Linda Henry – Page 2 – Media Nation

Nancy Barnes, The Boston Globe’s first female editor, will step down at the end of next week

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.

Nancy

The Globe’s paid digital circulation has stopped growing, according to newly revealed numbers

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.

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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.

Boston.com, the Globe’s free site since its launch 30 years ago, is adding a metered paywall

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.

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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.

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The Globe’s print circulation drops again, but it says paid digital ‘is thriving’

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.

Have the Red Sox gone MAGA? Here’s what we know about that meet-and-greet with Trump.

One day you’re telling yourself that at least the billionaire owner of your local newspaper hasn’t thrown in with Donald Trump. The next day a group of players from the baseball team he owns are lined up in the Oval Office, shaking hands with the president on the very day that Congress passed the worst piece of legislation in our lifetime.

Apparently we’ve already moved on from the news that a group of Red Sox players were greeted by Trump on Thursday during what has been described as a family visit. News accounts have been sketchy on the details, and it seems that no one is inclined to follow up. They should. I mean, this is Boston, and it’s the Red Sox, not the Trump-supporting Patriots. Has our favorite fourth-place, below-.500 team gone MAGA?

Here’s what we know, according to Chris Cotillo of MassLive. Thursday was an off-day before the Red Sox’ Fourth of July game against the Washington Nationals. A number of players decided to visit the White House as part of their annual family outing. Margo Martin, part of Trump’s communications team, posted a 17-second video on Twitter (you can watch it above) of 10 players shaking hands with the president. Those players were Trevor Story, Justin Wilson, Abraham Toro, Romy Gonzalez, Connor Wong, Greg Weissert, Wilyer Abreu, Garrett Whitlock, Brennan Bernardino and Rob Refsnyder. If there were any others, they haven’t been identified.

Not everyone on the team attended. Garrett Crochet posted a photo of a panda that he took while visiting the zoo, which may or may not have been intended as a zing at his teammates. Also missing were manager Alex Cora, coaches and team officials. This appears to have been an unofficial visit — an extremely embarrassing unofficial visit.

“It was scheduled as an apolitical, behind-the-scenes tour with no expectations of publicity or meeting President Trump, a source familiar with the visit said,” the Globe’s Tim Healey reported. Whether that source is being straight with Healey or not, at least the Sox realize this is not something they want to associate themselves with. As they say, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue.

The Globe’s owner, John Henry, is a billionaire financier, and he’s also the principal owner of the Red Sox. That’s what makes this so dicey. Unlike Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong’s Los Angeles Times, the Globe has remained a liberal paper, and its editorial pages enthusiastically endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year. Henry and his wife, Globe Media CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry, are regarded as politically liberal. Any signs of slippage would be alarming, which is why I hope that Thursday’s White House visit was just something that 10 players did on their own.

Still, I’d like to see more reporting.

Globe roundup: Slack controversy, Nina MacLaughlin goes solo and Scott Kirsner moves to MassLive

On Thursday morning, I posted our latest “What Works” podcast, in which my Northeastern University colleague Mike Beaudet of WCVB-TV (Channel 5) explained to Ellen Clegg and me why the folks running local television news need to transition to a digital-first, mobile-first mentality if they hope to attract a younger generation of viewers.

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The pixels were barely dry before I started hearing from The Boston Globe newsroom that the paper was canceling its four-days-a-week 5 p.m. newscast, “Boston Globe Today.” I was able to break that news before anyone else, so thanks as always to my sources. The program, launched in February 2023, appeared Monday through Thursday on New England Sports Network, of which Globe owners John and Linda Henry are part-owners.

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Boston Globe Media acquires Boston magazine, closing a deal that was reported here first

Boston Globe Media is acquiring Boston magazine, thus consummating a deal whose existence I revealed on Dec. 6. The glossy monthly, which combines lifestyle features with some serious investigative reporting, will continue with its current staff, as Globe media reporter Aidan Ryan writes that no one will lose their jobs in the transaction. Globe Media CEO Linda Henry is quoted as saying:

As so many other iconic publications that once shaped our city have faded away, we feel an immense responsibility to honor and preserve Boston magazine’s legacy. This is not just about sustaining a magazine — it’s about strengthening a cornerstone of Boston’s identity and ensuring its stories continue to inspire, connect, and resonate with our community for generations to come.

