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What’s next for the shrinking Globe

March 26, 2009 By dkennedy

Working harder isn’t going to do it once the Boston Globe has finished with its current round of 50 reductions to the newsroom staff. Once that process has been completed, the news staff will have shrunk from about 550 full-time journalists (or their equivalent) in 2000 to roughly 330. That means the Globe will, of necessity, be a fundamentally different paper.

This Friday, I’m going to be talking about the future of local news on “Radio Boston,” on WBUR (90.9 FM), from 1 to 2 p.m., along with El Planeta managing editor Marcela García, Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub and Globe regional editor David Dahl. I’ve been thinking about these ideas for a while, and this seems like as good a time as any to put them out there. (The Globe cuts will also be discussed on “Beat the Press,” on WGBH-TV/Channel 2, on Friday at 7 p.m.)

I’ve written a long post at Media Nation about ideas that might help save the Globe, including repositioning Boston.com as the paper’s principal, 24/7 news vehicle; charging more for the print edition; and hiring bloggers to aggregate the local online conversation about politics, sports, food, the arts and more. I invite your comments and thoughts, either here or on Media Nation.

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Filed Under: User Tagged With: boston-globe, media-business

Comments

  1. david says

    March 26, 2009 at 1:09 pm

    1. Part of “repositioning” boston.com had better be to redesign it.  It’s an absolutely hideous website — very hard to find anything other than what was in the print edition.  They’d be well-advised to hire whoever did the NY Times site to completely overhaul boston.com.  Considering how good NYT.com is, the pathetic-ness of boston.com is all the more baffling, since it’s part of the same media empire.

    <

    p>2. If they charge more for the print edition, they will lose more subscribers (unless you’re just talking about single-copy sales).  IMHO we are talking about a highly elastic supply/demand situation right now.  If the subscription price went up, I’d cancel, and I’m guessing lots of others would too.

    <

    p>3. Yay for hiring bloggers!  🙂

  2. edgarthearmenian says

    March 26, 2009 at 1:15 pm

    I know that I am not alone in this practice.

    • kbusch says

      March 26, 2009 at 2:36 pm

      My main problem was with the delivery service the Globe uses. Otherwise, I’d still subscribe.

      • huh says

        March 26, 2009 at 9:14 pm

        I prefer the printed edition since I catch things I don’t online, but we’ve had 4 no show days so far this month, the latest being this Sunday.  When we called to complain, we were told to call back during business hours.

        <

        p>If the web site didn’t bite, I’d just cancel.

        <

        p>

        • hrs-kevin says

          March 27, 2009 at 9:52 am

          I just go to the website and request a replacement, if it is still early enough in the morning, or else I just request a credit. I think that aspect of the website works just fine.

          <

          p>Paper delivery problems are not unique to the Globe. A year ago I kept getting the Wall Street Journal even though we do not subscribe, and it took four or five calls over several months before they finally stopped.

          • huh says

            March 27, 2009 at 10:33 am

            My point is more that the customer service line is closed on weekends.

            <

            p>Using the web site never occurred to me, though.  Thanks!

            <

            p>I’d also miss the comics big time.  I almost hate to admit it, but the “g” section has really grown on me.

  3. dkennedy says

    March 26, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    Obviously the most problematic idea in my post, and there’s no question paid circulation would decline, probably by quite a lot. My guess, though, is that there would still be quite a few left, and that those readers would become a decent revenue stream for the Globe.

  4. hrs-kevin says

    March 26, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    We have subscribed to the Globe for years and have been unhappy to see the general decline of the quality of the print edition. Recently we started getting the Times as well and except for its sports section (which apart from being understandably NY-centric is pretty low on content – NY sports fans must read something else) it is far better than the Globe in every respect. If the Globe hiked their prices too much, we would just cancel.

    <

    p>I have said this before, but what I would really like would be for the Globe to take advantage of its association with the Times to provide most of their international and national coverage and opinion pieces through them, and focus most of their resources on providing great coverage of regional and local news, sports, restaurants etc. If you could give me a paper with the best parts of the Globe and the Times, I would gladly pay what I currently pay for the Times or even more. Of course, that’s not going to happen 🙁

    <

    p>

  5. megarciag says

    March 26, 2009 at 2:13 pm

    Hi Dan,
    I’m also going to be on that show, Radio Boston @WBUR, tomorrow. I will be talking about the role ethnic media plays in the whole topic of hyperlocal news. Looking forward to sharing my point of view.

    <

    p>-Marcela G.

    • dkennedy says

      March 26, 2009 at 2:39 pm

      And I’m going to add you to my post on Media Nation.

  6. mcrd says

    March 26, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Still bleeding a million bucks a week. Used to be a great paper until it was taken over by the left wing crowd who didn’t attempt to give the impression of impartiality and objectivity.

    <

    p>Live by the sword—-die by the sword.

    • kbusch says

      March 26, 2009 at 3:15 pm

      MCRD repeats a frequent right-wing comment that ascribes the business problems of newspapers to their liberal bias. I’ve heard some suggestion of the contrary. For example, Associated Press has been dipping into the Wingnuttia Well because they have to appeal to smaller publishers who are quite conservative as a group.

      <

      p>However, is there any evidence for this conservative assertion? Is the Washington Times, say, thriving? Are they rolling in dough at the Boston Herald? Are printed conservatives flouring like their talk show brethren?

      <

      p>I suspect not as there are lots of better explanations.

      <

      p>I suspect this is the Limbaugh rule of evidence being applied, viz. anything a conservative thinks is common sense must be true. Don’t know for sure, so I wonder if there is any evidence here.

      • dkennedy says

        March 26, 2009 at 3:19 pm

        Add print and online readers together, and the Globe has as many readers as it’s ever had, or close to it. In order for the Globe to be losing readers because of its liberal bias, it would have to be, you know, losing readers. So you make an excellent point.

      • centralmassdad says

        March 26, 2009 at 3:28 pm

        I’m not sure that qualifies as conservative outside the editorial page.  might just be a good paper. or isnt profitable.

        • dkennedy says

          March 26, 2009 at 3:32 pm

          Not sure where I’d find the link, but there was a study done a few years ago that showed the news pages of the WSJ were the most liberally biased of any major paper. I doubt I would agree with those findings, but the point is that the WSJ’s ultraconservative editorial page has no effect on the rest of the paper.

          • centralmassdad says

            March 26, 2009 at 3:34 pm

            I respect you a lot, but rarely agree with you.

          • mike-from-norwell says

            March 26, 2009 at 7:20 pm

            is an entirely different animal, given its focus on business and the economy.  I’ve subscribed online for years (and they are the ONLY newspaper who has been able to pull this off).  If you’re involved in business, finance, or economics, a goto source.  Have seen that Murdoch is trying to partially open the website, but I’ll still fork over my 10 bucks a month.

            <

            p>Dan, would be interested in your comments on this recent piece by John Dvorak over in PC Magazine:

            <

            p>http://www.pcmag.com/article2/…

            • dkennedy says

              March 26, 2009 at 8:04 pm

              Read it a while ago. I guess my comment is that I think he wrote it in 15 minutes. 😉

              • mike-from-norwell says

                March 26, 2009 at 8:21 pm

                that’s about 5 minutes longer than his regular column!

                <

                p>Think he did have a good point about syndication and the ability of a NYT to go to a subscription model.

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