The Boston Globe just published the news that Brian McGrory will be returning as editor. McGrory left in early 2023 to become chair of Boston University’s journalism department. His return means that he’ll replace Nancy Barnes, who announced last week that she’d be stepping aside.
“Brian’s passion for the Globe and his love of Boston are deeply intertwined,” Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry said in a statement quoted by the Globe story. “We are thrilled to welcome Brian back and look forward to the work our world-class newsroom will continue to do under his leadership.”
What is most interesting about the article is that it contains not one word about this being an interim move. It sounds like McGrory is back at the helm. (Follow-up: In a statement to her employees, Linda Henry says that McGrory will be the permanent, not the “interim,” editor of the Globe, and that he has taken an extended leave from BU.)
McGrory was editor of the Globe from 2012 to 2023. The paper produced extraordinarily good work during those years, and McGrory was well-liked by the staff. He takes over at a time when the Globe’s strong growth in digital subscriptions has fizzled out.
I would attribute that more to the Globe’s mediocre UX than to its journalism, but this is a time when the paper needs inspirational leadership. Barnes got mixed reviews on that front, although I know that she had both supporters and detractors in the newsroom.
More news on the Nancy Barnes front, as several sources have forwarded to me an email just sent to the staff by Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry.
Team,
Today, Nancy Barnes announced that she will be stepping down from her role as Globe Editor at the end of next week, but thankfully staying with us in the role of Editor at Large. Over the past three years, Nancy has led the Globe newsroom with extraordinary dedication, guiding us through this historic news cycle and helping us deliver exceptional and award-winning journalism that will have a lasting impact on our community. While it is a loss for her to step back, we are thrilled that she is staying with the organization.
Globe readership and our subscriber base has grown under Nancy’s leadership, while the Globe has consistently been recognized nationally for the quality of our daily and investigative journalism across all of our platforms, including:
A Gerald Loeb Award, RFK Award, and Pulitzer Prize finalist honors for public service for our reporting on the Steward Health Care crisis.
Top ONA and Edward R. Murrow awards for the excellence of our digital report; our Sandra Birchmore investigation also won a Murrow award this year.
The first duPont-Columbia Award in the Globe’s history for the Spotlight team’s podcast, “Murder in Boston,” as well as Top IRE audio honors, and the corresponding docuseries which received an Edward R. Murrow Award and the Globe’s first-ever National Emmy Award.
The Michael Donoghue Freedom of Information award for our State’s Secrets reporting, and many others.
In addition to the world-class journalism, Nancy has moved the newsroom forward, finding ways to better reach and serve our smart audiences, including the launch of new newsletters like Starting Point, the launch of the Globe Weather HQ, the expansion of our Globe High School Sports initiative, a new, strategic focus on video journalism in partnership with our audience team, the opening of the Globe New Hampshire bureau to strengthen regional reporting, and the launch of Boston Globe Sports Report in collaboration with NESN.
These, and other initiatives, have allowed the Globe to innovate, adapt to the evolving digital landscape, and grow our reach on multiple platforms.
Nancy shared that she has decided to “take a break from the daily firestorm of news, consider new challenges, and tend to some personal issues.” While we will all miss her daily presence, we are grateful that she will remain part of the Globe in her new role as Editor at Large, available for editing support, coaching, and counsel. Nancy shared that she is also hopeful for more time to focus on a fundraising project to bring more investigative reporting to communities in New England news deserts, where local coverage is limited.
The Globe newsroom is full of dedicated, passionate journalists, and it has been a privilege to watch you all work alongside Nancy, whose professionalism, empathy, and talent have left a lasting mark on this team. Please join me in thanking Nancy for her leadership and her many contributions to The Boston Globe and the company.
We will share further updates about newsroom leadership with you very soon.
Nancy Barnes, the first woman to serve as editor of The Boston Globe, is stepping down at the end of next week. She made the announcement in an email to her staff, which a trusted source just forwarded to me. (And here is Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry’s message about Barnes’ departure.)
