One of the unsung good guys is leaving the Boston Globe. Veteran reporter Tom Palmer, who’s been covering real estate and development for the past several years, is among those taking the early-retirement buyout.
Palmer tells Media Nation by e-mail why he decided now is the time after passing up previous offers:
I’m leaving a job — 13 different ones, really, over 32 years at the Globe — that I still love. But this was a generous offer that probably won’t be repeated. It’s time to go do something new. I won’t decide on anything until after I’ve left the Globe late in May.
Palmer is one of a handful of newsroom conservatives, as well as a Van Morrison fan of the first order. He will be missed.
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Anonymous
Naive question – what do you mean by “newsroom conservative”?
Sean Roche
Thos. Palmer did a terrific job with the Starts and Stops column.
Dan Kennedy
Anon 10:55: He works in a newsroom. He’s a conservative.
Matt
palmer is an all around good guy at the globe. he will be sorely missed.matt
Anonymous
EB3 here,another familiar faceless name gone.The new ones aren’t kept around long to be familiar faceless names.Where have you gone Sam McCracken?
Anonymous
FWIW, I read his work for all those years and never noticed a political slant. Either he’s conservative only by Globe standards or he was smart enough to keep his own counsel (and thus his job) for 30+ years. Either way, he will be missed.
Anonymous
Wow.Palmer is like Bailey in that he has his tentacles into Downtown better than most anyone over there. It will take years for anyone to get the same kind of access. Binyamin Applebaum ain’t cuttin’ it either. I do like Scott Kirsner’s sunday articles, however. He has potential.
wellbasically
A major part of the business in Massachusetts is overturning government protections of current residents for the benefit of builders, bankers and real estate developers. I did not follow Palmer’s work closely but if he was a crusader against this process rather than an enabler I bet I would have heard about it. Like with Bailey I am open to examples of the man defending us city residents rather than hanging out with the residents of Mount Olympus but nobody ever came up with them. In the end, for different reasons, both the Globe and the Herald are in the bag when it comes to real estate and the steady chewing up of our space. They have done their little part to make Massachusetts less livable, and do not address the concerns of Bostonians in the area of development. A sure way for a newspaper to die is to fail to understand the lives and address the concerns of its readers.
magschmooz
Man, will he be missed…A boatload of historic memory, always fair, always accessible…
Anonymous
Is the Globe going out of business? Because, if they’re not going out of business, getting rid of their best people is a bad idea. If you’re going to keep putting out a newspaper, you need journalists. Journalists with lots of exerience and with a loyal following among readers are especially helpful.I fully realize how simple and obvious that statement is. But I never cease to be amazed by how some MBA-type consultants can get so wrapped up in the calculus of shedding senior payroll that everyone forgets this. It takes talented and knowledgeable people to put out a major daily newspaper. In the long run, losing these people to early retiremnet will be more costly than keeping them around. Because someone has to do what they did. Sometimes it takes two newbies to cover the ground one Edes or Bailey or Palmer did. And because people won’t pay for the print edition anymore if all their favorite familiar bylines are gone.
Anonymous
well,you’re entitled to your opinion but I lived here when Faneuil Hall Market was a place to buy meat. The good old days were not so good. Boston being Boston however, our schadenfreude demands that we bristle at the success of anyone else. In most other American cities, Palmer (and especially Bailey) would be considered socialists rather than “enablers”. I guess if you start from the position that capitalism sucks, you have to end up with that conclusion. Usually, we are our own worst enemies around here.
Anonymous
I’m more concerned with what the Globe will be after all these buyouts are completed, rather than whether or not Palmer was a conservative in the newsroom, and what that may mean. I don’t see anything good coming out of this. Sure, the payroll will be smaller, but the quality of what we will be paying for won’t be worth it.
Ben
I, too, am sad to see Tom go. But just a brief word in defense of Binyamin Appelbaum. He’s new to the Globe, so he’s not yet fully sourced-up (he’s a local boy, but he’s been a way for a long time). But check out his work in Charlotte, where he was before the Globe. His series on foreclosure was a Pulitzer finalist, and that was hardly his only strong work down there. I suspect that some day we’ll be talking about him much the way we talk about Palmer now, at least if he sticks around long enough.