Tag: Brian McGrory

McGrory hails Globe’s EPPY Award, praises staff and says print woes are easing

Here is the latest newsroom memo from Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory, sent out a little after 6 p.m. on Friday. A kind soul passed it on to me a short time later. First, a few observations of my own:

  • Six years after its debut, the Globe’s website still stacks up very well against those of most newspapers, so the EPPY Award is deserved. I could quibble, but it’s cleaner and faster than almost any other newspaper site. But the lack of a decent mobile experience remains a huge problem. Yes, the website is responsive and looks good on a phone. But it only works when you have a strong internet connection, which often isn’t available, especially on public transportation. I was told in late 2016 that the Globe was working on developing or licensing a new mobile app. It’s long overdue. For many of us, great mobile would be more useful than the Globe’s solving its print problems. Speaking of which:
  • As McGrory says, indications are that the horrendous printing and delivery problems associated with the new Taunton plant are easing. But based on anecdotal evidence, the Globe still has a way to go. If you’re still not getting your paper, or you’re not getting part of the paper, or it’s too late for you to be able to read it, or the print quality is terrible, then that’s a 100 percent failure, at least for you.
  • I couldn’t agree more on McGrory’s fifth point. The journalism remains excellent and vital. I would particularly point to Yvonne Abraham’s column on sexual harassment at the Statehouse, which, as McGrory notes, led to instant action.

The full text of McGrory’s memo follows.

Some quick and random thoughts to end the week:

1/ The Globe won Editor and Publisher’s EPPY Award for best daily newspaper website. This is a big damned deal, a tribute to everyone in this room and your tireless commitment to the distinctive journalism that fills the site hour after hour, day after day. Please take huge pride in this.

2/ Not for nothing, we added about 650 digital subscribers last week. We’ve roared past the 90,000 mark and are on our way to 100,000. This is yet more validation for your efforts.

3/ Our sports podcast, Season Ticket, continues to outperform all expectations — and is a flat out great listen. [Chris] Gasper’s fantastic, and our in-house guests — Nora [Princiotti], Pete [Abraham], Joe Sullivan, Alex [Speier], Fluto [Shinzawa], Ben [Volin] this week alone — are at once deeply knowledgeable and downright charming.

4/ The company is getting a higher quality paper on subscriber’s doorsteps with far greater consistency, such that we’ve been able to relax print deadlines in the room. It’s taken a lot of work on the second floor and in Taunton, and it’s really starting to show.

5/ The journalism continues to excel, and of that, you should be most proud. Yvonne today got a reaction from the House speaker within a couple of hours of posting her sharp and important column. There was Andrea [Estes] with another heart-breaking exclusive on the New Hampshire VA, Mark [Arsenault] on Vicki Kennedy, much of Sports with extraordinary deadline coverage of Gordon Hayward’s gruesome injury, our Amazon coverage (including the creative wrap), Shirley [Leung] excoriating Boston to appreciate itself, the DC bureau’s relentlessly fascinating coverage of all things Trump and Warren, and the Express Desk owning the moment, moment after moment. There’s much more that we’ve recently had, and there’s far more in the works. Thank you for it all, and as ever, please don’t let up.

Brian

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Globe editor McGrory addresses printing woes

The WGBH Radio (89.7 FM) program “Boston Public Radio” just aired an interview with Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory that was recorded earlier today. McGrory is a regular Wednesday guest on the show, hosted by Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. At the end of their half-hour conversation, McGrory briefly addressed the Globe’s problems at its Taunton printing facility.

“Look we’ve been on a difficult run over here,” McGrory said, adding that there have been good and bad nights. “It’s proven more difficult than we had anticipated,” he said, and the result was that the paper’s top executives had decided to make some changes in leadership. “Some very, very good high-quality people are no longer here at the Globe,” he said. McGrory was clearly referring to the departure of chief operating officer Sean Keohan and (so I hear) at least one other top executive as well. In addition, the Globe’s chief executive officer, Doug Franklin, left in July, although that was reportedly not related to the printing problems.

“We think we’re making progress,” McGrory said. “We’ve had some very good stretches, a week, two weeks at a time,” followed by “some significant setbacks.” One of those setbacks, he noted, affected this past Sunday’s Globe.

“Amid the progress there are setbacks, and it is really, really frustrating,” he said. “The overall trendlines are showing improvement,” he added, although those improvements need to be “faster and more consistent.”

Earlier

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Katie Kingsbury is leaving the Globe for a position at The New York Times

Kathleen Kingsbury, The Boston Globe’s managing editor for digital, is leaving the paper to accept a position as deputy editorial-page editor of The New York Times. This is a big one. Kingsbury is a Pulitzer-winning editorial writer, and she stepped into her current role last fall just as the Globe’s reinvention effort was heating up. She replaced David Skok, who was returning to his native Canada.

