Boston Globe publisher Richard Gilman has announced his retirement. The first non-Taylor to run the Globe, Gilman — dispatched to Boston by the New York Times Co. in 1999 — has presided over successes (bringing in Marty Baron as the editor in 2001) and disasters (the mindboggling failure to protect customer credit-card records).
New publisher Steve Ainsley’s priority will be to build the Times Co.’s chief New England asset. No, not the Globe, but Boston.com. Despite steeply declining circulation, the Globe and its chief rival, the Boston Herald, may have about as many readers as they’ve ever had when you count Web visitors.
Ainsley’s job will be to figure out how to make that pay.
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Anonymous
Bringing in Marty Baron was a success? Seems to me the Globe has a lot of missteps during his tenure – including a handful of front-page apologies/retractions/mea culpas.
Anonymous
Baron has presided over the era in which Bostonians realized they could skip reading the Globe and not miss out on much of anything important in the city. And the era of sidekick. How does that qualify as a success?
Anonymous
I have to agree. While the Globe is still better than say, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, replacing “Ask the Globe” and “Confidential Chat” with a selection of blog excerpts is not a step forward. More disturbing is how lazy the reporting has become. While not down to PunditReview’s level of self-congratulatory psuedo-journalism, there’s far too much repeating what each side said instead of reporting.