Boston Globe Looks for Subscribers . . . in the Herald

April 9, 2021

Well the hardreading staff was clicking through the Boston Herald’s E-Edition at our usual brisk pace when what should we come across but this.

 

 

Wait, what? The stately local broadsheet has taken to the feisty local tabloid to goose its circulation?

Get. Out.

The Globe’s virtual slumming comes at an interesting crisscross(road) for the paper, as illustrated by this graph from the Boston Business Journal.

As the BBJ’s crack managing editor Don Seiffert wrote last winter, it’s always smart to follow the money.

The Globe’s digital circulation has been the envy of regional daily newspapers nationwide in the past couple of years. It was one of the first papers in the nation to have more online subscribers than print ones last year.

The Globe has also raised its print prices to as much as $1,300 a year for some weekday subscribers, which may have accelerated the switch from print to digital. Some have even speculated that forcing readers to switch to online-only, thereby saving the business money, may be an intentional strategy.

Here’s a question, though: How does it make sense to trade a (potentially) $1300 a year print subscriber for a $360 a year digital subscriber? Not to mention, those departing print subscribers mean reduced print ad revenue as well.

Asking for a friend.

Meanwhile, the redoubtable Dan Kennedy at Media Nation provided this update on the Globe’s Fall 2020 circulation numbers, which included roughly 220,000 digital-only subscribers.

Paid print Friday circulation was down to 81,579 as of early September, lower than the 12-month average by about 1,500. A similar slide was reported in the publisher’s statement that appeared on Sunday: print circulation was 139,307 as of Sept. 6, down nearly 10,000 from the 12-month average.

But, Kennedy also notes, “Like many papers, the Globe has been signing up new subscribers at a steep discount. The challenge will be holding onto them once they are asked to re-up at the full rate of $30 a month.”

Which, as best we can tell, is the highest digital subscription rate – by far – of any major metro newspaper in the country.

That’s a whole nother challenge.

Meanwhile, the thirsty local tabloid is downright parched these days, as the BBJ’s Don Seiffert noted several months ago.

The Herald, owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group since March 2018, said in a filing with the Alliance for Audited Media that its total weekday print circulation over the six months from April to September [of 2020] averaged 24,540 per day. That’s down from 34,219 in the same six month span in 2019 — a 28% drop in a single year.

Even more knee-buckling: “Over the six months from April to September [of 2020], single-copy sales of the Herald averaged 12,619 per day, according to the filing. Last year, the average from April to September was 21,331 — a 41% drop.”

Even more knee-buckling: The Herald’s digital subscriptions at the same time were somewhere south of 10,000.

So any advertising revenue is welcome at the scrawny local tabloid – even from the hately local broadsheet.


Mass. Senate Wannabe Joe K 3.0 Is a Total Weenie

August 10, 2020

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joseph P. Kennedy III’s primary challenge to Sen. Ed Markey (D-Dad Sneakers) is grounded in nothing but naked ambition.

That, however, has not kept the Kennedy campaign from whining about non-existent attacks from the Markey campaign.

From Danny McDonald’s piece in the Boston Sunday Globe about a pro-Kennedy super PAC ad attacking Markey and the back-and-forth between the campaigns.

[Emily] Kaufman, the Kennedy campaign spokeswoman, said, “None of us have experienced anything like the vitriol, misinformation, and personal attacks launched at Joe and his supporters by Senator Markey’s network over the past several months. It has been horrific. And we think the Senator needs to take responsibility for the tone and tenor of the people supporting him in this race.”

 

Seriously? As the estimable Dan Kennedy (no relation to Joe) tweeted:

 

 

Our conclusion: Joe K 3.0 is a Chapstick snowflake who has run a thoroughly unpersuasive challenge to a sitting senator when there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the two on policy issues.

Your conclusion goes here.


Bottoms Up! Wine-Store Ad War in Boston Globe!

July 15, 2019

Think of it as a behind-the-bar brawl.

As the hardreading staff has previously noted, the Total Wine chain of liquor stores has dropped a bundle over the past two years on full-page ads in the Boston Globe, sometimes cheek-by-jowl with critical coverage of the retailer’s attempts to change state alcohol rules nationwide to work more in the chain’s favor.

