By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
There’s a howler near the top of former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld’s op-ed in today’s Boston Globe that any sharp-eyed editor should have caught. Weld and John Stimpson write:
In 1981, the United States was in the midst of what President Jimmy Carter had labeled a “national malaise” and a “crisis in confidence.”
Trouble is, as this PBS article explains, “Though he never used the word — [political adviser Pat] Caddell had in his memo — it became known as Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech.”
Local media and political activist Ron Newman has written an open letter to the Boston Globe asking that it save the City Weekly section, currently targeted for elimination on March 22. Newman writes:
Dear Boston Globe folks,
As a resident of Somerville, I am distressed to read that you plan to discontinue the only section of the Globe that consistently covers news about our city (and our neighbor, Cambridge).
Your internal memo, published at Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation blog, says that “the suburban zones … are too important to readers to dramatically reduce.” Does this mean that the Globe no longer cares about readers who live in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline? How do you expect to keep readers and advertisers if you keep slashing away at the content that makes the Globe unique?
For over 50 years, I’ve lived in houses that received home delivery of at least one daily newspaper. But I’m seeing less and less reason to keep my Globe subscription.
To see the reaction that this decision is getting, I recommend you read the comments on these blog entries:
http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1665644.html
http://community.livejournal.com/b0st0n/6482970.html
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23506
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23389You still have several weeks to reconsider this bad decision. Please do so.
My own take? Probably unrealistic. But I’d certainly like to see the Globe take some steps to pump up its city coverage online.
Media Nation has obtained a memo sent to the staff by Boston Globe metro editor Brian McGrory and regional editor David Dahl. The full text follows.
All,
We just wanted to bring you up to date on the proposed changes that we went over last week. The publisher and his senior management team approved the recommendations late yesterday involving Metro. This means that City Weekly will shut down, and Globe North West will disband as a freestanding zone, its geographic areas split between North and West. The final issue of City Weekly will be published on March 22; the final issue of Globe North West on March 26. The three suburban zones will continue to be published two days a week, Thursdays and Sundays, as they are now.
On City Weekly, we wish there was an upbeat spin to put on this. There’s not. It’s been a singular section since its launch in 1992 — vibrant, filled with voice, often with an edge that the rest of the paper would do well to replicate. Lately, under Veronica [Chao]’s leadership, it’s only grown stronger. The sad reality, though, is that advertising revenues simply don’t sustain it, so we’re losing a strong section put out by a group of talented and committed people.
Where we can sound more upbeat is in the suburbs. For the second year in a row, a group from across the paper studied the viability of the suburban zones and decided that they are too important to readers to dramatically reduce. It’s testament to everyone who works hard on those sections, and we expect that the hard work, the high quality, and the reader popularity to continue. And our suburban coverage will be greatly enhanced as we continue to roll out more Your Town sites — as many as 15 by year’s end.
As far as the zones copy desk, there will be substantial changes made, along the lines of what we said last week — the four day week becomes a five day week, with editors playing a stronger role in the Your Town sites. We’ll brief you on that when we have more, which should be soon.
Thanks for your cooperation and all your strong work through these really frustrating times.
Brian and David
No surprises — the City Weekly and Globe NorthWest cuts were already all but certain. Depressing nevertheless.
Last week I wrote about why I wasn’t reading the Boston Globe’s series on the life and career of Ted Kennedy. Today I want to explain why I think the Globe was smart to take on such a project.
One of the major challenges facing newspapers these days is figuring out how to draw traffic over a long period of time. Readers do not spend as much time with an online paper as they do with a print edition. When a news organization puts a lot of effort into a project, it makes sense to present it in such a way that readers will come back to it several times, and that other readers will discover it long after it’s been published.
With its skillfully done multimedia presentation, the Globe has ensured that the series will draw people in for some time to come. Though we might wish it were otherwise, Sen. Kennedy has come to the end of his life, even if he is able to enjoy some productive weeks and months ahead. When he passes on, the Globe series will stand as an important resource.
And it’s not just the text. Through historical front pages, political cartoons and video, the Globe has fleshed out its series in ways that words alone would not be able to accomplish. I’ve had a chance to watch a few of the videos. The video that accompanies Chapter 2 (produced by Ann Silvio), on the death of Robert Kennedy, is particularly moving. There’s a sequence in which Walter Mondale tries to recall Ted Kennedy’s words at the funeral, spliced with the actual eulogy, that will send shivers up your spine.
The Globe also deserves credit, at this delicate moment, for serving readers rather than the Kennedys. Last week the Boston Herald’s “Inside Track” reported, “Word on the Hill is that some Kennedy staffers are quite unhappy with the series, finding it far too critical of Ted.”
Indeed, in reading bits and pieces of the series, I was struck by how unsparing it was with respect to Kennedy’s behavior in the Chappaquiddick affair, and with his drinking and womanizing — problems he has long since put behind him, but which remain an important part of his story.
So when Kennedy agreed to talk with my former Boston Phoenix colleague Mark Leibovich of the New York Times over the weekend, I took it as a bit of puckish revenge on Kennedy’s part. After all, Kennedy had refused to speak to the Globe.
My friend the Outraged Liberal suggests that there must be some long faces at 135 Morrissey Blvd. over being bigfooted by their larger corporate cousin. Mr. O.L. may be right. But I’d say the Globe ought to take Kennedy’s interview with the Times as a signal that it had been appropriately tough.
The Boston Globe may get rid of City Weekly and the twice-weekly Northwest section, according to Michelle Hillman of the Boston Business Journal. She writes that the Globe would “absorb the coverage into other sections of the paper” if managers decide to go ahead with the move.
