• Looks like The Denver Post’s loss is The Boston Globe’s gain. Jim Romenesko reports that two-time Pulitzer-winning photographer Craig Walker is heading east. “He will be great there and do us all proud as a Post alum, but he will be missed,” Post editor Greg Moore tells his staff. Moore, as some of you know, is a former Globe managing editor.
• The Globe has finalized its deal to shift its printing operations to Taunton, clearing the way for sale of the paper’s Dorchester plant. The move will take place in 2017, according to the Globe’s Beth Healy. Charles Winokoor of the Taunton Gazette writes that folks in that city are pleased, but adds that at least one official is disheartened at the prospect of a two-year wait.
Retired T&G editor Harry Whitin and Polar Beverages chief executive Ralph Crowley had been mentioned as possible buyers since 2009, when the New York Times Co. first put the Globe and its related properties (including the T&G) up for sale. John Henry, who bought the Globe late last year, told the T&G staff in November that he hoped to sell the paper to someone local, and that he might hang onto it if he couldn’t find the right buyer. (Henry also said he would keep the T&G’s Millbury printing plant — a facility that is likely to be used to print the Globe and handle its contract work, including the Boston Herald, after Henry sells the Globe’s current headquarters on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. He recently confirmed that move in an interview with Boston magazine.)
Now, though, Whitin and Crowley are out, with Whitin telling the T&G’s Shaun Sutner: “For all intents and purposes, we have withdrawn from the process.”
Today’s T&G story also quotes Tim Murray, CEO of the Worcester Regional Chamber of Commerce and the former lieutenant governor, as saying that Henry should sell the paper at a discount if that means transferring it to local owners, just as the Times Co. sold the Globe to Henry out of a sense that he would prove to be a good steward. Here’s Murray:
The fact of the matter is The New York Times gave a discount to a local buyer for The Boston Globe because they had a buyer who professed to be committed to the region, Greater Boston and the journalistic mission that newspapers play. And therefore it is not unreasonable for Mr. Henry to extend that same courtesy to the residents of Worcester in contemplating a sale.
Sutner quotes me regarding two national chains — GateHouse Media, which owns about 100 papers in Eastern Massachusetts, and Digital First Media, which owns several papers not far from Worcester, including The Sun of Lowell and the Sentinel & Enterprise of Fitchburg.
Of the two, I think Digital First would be the more interesting choice. Headed by the bombastic John Paton (profiled in 2011 by David Carr of The New York Times), his company — which includes papers such as The Denver Post and the New Haven Register — has been trying to innovate its way out of the financial morass in which the newspaper business finds itself.
Digital First employs some of the most respected thinkers in digital journalism, including editor-in-chief Jim Brady and digital transformation editor Steve Buttry. Here is a press release on Digital First’s most recent initiative, Project Unbolt, which seeks to remove the “bolts” that still keep local journalism attached to the industrial processes that defined pre-Internet newspapers. Digital First also has a content partnership with GlobalPost, the pioneering online international news service founded five years ago by Boston media entrepreneur Phil Balboni. (I wrote about some of Paton’s early moves in New Haven in my book “The Wired City.”)
The Telegram & Gazette is a major media presence in Central Massachusetts. I still hope it ends up in local hands — or that Henry decides to keep it. But if it’s going to be sold to a national chain, the staff and the community could do worse than to be served by a company that is trying to revive the business of local news.
Former Globe managing editor Greg Moore has been named the Benjamin C. Bradlee Editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation for his leadership of the Denver Post. Moore was recently seen in the vicinity of the Globe, according to several people I’ve spoken with, although there’s also talk that he has no desire to return to Boston.
The smart money is on an internal candidate. The names that come up most frequently are metro columnist Brian McGrory, editorial-page editor Peter Canellos and managing editor Caleb Solomon. At The Phoenix, Peter Kadzis is predicting Solomon, and floats several other names as well. But, really, who knows what might happen?
Regardless of who ultimately moves into the glass house being vacated by Baron, congratulations to Greg Moore.
