Boston Globe on brink of closure

pelhamhall said:
There just isn't a need for the Globe anymore.
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Despite its commie, librul bias, the Globe is a valuable institution and city will be much worse off after it departure.
Of this much I'm sure.
 
Sure it is, but just because it doesn't conform to your world view doesn't mean it is worthless. That's just absurd thinking. Especially considering that a large portion of their content is apolitical.

Edit: And when I say 'your' I mean it in the general sense, not you specifically bosdevelopment, as I'm pretty sure the whole 'ultra-conservative' bit is just act, a la Colbert. :)
 
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The problem with the Globe is that it has cut back on the apolitical content, particularly the local news, since the Times acquired it. Who buys a local newspaper wanting to read the same slanted garbage repeated in every newspaper owned by the Times or to read some story by a wire service which is carried everywhere by everyone? Slanting to one side alienates half the customer base and cutting the unique content eliminates any reason to buy a newspaper in the first place.

The Globe should have realized original local reporting was key to their survival. It's the local stuff which is unique enough to maintain a market share. Cable news and the internet carry all the global and national news so quickly, newspapers shouldn't even bother unless they have a really in depth article. Essentially the Globe should be a Courant on steroids which covers the entire metro Boston area.

Unfortunately the NYT could care less about running a paper like that and the unions are too busy trying to milk a dry cow to figure out there needs to be dramatic reorganization.
 
^^The problem is that they buy into their own myth. They are the 'paper of record' and such papers carry all the important national news front and center. They didn't (and still don't) want to consign themselves to provincialism. They want to be an important player on the national stage. Not a bad ambition, but as you say the stage is getting too crowded.

BTW, do you really think a liberal slant would alienate 'half' of there readers? This is New England after all. :)
 
Being the "standard bearer" isn't a guarantee of survival. Chubby Checker was the "artist of record" for the Twist. Last time I checked, the Peppermint Lounge was closed.
 
Absolutely.

Hell, I'm not even sure we will see a NY Times in paper format within a few years.

As the man says, the Globe got 99 problems but a liberal slant ain't one.
 
I'm surprised no one noticed trouble brewing when the Globe couldn't seem to find Mike Barnicle's various professional misdeeds ethically bankrupt, and damaging to the reputation of the paper, enough to fire him.

Having the number of unions in your organization in double digits and ever agreeing to 'guaranteed life time work' agreements should have been hints problems were on the horizon.
 
The Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith affairs came to light 11 years ago, long before any version of this forum existed.
 
I heard a surprising statistic:

More people in Boston read the Herald than the Globe.

How many small, local stories has the Herald broken this year? Too many to count. Sure, they're aren't earth shattering, but these are the kinds of stories that shape the discussion in the city. This is a local newspaper, constantly breaking local controversies. So what if it does it with juvenile graphics and silly headlines? It's a fun read.

The Iraq War? Obama's massive government expansion? Pig flu? Who the hell cares what a pack of losers over on Morrissey Boulevard think about any of that? People get national news from national sources, not from some tweedy-jacketed yahoos over at the New York Junior Times branch office in Dorchester.
 
That post lacked the point... the point is, for a local paper to stay alive, it should be local.

The New York Junior Times is not local.
 
I would hate to see the Herald fold, either. But the Herald has no discernable plan for what to do if the Globe fails and they suddenly become the monopoly paper of record. You can't easily grab the Globe's audience share if you're gleefully trashing not just the Globe's owners and writers, but also their readers.

The Herald's paper circulation is shrinking even faster than the Globe's, by the way.
 
underground said:
However, what the Globe has done is give excellent coverage on issues that actually relate to Government Waste. They've been the leader on coverage of Public Pension Abuse, MBTA waste, Turnpike Authority waste, the do-nothing job to Aloisi's sister, DiMasi's shady Cognos deal, DiMasi's shady ticket broker deal, Alan LeBoveridge's continuous foot in mouth disease, etc., etc.
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Yeah, who needs 'em?!
 