Ben Mullin of Poynter has editor Brian McGrory’s farewell note:

I interviewed Kingsbury for my forthcoming book last fall, and I found her to be smart in all the right ways. When we talked, she told me she was testing out various smartphone apps for possible adoption by the Globe — an effort that we long-suffering mobile readers certainly hope pays off soon.

Kingsbury announced her departure just as the Globe is settling in at its new headquarters at 53 State St. On Saturday, the Globe’s entire print run took place at its new Taunton facility for the first time, according to a message to employees from  Rich Masotta, the Globe’s vice president for operations.

Kingsbury proved to be a good internal candidate for the top digital position. It will be interesting to see if the Globe goes outside or inside for her successor. Globe owner John Henry has bet the farm on paid digital. If anything, the Globe needs to accelerate its efforts on improving its digital products.

The Globe moves ahead with restructured beats

As the staff prepares to move to its new headquarters on State Street, The Boston Globe is rolling out its new beat structure. Here’s a list of what many of the reporters, editors and columnists are up to.

It doesn’t strike me as hugely different from what the Globe was doing before (and that’s a good thing), but it is built more around the idea of clusters that cover different topics, such as “Business, Technology, and Consumers.” Others: “Education,” “Healthcare, Science, and Medicine,” “Living and Working in Greater Boston,” “Arts and Books,” and “Politics, Government, and Accountability.”

In keeping with editor Brian McGrory’s reinvention memos, the beats comprise areas of interest rather than institutions that need to be covered, whether anyone wants to read about them or not. There’s also a greater emphasis on publishing stories online when they’re ready rather than waiting for the print edition. According to a memo from McGrory, last week — the first for the restructured beats — was a good one for digital subscriptions.

Some kind soul sent me a copy of McGrory’s memo, sent out late Friday afternoon. (The “Super Department,” by the way, combines much of the paper’s metro, business and lifestyle coverage.) Here’s the full text:

So to be clear, nobody should be ready to declare victory after our first full week of reinvention. We all know there are many wrinkles to iron out, and we’re already identifying changes that need to be changed.

But, damn, I’m having a tough time containing my enthusiasm over how well it’s gone and the massive potential that it holds. The truth is, I’m more excited about it now than at any time before.

It’s worth noting that we started from a dead stop. There was no lineup of clever stories ready to roll out. Spotlight didn’t have anything on the runway. Reporters hadn’t been quietly prepping on their new beats. No, 10 days ago, just after a long holiday weekend, we launched from scratch — with, by my count, at least 87 people in substantially different positions than they held the week before.

What’s happened? The metabolism has quickened considerably. People are here earlier in the day. Our higher profile enterprise stories are receiving a final edit through the day, and introduced online at peak readership times. There are fewer logjams in the evening — reporters waiting for that last read on a story. Copy-edits are happening far more frequently across the day.

Because we’re factoring in the needs of digital more effectively, the print front is holding fewer stories back, which means we’re popping more enterprise on the site, much of which is rippling back to the Business and Metro fronts in print. The paper, as we hoped, has been the stronger for it. Calls for A1 and the Metro and Business print fronts are getting made sooner, allowing us to better plan for the next day’s site.

All of which is to say that things, in general, are going as planned — not always, but often enough. And Pete Doucette [the Globe’s chief consumer revenue officer] says it’s the best week we’ve had for digital subscriptions in a while.

In many ways, there’s something of a symphonic quality to it all. It starts early in the morning when the Express Desk arrives and begins posting newsy and clever stories. They hold a stand-up meeting in the middle of the newsroom at 8:30, swapping ideas and mapping out the rest of the day. Then we bring in the enterprise work, pitched and scheduled at the 9:15 news meeting, which already has a newly creative tone. Beyond that, the strike team, narrative, and Spotlight will soon be adding to the mix. Beat reporters across the Super Department will be quickly gaining authority in what, for many, are new areas. Of course, sports, DC, arts, travel, and the magazine are as vital as ever. It’s a matter of time — and not a lot of it — until the full band, every aspect, is playing to its potential.

There’s much credit to go around for great stories, smart edits, beautiful photography, brilliant designs, inviting graphics, expert planning — really, too much to include here. Please know that I’m grateful beyond words. I’d like to say take the summer off, given how utterly draining this has all been, but, well, you wouldn’t want that anyway. Right?

My sincere thanks to everyone for so much hard and excellent work.