It will be interesting to see how the Globe integrates BoMag with its existing Sunday magazine given that the two publications overlap to some extent.

Boston magazine was purchased in 1970 by the late D. Herbert Lipson from the city’s chamber of commerce. Lipson, who was based in Philadelphia, was also the owner of Philadelphia magazine and was involved in several other publishing ventures over the years as well. The company he created, Metrocorp, is still family-owned, with his son David H. Lipson Jr. serving as chairman and CEO.

BoMag’s circulation is around 55,000, down from 75,000 in 2018, according to Ryan’s story.

Back when I was working for The Boston Phoenix, we considered Boston magazine to be one of our principal rivals given that its mix of long-form reporting, arts and culture was in our wheelhouse as well. The Phoenix closed in 2013, and BoMag has carried on in an increasingly difficult media environment.

The Globe, meanwhile, is profitable and growing, although it’s been making some cuts recently. Among other things, the paper has ended my former Phoenix colleague Nina MacLaughlin‘s excellent Sunday column as it dials back its coverage of books. Boston is a literary hub, and I hope the editors will reverse that ill-considered decision.

In addition to Boston magazine and the Globe itself, Globe Media publishes a free website, Boston.com, and Stat News, which covers health and medicine.

Update: A couple of sources just forwarded to me Linda Henry’s email to the staff. Here it is:

Dear Boston Globe Media Team —

We are thrilled to formally welcome Boston Magazine into the Boston Globe Media fold today as we work to connect our award-winning journalism to more audiences.

While many regional magazines in our area have faded away over the years, Boston Magazine has been an important chronicler of the people and culture of Boston for over six decades. For so many families in our community, The Boston Globe is on their kitchen table each day and BostonMagazine is on their coffee table each month, two publications serving the same region in different ways.

A bit of background: The Lipson family, owners of Philadelphia magazine, acquired Boston Magazine from the Boston Chamber of Commerce in 1970. The two publications operated under Metro Corp, based in Philadelphia. Following the passing of founder Herb Lipson in 2017, the company came under the leadership of his three children, with his son David taking the helm. The family made the decision to sell the whole company, leading to a long and complex process. We are delighted to announce that Boston Globe Media has acquired just Boston Magazine from Metro Corp, bringing this enduring publication under local stewardship.

I’m pleased to share that the entire Boston Magazine team has been given offers to retain their current positions, and we’ve been working diligently to ensure a seamless transition of operations. In the coming months and in our next Town Hall meeting on Monday, February 10, we will share more on our strategy and plans.

A heartfelt thank you to the fantastic Globe team who worked tirelessly to make this happen. To our new colleagues, welcome! We look forward to collaborating and continuing to find ways to better serve our community.

Warmly,
Linda

The Globe’s new Starting Point lead writer was co-writer of the Times’ morning newsletter

In her recent New Year’s message to readers, Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry listed an expanded morning newsletter as one of her goals for 2025. Today the Globe took a step toward accomplishing that goal, hiring Ian Prasad Philbrick, co-writer of The New York Times’ flagship newsletter, The Morning, to serve as chief writer for the Globe’s Starting Point.

According to Philbrick’s LinkedIn page, he’s currently living in Washington, but the Globe’s announcement says that he plans to relocate to the Roslindale area, where he has family.

No word in the announcement whether Starting Point will move from three days a week to five, which strikes me as a necessity, but perhaps that will be the next step. I should note that the Globe has a number of other newsletters, including a weekday-morning offering called The B-Side, which is part of Globe Media’s free Boston.com site and aimed at a younger audience.

What follows is the announcement to the newsroom from Jacqué Palmer, senior editorial director for newsletters; Teresa Hanafin, the editor of Starting Point; and Heather Ciras, deputy managing editor for audience.

We’re thrilled to announce that Ian Prasad Philbrick, a former co-writer of The Morning newsletter from The New York Times, has joined the Globe as our lead Starting Point writer.

