Globe editor Brian McGrory announces a wide-ranging reorganization and a ‘less dense’ website

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory is making some big changes in the newsroom, according to a memo to the staff that a trusted source forwarded to me a little while ago.

Though insiders will be particularly interested in the names, what strikes me is that McGrory says he’s looking for big improvements to the website, observing that it’s “our most widely read platform.” For those who think the Globe is still too print-centric, well, he agrees: “This is not to suggest that print isn’t important. It is, but there are exactly no prospects for increasing our print readership.”

The website, he writes, needs to be “less dense and more thoughtfully packaged, with a clearly defined hierarchy” — something I’m sure every reader would agree with.

As for the personnel moves, the most significant are the return of Beth Healy from WBUR to become the Globe’s business editor and the promotion of Tim Logan to metro editor. McGrory calls Healy “an indisputable star” and observes that the metro editor’s job “is central to the Globe.”

The full text of McGrory’s memo follows.

Hey all,

You may want to exhale and grab a large iced coffee. The goal is to cover a fair amount of ground in this note.

When I returned in January, I was confronted with two things at once — the newsroom structure needed significant updating, meaning modernization, while individual editors, many of them, privately approached me about moving from jobs they felt they had been in for too long.

Starting with the structure, I’ve said previously that we have a system that doesn’t give enough authority to shape our report to our most widely read platform, which is our site (plus our app, which is quietly vital and likely to get more so). This is not to suggest that print isn’t important. It is, but there are exactly no prospects for increasing our print readership.

We have allowed a system that gives too little opportunity to site editors and producers to shape our coverage. For the most part, our excellent home page production and editing team simply receives what it is given, often with too little planning. Ineffective headlines are left to wither online for lack of time. Alerts are too frequently written in the moment, even for stories that took days and even weeks to report and write. At the same time, I’ve heard many frustrations that top line editing can quickly devolve into a knot, though we’ve taken meaningful strides on this front.

The goal is to create a modern digital newsroom in which senior homepage editors have the ability and authority to work with the entire room to shape the site on an hourly and daily basis, where story publication schedules, where possible, are planned in advance, where we are broadly far more intentional about what, how, and when we are publishing online.

The goal, too, is to drive an overhaul of the aesthetic on site with the intention of making it look less dense and more thoughtfully packaged, with a more clearly defined hierarchy. Individual stories need to have more appealing designs. Headlines and alerts, where possible, need more creativity and the time to allow for that. And we need to commit to stories for longer stretches of time online.

In sum, the plan is to build a digital publication hub that will consist of a senior editor in the role of head programmer, with time and license to constantly consider the needs of the site and work with the room to achieve them. Under this editor, there will be a live news editor and an enterprise editor, with their hands on the site moment by moment.

Working in tandem with this group will be a pair of very senior editors charged with story telling. Their focus is three-fold: Toplining our most important work in very real time, working with departments across the room to help shape our coverage, and collaborating with the programming team to keep the site well-planned, yet fresh, with our digital readers top of mind. In addition, our visual departments – design, video, and photography – will all have an editor dedicated to this hub.

Easy, right?

Now the personnel changes.

Anica Butler, currently the deputy managing editor for local, will become the deputy managing editor for storytelling. This is a significant new role, one that has been well-earned by Anica. As metro editor for the past six years, she successfully modernized a sprawling department, always producing much of the most distinctive journalism at the Globe. Metro’s work under Anica has become notably sharper and more urgent, and Anica’s eye for story is among the most refined in the industry. Plus, as those who work for her know, she is an elite words editor, with an uncommon journalism compass.

Greg Huang, currently the business editor, will become a senior assistant managing editor for storytelling and be named to the masthead. In this role, he will work closely with Anica and with the programming team to topline stories, help plan the site, and work across departments to get our best work when we need it most. Having both Greg and Anica toplining stories, with help from Cynthia and Francis, should mean, will mean, that we blast through the bottlenecks that have sometimes been discouraging to reporters and their editors. Greg, as you know, is low-key in his approach, but the quality of his work speaks volumes. He has made our business department central to some of the most important work the Globe has produced in his seven years as editor, plus he’s particularly attuned to the culture of the newsroom.

Vicki McGrane, currently the deputy editor for audience engagement, will become the senior assistant managing editor for programming, a masthead role. Vicki will, in essence, be driving the site hour by hour, day by day, working across the room to help shape its offerings in the moment and plan it effectively in advance. She is uniquely qualified for this role, with a background as an elite reporter in Washington and Boston, and a highly sought editor in metro. She knows story, and she knows what our readers want, and she’s got a creative streak and sense of boldness that can challenge convention at every turn.

Amanda Kaufman, currently the homepage editor on Globe.com, will become the senior editor for live news on the site, elevating her to a role in which her refined sensibilities will continue to have outsized influence on how we publish. Amanda may be the calmest person under constant pressure in our entire organization. She makes more decisions in an hour than most of us make in a month, always unflappable and rarely wrong. In her new role, Amanda will take the lead on breaking news, drive our phenomenally successful live blogs, and oversee alerts, all with a continued eye toward urgency and how we reach our audience. She knows news inside and out, and knows our audience up and down, which has been key to making our site one of the most successful in journalism.

