It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town

As the hardreading staff noted the other week, there’s something up with the Boston Globe’s Saturday edition. First there was the abandonment of its WSJr format and return to the paper’s normal configuration, comme çi.

Then there was this.

The hardreading staff received a call [last month] from the Globe sales department offering us a couple of bucks off our outrageously expensive Sunday print/all access digital subscription for the next three months (which still costs half of our old seven-day print subscription) – plus the Saturday print edition at no extra charge for the next three months and beyond. Plus plus a buck a month thereafter off our old subscription price.

We were supposed to get our first bonus Saturday paper yesterday. We didn’t.

That was March 21st. Today marks the third Saturday in a row we’ve failed to get the Globe’s print edition.

We’re not sure what kind of scam this might be. But we’re pretty sure it’s some kind.

The hardreading staff is not sure what, but something’s going on at the Boston Globe regarding its Saturday edition.

Exhibit A: The Globe has apparently ditched its five-year-old Saturday format, which at its debut we dubbed WSJr, since it was so clearly a Weekend Wall Street Journal wannabe.

Representative sample from three weeks ago.

The whole thing was front-loaded – Metro, Nation, World, Business, Opinion all smushed together in the A section. That apparently was meant to clear the decks for a new section – Good Life – which was a thin gruel of lifestyle, arts, and culture.

Coronavirusly or not, the Globe has dumped that Saturday setup and returned to its default format the past two weeks.

Yesterday’s front page:

Metro and Business now get their own sections (B and D if you’re keeping score at home) and everything seems back to normal.

But there’s more.

Exhibit B: The hardreading staff received a call the other day from the Globe sales department offering us a couple of bucks off our outrageously expensive Sunday print/all access digital subscription for the next three months (which still costs half of our old seven-day print subscription) – plus the Saturday print edition at no extra charge for the next three months and beyond. Plus plus a buck a month thereafter off our old subscription price.

We were supposed to get our first bonus Saturday paper yesterday. We didn’t.

Regardless, we’re wondering why the Globe is doubling down on the Saturday print edition, since you’d think it might be the first to go if the Globeniks decided to scale back.

Actually, since we didn’t get the paper yesterday, maybe they already have.