For three years now the hardreading staff has chronicled the $tately local broadsheet’s slapping corporate logos on a series of editorial material – from lending Capital to Suffolk University to mortgaging part of its Business section to Rockland Trust to double-dipping on the Prouty Garden dustup at Boston Children’s Hospital to ensuring that Cross Insurance could “present” part of the Globe’s Arts section.
Just last week we noted how relentlessly the Globe’s print edition was flogging the Love Letters podcast in quarter-page ads that are also Kripaluscious.
Stay tuned – we’re guessing the Globe next sells The Metro Minute to Swatch.
Back in 2014 when the Boston Globe introduced its new weekly Capital section, it was a fat 12 pages with lots of advertising, as the hardreading staff noted at the time.
By the next year, however, Capital had started to dwindle, as we also noted.
Boston Globe’s Capital Withdrawal
Well the hardreading staff was leafing through the Boston Globe this morning and here’s what we found on Metro Page One:
Sure enough, the former stand-alone section occupied all of four Metro pages that featured – motheragawd! – exactly zero ads.
And now it’s come to this . . . one lonely page in yesterday’s edition of the Globe.
The only Capitalization in sight was Steward Health Care System’s promotion of James Pindell’s Ground Game, but even that lacked its usual full-page companion ad.
Looks like Capital might be the Globe’s latest strand of spaghetti that didn’t stick to the wall.
The Great Editorial Bake Sale proceeds apace at the Boston Globe.
As the hardreading staff has previously noted, the $tately local broadsheet is the NASCAR of newsprint, with logos peppered on it every which way. Take, for the latest example, today’s edition of Capital, starting Page One upper left.
That’s bookended by the strip across the bottom of the page.
And echoed in this page 3 ad.
Moving on, we have James Pindell’s Ground Game, brought to you by Steward.
Not coincidentally, Steward Health Care System also bought the back page.
Last, and sort of least, the Globe mortgaged its Politics Cafe to Capital One, a natural fit for this particular section..
So to recap: There are now a myriad of ways to use the pages of the Boston Globe to plug your products or services. Nothing especially egregious in most of the above, except allowing Steward to attach itself to editorial content. That’s a slippery slope the mately local broadsheet really should stay off.
As the hardreading staff has recently noted, the Boston Globe has lately been auctioning off various sections of the paper to the highest marketing bidder.
It wasn’t that long ago that the Boston Herald served as a sort of satellite campus for Suffolk University, teaming up on everything from polling to webcasts to editorial content.
But now Day Hop U has transferred out of the flunky local tabloid and enrolled in the Boston Globe’s Capital section.
Page One of today’s $tately local broadsheet (see bottom).
And Page One of the Capital section (see top and bottom).
Inside, readers get a fuller picture of the Globe/Suffolk collaboration, especially the Suffolk Solutions – what to call it? – marketing initiative that also include Globe reporter Joshua Miller’s Political Happy Hour (which now features a Suffolk University logo). The ad on page 3:
For the body copy-impaired:
If you go to the Suffolk Solutions site embedded in BostonGlobe.com, you find this “Sponsored” home page:
And here’s the video, which features Rachel Cobb, associate professor and chair of Suffolk University’s Department of Government, who’s also featured in the print ad.
Don’t be surprised if Dr. Cobb also finds her way into some of the Globe’s editorial coverage of local politics.
The Suffolk alliance is the second of these sponsorships the Globe has recently unveiled (the hardreading staff noted this one with Rockland Trust in the Business section last month).
But – wait – there’s yet a third, comfortably nestled in the Globe’s front-page News in brief column:
Yes, apparently the $tately local broadsheet has also auctioned off James Pindell’s Ground Game vertical covering the presidential primaries. The highest bidder? Steward Health Care System.
We look forward to further leasing out of the Boston Globe’s editorial content. Your suggestions go here . . .
Well the hardreading staff was leafing through the Boston Globe this morning and here’s what we found on Metro Page One:
Sure enough, the former stand-alone section occupied all of four Metro pages that featured – Motheragawd! – exactly zero ads. As one splendid reader pointed out to us, the mainstay of the old Capital’s ad pages – Steward Health Care System – had drifted over to the Business section, formerly a wholly owned subsidiary of UMass. Granted, UMass still has the bug that keeps on bugging nestled in the Business banner, but Steward owns the bottom of the page.
Should be fun to watch the Steward-UMass slap fight in the stately local broadsheet. At least until 2016, when – who knows – Capital might stand on its own two feet again.
There’s lots of interesting advertising material in today’s local dailies, starting with the Boston Globe’s Capital section. Usually the papers’s weekly political playground capitalizes on its cherce readership with a bundle of full-page ads, but in today’s edition what’s more interesting are the pieces about advertising.
First up: Noah Guiney’s scorecard on some of the latest New England campaign ads. Representative sample:
Charlie Baker, Martha Coakley, Seth Moulton, and Jeanne Shaheen also get the red-pen treatment.
Getting the graphic treatment are Political ads that aired most often (in two parts for legibility – sorry, no link).
Fun for the whole family.
Crosstown at the Boston Herald, it’s today’s ads themselves that are most noteworthy, starting with this one for heavy Lyfters.
That’s appeared before in the Herald, but not (to our knowledge) in the Globe.
Here’s another one that we haven’t seen in the stately local broadsheet.
Actually, we haven’t seen this ad in the Herald either before today. Anyway, here’s the Steppingstone website, and here’s their media page. Roll your own.
By far the most noteworthy ad in today’s Herald is this:
It’s been a couple of months since the Boston Globe launched its weekly section Capital, and for the most part it seems pretty fat (12 pages) and happy (exuberant layouts). The only thing even vaguely controversial about the sections is the spelling of its name.
Globe editor Brian McGrory has a running gag with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan on WGBH radio about why it’s Capital with an a not an o. McGrory keeps wriggling out of revealing the paper’s reasons, but here are three possible ones from today’s edition.
Would those ads likely have run in the A or B section if there were no Capital? Probably. But you have to believe a section geared toward political junkies is a more appealing environment for all three advertisers. For the first two, it’s obvious. For Steward Health Care, it’s a bit more oblique.
From Bruce Mohl’s CommonWealth piece last month on why Steward “is missing from the group of health care competitors that have banded together to fight the consent agreement negotiated by Partners HealthCare and Attorney General Martha Coakley”:
Some think the company decided to sit this one out because of its close ties to Coakley. The attorney general in 2010 approved the acquisition by Cerberus/Steward of six Caritas Christi hospitals owned by the Boston archdiocese. Coakley also retains some regulatory oversight over Steward, including a say in whether the health care system can shut down any of its hospitals.
Steward executives, led by CEO Ralph de la Torre, gave big to Coakley when she ran for the US Senate in 2010 and ponied up again earlier this year as she mounted her run for governor. Campaign finance records indicate de la Torre and his wife Wing led a group of Steward executives and spouses who made $500 donations to Coakley on February 26. More Steward officials contributed to Coakley in late March.
In all, Steward executives have contributed more than $18,000 to Coakley since late last year. No other health care system has taken such an interest in the gubernatorial campaign, which may help explain why Steward is less interested in the legal fight over the Partners expansion plans.
Interesting. But back to the original question: Why Capital with an a? Maybe because that’s what it hauls in.
P.S. Needless to say, none of the above ads ran in the Boston Herald.
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