What does that mean? A fair reading of it is that the Globe is telling us it’s only trying to save on paper and production costs, and that there will be no loss of coverage if the two sections are folded. I guess we’ll find out. (Via Universal Hub.)
Let’s take a time-out from the news apocalypse to acknowledge the two most successful newspapers in the United States: the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
What? Isn’t the financially ailing Times selling part of itself off to a shady Mexican billionaire? Isn’t the Globe, owned by the Times Co., losing a reported $1 million a week and eliminating 50 editorial positions?
Yes and yes. This week, though, the Nieman Journalism Lab pulled together a year’s worth of Web site figures — compiled by Nielsen and reported monthly by Editor & Publisher — and found that the Times’ and the Globe’s Web sites are far and away the most successful in their respective weight classes.
Among national papers, the Times has built such a huge lead over its rivals that there’s really no comparison. Look at the chart. With nearly 19.5 million unique visitors every month, the Times’ online readership is nearly double that of its closest competitor, USA Today.
The Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, ranked number six in the country, with 5.2 million unique visitors a month. If you consider the Los Angeles Times to be a national paper, then the Globe is by far the largest regional online newspaper.
One other thing. In December, visitors to the New York Times Web site spent an average of 33 minutes poking around. At the Globe, it was nearly 17 minutes. In other words, a substantial number of people are actually reading the paper on line, not just dipping in quickly from a search engine.
To be sure, there are some extenuating circumstances. According to the Nieman analysis, the Times’ average monthly uniques were driven up by the resignation of Eliot Spitzer as New York’s governor last March. The Globe benefited from Red Sox coverage during their September playoff drive. In fact, the Globe benefits from the Red Sox year-round, as Sox fans from around the country check in on a daily basis.
Still, this is further proof that what ails the newspaper business right now isn’t a lack of readers — it’s the collapse of the old business model, compounded by recession and debt.
If there’s any good news here, it’s that there are enough people who want what newspapers are giving them that there may be some way of figuring out the revenue dilemma.
No, I’m not reading the Boston Globe’s Ted Kennedy series, either. As a 50-something political junkie, I don’t need yet another overview of Kennedy’s life and career, no matter how comprehensive and well-executed it is. And I’ll assume it’s quite good.
For me, the more interesting question is this: Who’s the intended audience? Clearly the timing is based on Kennedy’s terminal illness. Kennedy has been much in the news, and there are probably a lot of younger people out there who don’t know that much about him.
Can the Globe lure the under-30s in with an effort like this? I suspect it’s a tough sell, although anyone who doesn’t know much about Kennedy ought to spend some time with the Globe series.
Not to be morbid, but the Globe has also positioned itself well for Kennedy’s death, both with its online multimedia package and an accompanying book, “Last Lion,” edited by Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos.
But I agree with Mr. Outraged Liberal: Right now, the series isn’t generating any buzz at all.
Interesting to note that Joel Kramer, editor of the community Web site MinnPost, is also thinking about premium pricing for the print editions of newspapers. Here’s what he writes at the New York Times’ blog Room for Debate:
I do think there is a strategy that might keep a high-quality regional newspaper modestly profitable in the future: Rely much more on revenue from readers. Publish a newspaper worth $2 a day, the price of a cup of coffee, and $5 on Sunday. Raise the quality. Make it more in-depth, more analytical, to complement the immediacy of your free Web site, and do not make that deeper, more insightful coverage available for free on the web. Perhaps make the printed product a tailored mix of sections that appeal to different readers: For $2, you get to pick, say, four sections out of six.
Obviously, circulation would drop. A newspaper that sold 400,000 copies at 50 cents daily and $1.25 on Sunday might sell only 100,000 at four times the price. But there would be a business incentive to keep quality high, because each extra copy sold should increase profit, not subtract from it.
He adds: “I think it has a better chance than going Web-only and charging for the content.” I agree. On Thursday, I floated a similar idea.
Question: If the Boston Globe (or any major metro) raised its prices to $2 on weekdays and $5 on Sundays, what sorts of print-only content would induce you to pay for it rather than simply reading it online? What other services should it make available to paying subscribers?
No offense to New York Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña, but his story today on the New York Times Co. should be seen as the Times Co.’s best case for itself rather than as a tough-minded forensic overview. So in that respect it offers some interesting insights into how Arthur Sulzberger Jr. assesses his reign as chairman of the company and publisher of its flagship newspaper.
And yes, for the most part, Sulzberger thinks he’s doing a hell of a job. Pérez-Peña writes:
Newspaper industry analysts say that despite some published alarms to the contrary, the company has positioned itself well to ride out another year of recession, maybe two. The company still operates at a profit, and analysts say it might have gotten by without the [Carlos] Slim loan, but could not afford to take the risk because borrowing could be even harder in six months or a year.
“But,” said Edward Atorino, an analyst at Benchmark, a research firm, “I think they’ve put The New York Times out of danger.”
And did you know that Times Topics is now a competitor to Wikipedia? No, me either. And Jimmy Wales makes three.
There is no mention of whether the Times Co. would like to peddle the Boston Globe, the subject of near-constant speculation around here.
Pérez-Peña does point to some shortcomings. And the most eye-opening is this: between 1997 and 2004, the company bought back $2.7 billion in stock, a number that is now nearly four times the company’s entire market capitalization of about $726 million.
“[I]t outweighs the prices of all the other second-guessed moves combined,” Pérez-Peña writes, “and it would be more than enough to ensure the company’s security for years to come.”
All that aside, I suspect that Pérez-Peña’s fundamentally sunny take on his newspaper’s future is more accurate than the doomsday scenarios put forth in recent months by Henry Blodget of Silicon Alley and Michael Hirschorn of the Atlantic.
At least I hope so.