Brian

Globe editor McGrory seeks to create a digital-first paper without neglecting print

Earlier today The Boston Globe published editor Brian McGrory’s latest update on the paper’s ongoing reinvention effort. For anyone who read his January memo, it shouldn’t contain too many surprises. Essentially it represents his and his staff’s latest thinking on how to build a digital-first news organization while not letting the print edition wither away. The idea, McGrory writes, is:

to once and for all break the stubborn rhythms of a print operation, allowing us to unabashedly pursue digital subscriptions even while honoring the many loyal readers who subscribe to the physical paper.

The main takeaways:

  • Managing editor for news Christine Chinlund, the newsroom veteran who’s overseeing the move to the paper’s new headquarters at 53 State St., may depart later this year, though McGrory writes that he’s trying to talk her out of it.
  • An “express desk” will push out “in-the-moment important, quirky and just plain fascinating stories that metrics show our readership craves.”
  • Much of the paper’s metro, business and lifestyle operations will be merged into what McGrory is calling a “super department” — an idea he says he first had when he was metro editor. “Admittedly, it was a failed power grab then, but now it’s just common sense,” he writes. The idea is that a big local story might cut across areas that have traditionally been divided by departmental lines. “Think the scourge of student debt, the era of political engagement, and a new consumer advocate, among many others,” McGrory writes. “Some beats are meant to last but a few months, others longer, but all will need to be constantly reassessed.”

Also of note: The Globe is looking to add a position to its Washington bureau, and may sell sports-only subscriptions outside New England in the near future. And, McGrory writes, “we are going to do whatever we can to put the 600-word incremental story out of its sad little end-state misery.” (Studies show that online readers prefer both shorter and longer stories, but that the medium-length story so beloved of newspapers because of the way they fit on a page no longer resonate.)

More Twitter reaction:

There’s a lot more to McGrory’s memo than I’m highlighting here. If you’re interested in the future of the Globe, you should definitely read the whole thing.

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Globe editor McGrory defends placement of BMC ad atop front page

The print edition of today’s Boston Globe includes a banner advertisement that appears above the nameplate at the very top of the page. The ad, for Boston Medical Center, promotes that institution’s addiction services. The placement is unusual enough to have prompted a message to the staff late Monday night from Globe editor Brian McGrory.

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The Globe reports a surge in paid digital subscriptions

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory’s latest message to his staff just arrived here via the usual top-secret route. The big news is that the Globe is reporting a surge in paid digital subscriptions. According deputy managing editor Jason Tuohey, paid digital has nearly hit 79,000, up from about 75,000 just a few weeks ago.

The Globe has bet the farm on paid digital — and, at $30 a month for longtime subscribers, it’s charging more than just about any newspaper. For instance, The Washington Post’s cheapest offering, the National Digital Edition, costs just $10 every four weeks. The Post, of course, is pursuing a huge national audience. The Globe, as a regional paper, has no option but to try to make its money from a much smaller group of readers.

The Globe has lately been upgrading its digital-only offerings, posting a “Trump Today” roundup every morning, moving must-read weather guy Dave Epstein from the free Boston.com site to Globe.com, and unveiling a blizzard of electronic newsletters. It sounds like it’s having an effect. Now if only they can do something about those slow loading speeds.

The full text of McGrory’s message is below.

Hey all,

We’ve got some numbers that are very much worth sharing from the past few weeks. Last year at this time we were having our best winter to date. We had Donald Trump’s emergence and the NH primary, among other big stories. This year, over the past 31 days, we’re up 45 percent in page views. That alone should speak volumes. More important, we’ve gained 2,100 digital subscribers in the past two calendar weeks — and that doesn’t include some equally remarkable success already this week.

Let’s acknowledge that no small part of this readership is being driven by extraordinary events. But what this room has done is provide exceptional journalism under relentless pressure, such that readers feel compelled to come back to us time and again — and to pull out their credit cards to subscribe. It’s the performance of our Washington bureau, which is breathtakingly thoughtful and engaging. It’s the work of our Metro staff in covering immigration issues and the massive protests, exhaustive reporting that has quite literally taken staff straight through the night. It’s the best Sports department in America reporting on the best Super Bowl comeback in history, with commentary, insight, and straight news coverage that no organization on the planet can match.

Katie [Kingsbury, managing editor for digital] asked Jason Tuohey for a fuller picture of our recent successes. Here’s Jason’s direct response:

First off, January 2017 was the best month we’ve had in at least three years. We broke post-Marathon bombing records in a host of categories:

  • Visits
  • Unique visitors
  • Page views
  • Logged-in visits / aka subscriber visits
  • Returning visitors
  • Return visits of five or more times
  • Return visits of 20 or more times

Still Jason: This torrid pace has extended into February. We added 1,331 subscribers last week, the highest total in more than three years, which put us at 77,999 paid digital subscribers. We didn’t stay there very long, converting nearly 800 more new subscribers in the past two days alone. Yesterday, the day after the Super Bowl, ranked among the very best days we’ve ever had on Globe.com in virtually every audience category we measure.

