[View the story “Janet Robinson and the Boston Globe” on Storify]
Discover more from Media Nation
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
6 thoughts on “The Boston Globe may be on the block — again”
Comments are closed.
By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
[View the story “Janet Robinson and the Boston Globe” on Storify]
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Comments are closed.
The Globe’s success at monetizing their website will tell all. They obviously play to their editorial base but that hasn’t solved revenue on the dead tree side of the business. An employee in my family lived through the sale of Dow Jones to Newscorp a few years ago.It’s still a work in progress but Murdoch seems to be fine ONLY as long as people produce. FT and Bloomberg, among others, guarantee that complacent DJ employees are a thing of the past. My suggestion would be to remind editorial at the Globe that it doesn’t exist to indulge their political or sociological fantasies. Until the other day, the Elizabeth Warren ethnic issue was deliberately ignored by the Globe. The smug arrogance of “it’s news when we say it is” is no longer acceptable. When The Newspaper of Record is getting their head handed to them by Sharman Sacchetti, a reality check is long overdue.
Wouldn’t the irony be stunning if somehow Purcell ended up buying the Globe and either shutting it, or the Herald, down?
OK, can we just put the patronizing “it’s the politics that’s killing the papers” to rest right now? Good lord, if the Globe’s moderation is hurting its sales, what does that say about the frigging Herald? If anything, it would suggest the Globe should be more partisan, not less.
I always enjoy New York Mag articles dissecting sundry and various organs of the media ecology. This piece was more of an examination of the disfunctional Sulzberger reign and bad investments and strategic decisions made by the Gray Lady brain trust (as it were). Janet Robinson is portrayed as just another nasty piece of infighting road kill. The bottom line for the Globe to the NYT is the bottom line. What can they get for it vs. how much is it still costing them. The “saving democracy, truth telling and the sanctity of journalism” memes are all secondary to the dividends needed to support the Sulzberger princelings. New local ownership won’t solve the fundamental reasons the Globe is shedding readers and advertisers. But that’s a story a Boston media critic needs to write.
Mike: the Herald’s circulation drop is much worse than the Globe. I don’t know how they are staying in business. It’s down over 12% in 12 months – at that rate it’ll be under 100K by next year.
@Laurence: Exactly my point. Rick wrote “My suggestion would be to remind editorial at the Globe that it doesn’t exist to indulge their political or sociological fantasies.” Rick is making the assumption that readers are turned off by the Globe’s editorial positions. There’s no convincing evidence to support his opinion. And the notion that the Globe would gain traction by moving to the right is undone by the bloodbath at the Herald. Why would the Globe want to abandon a market they dominate for an even smaller, less profitable one?