, papers delivered but thrown away without being opened as people lead their busy lives.
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p>Have you ever used Craigslist? Sure, it’s free, but it completely lacks features or usability. It’s like a series of post-it notes on a bulletin board. Any newspaper could develop an eBay-like interface with actual categories (like the classified) and trump it in a heartbeat. But none even try.
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p>And the back-and-forth that the internet offers should be a goldmine. It should provide the newspapers with feedback as to what people like to read. It can provide alternate points of view to a story as readers share their opinions. It can provide a source of leads for reporters.
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p>So why can’t they make any money from it? Is it because they are trying to serve two worlds — the print world and the online world — but the revenues can support only one technology?
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p>Is it because they just can’t figure out how to get offline companies to advertise online?
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p>Newspapers have the “creds”. If you were advertising, would you want to appear on Boston.com or on Joe’s Boston Blog? So why is it when I go to Boston.com all I see are larger players? There are tens of thousands of companies in Boston — so why do I get a “Coolsavings.com” banner when I click on a story? Why don’t they bite the bullet for a while, work with 10-20 local companies, give them FREE advertising on Boston.com for a while, see how things play out?
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p>Boston.com is ranked as the 320th largest website in the USA. They are estimated to have 4.3 million viewers per month. And they can’t figure out how to make money from that? Is there no way to get an advertisement out to 4.3 million people on the internet?
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p>Are they so focused on clicks that they forget that the number of clicks in the print edition is always zero? Have they forgotten that there is a difference between advertising and direct response marketing?
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p>Smart. Wonder if they’re doing that. I just perused the website. I couldn’t even find pricing for Boston.com alone. Just for the newspaper. Maybe it’s there somewhere.
All these newspaperes are now in serious jeopardy of being null and void—defunct by this time next year. What is the common thread amongst these papers? C’mon, we all know what it is——they have an agenda, and it ain’t reporting the news.
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p>I have been an avid newspaper reader my entire life. I paid big bucks to have my local rag delivered at home and often bought the Herald and Globe and sometimes the WSJ on the newstand. A month and a half ago I called my local rag and cancelled. They asked why—I replied that your editorial policy is 98% left wing(they don’t deny it) . I could even tolerate 60-40, but ever since last May—they went right off the deep end and after reading a left wing rant last October–I called and cancelled. I used to get the Globe at home as well. The Herald is a so-so paper—- but it has decent local coverage. If the idiots that ran NYT , The Trib, Globe etc had half a brain, they would have stuck to straight reporting rather than being political pitchmen—they killed themselves. Good Riddance.
Congratulations, you have effectively parroted the standard right-wing talking point on newspapers without offering a shred of evidence.
to a local owner would do the paper a world of good, imho. Even an average owner would probably do a better job, because if it were their paper they’d care more. The Globe will always be a tiny subsidiary compared to the NYT. They just don’t care that much, except for the bottom line. The cuts they’ve made have hurt the paper’s long term profitability in order to maximize short term gains.
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p>Boston.com alone should be one of the best sites on the internet. There’s some good aspects to it – it’s not a horrible website – but it’s not a great one, either. Furthermore, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be able to make huge profits from it. Not only do they get shit loads of readers (and could get shit loads more), but they get a lot of people who hit the site nearly every day – even more than once a day. Improve the site, improve the ad revenue they get from the site… and it’ll save the paper. But the focus of the entire endeavor must be the website; the dead tree has to become secondary.
it’s the Worcester TeleGRAM & Gazette.
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p>Just saying.
The Modem & Gazette