Put simply, our audience isn’t just growing — it’s swelling with new subscribers, who come back again and again to experience our journalism.

The big drivers for this surge in readership are Trump, particularly the marches and the executive order on immigration, and the Patriots. But if you’re looking for a few other gems in 2017, here are some options:

— [Bryan] Marquard’s obit on Dr. Kamala Dansinghani

— Jackie Reiss on why Sasha Obama wasn’t at her father’s farewell

— Jan Ransom’s story about the 14-year-old charged with murder

— Liz Kowalczyk’s reporting on the intruder in the Brigham OR

— Matt Rocheleau explaining how White House webpages were archived (not deleted, as others reported) on the first day of the Trump administration

— The Dan Adams-led investigation into which bars have the most OUIs

Brian again:

Be proud. Everyone in the room has played a role here, from the reporting to the exquisite editing and copy-editing, to the extraordinary graphics, the arresting photography, the ground-breaking development and product work, the polished and addictive video, and the striking designs online and in print. Subscriptions are our lifeblood, and we’re bringing digital subscribers to the Globe far, far more effectively than any other metro news organization in the country.

While we’re at it, please offer your appreciation to our colleagues at boston.com, who have seen an unprecedented surge on our sister site, especially over the past four days. The reasons are not surprising: great, often clever and pithy stories that capture the absolute essence of Boston in the aftermath of the Super Bowl. It, too, has been a must read.

Congratulations and thanks to you all.

Brian

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No more ‘paper of record’: McGrory offers more details on the Globe’s reinvention

Also published at WGBHNews.org.

Earlier this week Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory promised his staff that he’d soon be offering more details about the paper’s reinvention effort. Well, a little while ago his latest memo came floating in through my open window.

If you are interested in the future of the Globe then you should read it in full; it defies summary. My instant takeaway, though, is that there are three points that deserve special attention:

  • The Globe is moving away from the idea that it needs to be a paper of record in the old-fashioned sense. Rather, McGrory wants it to be “an organization of interest.” In other words, no more obligatory process stories about things that few readers care about.
  • The news cycle will be reorganized to move further away from the deadlines demanded by the print schedule. Instead, stories will be published online throughout the day and night, with an “Express Desk” playing a key role in that.
  • The old barriers separating the newsroom and business sides will be rethought. There is an industry-wide view that at a time when revenues are shrinking, new working relationships need to be defined as long as they don’t compromise the integrity of the journalism. Easier said than done, of course.

The full text of McGrory’s memo follows.

Hey all,

I wanted to give you an update on where we are with the reinvention initiative. The intention was to be brief. The reality is that it’s not. My apologies in advance.

The presentations by the four sets of working group chairs in late November went incredibly well. I hope everyone agrees. The pitches were strong, the questions and comments were smart, and there seemed to be an unmistakable consensus around the need for change. Following those meetings, I’ve sat with a decent swath of the newsroom in one-on-one and small group meetings to get a sense of your thoughts and concerns. I’ve found it truly helpful, to say the least. Your sheer brains and commitment all but guarantee our success in the weeks, months, and years ahead.

Separately, we’ve put together a core reinvention committee, composed of the eight working group chairs, and the deputy managing editors, managing editors, and the editorial page editor. We’ve met several times to begin mapping out initiatives that we can roll out as soon as this month. We’re making good progress, but we need to step it up.

Indulge me while I repeat some of the principles behind a reinvention:

  • We need to be still more interesting, relentlessly interesting, every hour of the day. To this end, we need to jettison any sense of being the paper of record. We are the organization of interest. If something feels obligatory to write, it’s an obligation for someone to read. The problem is, readers don’t feel that obligation any more.
  • We need to focus on what readers truly value, understanding that we can’t be all things to everyone. The great news is that Globe subscribers most want to read the kinds of stories that we most like to produce. Think accountability journalism, colorful and contextual breaking news reporting, lyrical narrative, smart enterprise reporting, and provocative commentary.
  • We need to focus not on platforms, but on journalism. We must redouble all efforts to demolish the stubborn rhythms of a legacy news operation and get our work in front of people when they are most likely to read it.
  • We need to make sure that the boundaries that served us well in better financial times don’t become obstacles to our success. Put more bluntly, we need to work with the other departments to make sure we have enough revenue to support our journalism.
  • We always need to hold true to our journalistic values, because without them, we lose our credibility. Repeat this last one again.

So here’s a rough map of where we go from here, understanding that this remains very much a work in progress, and there will be bumps—really mountains—to traverse along the way.