Peter Bailey-Wells, assistant homepage editor, will become the enterprise planning editor for Globe.com. This role will give him the authority to strategize, then execute, when, how, and where some of our most distinctive enterprise journalism appears on site. This role, combined with Amanda’s live news role, should give us far more intentionality to how we look at our site moment to moment and day to day. Peter, as everyone knows, is as thoughtful as an editor can be, yet is lightning fast in his ability to keep the site fresh. Peter arrived here as an intern and never actually left, which is a great thing for the Globe. The tandem of Amanda and Peter, with their respective wisdom of how great journalism meets a web audience, is central to our efforts, and these roles will give them more flexibility and authority.

In terms of our organizational chart, Anica and Greg will report to Cynthia Needham, Vicki will report to Jason Tuohey, and Amanda and Peter will report to Vicki. Desk producers will continue to report to Amanda, and also Peter.

Heather Ciras, the deputy managing editor for audience engagement, will add digital strategy to her mix. As everyone knows, Heather is pretty well a genius in terms of how to engage our audience, on site and off. She will lead efforts to staff up the audience engagement team, and then creatively drive our efforts to refine, then build, our newsletter portfolio, further develop our strategy on social platforms, and strategize, then execute, how we directly engage our existing subscribers, which is increasingly key to our success. And we want to take fuller advantage of Heather’s wealth of knowledge on broader digital strategy – what’s going on across the industry, how can we be constantly striving to be better here, what do we specifically need to do to get there.

As previously said, the photo, video, and design teams will all dedicate an editor to this hub in the coming weeks.

Obviously, these moves are impacting the heart of the Globe, two of our most vital departments, metro and business. The changes there are as follows.

Tim Logan, currently the deputy business editor, will become the deputy managing editor for local news, meaning the metro editor. Lots of brain calories were burned in the making of this decision, and for good reason. It is central to the Globe. In the end, there was a near inevitability to this move, given Tim’s talent and the regard with which he is held in the room. Tim is somehow both a reporter’s editor and an editor’s editor. He does it by knowing story, and by having uncommon vision for what this organization can and should be. Day to day, he’s oddly unflappable, always carrying himself with a quiet authority that is never for a moment overbearing. He was for many years the most read beat reporter at the Globe when he covered development, and he did this by being deeply plugged into the community and having an eye for what was relentlessly interesting. As an editor, he worked with Greg to make business a creative powerhouse and an entry point for enormously talented reporters.

Milton Valencia, currently an assistant metro editor focusing on criminal justice issues and immigration, will become the deputy metro editor. I’ll just say the obvious here: Milton has emerged as a star editor over the past few years, after spending more than a decade as a deeply accomplished metro reporter. He’s also, somehow, become everyone’s favorite colleague, given his pure brainpower, his strong news judgment, and his understanding of what makes this organization so vital in the community. Milton has had his hands on some of our most distinctive coverage for years, quietly driving it, always deflecting credit. This role is intended to put him at the center of even more. I’ll also say this: Milton’s and Tim’s talents complement each other entirely.

Ben Olivo, currently the deputy metro editor, will help drive key new initiatives in metro as an assistant metro editor, possibly around outside partnerships, internal mentoring, all while he works with a group of reporters in key topic areas. Ben has emerged as a deeply skilled editor and a strong molder of our talent, and he will continue to do this vital work.

Beth Healy, currently the managing editor for local news at WBUR, will return to the Globe to become our business editor. It’s not possible to overstate how meaningful this move will be to our current and future journalism. When Beth was at the Globe for some 19 years in her last run, she was an indisputable star, plus the adult in every room that she was in. She was a quietly leaderly presence with other reporters, and the go-to person for every editor. Patty Wen, while Spotlight editor, described Beth as her “Zen therapist.” At the keyboard, Beth was anything other than Zen. Focusing on financial services for years in our business department, she covered and uncovered one seismic story after another, from the 2008-2009 financial crisis to everything about Fidelity to the Bernie Madoff scandal that had outsized impact on this region. On Spotlight, she was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in her first tour on the team, then returned to play a key role in several more projects, including the widely acclaimed podcast and print series on Aaron Hernandez. Beth left for WBUR in the summer of 2019 to take a role as an investigative reporter. They quickly appreciated her leadership, and asked her to be an editor. She currently runs local news across the newsroom with an emphasis on urgency while taking a particular delight in beating the Globe. In her return, Beth will undoubtedly bring an accountability edge in business, while ratcheting up some coverage in key sectors, all with her trademark spirit of collaboration. She will pick a deputy business editor after she returns. This is a great get for us.

If anyone is still with me, first, I’m really sorry about the length, and second, no, none of this gives you an excuse to write longer stories. But there’s a couple of more things to say.

First, this is the best system that Cynthia, Jason, and I can devise at this moment. We know going in that many of these jobs are new, and everyone is new to these jobs. There will undoubtedly be some bumping around at the beginning as the editors get used to the roles, and the room gets used to the new system. Give it time. It will be worth it.

Second, all of this will require an extraordinary amount of collaboration, between editors and departments. There is intentional overlap, or in corporate jargon, redundancies. That should make things smoother, but it is not without risk of friction. We know that. We also know, and have seen, the ability of this room to collaborate on meaningful things this year, and we are beyond optimistic that this will succeed.

Third, and lastly, we also know there are parts of this that won’t work. Problem is, as the old saying goes, I don’t know which parts. That’s all perfectly okay. We will fix whatever goes wrong, and be better for the lessons learned.

Everyone will start their new roles on Monday, September 14. There is a lot of great work ahead.

Brian