Boston Herald No-Show in Yankee Stadium Press Box

July 17, 2022

From our One-And-A-Half Daily Town desk

The Boston Herald newsroom is so threadbare nowadays, the flailing local tabloid has turned its Red Sox beat reporter into a TV critic.

Boston Globe scribe Dan Shaughnessy noted the shrink local tabloid’s Hexit™ from Red Sox road games in his piece yesterday about how the Sox are living rent-free in the heads of the New York Yankees (with last night’s outcome an obvious exception).

Count this observer as one discouraged by a lack of New England media presence in the Yankee Stadium press box Friday. Only the Globe (three reporters) and MassLive bothered to cover the Sox in this “big” series before the All-Star break. It made me wonder when was the last time only one Boston newspaper covered the Red Sox in New York. Probably never.

Sure enough, check the ledes in the two dailies’ coverage of Friday night’s game.

 

Pop quiz: What does Shaughnessy’s piece have that Mastrodonato’s doesn’t?

That’s right. A New York dateline.

So the Red Sox beat reporter at the fading local tabloid has to cover the team’s road games with no access to a) players pre-game, b) players post-game, c) other beat reporters, and d) team executives, fans, and etc.

Seriously?

The hardreading staff has total respeck for all the Herald journalists who – remarkably – produce a newspaper every day.

But take a step back, and the Boston Herald looks like a dead daily walking, as we noted earlier this month.

Two years ago the Boston Business Journal’s redoubtable Don Seiffert reported this about the flailing local tabloid: “The Herald’s print circulation was just under 30,000 as of the first quarter of 2020, with more than half of that from single-copy sales at newsstands around and outside the city. That’s down 46% from four years earlier.”

And this: “The size of the Boston Herald has gone from about 240 employees at the end of 2017, before its purchase by MediaNews Group, to just a few dozen today.”

That was two years ago.

We’re guessing the Herald’s daily print circulation is now somewhere south of 20,000, which is alarmingly close to mimeograph territory.

We’ve often – at times, arduously – put on the pompoms for the Boston Herald, if only to keep the Boston Globe on the straight and narrow.

But it increasingly feels like Kaddish for the feisty local tabloid.

So . . . the sadreading staff at It’s Sad to Live in a One-Daily Town is clearly not going anywhere.

P.S. Same thing in today’s editions of the two dailies – Shaughnessy in the Big Town, Mastrodonato on his lonely couch at home.

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Wait, What? The Boston Herald Now Costs $4.50?

July 1, 2022

From our Déjà Vu All Over Again desk

Two years ago, sharp-eyed commenter Mark notified the hardreading staff that the Boston Herald had jacked up the price of its daily print edition by 40%, from $2.50 to $3.50

Maybe it’s the lack of ads, but did you notice that the newsstand price of The Herald went up to $3.50 last week? $3.50! More than The NY Times, the Globe, and almost as much as the New York Daily News and the New York Post together! Who is going to be so devoted to Howie Carr, yet so undevoted to home delivery or ipad reading, as to pay that much every morning?

Good questions all.

Now – in response to our recent post about the Boston Globe’s knee-buckling decline in its daily circulation to 68,806  – comes Mark’s latest Herald price-hike heads up.

I don’t see the Herald anywhere on this [Top 25 U.S.newspaper circulation] list. This won’t help: their single copy price apparently went up to $4.50 this week. Seriously?

Seriously. Last Sunday the flailing local tabloid cost $4.

One day later, the daily edition went for $4.50.

That makes a certain amount of sense, since the Sunday Herald’s circulation has long lagged behind the daily’s distribution.

But $4.50? For the flimsy local tabloid?

What the hell, right?

For those of you keeping score at home: Boston Globe print edition, $3.50. New York Times print edition, $3.00. Wall Street Journal print edition, $5.00.

Two years ago the Boston Business Journal’s redoubtable Don Seiffert reported this about the flailing local tabloid: “The Herald’s print circulation was just under 30,000 as of the first quarter of 2020, with more than half of that from single-copy sales at newsstands around and outside the city. That’s down 46% from four years earlier.”

And this: “The size of the Boston Herald has gone from about 240 employees at the end of 2017, before its purchase by MediaNews Group, to just a few dozen today.”

Your back-of-the-envelope update goes here.

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Boston Globe Print Circulation Sinks 11% to 68,806

June 28, 2022

From our Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts desk

For the past few years, the hardreading staff has unhappily tracked the knee-buckling declines in the Boston Globe’s daily print circulation, while the Boston Business Journal’s redoubtable Don Seiffert has chronicled the Globe’s halting digital subscriptions.

But we were totally unprepared for William Turvill’s piece the other day in the UK’s Press Gazette.

Top 25 US newspaper circulations: Print sales fall another 12% in 2022

Our top 25 ranking, based on figures shared by the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM), shows that The Wall Street Journal and New York Times retain the largest daily print circulations in the US.