1. You’ll receive a questionnaire via email soon, prepared by Jen Peter [senior deputy managing editor for local news] and Anica Butler [assistant metro editor], asking, among other things, what beats you’ve dreamed of covering or what jobs you’d most like to have. It could be the one you have now, it could be something else, it could be a role that we haven’t thought about but will want to have when we hear it. Please respond to this questionnaire. We need to hear from you.

2. We’re planning to set up a room-wide Express Desk as soon as possible. This is designed to get news in front of the eyes of our readers quickly, and to have a fascinating diversity of news. It could be a water main break in the Financial District one moment, a passenger handing out Christmas gifts on an arriving JetBlue flight the next. This desk needs to not only be urgent, but smart and clever, and it will be powered by some of the most talented people in this room. I’ve asked Katie Kingsbury [managing editor for digital] to lead a small group in mapping out an Express Desk in terms of size and positions, and she’ll have something back to us very soon.

3. We’re planning to set up a Print Desk, congruent with the Express Desk. While the larger room focuses on journalism, the print desk will focus on how that journalism comes together in paper form every day. Let me be absolutely clear here: The physical newspaper will not be an afterthought at the Globe. It is of vital importance to us, a huge—albeit, declining—source of our revenue, and the most valued product to our most loyal readers. But it cannot continue to needlessly dominate our thinking and resources in the way it currently does. I asked Chris Chinlund [managing editor for news] to lead a small group in determining the size and components of this operation, and she, too, will have something back in early January.

4. We’ll expand on our excellence in projects, with an eye toward even more, with a greater range of ambition and length (some even shorter than this memo).

5. We’ll set up an Audience Engagement team under Jason Tuohey [deputy managing editor for audience engagement] designed to make sure we are better connecting to existing audiences, and seeking new audiences, in every way possible, through our journalism and the way we present it. We are swimming in metrics. The goal now is to refine, interpret, and apply them. We will offer whatever training is necessary to work on the team.

6. We will reimagine our beats with the same eye toward becoming relentlessly interesting. I don’t know that we’ve done a major refresh of our beats in decades. It’s time. So the reinvention group, or some subset of it, will outline new beats and recalibrate the resources we have on our coverage areas. The broader room needs to play a major role in this with your ideas, whether through the questionnaire or in conversations with me and others. Please express your creativity and passions, and do it soon.

In determining what we want to cover, it will become clearer to all of us what we should forego, or at least what we can cover less of. As part of this, we’ll look at presenting news in different formats, to cut down our overuse of the incremental 700-word story.

7. We will refine and then refine again the Hubs system that was proposed by the Mission working group, but it’s not quite ready to be implemented yet—or maybe we as a room are not quite ready to accept it. There are many intriguing, even brilliant, aspects to the Hubs concept, which would push us to be far more nimble, provocative, and—this word, again—interesting But there needs to be more clarity in how it would work day to day. My sense is that we’re getting snagged up on Hubs as the infrastructure of the room. If we create Hubs within the infrastructure, we will get a better sense of how they’ll work and how effective they can be. So that’s exactly how we’ll start. Hub ideas are welcome.

8. We are planning to appoint a small, tech-savvy group that will devote itself to making Methode more user-friendly and an overall better communications tool for the entire room. [Methode is the Globe’s content-management system.]

9. We are setting up groups to further engage Advertising and Circulation, hoping to involve the newsroom deeper in both areas. On Circulation, we will focus on subscriber retention, with some acquisition, working with our colleagues there to do direct outreach to subscribers. On Advertising, we are putting together a newsroom-based advisory group to offer input on all forms of sponsored and native campaigns, with the intention to ratchet up the creativity that goes into these campaigns. David Dahl [deputy managing editor for operations] is currently drawing up rules of the road to make sure that we don’t put ourselves in a compromising position.

10. We’ll be looking, soon, to get much of the room started earlier in the day, and impose rolling deadlines on enterprise stories through the day, to assure that we have a flow of fresh stories when people are most likely to read them. Still too many stories are posted on the site in the evening, because we’ve followed old-school print deadlines. That’s got to stop. The news meetings will be pushed up soon, probably to 9 a.m. The morning meeting will focus on brainstorming ideas, and the specifics of when stories will be posted. The afternoon will include the timing of web stories, but focus too on the print paper.

Key point: As part of this, we have to fulfill the promise to everyone in the room that as you get here earlier, you leave earlier. Foreign as this might seem, it is very doable.

Over the next few weeks, a dedicated group will basically create a blueprint for a reimagined newsroom, carving out the new desks mentioned above, prescribing headcounts to each of these areas, and getting right down to specific beats, possible Hubs, and reconfigured departments. You aren’t just invited to be a part of it, you need to be a part of it. Offer up your thoughts. We’ll come back to the room soon with what we have.

There’s more, especially in terms of communications and the culture of the room. And please keep in mind that this is not a one-and-done project, but a constant evolution; some of the things we change will need to be changed again.

