Wednesday morning I saw a photo on the front page of The Daily Collegian from the ‘Save the Globe’ rally. As if a bunch of people showing up at Faneuil Hall to talk will make any difference. Instead of talking they ought to be buying copies of the Boston Globe. The problems are financial and not conversational.
The Globe, according to The Collegian, is on track to lose $85 million this year. That’s well over $1 million a week. Readership is down, advertising is down and the Globe’s parent company, the Times Co., wants $20 million in cuts by Friday, May 1.
As usual, we find that the union is responsible for holding things up. While $20 million in cuts will be hard to find in any case, the Boston Newspaper Guild will not do anything to save the paper for as long as they can. Unions have forced the closings of many businesses, which negate the entire purpose of the union.
As admirable as union goals might be, I believe that it is far more worthwhile to distribute the $20 million as widely as possible ‘- hourly pay cuts, no more paid internships, closing the D.C. bureau and streamlining the organization to run more efficiently with fewer people ‘- than to be obstinate and have the whole paper shut down.‘
I also ask, what are the most relevant sections of the newspaper? Cinema, theater, music and the arts section in general can be cut wholesale. If someone wants to advertise a play or band they should be more than welcome to pay for it. I would even suggest that the sports section could be scrapped, since we have ESPN, NESN, radio and the sports teams’ official websites to discuss every angle of every play of every game.‘
The three most important sections of the Globe ‘- and indeed, any newspaper ‘- are the local, non-local and editorial sections.‘
I say this, not because I am a news and an editorial/opinion writer, but because news is the main province of a newspaper and letters to the editor constitute one of the most valuable public forums for the discussion and exchange of ideas in a polite and rational manner. Internet forums will probably never be able to replace that.
But all these are stop-gap measures. Newspapers on the whole have been declining in circulation and profitability for years. The question is, why?
The usual suspects are the Internet and 24-hour news television chasing away advertising and making it cheaper to access news stories. But those things in and of themselves are not responsible ‘- the real failure is that of the newspapers to compete with the newer forms.
The Boston Herald, despite its circulation decline, is still profitable. Herald editor Jules Crittenden said in a blog post, ‘Actually the Globe does stand alone, spectacularly alone.‘ The Globe is hemorrhaging more than $1 million a week…Reporting in the recent past has indicated the Herald operates in the black. Knock on wood. The Globe neglected to mention that.’
Why has the Herald thrived despite a 38 percent drop in daily circulation?‘ By adapting. By being competitive in a changing market.‘
For too long newspapers sat on their laurels and did not even bother to compete.‘ Entrepreneurship stagnated in the world of print media ‘- every region of the country had as many newspapers as it could support and advertising wasn’t going anywhere ‘-and they failed to care about CNN or the Internet. But both 24-hour TV and the Internet can get news out there faster than a daily newspaper. Now, the race does not always go to the swift, but when ‘old news’ comes to mean news first reported an hour ago and not 24 hours ago, it’s time for innovation.
What form will that innovation take? If I knew that I’d be looking to buy a publishing company, but I think that first, there will be no more weekend editions and eventually newspapers will be weekly or twice-weekly.
Because of that, the emphasis of news writing will be on in-depth human-interest stories and investigative features. I can also see special editions being printed for important events. But I think that the future of newspapers looks a lot like their past: as the mouthpieces of political parties. Parties have the money and influence to finance newspapers ‘- even if they’re online. They also have the desire in the form of educating voters about beliefs and candidates. This will lead to a boom in independent media, either desiring greater objectivity or alternative voices.
But that’s the future. It will happen when it happens and when it does; it will know where to find me. I’ll be the one reading The
Matthew M. Robare is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
