The Boston Globe’s print edition gets snowed out, invoking memories of the Blizzard of ’78

The Boston Globe calls its decision not to print a paper today “unprecedented.” But as Aidan Ryan reports (sub. req.), it depends on your definition of unprecedented: “Even during the historic Blizzard of ’78, the Globe printed a few thousand copies of the Feb. 7, 1978, edition, though its delivery trucks couldn’t get through the piles of snow around its old offices on Morrissey Boulevard.”

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Moreover, Ryan notes that today’s edition will be printed and delivered with Wednesday’s paper. It strikes me as an odd move given that the Globe’s website is up and running, including the daily e-paper. But maybe there are a few print customers who really don’t want to read the paper online and who will appreciate having today’s paper — perhaps to commemorate the Blizzard of ’26.

It should also be noted that the Globe’s printing facility, in Taunton, was among the hardest-hit communities in Monday’s blizzard. Ryan writes:

Chris Johnson, executive director of manufacturing at Boston Globe Publishing Services, said on Monday he got stuck on the way to the facility and was pulled out by another truck. Then, that truck and its driver went 30 feet and got stuck, prompting Johnson to help him out of the snow. He also was stopped by a fire truck that couldn’t move off of railroad tracks because the snow was so deep.

“It took me almost two hours to get to the plant and I got a four-wheel drive pickup truck,” he said. “It was just not going to work. The risk reward is upside down.”

Canceling (or postponing) a print edition in 2026 obviously has a lot fewer implications than it did in 1978. The Globe’s average weekday print circulation these days is just a bit more than 50,000, whereas the paper has about 260,000 paid digital-only subscribers. There won’t be much of a loss in ad revenue, either, given that today’s e-edition includes very few ads — and some of those are house ads.

I don’t know how the Boston Herald handled today’s delivery, but, like the Globe, its website and e-edition are available. All you need is electricity, which unfortunately is in short supply in many parts of southern New England today.

Since we’ll be talking about this storm for years to come, I thought I would take a look back at the Blizzard of ’78, when I was an editor at our student paper, the Northeastern News. We had two sportswriters at the Beanpot, and we were determined to get a paper out that week. I talked about it with Zoe MacDiarmid of The Huntington News, as the now-independent nonprofit student paper is known these days, in a feature that’s part of the News’ 100th-anniversary celebration. I’ll let her take it away:

Kennedy recalled an especially frosty night in February 1978 as Northeastern faced off against Harvard University in the annual Beanpot tournament. As the teams battled on the ice, more than 27 inches of snow piled atop the city in what many dubbed the “blizzard of the century.”

By the end of the last match up, which was between Boston University and Boston College, the conditions had worsened, forcing The Garden to remain open overnight as a refuge. Among those trapped were the sports editors of The News. About two miles away, on campus, Kennedy was in the throes of his weekly Monday all-nighter and urged them to come back, unaware of the harsh conditions outdoors. He said that the paper was saving space for a Beanpot article.

As some fans opted to sleep in the sky boxes of the 15,000-seat arena, others ventured out into the relentless blizzard. “It must have been 2 or 3 in the morning,” Kennedy said. “They suddenly walk into the newsroom covered with snow and ice, and we said, ‘Oh, gee, we shouldn’t have told you to come back. This is awful.’ But they sat down and banged out their story, and we produced the whole paper.”

The journalists worked through the night and rang The Phoenix in the morning.

“We called The Boston Phoenix, and they said, ‘Are you out of your minds? We can’t get the pages out to the western part of the state, where the printing plant is. You’re not having a paper,’” he said. “Of course, today it would be immaterial. It would just be in digital and that would be that. But they nearly killed themselves for nothing.”

I also recall that Northeastern and just about everything else was shut down for a week in 1978. The university is shut down today; there’s been no announcement yet about tomorrow. But, as with digital news, the ability to teach remotely these days is an enormous change, even compared to Snowmageddon in 2015.

Which is my cue to wrap this up and start getting ready for class.