Month: October 2006 Page 1 of 6

I almost forgot. One more reason that print circulation at the Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette may be falling more steeply than elsewhere in the country is the credit-card disaster of last winter.

Now, what would make me remember that?

Earlier today we received a message on our answering machine to call a fraud hotline for one of our Visa cards. A half-hour ago, a very helpful woman at Chase told us that $2,700 had been transferred from that card and into someone’s pocket just yesterday. We canceled the account immediately.

I have no one to blame but myself. Shortly after the story broke some months back, I checked to see whether we were among those whose credit-card numbers had been stolen. We were, but I figured that if nothing bad happened immediately, then we would be OK. Inertia is a powerful force.

And how stupid and/or naive am I? I just got finished entering a different credit-card number at the Globe’s customer-service site.

Do I know for a fact that this attempted $2,700 transfer was related to the Globe? No. But I’m willing to bet that it was.

Have a look (sub. req.) at former Boston Globe columnist John Ellis’ latest for the Wall Street Journal, in which he analyzes the Jack Welch/ Jack Connors/ Joe O’Donnell play for the Globe. His take on how Welch managed to prevent an auction that would drive up the price is fascinating, if a little hard to follow.

Still, Ellis’ bottom line strikes me as exactly right: “Mr. Sulzberger would be a fool, of course, to sell the Globe to anyone at this juncture.”

Oh, and in case last week’s ridiculous back-and-forth over the meaning of “in play” isn’t completely dead, here is Ellis’ lede:

Last week in Boston, a group of local businessmen led by Jack Welch let it be known that they were interested in acquiring the Boston Globe from the New York Times Company for $500-$600 million. The offer served to put the Globe “in play” (as the talking heads say) and to galvanize Class B (non-family) shareholders of Times stock, already up in arms about mismanagement and financial performance.

Don’t feel as though you have to respond, Mike.

Thanks to Adam, who also points to a fuller summary of Ellis’ column for those who aren’t Journal subscribers.

Isn’t it obvious that John Kerry was referring to President Bush — and not to American troops — as “stupid”? Well, not to some people, apparently. Kerry, hardly the political world’s most artful speaker, has managed to put his foot in his mouth once again. We’ll be hearing about this right up until Election Day.

Kerry responds here, calling his remarks “a botched joke about the president and the president’s people, not about the troops.”

Then again: I don’t know. Maybe I’m seeing this through the lens of what I know Kerry meant. But if you watch him actually speaking the words — wow: “Education — if you make the most of it and you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.”

I mean, I instantly knew what he meant. But that’s not what he said. I guess.

But he’s a funny guy! Let’s not forget this Kerry knee-slapper about Dan Quayle. Guaranteed to win you a home visit from the Secret Service.

I’ve got a profile of citizen-journalism pioneer Dan Gillmor in the new issue of CommonWealth Magazine. Gillmor, author of the much-celebrated “We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People,” is the founder of the Center for Citizen Media, which brings him to Harvard for a few days each month.

Gillmor’s a former technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Philosophically, he’s at the midpoint between the New Media triumphalists and the Old Media traditionalists.

“Contrary to some folks in this area, I’m a big fan of traditional media,” Gillmor says. “I want to help them work in ways that they’ve never done before. I want to work with people doing citizen media independently, and in places where that intersects with journalism, I hope I can help.”

Three years ago I profiled Bill Siroty, a New Hampshire physician with an unusual hobby: staying up half the night to compile a daily, 40,000-word e-mail of every political story he could find. Some 500 people, including much of the nation’s political press, were subscribers to his free service.

Well, now the former Howard Dean supporter has taken his New Hampshire Links service to the next level, unveiling a slick-looking, well-organized Web site. The Hotline is linking to him as its premier source for New Hampshire political news.

Who needs The Note when you’ve got Dr. Bill?

The Boston Globe today reports on the latest drop in newspaper circulation, including particularly steep declines at the Globe and the Boston Herald. Why are things worse here? Robert Gavin’s article makes the case that Net-savvy Massachusetts is making the transition to the Internet even faster than the rest of the country.

Gavin could have cited numbers from the Globe’s own Web site, Boston.com. According to figures from last January — already out of date — Boston.com attracts some 4 million unique users every month, and has a million registered users. The unique-user figure is the same as the one I referenced in this post last October, but the number of registered users is up considerably. Surely there are a considerably number of people among those 1 million registered users who’ve canceled home delivery in the past year or two.

The story is similar at the Herald, where Jesse Noyes ends his report with this: “BostonHerald.com averaged over 2 million unique visitors a month, up 33 percent year-over-year, according to the most recently reported figures.”

Again, last year I noted that the Herald claimed 3 million a month for its online network, which includes BostonHerald.com, the massive Town Online site and a few advertising properties. Now Herald Interactive says that number has risen to 4 million, an increase of 33 percent — precisely on track with the 33 percent increase that the Herald claims just for its own Web site.

The Herald Web site has become considerably more attractive in the past year, as publisher Pat Purcell removed the paid-subscription barrier for columnists. Being able to get your fix of Peter Gelzinis, Margery Eagan and Howie Carr for free is a large disincentive to buying the paper. But Purcell, to his credit, knows that he has to figure out a new business model if the Herald is to survive.