In sum, picture a newsroom that kicks to life before dawn, as members of an Express Desk arrive and continue to flow in through the morning, ready to post breaking news, fashion clever ideas, and find the wryest stories trending on social media. Picture the larger room starting their jobs by 9 in most instances, ready to publish at peak times. Picture a round-the-clock multiplatform desk ready to give stories an expert workover regardless of the hour they are submitted.

Picture a wider range of fresher beats to produce a steady stream of fascinating stories. Picture a story-telling team from product and development working on hubs to create extraordinary presentations. Picture respected and experienced “priority editors”—what one working group described as “air traffic controllers” and another as “traffic cops”—making the best use of our journalism across the day, the week, and the platform. In this scenario, the print desk begins arriving in the early afternoon, working with a team of talented designers to produce a stunning newspaper for the following morning.

Lift the lens a bit and see an even broader picture, of a room more inclined to pursue risks and more accepting of the inevitable failures. It is an enterprise more crusading in our approach, an organization that not only covers the region, but regularly provokes it—by holding the powerful accountable, giving voice to those who wouldn’t otherwise have one, advocating for what works, and being our readers’ best ally. All the while, we will be working closely with the business side to drive digital subscriptions, keep our existing subscribers happy, and offer our creativity to native content.

Easy, right?

Probably not, but we will accomplish this in the coming months, your help very much required. Please continue to speak up. We need to hear from you.

Brian

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McGrory promises details about the Globe’s reinvention ‘in a few days’

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory has outdone himself with a 1,550-word New Year’s message to his staff, a copy of which a kind newsroom soul sent me on Sunday. McGrory is full of praise for the accomplishments of the past year while cognizant of the problems caused by continued budget cuts.

There is news here, too: He promises some details about the paper’s ongoing reinvention effort “in a few days.”

The full text of McGrory’s message follows.

Hey all,

It’s odd, the things you remember about a given year. It was raining out, not a warm, soothing rain, but freezing little icicles that prick your skin again and again and again. The sun hadn’t come up. I’m not sure it ever did. The sidewalks were a hockey rink. And Ellen Clegg, the wheelwoman on our two-person delivery route that Sunday morning last January, apparently had just about enough of my methodical pace. So she slammed her SUV into park and began running down a Wellesley street tossing papers on subscribers’ driveways.

We were but two delivery people in a vast newsroom army, one that had been organized a week earlier by Beth Healy. Person after person answered the call, reporters, editors, designers, photographers, graphic artists, technologists, owners—you name it. And for those who couldn’t deliver, they worked the phone banks or created daily delivery spreadsheets. It felt like the ground was cracking under our feet, but this newsroom would do everything it could to preserve the integrity of the Globe.

While many of us remember delivering the papers those subsequent Sundays, it’s what was in the papers themselves that matters most. In those issues, it was a pair of important stories on questionable influence in City Hall. It was a brilliantly written feature on the development boom leading to obstructed views. It was an essay on Donald Trump’s unfiltered style, a gripping enterprise story on a high-level drug trafficking informant, and a fresh look at the ballooning pricetag for the Green Line extension. In sum and as usual, it was vital and interesting Boston Globe journalism, well worth whatever effort it took to get it in the hands of our readers.

The year may have begun in crisis. It ends, however, with a crucial dose of introspection—an unsparing review, part of a broad reinvention initiative, of what works and what doesn’t at the Globe, what we need to change, and how we will change it. This is among the most important work we’ve done this year, and I’ll be back to you in a few days with more details on the road ahead.

For now, though, let’s be grateful that we had such a quiet year, news-wise, to devote ourselves to this important work.

Yeah, right.

Somewhere between helping to save the Globe and then reinventing it, you produced some of the finest journalism in the industry, and some of the best I’ve seen in my time here—in a year unlike any other. Take the Washington Bureau. Have five people—seriously, just five people—ever produced such an extraordinary body of riveting and vital work, from the stories on Trump’s business dealings, to the internal workings of Clinton’s orbit, to a nation’s anger, and so much more? It just kept coming, fresh enterprise, news stories with exceptional voice and context, pieces that larger, national news organizations had no choice but to follow. I honestly don’t believe that Matt Viser and Annie Linskey, with Chris Rowland’s guiding hand, wrote a story all year that I wasn’t eager to read—and then delighted that I did. And Vicki McGrane has only added to it all.

Take our Business department. If 2015 was the year it established its own section, 2016 was when it made it an utterly must-read part of the Globe. You start naming names, you start getting into trouble, but how do you not cite Shirley Leung’s work on Ed Ansin, General Electric, and anything else she touched? Does Jon Chesto ever sleep? Does Tim Logan have the entire development community wired? Does Beth Healy ever back down? I could go on and on, beat after beat, but suffice it to say that the entire department brought urgency and freshness to the report virtually every day.