Gannett’s USA Today keeps third place, but is close to seeing its print circulation fall below Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post.

Here’s the top part of AAM’s newspaper circulation chart.

Boston Globeniks: We’re Number 14! We’re Number 14!

Everyone else: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

All due respect.

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Boston Herald Contracts a Mild Case of the Merchies

February 4, 2022

As the splendid readers of this blog well know, the Boston Herald’s print circulation has been circling the drain for quite some time now.

A year ago, according to the redoubtable Don Seiffert at the Boston Business Journal (subscription required), numbers filed with the Alliance for Audited Media (AAM) indicated that the Herald’s average weekday circulation had fallen to 22,032, which is roughly equivalent to the number of iced coffees your local Dunkin serves every day.

Knee-buckling graphic from the BBJ.

Consequently, it’s no surprise that the thirsty local tabloid has looked to sources other than its actual news gathering to bolster the bottom line.

Enter the Boston Herald Store.

This week the flailing local tabloid has run full-page and quarter-page ads promoting its Newsroom Collection, urging readers to “Show your support for local journalism with Boston Herald apparel and mugs.”

 

Here’s the store’s full inventory.

 

Really, Heraldniks? That’s the best you got?

No GlobeBusters baseball caps?

No Howie (American) Carrnage bomber jackets?

And where’s the I Get It in the Morning. That’s Right: The Herald replica of the paper’s vintage 1970s t-shirt?

(UPDATE: The Missus reliably informs me that it was actually a sweatshirt. She had one when she worked at the paper in 1975. On the front it said I Get it Every Morning . . . and on the back That’s Right. The Herald. At the time, the flashy local tabloid was a broadsheet with a daily circulation north of 350,000.)

The hardreading staff knows that it’s tough putting out a daily paper with a newsroom that can barely field a parks and rec soccer squad.

But maybe the Herald’s puppet management could prevail on the vampire capital hedge fund sucking the lifeblood out of the paper to at least send it off with some decent valedictory merchandise at its sad little online store.

Or is that too much to ask in a world of death by a thousand paper cuts?

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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.

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Boston Globe Bleeds Subscribers for Extra $109/year

January 28, 2021

For the past year or two, the hardreading staff has subscribed to the print edition of the Boston Sunday Globe, which also gets us unlimited digital access to the stately local broadsheet (as well as the print edition of the Saturday Globe, which for some inexplicable reason we started getting for no additional charge).

And then yesterday we got this in our emailbox.

Dear Globe Subscriber,

It’s become a bit clichéd to say that 2020 was a year unlike any other. But there’s no other good way to sum it up. It was a year in which we saw unfathomable death from the global pandemic. We saw so much of our economy collapse. We saw a vital social justice movement. We saw the most important presidential campaign in generations. And we saw an election aftermath unlike any that came before.

We also saw how much journalism mattered . . .

As costs of covering the news have increased, we are increasing the weekly rate by $2.10, effective on your next subscription renewal . . .

Not to get technical about it, but it turns out that by “subscription renewal” the Globe means “your next automatic credit card payment.”

So, starting sort of right now, a hike of $109.20 per annum.

For those of you keeping score at home, Boston Business Journal stalwart Don Seiffert detailed the Globe rate card last year.

The Globe’s subscription rates have historically been considered among the highest of any regional daily in the nation. Its website currently indicates a regular, weekday subscription rate of $21 a week ($1,092 a year), and a Sunday-only rate of $8 a week ($416 per year), after introductory discounts expire . . .

The Globe’s regular online-only subscription rate, before discounts, is $6.93 per week, or $360 annually.

Subscription rates vary widely, but bottom line for us: We could pay $556 to keep what we currently have, or drop the Sunday print edition and save $224 a year.

Which is exactly what we did.

So we gotta ask: Who’s doing the math at the Boston Globe?

As this BBJ chart shows, print subscriptions are cratering at the Globe while online subscriptions rise.

How does replacing departed $1000 print subscribers with (at best) $525 digital subscribers work as a revenue model? Taking a 50% haircut for every lost print subscription hardly seems a recipe for long-term success. (Keep in mind that the Globe’s print circulation in 2013 – when John Henry bought the paper – was 245,572.)

Or are we missing something here?

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Boston Herald Jacks Up Newsstand Price by 40%

June 8, 2020

Sharp-eyed commenter Mark sent this heads-up to the hardreading staff today.

Maybe it’s the lack of ads, but did you notice that the newsstand price of The Herald went up to $3.50 last week? $3.50! More than The NY Times, the Globe, and almost as much as the New York Daily News and the New York Post together! Who is going to be so devoted to Howie Carr, yet so undevoted to home delivery or ipad reading, as to pay that much every morning?

(For the single copy price of 3 months of Heralds, you can get home delivery for a year. For less than 3 weeks of single copy Heralds, you can read the e-edition for a year.)

 

The truth is, we hadn’t noticed. When we checked, though, we discovered that a week ago the newsstand price of the costly local tabloid went from this . . .