Barnes was named editor just a little over three years ago. She succeeded Brian McGrory, a longtime Globe veteran who is now chair of Boston University’s journalism department.
Barnes was chief news executive at NPR when she was named to the Globe’s top newsroom position. She has local ties, having grown up in the Boston area and worked as an intern at the Globe and as a reporter at The Sun of Lowell earlier in her career. Before coming to NPR as senior vice president for news and editorial director in 2018, she had held the top editing jobs at the Houston Chronicle and the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.
Just a few weeks ago she spoke at Northeastern in a conversation with our School of Journalism director, Jonathan Kaufman, as part of the Jack Thomas Lecture Series. In her announcement, Barnes says she’ll be staying at the Globe as an editor-at-large and work on a fundraising initiative aimed at addressing the local news crisis. Her full announcement follows.
Dear all,
It has been an honor to lead the Globe newsroom these last three years. I am enormously proud of the journalism we have delivered together, during such a tumultuous time in history. The array of stories we have published is extraordinary — just this year alone.
I have spent my entire adult lifetime in journalism, including nearly two decades as the editor of four great newsrooms. It is a period that has transcended the dawn of the internet age, the birth (and near death) of social media, the rise of AI, and enough stories to fill multiple history books.
By now, you have figured out that I have some difficult news to share: It’s time for me to take a break from the daily firestorm of news, consider new challenges and tend to some personal issues. I will be stepping down as editor at the end of next week. This is not goodbye, however. Linda [Henry, CEO of Boston Globe Media] and I have agreed I will stay with the Globe as Editor at Large and make myself available to any of you who might need editing help, coaching or a listening ear. I also hope to work on a fund-raising initiative to serve New England news deserts, a passion that I have thus far been unable to find time to pursue.
This is a special newsroom, full of dedicated journalists with big hearts, who are driven to deliver great journalism day in and day out – as you have these last three years. It has been my great privilege to work with you. Journalists are a quirky, special breed, and I love you all for being so true to form. Thank you.
Next week, I will be in the office to help polish up some of our final stories of the year and assist with anything else you all might need. After that I will be traveling for several weeks before returning to Boston.
Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry shared some numbers, forwarded to me by a trusted source, when she addressed the staff at a town hall-style meeting earlier this week. Probably her most newsworthy revelation was that the Globe’s paid digital circulation is now 260,500 — essentially unchanged from the fall of 2024, when it was 261,000.
In October 2023, paid digital was 245,000, which means that it grew by 6.5% over the next year before stalling out. Given that digital growth has been the key to the Globe’s growth in recent years, the company’s executives need to figure out how to get back on an upward trajectory.
I’d suggest some improvements in the user experience. Newspaper homepages tend to be a jumble, but the Globe’s is busier than most. I also hear complaints on occasion from subscribers who have trouble logging on. And, to drag out one of my favorite laments, providing subscribers with a few gift links each month that they can share on social media might entice some occasional visitors into handing over their credit-card information. (As I recently noted, you can already email gift links to non-subscribers.)
Digging deeper, the Globe has boosted circulation by rolling out digital editions in Rhode Island and New Hampshire in recent years. What other areas might they target? The Worcester area (an ironic choice given that John and Linda Henry briefly owned the Telegram & Gazette after buying the Globe in 2013) and Western Massachusetts would make some sense. Its recent decision to bolster high school sports coverage was a smart one, too.
In other news from the town hall, Linda Henry said that average paid print circulation is 66,086. I wish I had more context for that number, but I don’t. In October, the Globe reported in its legally required postal statement that paid print averaged 51,626 on weekdays and 89,809 on Sundays. The Globe also recently reported to the Alliance for Audited Media that its average weekday circulation for the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2025, was 44,835 on weekdays and 79,742 on Sundays.