If anyone thought that Jess Rinaldi’s Pulitzer Prize for her incredible Strider Wolf portfolio would cause the Photo Department to kick back a bit, well, you don’t know the Photo Department. Who will ever forget Keith Bedford’s arresting images from Methadone Mile in July, or Suzanne Kreiter’s chilling work on Spotlight’s mental health series, or the daily offerings of just about everyone else, from the veterans with elaborate morning rituals to the guy from Denver, to our great sports shooters, all of it so good that it helped change the look and tone of our print front page.

Sports chronicled the early endings to a pair of otherwise incredible seasons—the Patriots last January and the Red Sox in October. Seriously, there’s no regional news organization in the country that has four pro sports teams staffed with more authority and insight than the Globe, with our stable of expert beat reporters, supported by a best-in-show editing operation and production desk. Celtics, Bruins, Patriots, Red Sox, there’s nobody better. Throw Shaughnessy and Gasper into the mix and we can’t be beat.

Metro had another banner year, with strong accountability reporting on government influence, more groundbreaking coverage of the opioid crisis, political reporting that drove key ballot questions on marijuana legalization and charter schools, Kay Lazar’s continued watchdog reporting on abuses in the state’s nursing homes—stories that have pretty much defined our daily goal of giving voice to those who wouldn’t otherwise have one. The beat reporting, whether on transportation, higher ed, hospitals, casino gambling, and so much more, has been stellar. And the in-depth work has been some of the most fascinating and important that I can recall, whether Nestor Ramos and Evan Allen on Methadone Mile, or Eric Moskowitz on the election night trolley crash, or Maria Sacchetti on ICE and the secret release of dangerous immigrants, or Billy Baker on Will Lacey. Yvonne Abraham had a breakout year with her powerful commentary, and Josh Miller might produce the most engaging political newsletter in the industry.

Living/Arts helped drive us further into the realm of a digital first enterprise. Our extraordinary stable of critics, let by Matthew Gilbert, was a force of nature online. Ty was must reading across the year on movies and all things culture, and Sebastian is what he is, which is the best visual arts critic in the nation. But really, theater, classical music, photography, we owned it with an insightful voice, and our Sunday Arts section remains one of the absolute best of any news organization, national or regional, in the country. Our feature writers, too, have regularly splashed color on the homepage and front page—clever, smart, fresh stories. Dugan buying marijuana was worth the price of a month’s subscription all by itself.

Spotlight had a year for the ages, producing powerful reports on multiple fronts while only enhancing the quality and impact that is its trademark. The mental health series, big, bold, and beautifully told, again gave voice to those who wouldn’t otherwise have one. The team’s urgent but exhaustive work on predatory sexual behavior at elite private schools, which began with Bella English back in Features, has been life-changing for victims. And imagine being a partner at the Thornton Law Firm?

The list keeps going on and on. Our copy editing team is in a class of its own, uniformly respected across the enterprise for every good reason. Our Globe.com team has been pivotal in orchestrating another record year of viewership and, if it’s a word, subscribership. Their collective news judgment, urgency, and knowledge of the digital habitat are all flat-out impeccable. Graphics and design has made us bolder and more confident with pitch-perfect graphics, extraordinary digital presentations, and fresh front pages and section fronts. Our magazine remains at the very top of every reader survey, understandably so, and is the envy of the industry. While we’re talking popular, our Address, Travel, Food, and Good Life sections give our readers knowledge wrapped in style and flair week after week. Finally, a special hand to the editors and reporters of boston.com, who have miraculously preserved traffic in the face of substantial cuts. How? By working like crazy to produce a smart site.

On the issue of cuts, let’s be honest about it: we’ve lost a lot of people again this year and it doesn’t get any easier. These aren’t so much good people as great people, experienced journalists who have helped build the foundation for our success. But it’s testament to our extraordinary depth, resilience, and character that we have done this well in the face of the relentless pressures of a profoundly changing industry.

I wish we could glide on our accomplishments for a while—but that’s not possible, and the truth is, you’d get bored. You would, right? We’ve got too much to do in 2017. We’ll reinvent how we produce our journalism. We’ll move to innovative space in downtown Boston. We’ll be relentlessly interesting. We’ll drive the civic conversation in Greater Boston and beyond. We’ll hold the powerful accountable and give voice to those who need to be heard.

We should all be incredibly proud of where we’ve just been. We should be even more excited about where we’re about to go. Me, I’m also honored to be part of the smart, engaging, deeply committed group that is the Globe newsroom. Really, it’s something special, and every person reading this has a vital role.

Have a healthy, happy, and safe New Year. My sincere thanks to you all.

