Media Nation

Three years ago I profiled Bill Siroty, a New Hampshire physician with an unusual hobby: staying up half the night to compile a daily, 40,000-word e-mail of every political story he could find. Some 500 people, including much of the nation’s political press, were subscribers to his free service.

Well, now the former Howard Dean supporter has taken his New Hampshire Links service to the next level, unveiling a slick-looking, well-organized Web site. The Hotline is linking to him as its premier source for New Hampshire political news.

Who needs The Note when you’ve got Dr. Bill?

The Boston Globe today reports on the latest drop in newspaper circulation, including particularly steep declines at the Globe and the Boston Herald. Why are things worse here? Robert Gavin’s article makes the case that Net-savvy Massachusetts is making the transition to the Internet even faster than the rest of the country.

Gavin could have cited numbers from the Globe’s own Web site, Boston.com. According to figures from last January — already out of date — Boston.com attracts some 4 million unique users every month, and has a million registered users. The unique-user figure is the same as the one I referenced in this post last October, but the number of registered users is up considerably. Surely there are a considerably number of people among those 1 million registered users who’ve canceled home delivery in the past year or two.

The story is similar at the Herald, where Jesse Noyes ends his report with this: “BostonHerald.com averaged over 2 million unique visitors a month, up 33 percent year-over-year, according to the most recently reported figures.”

Again, last year I noted that the Herald claimed 3 million a month for its online network, which includes BostonHerald.com, the massive Town Online site and a few advertising properties. Now Herald Interactive says that number has risen to 4 million, an increase of 33 percent — precisely on track with the 33 percent increase that the Herald claims just for its own Web site.

The Herald Web site has become considerably more attractive in the past year, as publisher Pat Purcell removed the paid-subscription barrier for columnists. Being able to get your fix of Peter Gelzinis, Margery Eagan and Howie Carr for free is a large disincentive to buying the paper. But Purcell, to his credit, knows that he has to figure out a new business model if the Herald is to survive.

By the way, the circulation numbers are pretty stomach-churning.

The Globe is down 7 percent on weekdays, from 414,000 to 386,000, and 10 percent on Sundays, from 652,000 to 587,000. It wasn’t too many years ago that the Globe guaranteed advertisers at least 500,000 on weekdays and at least 800,000 on Sundays.

The Herald is down 12 percent on weekdays, from 230,000 to 203,000, and 13 percent on Sundays, from 132,000 to 115,000.

Not good, especially given industry estimates that it takes somewhere between 10 and 100 online readers to make up for the revenue generated by one print reader. (I can’t remember where I picked that up — perhaps a Media Nation reader can enlighten us.)

The point, though, is that dropping print numbers are just part of a much larger picture.

How early is the North Pole edition of the Boston Globe printed? As you can see from this image — and no doubt from your Sunday Globe, unless you take home delivery in Boston’s northern suburbs — the death of the great Red Auerbach leads the paper today, as of course it should.

Yet there isn’t a mention of Auerbach’s death in the edition of the Globe that was delivered to Media Nation Central this morning, even though it made the front of the New York Times, which was delivered along with it.

Of course, Auerbach’s image dominates the front of the Boston Herald, too.

Now, I realize that certain things in life are constrained by the laws of physics. But tell me, Steve, exactly why is it that I pay for home delivery?

Special Northeastern aside: this Globe sidebar, a talker with Celtics fans who were interviewed at the Garden last night, is by NU student Glenn Yoder.

This is pretty incredible. Kerry Healey tells the Salem News that her gubernatorial candidacy sank like a rock because the public was repulsed not by the negative ads with which she assaulted Deval Patrick, but, rather, by negative ads taken out against her.

Here is the top of Ed Mason’s story:

Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey yesterday dismissed recent public opinion polls showing she trails Democrat Deval Patrick by at least 25 points because of the negative tone of her attack ads. Instead, in a meeting here with Salem News editors, she blamed an onslaught of negative ads launched by Patrick and others for her plummet in the polls.

“If you tallied up all the negative ads run against me and the governor since the primary,” Healey said, “I’ve run maybe three negative ads and they’ve run, I don’t know, 20.”

There is so much that I could say, but I’ll leave it at this: Even Scotto gets it. And denial is a river that runs through Prides Crossing.

From CFO.com: “Jack Welch, retired General Electric chief executive, has partnered with Hack Connors, a Boston advertising executive, to consider a bid for the Boston Globe newspaper.”

It was Election Night 2000. Fox News had just called Florida for George W. Bush. And, according to allegations that were later investigated by U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, General Electric chairman Jack Welch put his arm around NBC News’ director of elections, Sheldon Gawiser, and asked him why NBC was not doing the same.

Welch, of course, was both a major contributor to the Republican Party as well as Gawiser’s überboss, since GE owned NBC. The behavior described by Waxman is the very definition of inappropriate interference in the news operation by a meddlesome owner.

The Waxman investigation came to a head on Sept. 10, 2001, when the California Democrat released an eight-page letter detailing efforts that Welch had allegedly made to influence NBC’s election coverage. We all know what happened the next day; the investigation was quietly shelved.