Ian not only co-wrote The Morning, but was also a key player in its ongoing development since its inception five years ago. He has the journalistic mindset, skills, and strategic foresight required to successfully helm a flagship newsletter like Starting Point. We are delighted to have him step into this role and help us reach our subscription goals.

Ian’s former colleagues raved about his ability to write big, sweepy, and informative stories, but also dig into data, identify trends, and offer fresh takes on the old, but interesting. His former editor went on at length about how thoughtful, careful, and smart Ian’s work is — and the Starting Point team couldn’t agree more.

Ian grew up in rural Maine, taught in a Boston public school for City Year, and studied politics at Georgetown University. He currently lives in Brooklyn with his fiancée Madeline, his dog Pearl, and his cat Squash. In his free time, you’re likely to find Ian reading a presidential biography, jogging in the park, or trying out a new recipe (this pumpkin maple cornbread is a current favorite).

Please join us in giving a warm welcome to Ian. He will soon relocate and is hoping to land near family in the Roslindale area. He reports to Jacqué, is edited by Teresa, and will sit with the audience team when he is in the office.

Thank you to all who have contributed to Starting Point since it launched in September. (And we may still come to you from time to time for guest essays.) Because of your work, we already have close to 30,000 subscribers, with more signing up every week. In fact, we regularly get emails from readers thanking us for this newsletter. If you have any questions about how we can highlight your work, please email the Starting Point team at startingpoint@globe.com.

In Colorado, a Trumper is charged with assaulting a journalist of color; plus, media notes

“This is Trump’s America now.” Photo (cc) 2024 by Gage Skidmore.

This story has been slowly building since Dec. 18 and finally broke through over the weekend. A Colorado television journalist who’s a person of color was reportedly attacked by a taxi driver who attempted to choke him, demanded to know whether he was a U.S. citizen, and taunted him by shouting, “This is Trump’s America now.”

No doubt we can expect to see more of this as Donald Trump prepares to return to the White House on Jan. 20. Trump has normalized attacks on the media, and we shouldn’t be surprised that some of his more unhinged supporters would escalate that hatred into actual physical assaults.

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I learned about the incident from Corey Hutchins, who writes Inside the News in Colorado, a weekly newsletter. He wrote about it on Dec. 27 and decided not to name either the alleged assailant or the journalist, though both had been previously identified by CBS Colorado. Hutchins explained:

I haven’t yet seen the victim say anything publicly beyond what he told police, though I’ve reached out, and you can imagine what kind of hate and harassment might come his way these days with his name widely known. As for the accused, I haven’t seen him reached for comment yet, either. A Mesa County Court official said on Thursday he is represented by a public defender; her voicemail stated she is out of the office until after the new year.

That was a smart ethical decision on Hutchins’ part, though it didn’t hold for very long. As he notes, the story was picked up by The Associated Press on Dec. 28 and has since been reported by a number of news outlets including CNN, Axios and The Guardian.

According to the AP account, the taxi driver, 39-year-old Patrick Thomas Egan, was arrested on Dec. 18 in Grand Junction after police say he followed reporter Ja’Ronn Alex for about 40 miles. Egan pulled up next to Alex at a stoplight and, according to police, said something like “Are you even a U.S. citizen? This is Trump’s America now! I’m a Marine and I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”

Alex is a native of Detroit with a Pacific Islands background, according to news accounts.

Alex drove his news vehicle back to his station, KKCO/KJCT and, after he got out, was reportedly chased by Egan, who demanded to see his ID. Egan is accused of then tackling Alex, putting him in a headlock and attempting “to strangle him,” police said. Coworkers and others came to Alex’s rescue and said he was starting to lose his ability to breathe.

Egan has not yet been formally charged but is being held on $20,000 bond and is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday.

Hutchins also quotes from a recent study finding that 37% of white respondents thought it was acceptable for political leaders to target journalists and news outlets. As the authors of the study, Julie Posetti and Waqas Ejaz, wrote for The Conversation: “It appears intolerance towards the press has a face — a predominantly white, male and Republican-voting face…. Trump has effectively licensed attacks on American journalists through anti-press rhetoric and undermined respect for press freedom.”

