Boston Globe on brink of closure

The Herald wrote about the WARN status awhile back:

http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1164216

This is the most telling part of the article: "The Rocky Mountain News filed a WARN notice in Febuary on the same day it shut down. The notice said employees would be laid off effective April 28."

The Herald - breaks more local news than the soon-to-be defunct Globe. Seriously, an article like this is the smartest, most insightful piece of journalism on this whole Globe travesty, and the subject is the Globe, and the Globe loses the scoop to the Herald?
 
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That comic seems to ignore the fact newspapers are mostly comprised of cookie cutter content from wire services, which already posted online. Figure in some local vetted bloggers, or stringers on commission, and the pretty much covers what pitifully shallow content most newspapers carry these days.
 
Still, the price structure is going to have to change to accommodate at least the wire services (Huffington Post can't keep piggybacking off them for free), and the newspapers that do publish valuable information, like the Times.
 
And who is going to pay to keep the wire services in business if all their customers go belly up?

Assuming you don't count television 'news' as journalism, after print media dies all we will have left are bloggers and infotainment. Good luck with that.
 
Also, where does all of that 'cookie-cutter wire service content' come from? Much of it is rewritten from reports by LOCAL newspapers in the cities where the events in the story happened. Take away the local papers and where does that leave the Associated Press?
 
Currently, the second lead story on Boston.com:

From Remy to Nietzsche: most popular dog names in Newton, Wellesley

I understand that animal stories get attention and are popular, but this sort of thing doesn't really scream, "We are done wasting money". :(
 
And the Nietzsche reference (plus focus on upscale suburbs) makes it actually fairly highbrow for boston.com content.
 
I'm comfortable with the current line-up of stories:

Bernanke: Recession should end later this year
Maine House OK's gay marriage bill
Opera House, Orpheum, Paradise sold
Actor Dom DeLuise dies
Globe to resume talks with largest union

A nice mix of national/regional/local. The only fluff being Deluise, but he was a fairly popular star in his day.
 
Is it ironic that the Globe must report on it's own death?
 
Boston.com
Mike Reiss, the Globe and Boston.com?s prolific NFL writer, is departing to join ESPNBoston, the sports network?s second city-specific site as it attempts to strengthen its national brand with a local online presence in the nation?s largest and most passionate sports cities. The site will launch Sept. 14, an ESPN spokesman confirmed.
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This sucks. He was hands-down the best sports reporter they had on staff.

The exodus begins (continues?)
 
Globe says 2 bidders visit the Boston newspaper

(AP) ? 8 hours ago

BOSTON ? Two groups with an interest in buying The Boston Globe have reportedly toured the newspaper's headquarters in the past week, while a bid from a third group is looking less likely.

The newspaper, citing unnamed sources familiar with negotiations, reported Tuesday that a group headed by Stephen Taylor, a member of the family that sold the newspaper for $1.1 billion to The New York Times Co., and a second group led by private equity investment firm Platinum Equity of Beverly Hills, Calif., met with Globe executives.

The newspaper says the groups have each offered about $35 million for the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The Globe says a group led by former advertising executive Jack Connors and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca may drop out of the bidding.
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Boston.com - October 29, 2009
Wall Street Journal will close Boston bureau
October 29, 2009 12:22 PM E-mail| |Comments (1)| Text size ? +

By Johnny Diaz, Globe Staff

The Wall Street Journal is closing its Boston bureau by the end of the year, officials told employees today in a memo.

The bureau, which is in downtown Boston, has 12 reporters and editors. The bureau, which has won at two Pulitzers in the last five years, will close Dec. 31, said Bob Christie, a spokesman for the Journal.

Nine employees will be laid off and three will stay with the company, Christie said. No other bureaus will be closed. The laid off employees will be able to apply for other jobs within the paper.

In a memo to employees today, managing editor Robert Thomson wrote: ?The economic background to the closure is painfully obvious to us all."

The investigative team, which includes two employees, will remain in Boston. Coverage of the Boston mutual fund industry will switch to the Money and Investing team. And the Journal will create an enhanced New York-based education team.