But the allegations raise more questions as to whether Welch would respect the traditional dividing line between the newsroom and the publisher’s suite should he be successful in putting together a deal to buy the Boston Globe from the New York Times Co.

I learned about the allegations regarding Welch’s behavior that night from Phil Rosenthal’s column in today’s Chicago Tribune. Digging deeper, I found this Los Angeles Times story on Waxman’s Web site. Here’s the heart of it:

According to Waxman’s sources, Welch spent much of the night at NBC’s decision desk, where election returns were projected.

Among their allegations:

• Welch and other visitors “distracted” NBC News Director of Elections Sheldon R. Gawiser with repeated questions about how his projection decisions were made.
• Welch had access to raw election data that weren’t available to news anchors, writers, producers or other on-air reporters.
• After instruction about reading the data, Welch later concluded that Bush had won Florida, and shared his analysis with Gawiser. Witnesses told Waxman that “at almost the same time, John Ellis — George W. Bush’s cousin and Fox News’ senior decision desk official — called both the Florida and the national election for George W. Bush. Immediately after this announcement, Mr. Welch was observed standing behind Dr. Gawiser with his hand on his shoulder, asking why NBC was not also calling the election for Bush.”

According to Waxman’s sources, “shortly after this,” Gawiser called the election for Bush. A similar call was made by all major television news outlets within minutes.

Unfortunately, Waxman’s investigation was a mess, marred by his insistence that NBC turn over a videotape — by subpoena, if necessary — that might have shed light on Welch’s behavior. Waxman’s attempted assault on the First Amendment was the subject of a contentious interview with Waxman by NPR’s “On the Media” and in a letter by the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

And even Waxman conceded that Welch may have been joking when he reportedly said to Gawiser, “How much would I have to pay you to call the race for Bush?”

Nevertheless, as Waxman wrote in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times in August 2001, “I don’t know if Jack Welch acted inappropriately on election night, but it’s a question that’s both easily answered and worth answering.”

Now more than ever.

“The two-party system works. Even in Palestine they have Hamas and Fatah.” — Gov. Mitt Romney, speaking yesterday at a Kerry Healey event.

Bill Jensen has left as editor of the Boston Phoenix just a few months after being named to the job, and barely a year and a half after coming to the paper. I have zero insight into this, but here is the announcement.

Jensen is apparently going to be chief Web guru for the New Times/Village Voice chain.

Fortunately for the Phoenix, Jensen’s predecessor, Peter Kadzis, is still around.

As I wrote yesterday, all sorts of possible buyers of the Boston Globe would surface now that Jack Welch, Jack Connors and company had made their interest known. Well, check this out from today’s Wall Street Journal:

Other potential buyers have been sniffing around the Globe this year as its financial troubles have mounted….

Ben Taylor, the former Globe publisher whose family sold the Globe to the New York Times, has long been unhappy with the performance of the business and has talked about wanting to buy it back, according to a person close to the situation. Mr. Taylor didn’t return a call for comment.

Private equity firms such as Providence Equity Partners, Bain Capital and Blackstone Group have been eyeing the paper as a possible target, although it is unclear if they have reached out to the Taylors, according to a private equity executive.

The Globe today publishes a correction — in fact, the New York Times Co. has not denied that it would sell the Globe. Instead, the company has said nothing one way or the other.

Meanwhile, the Times itself reports that Welch has talked with Boston Herald publisher Pat Purcell about being a possible partner in the Globe deal.

This is going to get very interesting.

What kind of a co-owner of the Boston Globe would retired General Electric chairman Jack Welch make? Assuming yesterday’s news gets beyond the speculative stage, that will become a key question. And according to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), a left-leaning media-watch organization, the answer could prove to be troubling.

Remember, being a media executive is old hat for Welch: GE acquired NBC in 1986, just five years into his chairmanship. FAIR’s research found that GE’s business priorities affected NBC News’ coverage mainly through unspoken intimidation — but that Welch wasn’t above making his journalistic priorities explicit, either.

Here are some choice tidbits from a piece that Jim Naureckas wrote in 1995 in Extra!, FAIR’s magazine:

[Former NBC News president] Larry Grossman … was told in no uncertain terms what GE expected from him. “You work for GE!” Welch once shouted at his subordinate, poking a finger at Grossman’s chest (Ken Auletta, Three Blind Mice).

Welch told Grossman not to use phrases like “Black Monday” to describe the 1987 stock market crash, because it was depressing the price of blue chip stocks like GE. And warned the NBC News chief, “Don’t bend over backwards to go after us just because we own you.” Welch even told Grossman to allow Today show weather forecaster Willard Scott to keep plugging GE light bulbs (Lawrence Grossman, The Electronic Republic; Electronic Media, 11/11/91).

In 1991, Extra! reported that the Today show wouldn’t even touch a story about a boycott of GE products organized by peace activists as a way of drawing attention the company’s role in producing nuclear weapons. Todd Putnam, then the editor of National Boycott News, wrote that a producer told him he’d be “looking for a new job on Tuesday” if he were to greenlight such a segment.

Do you think Welch would take a high-profile ownership stake in the Globe while promising to keep his hands off the news coverage? I don’t. And his stewardship of NBC is powerful evidence.