What to make of these differences? Circulation numbers are a dark art, and they can vary quite a bit depending on the reporting requirements of whoever it is you’re providing numbers to. Globe Media spokeswoman Carla Kath told me by email:
The print subscriber number shared today is a point in time snapshot of our home delivery subscribers, regardless of delivery frequency. The AAM numbers are averages over a six month period. However, the bigger reason for the difference is that the numbers shared today are home delivery subscribers only and don’t include newsstand sales. The AAM numbers are circulation figures that do include newsstand sales.
Let me suggest another possibility: perhaps 66,086 is a seven-day average that includes the larger Sunday figure.
Stat, Globe Media’s digital publication covering health and medicine, now has 50,337 paid subscribers, Henry told the staff. And she said that total subscribers (paid and unpaid) across all Globe Media publications is 411,857. Kath told me that comprises the Globe digital and print, Boston magazine, Boston.com, The B-Side newsletter and Stat.
For some context, Henry announced several years ago that her long-term “North Star” goal for paid digital circulation was 500,000 — 400,000 for the Globe and 100,000 for Stat. At the moment, the combined number for those two outlets is just shy of 311,000, but that was before Globe Media added Boston magazine, a paid product, and unveiled a paywall for Boston.com.
By the way, the Boston Herald has not reported numbers to the Alliance for Audited Media since this past spring, when it said that its weekday average paid print circulation was 10,902; the Sunday average was 13,454. Paid digital was a bit north of 41,000.
On several occasions recently, I’ve argued that The Boston Globe ought to make a few gift links available each month so that subscribers can share them. Among other things, it might entice some casual readers into subscribing.
That’s the practice at The New York Times and The Washington Post, both of which allot subscribers 10 gift links per month. The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic let subscribers share an unlimited number of stories. Surely the Globe could offer, oh, five or six.
Well, the other day I heard from a reader who told me that the Globe does allow sharing in a limited way. If you email someone the link to a Globe article by copying the URL at the top of your web browser and sending it with your email program, they will hit the paywall. But if you use the email thingie embedded at the top of each article (as in the illustration above), it will produce a link that can be opened by a non-subscriber. I’ve tested it with some of my social media followers, and it works.
What won’t work is if you use any of the other sharing bottons for Facebook, Bluesky and the rest. You’ll get a link, but it won’t get anyone around the paywall. But, uh, let me just also say that the link you get when you use the email button can be shared on social media or anywhere else, and anyone who opens it will have free access to that article.
I’m not going to use those free links on social media. Globe executives have the right charge for their journalism the way they see fit, and the social sharing workaround is clearly an unintended backdoor. On the other hand, I’m not inclined to keep this information to myself. I imagine they’ll implement a fix at some point. But it’s there — at least for now.
A DEA drug bust in Norfolk, Va. Photo (cc) 2019 by the Office of Public Affairs for the U.S. Marshals Service.
This morning I’d like to call your attention to three outstanding recent examples of enterprise journalism in The Boston Globe. On Friday I shared my last gift links for the month to The New York Times (those links should still work, by the way); the Globe, unfortunately, has a tight paywall with no gift links. One, however, is a podcast that you can listen to for free. So here we go.
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has claimed that it’s made a major dent in the flow of illegal drugs in New England by arresting high-value suspects from a Latin American drug cartel. The Globe found that, in fact, the suspects were overwhelmingly “addicts, low-level dealers, shoplifters, and people living at a homeless encampment.” The Spotlight Team wrote:
“I can guarantee that he’s not part of the Sinaloa Cartel,” Scott Alati said of his son, Tyler, who was charged in state court in Franklin with a felony-level drug sale and immediately released without having to post bail. “He isn’t a high-ranking member of anything. He’s high-ranking dumb.”
In an editorial published today, the Globe asks: “If the Trump administration isn’t telling the truth about drug raids in New Hampshire, can people believe its rationale for killing supposed drug runners in the Caribbean?”
The answer is no. No, we can’t.