The news comes after the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported earlier this week that the Wall Street Journal had surpassed USA Today as the country?s largest newspaper. The Wall Street Journal, owned by News Corp, added 0.6 percent to its daily weekday circulation to 2,024,269 copies in the six months ending in September.

It was the only newspaper of the top five US papers that gained circulation.


Managing editor Robert Thomson's memo to employees

Colleagues,

Today we told our team in Boston that we are closing the bureau in its present form. The economic background to the closure is painfully obvious to us all. An investigative function will remain in Boston, but the core reporting team will be disbanded, though all nine reporters affected will certainly be able to apply for openings elsewhere on the paper. Coverage of the Boston mutual fund industry will switch to the Money and Investing team and we are creating an enhanced New York-based education team.

Any such decision inevitably stirs apprehension and uncertainty, but there are no plans, nascent or otherwise, to close any other US or international bureau. Meanwhile, the Newswires bureau and the MarketWatch team in Boston will remain at their present staffing levels.

That there has been truly great reporting under the generalship of Gary Putka out of Boston over many, many years is not in doubt. But we remain in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue and thus must think the unthinkable.

Robert
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Does this say more about the economy, the state of newspapers, or Boston?

Given the parts I've bolded I'd say it's more about Boston. :(
 
One relevant question is where the other US bureaux are. DC is obviously important for them, as is Chicago for the commodity markets. They probably need at least one West Coast presence, and maybe they have Miami to report on Latin American business. From that perspective, Boston looks like the most logical branch to close, especially because it's a short train ride away for NY-based staff and you can relocate the Pulitzer-mill types pretty easily, and because, despite local hubris about the industry, education really isn't "based" here in the same way that, say, financial services are based in NY - that team is probably aggregating nationwide/worldwide news anyway.

As for their circulation numbers: WSJ has been inflating them wildly since 2003, because they're the only major paper to count online subscriptions. These are exactly indicative of the same profitability, whether from subscriptions or (especially) from ad revenue.
 
This was bound to happen given that we've recently lost our stock exchange and fewer companies are headquartered here. Sadly the city and state is slowly slipping into stagnation again, much like it did during the Curley era, for roughly the same reasons. I only pray we don't see similarly bungled renewal efforts at the tail end of the epoch.
 
That's totally overstating the problem. Financial services aren't growing here the same way they really did, and the stock market was probably more or less sidelined by the internet, like a lot of regional bourses. That doesn't mean Boston doesn't have, say, a biotech industry that's the envy of every city in the US (NY is desperate for some of that business and can't get the ball rolling, for example).

What the state should really do is make sure that successful companies it incubates manage to somehow share revenue/prosperity locally. Why did Facebook move from Cambridge to Silicon Valley? If it was access to venture capital, let's lure more of that here (it's certainly fertile ground for it). Or let's give universities incentives to aggressively claim they contributed to the development of intellectual property, either giving them a stake in new ventures (and an incentive to locate them nearby) or requiring that, to do so, they must demand innovators stay nearby.
 
Lurker said:
Sadly the city and state is slowly slipping into stagnation again, much like it did during the Curley era, for roughly the same reasons.
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It's not hard to see.

I only pray we don't see similarly bungled renewal efforts at the tail end of the epoch.
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If you're referring to the West End and Government Center, aren't we seeing this already at the "Seaport", Kendall and Longwood?
 
Ablarc I'm referring to the carte blanche demolition of run down, but entirely functional, neighborhoods in favor of new anti-urban developments specifically aimed at wooing wealthy surburbanites back into the city. All those lovely people whom then clamor for more open space, wider roads, and fewer shadows until the city is utterly de-urbanized.

To be analogious: cities are living organisms where one problem can feed another until the host dies. Bad planning and development is akin to cancer or an immune system disorder compounding problems systemically to eventually result in death.

The "Seaport" and Kendall at least were post-industrial wastelands which represent a lost opportunity rather than the destruction of something somewhat valuable to begin with. Longwood is a medical area, as much as it would be nice for it to be mixed use, I doubt anyone really wants to live in a 24/7 ambulance siren zone surrounded by every kind of radiological, biological, or chemical hazard from the facilities themselves.
 
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