The Herald’s Messenger Blog reports that the Globe is eliminating 19 editorial jobs, 17 on the news side and two on the opinion pages. The cuts are part of an overall plan by the New York Times Co. to get rid of 125 positions at the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.
Globe editor Marty Baron, who’s out of town, says he’ll explain the impact in person next week. He writes in a memo to the troops:
Here is how Editorial will be affected: We are aiming for a reduction of 19 staff positions in Editorial, including 17 on the news side and two on the opinion pages. Some current openings also will be frozen. In addition, we anticipate achieving cost savings through newshole and other expense reductions, which I will detail as soon as possible in coming weeks.
This is bad news, obviously, but it’s not surprising. As I’ve said a number of times before, the Globe in a few years will be mostly local, mostly online and a lot smaller than it is today. This is just another painful step toward that uncertain future.
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Vox
Ominous, ominous. As one who enjoys many of the new technologies and still uses a typewriter (Olympia desk top, circa 1976), I am really uneasy about the way in which we are increasingly being forced to adapt to this all encompassing online world. Harlan Ellison best expressed it when he said that we should use the technology that best suits us. And as far as newspapers go, I like the level of technology that allows me to sit on the couch or at the kitchen table and turn the pages with my hand just fine.I don’t know about anyone else, but I for one increasingly feel the loss of choice in this Cyber Age.Your Occasional Luddite,Vox
hack myers
And how exactly is cutting back on the editorial side going to make readers who have abandoned the paper?
Brian Maloney
Get ready for a lot less local reporting and a great deal more AP filler.
hack myers
… return to the paper?(finishing thought from last post)
o-fish-l
So the “irrelevant” paper is reporting on the wasting-away of the paper deemed here to be relevant? Priceless.
Sam
The only way the Globe can grow — or perhaps even survive — is to focus mainly on local news. The Globe needs to do what it does best and ignore everything else.
Anonymous
But who will write the Ron Burgundy interviewing Belichik articles? I need to know!
GoldsteinGoneWild
If the future is mostly local, mostly web….why wouldn’t a competitor emerge that is all local, all web? Boston2.comWhy couldn’t someone target the top 20 Globies — 2 reporters and 2 columnists each from business, arts, metro, science, sports — give em each 2% of the company, and create an all-web daily that has $5 million in costs and $20 million in revenues? Each percentage point would be worth $150,000 per year….
Anonymous
First ones to go should be the authors of the lame, parochial editorial about San Diego in today’s Globe. Feigning sophistication by referring to Sun Tzu, (and then presuming their moronic readers wouldn’t know who he was); tagging San Diego as “provincial” but “our enlightened Northeast” as “cosmopolitan”; this was weak even for the Globe. Not funny, just a gratuitous ad hominem. Bostonians referring to OTHERS as “provincial”? Perhaps they’re just angry after discovering whence their erstwhile 25-54 demographic has emigrated?
Anonymous
Dan, regarding the cutbacks at the Globe, do you have any insight as to why anyone would want to buy the hardcopy of something that has become little more than a re-packager of wire service reports for international and national news, and whose local reportage seems to be limited to “tree falls over, smashes car”? It appears that the family who sold the Globe to the NYTimes company did so at exactly the right time.I have noted the incredibly shrinking Boston.com web site, and it seems to have metamorphosed into local movie and TV listings and little otherwise.Frankly, I’ve given up on American news media, even the NYTimes and the Washington Post, given their defalcations in regards the Iraq war. I pretty much stick to European news media. I don’t read French or Italian, but I do read German, and between the British and German media, the news reporting is far superior.–raj
mike_b1
raj, there’s a very good reason people want the hard copy. They like the specs.Print is highly portable, readable, offers instant on/off, easy to navigate, generally low cost (how many years of papers would a PC + online service cost?), and no one tells you to shut it off. Well, except my wife.Never underestimate the tenacity of incumbent technologies.
SolShine7
Say it ain’t so. I like reading hard-copy newspapers from time to time. There’s so many things that can go wrong with computers.
Anonymous
Mike_b1, what you say is correct, but I suspect that most people who might buy the Globe already have access to a PC and internet service–whether at home or at work–and wouldn’t have to get same just to get the Globe. And, if they want portability, there’s always the print option on the PC–I print out articles from the Globe web site for my computer illiterate (by choice) partner. A ream of paper doesn’t cost very much, and for the few articles from the web site that are of interest, it would suffice for several weeks of buying the hardcopy Globe.Regarding Never underestimate the tenacity of incumbent technologies you’re exactly correct. Look how long it took LDC displays to send CRTs to the graveyard. Well over a decade.
Anonymous
I find it comical to read about the Globe’s cutting jobs when they are wasting how much money sending so many of their sports writers to events that have no impact on their readership. How much did it cost the Globe to send Bob Ryan to Chicago to cover the NFC title game? Does the Globe really need that column on Monday? And how many of the sports crew is at the Super Bowl a week before the game, again with no local team there? Travel tickets, hotels, meals, and they are cutting jobs. It’s crazy.