By the way, the circulation numbers are pretty stomach-churning.

The Globe is down 7 percent on weekdays, from 414,000 to 386,000, and 10 percent on Sundays, from 652,000 to 587,000. It wasn’t too many years ago that the Globe guaranteed advertisers at least 500,000 on weekdays and at least 800,000 on Sundays.

The Herald is down 12 percent on weekdays, from 230,000 to 203,000, and 13 percent on Sundays, from 132,000 to 115,000.

Not good, especially given industry estimates that it takes somewhere between 10 and 100 online readers to make up for the revenue generated by one print reader. (I can’t remember where I picked that up — perhaps a Media Nation reader can enlighten us.)

The point, though, is that dropping print numbers are just part of a much larger picture.

How early is the North Pole edition of the Boston Globe printed? As you can see from this image — and no doubt from your Sunday Globe, unless you take home delivery in Boston’s northern suburbs — the death of the great Red Auerbach leads the paper today, as of course it should.

Yet there isn’t a mention of Auerbach’s death in the edition of the Globe that was delivered to Media Nation Central this morning, even though it made the front of the New York Times, which was delivered along with it.

Of course, Auerbach’s image dominates the front of the Boston Herald, too.

Now, I realize that certain things in life are constrained by the laws of physics. But tell me, Steve, exactly why is it that I pay for home delivery?

Special Northeastern aside: this Globe sidebar, a talker with Celtics fans who were interviewed at the Garden last night, is by NU student Glenn Yoder.

This is pretty incredible. Kerry Healey tells the Salem News that her gubernatorial candidacy sank like a rock because the public was repulsed not by the negative ads with which she assaulted Deval Patrick, but, rather, by negative ads taken out against her.

Here is the top of Ed Mason’s story:

Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey yesterday dismissed recent public opinion polls showing she trails Democrat Deval Patrick by at least 25 points because of the negative tone of her attack ads. Instead, in a meeting here with Salem News editors, she blamed an onslaught of negative ads launched by Patrick and others for her plummet in the polls.

“If you tallied up all the negative ads run against me and the governor since the primary,” Healey said, “I’ve run maybe three negative ads and they’ve run, I don’t know, 20.”

There is so much that I could say, but I’ll leave it at this: Even Scotto gets it. And denial is a river that runs through Prides Crossing.

From CFO.com: “Jack Welch, retired General Electric chief executive, has partnered with Hack Connors, a Boston advertising executive, to consider a bid for the Boston Globe newspaper.”

It was Election Night 2000. Fox News had just called Florida for George W. Bush. And, according to allegations that were later investigated by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, General Electric chairman Jack Welch put his arm around NBC News’ director of elections, Sheldon Gawiser, and asked him why NBC was not doing the same.

Welch, of course, was both a major contributor to the Republican Party as well as Gawiser’s überboss, since GE owned NBC. The behavior described by Waxman is the very definition of inappropriate interference in the news operation by a meddlesome owner.

The Waxman investigation came to a head on Sept. 10, 2001, when the California Democrat released an eight-page letter detailing efforts that Welch had allegedly made to influence NBC’s election coverage. We all know what happened the next day; the investigation was quietly shelved.

But the allegations raise more questions as to whether Welch would respect the traditional dividing line between the newsroom and the publisher’s suite should he be successful in putting together a deal to buy the Boston Globe from the New York Times Co.

I learned about the allegations regarding Welch’s behavior that night from Phil Rosenthal’s column in today’s Chicago Tribune. Digging deeper, I found this Los Angeles Times story on Waxman’s Web site. Here’s the heart of it:

According to Waxman’s sources, Welch spent much of the night at NBC’s decision desk, where election returns were projected.

Among their allegations:

• Welch and other visitors “distracted” NBC News Director of Elections Sheldon R. Gawiser with repeated questions about how his projection decisions were made.
• Welch had access to raw election data that weren’t available to news anchors, writers, producers or other on-air reporters.
• After instruction about reading the data, Welch later concluded that Bush had won Florida, and shared his analysis with Gawiser. Witnesses told Waxman that “at almost the same time, John Ellis — George W. Bush’s cousin and Fox News’ senior decision desk official — called both the Florida and the national election for George W. Bush. Immediately after this announcement, Mr. Welch was observed standing behind Dr. Gawiser with his hand on his shoulder, asking why NBC was not also calling the election for Bush.”

According to Waxman’s sources, “shortly after this,” Gawiser called the election for Bush. A similar call was made by all major television news outlets within minutes.

Unfortunately, Waxman’s investigation was a mess, marred by his insistence that NBC turn over a videotape — by subpoena, if necessary — that might have shed light on Welch’s behavior. Waxman’s attempted assault on the First Amendment was the subject of a contentious interview with Waxman by NPR’s “On the Media” and in a letter by the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

And even Waxman conceded that Welch may have been joking when he reportedly said to Gawiser, “How much would I have to pay you to call the race for Bush?”

Nevertheless, as Waxman wrote in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times in August 2001, “I don’t know if Jack Welch acted inappropriately on election night, but it’s a question that’s both easily answered and worth answering.”

Now more than ever.