I'd hate to see any newspaper go away. In my life, the Record, the American, the Record-American, the Traveller, the Herald Traveller, the Herald American, the Boston Evening Globe, Boston After Dark, probably others, I forget. The decline in the fishing industry has really taken its toll.
 
In 10-15 years, the newspaper industry will be gone, it will be sub-division of a broader "news-gathering industry"

There will be 3-5 of these national news outlets and they will encompass newspapers, TV and print. Plus whatever new media we don't know about yet.

- Wall Street Journal/Fox/Murdoch's new newswire service - one right wing media outlet, tightly controlled by one company

- USA TODAY? ABC News/CNN - one center-left media outlet. CNN & ABC continue to dance with a merger, and why wouldn't they? ABC has no national cable presence. Plus, USA Today floats out there as a really interesting paper component of the news-gathering industry that is unaffiliated with TV. People don't laugh at the USA Today anymore, and you can buy it in Berlin and Tokyo - you can scrap the brand and keep the distribution channels. I can already envision the logo mix on the newspaper masthead: "CNN TODAY"

- New York Times/NBC/MSNBC/CNBC - a probable fit is that when the NYTimes ultimately fails, it will combine its news gathering with NBC (or perhaps CBS)

Companies like Bloomberg and Reuters/Thompson will fall in line with a conglomerate too.

All cities will offer these 4 or 5 media outlets along with local coverage. So imagine you are a fan of the CNN/ABC/USA TODAY conglomerate, for simplicty sake, let's say they rebrand as just CNN. You turn on channel 5 and watch the "CNN News - Boston " at 6pm with Natalie Jacobson. Then the CNN Nightly News comes on at 6:30 hosted by Ted Koppel. Both newscasts are tightly produced in the same manner with the same set design only the backdrop changes to a shot of Boston for Liz Walker's stage .

In the morning, you could buy a copy of the "CNN TODAY - Boston Edition" - which features articles and features from the Ted Koppel crew over at CNN National.

It would be like buying a national paper today, the difference is that you would have a separate pull-out section of the national paper that has local editorials from well-known local columnists, where Liz Walker makes an appearance again in print, and in-depth articles surrounding local news. This pull out section is what one may have been known as "The Boston Globe"

The only person who seems to really and truly grasp this new reality is Rupert Murdoch. And he has no competition out there in right field, while all of his competitors trip over the media crowds in left. As he launches his wire service, he is going to sign up plenty of local newspapers (like the Herald I'm sure) and is going to end up controlling the content of much of these papers - which will rely more and more on the national wire service. So someday you can watch Maria Stefanos on Fox Boston, Shep Smith on Fox Nightly News, then pick up the Fox Street Journal in the morning, with its Boston Herald pull-out section.

Voila - the future of news.

(or I'm just a little too drunk at the moment from after work cocktails)
 
Pelham your vision mimics mine very closely, however, I see it going even farther with the conglomerates. What about NBC+NYT+GE+Microsoft+Ford? The future of media, not just news, is a few mega-corporations offering streamlined content and organization from the local level to the national level. For sake of an example, I'm going to use the Globe's name regardless of if they survive. As the Boston component of the NYT/NBC company, we'd pick it up in the morning (or more likely, open up an e-ink paper that refreshes each morning). That evening, we'd watch the local news on channel 5 (called NBC Boston, none of this jumble of letters like WCVB 5). Then, as Pelham said, it would switch to the national news, the NBC Nightly News (just NBC, not MSN or C). If we wanted more information, we'd go to "boston.nbc.com." Then again, our we'll probably watching TV through on our Microsoft computer via the internet-no more separate broadcasts. Live, streaming TV. On the internet. Consolidated and streamlined. That's the future for you.

Wow, this is way off of architecture.
 
^^^ LOVE how ABC and CNN are described as CENTER LEFT while that awful, oppressive FoxNews is described as only as RIGHT. Give me a break
 
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