Brian

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Sunday night memo dump I: McGrory on Trump coverage

Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory sent out his latest message to the staff late Friday afternoon. Among other things, he addresses the question of whether the Globe will “normalize” Donald Trump (answer: no, but) and how the paper will proceed now that Trump is the president-elect. Plus his customary fulsome praise all around. The full text follows:

Hey all,

So the earth shook under us last week with Donald Trump’s stunning victory, raising all the questions you’ve heard and even asked about the inability of the news media to see this coming. These are good questions, with no clear or clean answers, but what absolutely can’t be lost in our self-reflection is that we’re in a moment, an utterly pivotal moment, in which we matter more than ever to our region and our loyal readership. It is not an overstatement to say that this is why we exist. And I don’t have even the slightest doubt that we will meet the challenge.

To that end, I should say more publicly what I’ve told a lot of people in here privately over the past ten days: I’m intensely proud of our national and campaign coverage going back not just weeks and months, but years. You should be, too.

Beginning in 2013, with the award-winning Broken City series, we explored in a way that no news organization ever had the incredible dysfunction in Washington that so obviously played a role in the outcome of this campaign. In 2015, we were back again with Michael Kranish’s Divided Nation series, which gave voice to people on all sides of massive issues, from inequality to race and so much more.

Also in 2015, editors and reporters made the very conscious decision to not have our coverage driven by Trump’s outrage of the day. Certainly, we wouldn’t hide his bombastic and too often bigoted remarks from our readers, but we made a commitment to run him through the filter that all serious presidential contenders must endure. Matt Viser wrote of his bankruptcies in Atlantic City, his time at Wharton, his ownership of a beauty pageant during which he made unwanted physical moves on contestants. We wrote of crime figures employed in his business. All of these stories attracted a huge number of readers. Most were followed by other outlets.

This past summer, we launched the America on Edge series, designed to show the anxiety, uncertainty, and even anger that were leading so many voters to Trump. Again, these were some of the most read stories of the year, for every good reason, as we took our readers from a small town in Pennsylvania to portray the economic uncertainty of retirees, to a community in Georgia riven by resentment toward immigrants, to voters in Florida who protested using a mosque as a polling place, to millennials in North Carolina repelled by the toxicity of this campaign. You want answers about what just happened, reread this series.

Let’s not forget our intense, exhaustive, and excellent coverage of New Hampshire, Iowa, and beyond, and the consistently excellent Ground Game newsletter each morning. In the hours after the election, we were in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, with colorful, insightful dispatches explaining what had just occurred. Metro and Business have done great work exploring the potential impacts of a Trump presidency from here. And a shout-out to our editorial and op-ed pages, which have been stacked with particularly provocative work, and to our own news-side columnists, particularly Yvonne [Abraham], who have been required reading.

Going forward, covering Donald Trump as the president-elect, a Trump Administration, and America in the Trump era, there’s no need for us to recalibrate our approach, except, hopefully, to redeploy some people to Washington. We’ll be fair, we’ll be tough, and we’ll be ready to pounce on the most interesting and thoughtful stories possible. We will not for a moment normalize bigotry and misogyny, if he continues down the path of the campaign and with some early appointments. But we will also be wide open to the idea that his may be a novel and perhaps effective presidency, a non-ideologue in the age of hyper-partisanship. In short, we don’t know what the hell is about to happen. Nobody does. But, again, it’s why we matter.

Take this as an open solicitation. We need your input. If you have concerns, ideas, general concepts, or just a desire to download thoughts, reach out. We are already planning some creative approaches to cover an unconventional presidency. Your ideas are more than welcome. We are also in dire — and I do mean dire — need of excellent stories that are not Trump related. As interested as readers are in the situation, and the numbers on our site show they are fascinated, there is also a thirst for great reads that are far off the political path.

Some staffers have asked worthwhile questions about whether they are allowed to contribute to activist organizations, and participate in marches and vigils and the like. The answer is that we encourage everyone to live a full, meaningful life outside of the Globe. Our journalism is actually the better for it. But we can’t allow our staffers to take part in activity that calls into question the essential fairness and neutrality of the Globe — more important now than ever. Our ethics policy is clear on this, in terms of forbidding contributions or other involvement in organizations or campaigns that push candidates, ballot questions, or legislation. You’ll ask about causes. We’ll fold most of those into the group as well.

Here’s all I ask: Use your very sizable brains and your best judgment, which I trust. If there’s any question, go to Chris Chinlund, Katie Kingsbury, or me. Think of our reputation and think of this vital moment. And please, be cautious on social media.

Finally, get some rest. This has been extraordinary in too many ways to mention here. We’ve done incredible journalism. And we have a lot of vital work ahead.

Brian

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