“Water is coming for the Seaport; the whole city will be poorer for it,” by Catherine Carlock and Yoohyun Jung. The story about how climate change threatens to inundate the Seaport District because of rising water levels is just one of a package. Other articles examine the effects of climate change-induced flooding on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester, the low-lying town of Hull, the pressure on levees in cities like Chicopee, and what is happening in small coastal communities.
Carlock and Jung write of the Seaport:
Rising seas threaten to reclaim those old mud flats, and, together with more frequent and severe storms, could swamp the neighborhood that has risen atop them. In all, 99 percent of what’s been built in the Seaport in the last quarter-century is at risk of flooding by 2050, according to a recent analysis from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council.
I want to call your attention to an interactive map put together by Jung and John Hancock that’s based on data from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the Trump regime has been busily wrecking. You can enter any address and see what the risks are. It turns out that we’re far enough uphill from the Mystic Lakes that we have little to worry about, but that’s not true of our neighbors closer to the shore.
The digital presentation of the entire series is outstanding.
“The Harvard Plan, Season 2,”by Ilya Marritz. I do not share the Globe’s obsession with all things Harvard. But I listened to Season 1 on the fall of former Harvard president Claudine Gay and got more out of it than I had expected. Over the weekend I caught the first episode of Season 2, which deals with the Trump regime’s assault on Harvard and other universities. As someone who works for a large university, I couldn’t help but be enthralled.
The podcast is a collaboration between the Globe and the public radio program “On the Media,” and it’s free. I was especially taken with Kit Parker, a bioengineering and physics professor, Army officer and self-described conservative Trump supporter. Parker is in favor of Trump’s crusade. At one point he says:
We’re unable to complete our mission by hosting debate and thoughtful discussion about the issues of the day represented by both sides. We continue to lower standards for admissions and scholarship, and integrity of scholarship.
We had spent 10 years talking about diversity, equity, inclusion, while we were aggressively excluding or silencing conservative voices on campus. Harvard should be like an intellectual cage match.
Of course, there are also more liberal faculty members who express horror at what Trump is doing as well as ambivalence over how Harvard should respond.
If you live in the Boston area and you’re reading this blog, then you’re probably already a Globe subscriber. But as I’ve said before, I wish they’d offer a few gift links per month, and I think it would result in more paid subscribers.
A well-known Boston Globe byline will soon be appearing in The New York Times. Mark Arsenault, who came to the Globe in 2010, has been hired by the Times to report on education. He’ll leave the paper on Oct. 30.
An email to the staff from editor Nancy Barnes and deputy managing editor Francis Storrs, forwarded to me by a trusted source, says in part:
Mark started at the Globe’s DC bureau in 2010, and has been based in the Boston office since 2011. Amazingly prolific and adaptable, he’s covered Congress and politics, teen suicide, the rise of the state casino industry, national parks, and the US-Canada trade war, to name just a few subjects. He worked for years on the Spotlight Team, including on projects about men imprisoned for life, the housing crisis, an ousted MIT professor, and about patients who died amid the Steward Health Care collapse. He reported on the Marathon Bombing, as part of the Globe staff that won a Pulitzer, and was on the Steward team that recently won a Loeb, among many other honors.
Arsenault’s recent Globe stories include a report from the border (sub. req.) between Calais, Maine, and St. Stephen, New Brunswick, on how residents in both communities were faring during Donald Trump’s second term, and a story on the long-running battle (sub. req.) between Trump and the Pritzker family. Penny Pritzker, a senior fellow of the Harvard Corporation, has helped lead that university’s fight against Trump’s depredations.
Boston.com, a free service of Boston Globe Media since its launch 30 years ago, is adding a paywall. According to a memo sent to the staff Wednesday afternoon and provided to me by a trusted source, the site is moving to a metered paywall that can be tailored “as we learn more.” I take that to mean Boston.com will offer a certain number of free shares per month that may be moved up or down depending on what the data show.