 

 

. . . to this.

 

(Newsstand prices for both the Boston Globe and the New York Times are $3 weekdays and $6 Sunday, if you’re keeping score at home.)

While the hike might be startling, it’s hardly surprising. Herald ad revenues are increasingly anemic, and print circulation is deep into its death spiral, as the Boston Business Journal’s redoubtable Don Seiffert reported last month.

The Herald’s print circulation was just under 30,000 as of the first quarter of 2020, with more than half of that from single-copy sales at newsstands around and outside the city. That’s down 46% from four years earlier.

 

Eye-popping chart:

And then there’s this, also from Seiffert’s piece. “The size of the Boston Herald has gone from about 240 employees at the end of 2017, before its purchase by MediaNews Group, to just a few dozen today.”

So to summarize: The value proposition at the skimpy local tabloid seems to be something along the lines of The Boston Herald: You give us more, we’ll give you less.

Law of diminishing returns, anyone?

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Editors at New York Times: ‘What’s a Boston Herald?’

May 25, 2020

Yesterday’s jaw-dropping New York Times front page has rightfully been the talk of the media world.

 

 

Also rightfully, the Times cited its sources at the end of the four-page roll call.

 

 

The publications appear in alphabetical order. Here are the B’s.

 

 

You see who’s missing there? That’s right – the Herald.

The hardcounting staff tallied 264 publications nationwide that the Times consulted for biographical details on the 1000 coronavirus victims who peopled yesterday’s list.

But not the Boston Herald (whose print circulation, the Boston Business Journal’s Don Seiffert reported last week, has fallen below 30,000 – down 46% from four years ago).

See our kissin’ cousins at One-Daily Town for further details.

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Turn the Boston Herald Sideways, It Sorta Disappears

January 16, 2020

Since Digital Worst – sorry, First – Media bought it in 2018, the Boston Herald has been, to borrow a phrase from the great Raymond Chandler, thin as the gold on a weekend wedding ring, officially making the Herald the flimsy local tabloid.

And getting flimsier all the time.

Take yesterday’s edition: Of the paper’s 48 pages, four-and-a-half were given over to house ads such as this one.

 

 

Something under two pages were occupied by display – that is to say, paid – ads.

That’s non-business-as-usual for the fading local tabloid, which is suffering  knee-buckling decreases in both circulation and ad revenue.

As the redoubtable Don Seiffert noted in the Boston Business Journal last month, “[a]s of September 2014, the Herald had weekday print circulation of 60,960. As of this past September — six years later — that number was down to 33,337. Over the past year, the Herald’s weekday print circulation fell 16 percent.”

The paper’s Sunday circulation is even lower than its weekday readership, a distinction few metro dailies can claim.

Bottom line: The Boston Herald is disappearing in slow motion right before our eyes.

No wonder the hardreading staff has kissin’ cousins at It’s Sad to Live in a One-Daily Town.

And it will be, whatever you might think of the dodgy local tabloid.

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Boston Globe Using Slimy Law Firm to Bust Its Union

October 13, 2019

Well the hardreading staff was listening to the latest episode of Slate’s excellent Trumpcast when we heard Above the Law contributor Elie Mystal say this to host Virginia Heffernan.

Jones Day has been basically the legal farm team for the Trump administration. It’s where [former White House counsel Don] McGann comes from. And McGann has brought along a lot of his kind of cronies and partners. It is where I think for something like 17 Jones Day lawyers have either had positions in the Trump administration or been nominated to judgeships by the Trump administration . . . They are being sued right now for some really troubling sexual harassment and hostile work environment allegations of refusing to pay women partners as much as men . . . There was one allegation where a associate of color claims that Jones they doctored her picture on their website to make her look darker . . . and widened her nose and made her look darker with Photoshop to say ‘Look see we got a black one. Leave us alone.’ The thing about Jones  that people need to understand is that this is totally on brand for Jones Day . . . This is a firm that got their start as a big tobacco law firm.

 

Wait – isn’t Jones Day the law firm the Boston Globe hired to negotiate a new contract with its newsroom and business employees?

Yes indeed, as the Boston Business Journal’s estimable Don Seiffert reported last December.

Boston Globe hires law firm known for taking hard line with unions

With the Boston Globe’s contract with newsroom and business employees set to expire at the end of the year, the paper has hired a law firm with a reputation for taking a hard line on media unions when it comes to contract talks.

In a memo to members last week, the Boston Newspaper Guild, which says it represents about 300 workers at the Globe, said the company recently hired law firm Jones Day, saying the firm is “known for union-busting in the media industry.”

 

But it’s not just union-busting on Jones Day’s resume.

Self-styled local paragons John Henry and Linda Pizzuti Henry have hired an allegedly sexist, racist, ethically challenged law firm to represent them in a purportedly good faith labor negotiation with its employees.

As the Globe turns, eh?

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