Tag: Boston Globe

Keeping tabs on the Globe’s downsizing

Adam Reilly of the Boston Phoenix is keeping on top of the buyouts at the Boston Globe. I really haven’t been, so please take a look at what Adam has been writing here, here and here.

Among those leaving thus far: Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Gail Caldwell; literary-beat reporter David Mehegan; managing editor for administration Mary Jane Wilkinson; business reporter Jeffrey Krasner; and education reporter Linda Wertheimer.

Good quotes from Mehegan and Wilkinson. Mehegan is especially pointed, telling Reilly:

There’s no Living/Arts section. I used to write these great profiles that were combined with great art and design, and now the section’s gone. In many ways, I feel as if the paper I used to write for has already departed. We can’t do the stories we used to do, and we don’ t have freedom to write in the way we used to; everything has to be shorter and tighter. I don’t know what they’re going to do with my old beat, but I do know it’s one people are intensely interested in.

I think [Globe editor] Marty Baron’s done a wonderful job under very difficult circumstances. I have a lot of respect for him. But the old business model’s broken, and it’s not coming back.

Tough times not just at 135 Morrissey Blvd., but for readers of the Globe, too.

A low whine from the Naked City (II)

Alan Mutter, one of the best newspaper analysts in the blogosphere, shares Adam Reilly’s and my skepticism about Douglas McIntyre’s list of doomed newspapers. Mutter calls McIntyre “a friend,” but adds that there is “no hard data or deep analysis to support his findings.” He continues:

Although some of the papers one day may succumb to anemic readership and revenues, there is not enough information or analysis underlying the scary list to support the proposition that the publications are more or less doomed than any of 10, 20 or 30 other papers that might have been named, instead.

What Mutter’s got to say about Boston is especially interesting:

Even though weak economies are hardest on the No. 2 papers in two-newspaper towns, Doug predicts the demise of the print edition of the Boston Globe while saying nothing of the apparently fragile financial status of the far smaller Boston Herald.

Over at the Phoenix, Reilly responds to the Inside Track’s criticism.

Update: Paul McMorrow nails it.

A low whine from the Naked City

Is this what the Boston Herald calls a correction?

The Herald’s Inside Track chides the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and Media Nation today for questioning a blog post by financial analyst Douglas McIntyre placing the Boston Globe on a list of 10 newspapers that may go out of business or go online-only by the end of the year.

What’s really amusing, though, is the way the Track quietly corrects an error made earlier this week on Jessica Heslam’s Messenger Blog. The error — which had Time magazine predicting the Globe’s demise — remains uncorrected.

As Media Nation was the first to report, Time, like several other media outlets, was merely running the feed from McIntyre’s 24/7 Wall St. blog on its Web site. Naturally, the Track takes Reilly and me to task for not doing any “reporting,” which it conveniently defines as not calling the Globe in order to get a “no comment.”

Finally, the Track manages the neat trick of lampooning Reilly’s and my skepticism over McIntyre’s claim that the Globe is worth only $20 million while simultaneously acknowledging that the paper’s real estate and other assets are probably worth more than $100 million.

The plain fact is that the most recent analysis anyone has seen is one put out by Barclays Capital analyst Craig Huber, who estimates the paper’s value at $192.8 million.

The newspaper business is in unimaginably bad shape, and the Globe is as vulnerable as any paper. If being cautiously optimistic about the future of the Globe makes me hopelessly naive, then I offer my deepest apologies.

Then again, I’m also one of the few media-watchers I know who predicts that the Herald will also survive. I suppose I could be wrong about that, too.

More: WBZ Radio (AM 1030) still has a Tuesday report up on its Web site wrongly attributing McIntyre’s item to Time magazine. Come on, folks. This isn’t that hard.

Time is not predicting the Globe’s demise

First of all, let’s dispense with the fiction that Time magazine is predicting the Boston Globe may go out of business or cease publishing its print edition sometime this year. Universal Hub and Jessica Heslam wrongly attribute the prediction to Time. Bostonist almost gets it right, but is unclear enough that readers might still think this is coming from Time.

In fact, the source of this rather startling prediction is Douglas McIntyre, a blogger for 24/7 Wall Street — not exactly the ghost of Henry Luce. Time just happens to run the feed on its Web site. (Here’s a look at the site’s syndication service.) I’ve interviewed McIntyre. He’s a smart, knowledgeable guy, but it’s fair to say that he likes to be a provocateur.

You will notice, too, that McIntyre repeats that bit about the Globe’s being worth only $20 million. In fact, as the Boston Business Journal reported recently, a more logical number is a shade under $200 million — far short of the $1.1 billion that the New York Times Co. paid for it (in 1993 dollars, no less), but a lot more than $20 million. I know of no one who ever thought the $20 million figure was credible.

The Globe is struggling mightily, but its Web site, Boston.com, attracts more than 5 million unique visitors a month, and its paid print circulation — about 325,000 on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays — is, though far short of the glory days, plenty enough to attract a decent amount of advertising if we weren’t in the midst of a brutal recession.

So can we please get real?

The Globe’s Kennedy book makes a splash

“Last Lion,” the book version of the Boston Globe’s series on Ted Kennedy, edited by Washington bureau chief Peter Canellos, will be number seven on the New York Times’ bestseller list next week. I never cease to be amazed at how much appetite there is out there for material about the Kennedy family.

The Globe’s OT is O-U-T

The Boston Globe’s sports weekly, OT, might have had a chance if it had been given away at sporting events. A good-quality sports tabloid would have been attractive to advertisers if it could have actually been put into the hands of sports fans.

Instead, the Globe decided to charge 50 cents — a trivial amount, but it made distribution a hassle. (I think I’ve seen it once.) OT never attained lift-off, and, as David Scott reports, it’s now been canceled.

Success would have been difficult under any circumstances, but this was an opportunity lost. (Via Universal Hub.)

Weld misquotes Carter

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.”