(For a lively debate in this space about whether the Globe should have disclosed its financial connection to Total Wine in those news reports, see here.)

Regardless, Total Wine had pretty much the run of the stately local broadsheet until last Thursday, when this ad appeared on page A16.

 

Here’s the body copy in the New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlet ad.

Something all serious winemakers and distillers have in common is great pride in their work. Read the label – they’re very eager to tell you all about their history, their traditions, their culture. Oh, it’s not on there? Maybe you’re looking at one of Total Wine’s private-label “house brands” from an unidentified source.

At New Hampshire Liquor & Wine Outlets, you will find brands you know and trust at everyday low prices.

 

Whoa – that’s some serious liquor store shade, no?

This being Boston, we expected a serious smashmouth response, but here’s what appeared on page A3 of yesterday’s Globe.

 

 

Average savings of six bucks vs. New Hampshire prices?

That’s all you got, Total Wine?

Total Wimp is more like it.


Do Globe Layoffs Have ‘Your Worried’? It’s Too Late

December 2, 2018

As the hardreading staff worked its way through Saturday’s local dailies, we encountered this headline on Hiawatha Bray’s latest tech column in the Boston Globe.

 

 

Of course the headline should have read “have you worried.”

Then again, grammatical glitches in the shrinky local broadsheet are no surprise, given that the Globe is shedding editorial staff like a Corgi in spring.

Which should have your worried, no?


Boston Globe Is Now the Dollar Store of Dailies

November 22, 2018

Recipients of the latest Boston Globe Weekender newsletter were greeted with this cheery offering from local scribe Michael Andor Brodeur.

From now through what is still for some reason called “Cyber Monday,” Weekenders can score a one-year subscription to the Globe online for just a buck a week for a year. I just did the math on that and it comes out to just $52, which is objectively less than other prices (including the usual $360).

 

Stop the presses!

On second thought, don’t. For several years now the Globeniks have staked their future on expanded digital revenues, as the redoubtable Dan Kennedy noted last month in Media Nation.

[T]he paper is reporting that it has passed the 100,000 level for digital-only subscriptions, a benchmark the paper’s executives had originally hoped to reach by the end of June. Don Seiffert of the Boston Business Journal has the details.

When I interviewed Globe editor Brian McGrory for “The Return of the Moguls” nearly two years ago, he said the paper would start to look like a sustainable business if it could hit 200,000.

 

Not to be the skunk at the garden party, but given that 1) the Globe introduced its paywall in 2011, and 2) it’s taken seven years to get to 100,000 digital-only subscribers, the question remains: Will Globe owner John Henry have the patience to wait until 2025 for the paper “to look like a sustainable business”?

As the BBJ’s Seiffert noted:

[G]etting to the second 100,000 subscriptions will be a heavy lift for a paper like the Globe that’s bound by geography. Rick Edmonds, media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, said in an email interview a couple weeks ago regarding the Globe’s digital progress that “as with print circulation, (digital) growth can be hard to sustain.”

“It takes marketing, a steady effort to convert people to fully paid, keeping renewal rates up and replacing churned subs with new ones at the discounted price,” said Edmonds. “If times are tight and (Globe owner) John Henry is impatient with losses as he has said — I can see the budget for all of that being cut back.”

 

Maybe even cut back to a dollar a week.


Hark! The Herald! (Useless Print Edition Edition)

March 22, 2018

Umpteenth in our never-ending series

On numerous occasions the hardreading staff has referred to a Boston Herald subscription as Biggest. Waste. Ever.

And now we’re back.

Page 3 of today’s selfie local tabloid is entirely devoted to this piece bylined “Herald Staff,” the designation routinely employed in passing off press releases as actual news.

Herald moves print production to Providence Journal

The Boston Herald is now being printed in Providence, which means our loyal customers can look forward to a more reader-friendly paper.