Media notes

• Through a glass, darkly. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey is slow-walking a pledge she made during her 2022 campaign to bring the governor’s office under the purview of the state’s public-records laws, according to Matt Stout of The Boston Globe. Healey says she still supports “transparency,” and would like to extend the law to the legislative and judicial branches as well — but she now says the governor needs to be able to invoke unspecified “exceptions.” The public-records law is one of the most restrictive in the country.

• Battle of the MAGAs. In case you missed it over the holidays, Heather Cox Richardson has a good overview of the battle that broke out online last week between Tech Bro MAGA and White Racist Twitter. The fight is between newly minted Trumpers like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who don’t want immigration restrictions to apply to highly educated tech workers, and classic haters like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon, who really, really want to prevent anyone who doesn’t look like from them entering the country. “Now, with Trump not even in office yet, the two factions of Trump’s MAGA base — which, indeed, have opposing interests — are at war,” Richardson writes.

• Coming attractions. Boston Globe Media CEO Linda Henry’s year-end message, published as a full-page ad in Sunday’s print edition and emailed to subscribers (you can read it here), lays out a number of goals for 2025. I found two especially worthy of note. The morning newsletter, Starting Point, will be expanded, which I hope means it will be come out every weekday instead of just on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Earlier would be better, too. By 7 a.m., most of us are off and running for the day.

Another smart goal: “Enhancing our high school sports coverage to further local engagement.” The region’s legacy newspapers are barely covering school sports these days, and many of the nonprofit startups don’t see it as part of their mission. More Globe sports coverage would fill a real need.

• Remembering Jimmy Carter. The late, great Jimmy Carter lived so long that several of the journalists who wrote his obituary years ago were no longer with us by the time their work was published. At The New York Times (gift link), Peter Baker shares a byline with Roy Reed, who died in 2017. The Washington Post’s obit (gift link) was written by Kevin Sullivan and Edward Walsh, the latter of whom died in 2014. Carter left office 43 years ago. For perspective, Franklin Roosevelt was in the midst of his second term 43 years before that.

Exclusive: Boston Globe Media is looking to buy Boston magazine

Boston Globe Media is exploring a possible acquisition of Boston magazine, according to sources in the newsroom who had heard about the plans and who asked not to be identified. The glossy monthly would become part of a portfolio of media properties that includes The Boston Globe, the free website Boston.com and Stat News, which covers medicine and the health-care industry.

When asked about Globe Media’s interest in BoMag, the company responded with a statement:

Boston Globe Media continuously evaluates opportunities for growth that align with our business strategy, and our success as a dynamic media organization is due in part to our desire to adapt and evolve along with our audiences. We cannot disclose any current opportunities at this time. We will stay in touch.

If the deal is consummated, it would be a significant move by Globe owners John and Linda Henry, who have built one of the country’s few growing and profitable major metropolitan newspapers. Boston magazine, by contrast, has gone through several rounds of budget cuts in recent years.

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BoMag is best known for its annual Best of Boston rankings of everything from restaurants to kids’ activities as well as gauzy features on lifestyle, culture and real estate, as is characteristic of city magazines.

But it also publishes in-depth news stories, such as Gretchen Voss’ memorable 2023 story about a long-running battle between Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria and the Everett Leader Herald, one of that city’s three independent weekly newspapers. Voss reported that Leader Herald editor Josh Resnek, in the course of being deposed in a libel suit brought against him and the paper by DeMaria, admitted he’d engaged in fabrication in his stories accusing the mayor of corruption.

Another Voss story is currently the subject of a court battle over anonymity in the notorious Karen Read murder case. On Thursday, the Globe reported that Judge Beverly Cannone had ordered Voss and the magazine to turn over off-the-record and redacted notes from interviews that Voss had conducted with Read for a story that was published last fall.

BoMag attorney Rob Bertsche was quoted as saying that the case illustrated the need for a state shield law to protect journalists’ confidential sources and documents. “The judge’s decision today illustrates a harsh truth: In Massachusetts, in the absence of a shield law, a court will not necessarily protect an investigative reporter’s promise to keep certain information confidential,” Bertsche told the Globe in a statement.