The Boston Globe: Arrogance With Blinders On Equals Failure.

The Editors of the Boston Globe, with the massive sense of self-worth and entitlement that is seemingly a trait of all failing newspapers, led off the Saturday paper with a massive front page whining that its Parent Company was threatening to close it, some say, in 30 days if the Globe's unions do not immediately agree to concessions.

Today, they followed up with another gem:
"Threat To Globe Triggers Emotions."

The Globe is losing over $1,000,000 every single week. It could be losing close to $2,000,000 a week pretty soon here and its owners, who basically have already written off the billion dollars they paid for it in 2003 are less than thrilled.

The Globe, its employees, writers and editors, completely lacking in any sense of self-perspective, are searching the city for people to support them.

Good luck.

The Globe is not failing because of the recession, or because of the 'advertising climate' - it's failing because when the whole world went left, the Globe continued to go arrogantly to the right and continues to this day. It didn't help that its reporting was turned into absolute crap by newsroom cutbacks.

In 2005, I was working on a corporate turnaround project for a large business here in Boston. In 2004, they had spent $3,000,000 advertising in the Globe, it was too much money for too little return so we proposed to the Globe that we would spend one million dollars and we wondered what rate discount we would receive

The answer was zero, that's right, zero. Rack rates, which, as the subscription numbers were falling, were being raised so we were going to pay more, receive nothing and like it. Well, let's just say we passed on that opportunity.

Every six months since then, the Globe has reported a steady decline in distribution numbers. In their wisdom, they did what every business facing declining sales should do, they raised their news stand prices and then they raised them again. Now, you can pay up to $1.00 for your copy of the Globe. It's just so smart.

All around the country newspapers are failing.

They are failing because the product they deliver is no good for their readers, so their numbers are down. They are failing because their advertising model doesn't work for businesses to support them.

They are also failing because of the bursting of the asset bubble and cheap credit. I have been involved in some discussions with groups looking to purchase some of the newspapers that are for sale out there. The amount of debt these papers have amassed is staggering. In one case, a small newspaper with 150,000 subscribers had $800,000,000 in debt. It was shocking.

Of course, newspapers are failing because of sites like this and many more new media means of distributing news are developing, and in the end, here's the rub.

Newspapers are in the news business, not the paper business. If you took the online advertising revenue from boston.com, you'd have a very strong business. But no, it can't support 200 deliverymen and women driving the paper around. It can't support the presses and the lifetime contracted workers.

The world changed, not now, but years ago, and the newspapers, like the auto companies, hung on not by improving their product, but by improving their ability to manage debt.

Eighteen months ago, right here, I predicted we would see one major city newspaper fail by the end of 2008. This year, we will see dozens fail.

From their carnage, new models will emerge. New means to advertise, new means of reading the news. The faster the transition occurs, the better.

Comments

[raker]

I worry that after the newspapers are gone, people will get their news from TV, which is to say they will go into the cave and try to learn something by looking at the shadows on the wall. There will be news on the Internets, but will there be authoritative and reliable local news outlets in every city? Will Boston have an online equivalent to the Globe of twenty years ago? (An online version of the current Globe would be as doomed as the paper.)

A common thread is running through the car industry and newspaper crises, and that's the assault on labor unions. I think this may be the kind of thing Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine is about.

[jimdarling]

I find Huffingtonpost a useful news site, but the preening arrogance on display in this piece sickens me. There are good points to be made about why the Globe isn't profitable, but this hit piece isn't about that, it's just about how much the author dislikes the paper in question. Running a front-page article about an existential threat to a city's biggest paper isn't "whining," it's news. Running a follow-up piece about the outpouring of emotion is perfectly reasonable. People are emotional! I know I am, and the author of this piece should understand that emotion, since he has clearly let his own animus for the Globe get in the way of his ability to reason.

You can't simultaneously complain that distribution takes too much money and that raising newsstand prices is foolhardy; if fewer people buy the paper, that costly distribution can be pared down. You can't simultaneously complain that newspapers are like auto companies, hampered by their inability to improve their product, then praise their websites! Well, you can, but only if you're arrogant, disingenuous, and have an ax to grind.

[AliveInNYC]

The Globe started going downhill as soon as the NY Times took them over and made massive cuts to almost every department. The newspaper industry as a whole completely ignored the power of the internet as a news source and is now paying the price.

Although I don't live there anymore, I shroudder to think of the Herald as the only paper in Boston and the ramifications it will have on the Boston media market.

[LarryBlasko]

The Globe and other newspaper are failing because they think they're in the news business, but are very much set up as a delivery business. You can check out the reasoning here:

http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/

And they're failing because when they do try to do news, they're trying to serve a community that's no longer defined by geography. There's an explanation of that available here:

http://larryblaskosaid.blogspot.com/2009/04/news-fish-in-waterless-ocean.html

Newspapers in general are failing because they were obscenely profitable in the past, and mistakenly concluded that they were obviously brilliant, vital and essential. As I mentioned in one of the above pieces, it's like parakeets with mirrors -- madly in love with what they see, but not much chance of anything more coming from it.

[SassySundry]

I agree that the quality of the Globe has gone way downhill. The newsroom cuts have left it without the resources to do what newspapers do best---cover the news. However, I am personally (and perhaps foolishly) hopeful that the paper will make some changes to restore it to viability and relevance. We can't be stuck in a town with the Herald as our paper of record.