Beginning this week, the Herald is being printed at the The Providence Journal’s flexographic newspaper printing facility, which was North America’s first entirely flexographic printing facility when it opened in 1987. The Journal selected the flexo process because it creates a paper with vibrant color reproduction and uses an environmentally friendly, water-based ink that won’t have the paper rubbing off on your hands.

 

More reader-friendly?

Here’s what this reader got on today’s Scoreboard pages.

The redoubtable Dan Kennedy at Media Nation called this one several days ago: “I’m hearing reports from inside the Herald that the switch will require deadlines so early that evening sports stories may not make the print edition.”

Bingo.

(To be sure graf goes here)

To be sure, the Herald at times gave readers the same short shrift when the Boston Globe printed it.

(Two be sure graf goes here)

Also to be sure, the e-Edition of the spotty local tabloid did have yesterday’s results.

But we’re shelling out good money for the print edition while getting less news for the buck all the time.

So, Heraldniks, we say this as you celebrate your new printing setup: Not a providential beginning. Not by a long shot.


Kevin ‘Cullen’ It in Today’s Column About the Herald

January 12, 2018

So, to recap:

On Wednesday, Boston Herald reporter Brian Dowling had this piece in the selfie local tabloid.

Herald execs’ pay disclosed in bankruptcy filings

Premium salaries as bankruptcy neared

The Herald paid substantial salaries to its publisher and top executive as the newspaper’s finances grew dire and management directed the company to a bankruptcy sale, according to court papers.

Patrick J. Purcell, the Herald’s publisher, took home $970,092 in the year prior to the company’s Chapter 11 filing in Delaware on Dec. 8, according to papers in the ongoing bankruptcy case. His compensation included fringe benefits of a golf membership and use of a company vehicle.

 

Among others, Jeff Jacoby, late of the shaky local tabloid, applauded the paper for running the story (tip o’ the pixel to the redoubtable Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation).

 

 

Now comes today’s piece by the Boston Globe’s Kevin Cullen, in which he whacks Purcell and waxes nostalgic about the feisty local tabloid.

Herald mogul takes a hit

It was the perfect Boston Herald story: Greedy entrepreneur runs business into the ground, walks away to his myriad mansions with pockets lined with millions while working stiffs are left holding the bag.

Remarkably, that story, which ran in Wednesday’s Herald pretty much straight, without typical tabloid excess, was about the publisher of the Boston Herald, Pat Purcell. It noted that in the year leading up to the Herald filing for bankruptcy and being put up for sale, Purcell was paying himself an annual salary of almost a million dollars, while doling out some $265,000 in salaries among his three daughters.

If you ask me, the best argument for wanting the Herald to survive was on robust display when reporter Brian Dowling wrote that story and the Herald courageously printed it.

 

(Spoiler alert: Purcell does not come across as a sympathetic character in the piece. But Herald staffers do.)

Cullen’s column a far cry from this mash note Globe owner John Henry published when Purcell first announced the sale last month.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Pat Purcell’s service to Boston

Patrick J. Purcell, longtime owner and publisher of the Boston Herald, is someone who has spent most of his adult life tending to one of the most essential tasks of our democracy: leading civic conversations that are sometimes contentious but are invariably important. While his efforts on behalf of journalism for the city are well known, the personal impact he has had on so many over decades isn’t as well known.

Boston knows Pat as the driven media executive who long ago bought the Herald from Rupert Murdoch and infused it with a very strong vision for his adopted city. But he is also unfailingly described as a loyal friend and devoted family man, who landed here after a colorful career in New York and became a Bostonian to the core.

 

Which, apparently, means greedy and heartless.

 


Boston Globe Stiffs Herald – After Herald Stiffs Worcester Telegram – on Boy-Beating Girl Golfer

October 28, 2017

The hardreading staff has on more than one occasion referred to the Boston Herald as a “lively index to the Boston Globe.”

But every now and again it’s the Globe that becomes a lowly caboose to the Herald.

Like yesterday.

Let’s begin with this piece in Thursday’s Herald.

TEEING OFF ON BOYS’ CLUB

Girl golfer wins tourney, MIAA withholds her trophy

The record books won’t note Emily Nash’s amazing three-over-par high school tournament victory — because she’s a girl.