The cost is $5 a month for a combined subscription to Boston.com and Boston magazine, which Globe Media acquired in January of this year. Strangely enough, the cost is the same even if you only want Boston.com. Those are introductory offers; the site is also offering a non-discounted annual subscription fee of $90 that leaves out BoMag. It’s a little confusing — and don’t get me started on the completely different subscription offers you’ll find at BoMag. I’d say some unsnarling needs to be done.
The Boston Globe’s paid print circulation continues to fall, and the paper has stopped reporting numbers for digital subscribers — although a spokeswoman says that paid digital “is thriving and surpassing expectations.”
The print numbers come from the Globe’s annual “Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation,” which it is required to publish under postal regulations. The Sunday Globe numbers appeared this past Sunday and the weekday numbers were reported on Monday.
The Globe’s average weekday paid print circulation for the 12-month period ending in August 2025 was 51,626. That’s a decline of 5,824 over the previous year, when the figure was 57,450, and a total drop of 13,351 from two years ago, when it was 64,977. In percentage terms, daily paid print circulation is down 10.1% over last year and 20.5% over two years ago.
On Sunday, the most recent 12-month average for paid print is 89,809, down 12,894 (from 102,703) compared to the previous year and down 26,647 (from 116,456) compared to two years ago. The percentage drops are 12.6% over the previous year and 22.9% over the past two.
Of course, what really matters at the Globe, and at most other newspapers, is paid digital circulation. Unfortunately, I have nothing to share, as the Globe has stopped providing those numbers. Don Seiffert reported in the Boston Business Journal last June that the Globe was no longer including paid digital in the numbers that it makes available to the Alliance for Audited Media. He quoted a Globe spokesperson as saying that its digital-subscriber base “continues to grow at a steady pace” and that the paper will share those numbers “periodically, most likely around significant milestones.”
In the past, the Globe has shared its internal numbers for paid digital with journalists. But when I asked for them this week, Globe spokeswoman Carla Kath told me by email, “While I can’t share exact figures right now, our subscription business is thriving and surpassing expectations. We will continue to share our subscriber numbers at key milestones.”
Last fall, the Globe said that paid digital circulation had reached 261,000, up from 245,000 the previous year. Chief executive Linda Henry has set a long-term goal of 400,000 paid digital subscribers.
In the absence of any paid digital numbers, I’ll note that Joshua Benton of Nieman Lab recently reported that the Globe’s website received 8,691,001 visits in June of this year, making it the 13th most heavily trafficked newspaper site in the U.S. That was down 18.9% from the previous month, when the Globe was No. 7. (Large month-to-month fluctuations in web traffic are not unusual.) That’s impressive for a paper with an exceptionally tight paywall, something that limits casual traffic.
If Globe executives want to boost digital subscriptions, I’d suggest that they offer a few free shares each month, as many other papers do. If non-subscribers could have a chance to sample the Globe’s journalism, they might decide it’s worth handing over their credit-card information.
“NJ Spotlight News” anchor Briana Vannozzi, right, interviews U.S. Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.
NJ PBS chair Scott Kobler has issued a statement in which he criticizes New Jersey government officials for “intransigence or maybe even apathy” over the public broadcasting funding crisis.
As I noted Wednesday, NJ PBS may shut down in June 2026 following a breakdown in negotiations between the state and WNET of New York, the public media organization that runs the New Jersey operation. In addition to losing some $1.5 million in federal funds, NJ PBS’s allotment of state funds has been cut from $1 million for the coming year to just $250,000.
The cuts are likely to affect NJ Spotlight News, a website covering statewide politics and public policy as well as the name of NJ PBS’s daily half-hour newscast. The two operations merged in 2019. Although WNET has pledged to keep the news operation alive online and on its New York-based station, Thirteen, regardless of what happens, its reporting capacity is likely to be reduced unless a well-heeled benefactor or two steps up.