That has golfers from all over the country calling to praise the 16-year-old Lunenburg High junior who beat all the boys.

“It still kind of stinks,” Nash told the Herald last night. She had to give up the trophy to the second-place finisher.

“I’m disappointed I didn’t get the trophy. But that’s OK. Even if I didn’t get the trophy, everyone knew my score,” she said. “In golf, it’s all about the rules.”

 

In the news business, though, the rules are slightly looser. So on Friday, the Globe unblushingly ran this piece.

Girl golfer beats boys, denied trophy

MIAA rule book allows her to play, but not to win

She was allowed to golf with the boys, but the rules didn’t allow her to beat them.

So when Emily Nash, a Lunenburg High School junior, shot the best score at the Central region Division 3 high school golf tournament at Blissful Meadows in Uxbridge on Tuesday, officials had to hand the trophy to the best-scoring boy, who had finished four strokes back.

 

Drive the Herald nuts graf:

“The statewide rule that denied her a victory will be reviewed and possibly changed, high school sports officials said. On its face, it certainly seems like an injustice to deny a trophy to the golfer with the best score, and Nash’s story has quickly gained national attention, amplified by social media and highlighted on the Web page of the PGA.”

Not to mention local attention, which the Globe conveniently did not mention.

Low class, Globeniks. Very low class.

UPDATE:

(Tip o’ the pixel to @lordpaluzzi via @dankennedy_nu)


Boston Globe Printing Press Just Crushing Things

July 18, 2017

With the departure of Doug Franklin as Boston Globe CEO after only six months on the job, we now have our second casualty of the paper’s new Taunton printing facility. (Tip o’ the pixel to the redoubtable Dan Kennedy at Media Nation.)

The first casualty? The daily baseball scores.

Earlier this month, the Globe ran this note on Page One of the Sports section for over a week.

 

 

Fair enough. But here’s the baseball scoreboard from one of the print editions right before the All Star break..

 

 

Seriously? A ballgame in Philadelphia or New York is a “late game score”?

As for being resolved by mid-July, here’s the scoreboard from today’s print edition:

 

 

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald, which the Globe also prints at its Taunton facility, is suffering the same fate, but has a different solution. The tardy local tabloid just doesn’t list the games whose scores are missing.

 

 

That is so Boston Herald, no?

UPDATE: Sharp-eyed (and -tongued) reader Paul sent this:

Um, the Herald splits the AL and NL scores in print. All the games they “didn’t list” are on the other side of the page.

But I suppose that doesn’t fit your pithy little quip, does it?

 

The hardlyreading staff apologizes for the brain freeze.


Boston Globe Still Won’t Disclose Total Wine Intere$t

June 1, 2017

As the hardreading staff noted earlier this week, the Boston Globe is raking in ad revenue from Total Wine & More while also reporting on the disruptive liquor retailer’s attempts to change state alcohol rules nationwide.

But the Globe has at the same time failed to acknowledge its financial relationship with Total Wine, which has spent tens of thousands of dollars on advertising in the $tately local broadsheet.

Latest example: Yesterday’s Page One piece on the pushback to relaxing alcohol regulations. Buried in the final grafs was this:

Businesses, meanwhile, are prepared to spend handsomely to push measures that benefit them. The Total Wine & More chain, for example, just launched a large public relations campaign urging the task force and the Legislature to allow alcohol retailers to issue coupons and loyalty cards.

 

At that point you’d think the Globe might mention this ad that ran three pages later.

 

 

But no.

Then again, not everyone finds the Globe’s non-disclosure problematic. After our initial post, the redoubtable Dan Kennedy sent us this message.

 

 

We yield to no man in our respect for Mr. Media Nation, but . . .

 

 

One final note: Before you pooh-pooh the hardtsking staff, consider the Globe’s totally egregious pom-pom reporting of the recent Citgo sign rumpus, during which the paper raked in easily a hundred thousand dollars in feel-good ads for the Kenmore Square icon without disclosing its financial interest in the matter.

But no matter?

Respectfully, we think not.