Boston has always had a rivalry with New York: in sports, in finance, and in scholarship. Because of New York’s size and worldwide renown, we New Englanders end up losing out to our Gotham rivals more often than not. It’s happened to the Red Sox more frequently than we’d like to remember, and many Bostonians now feel like it is happening to the Boston Globe.
The New York Times Company bought the venerable Globe back in 1993, in a deal seen by some as an blow to Boston’s cultural independence. Now, its New York owners have told the Globe to make huge budget cuts or face the end of its 137-year history.
Brief History of the Boston Globe
In 1872, six prominent Bostonians — led by Eben Jordan of the Jordan Marsh department store — pooled together $150,000 to print the first issue of the Boston Daily Globe on March 4th of that year, which they sold for four cents per copy. A year later, the paper was having financial difficulties, so Jordan brought in the young Charles H. Taylor as business manager to turn things around. Taylor was so successful that he was named publisher of the Globe, a position held exclusively by members of the Taylor family until 1999.
The Globe remained an independent paper for over 100 years, expanding to Sunday and evening editions as time progressed. In 1973, the paper went public as part of a new entity, Affiliated Publications. The evening edition was dropped a few years later as Affiliated expanded into radio, television, and even cellular phone ventures, but the paper was doing great reporting. Between 1973 and 1993, the Boston Globe won 10 Pulitzer prizes.
Purchase by the New York Times Company
In 1993, the New York Times Company bought Affiliated Publications, making the Globe its wholly-owned subsidiary. Changes were made, and some worldwide operations were combined. Former Globe staffers have complained (in editorials in the rival Boston Herald, among other places) that some of the changes negatively impacted the quality of the paper, but that position is arguable.
In fact, one of the biggest news stories of the last 10 years — the Catholic sex abuse scandal — was first brought to light in the pages of the Globe. The paper won a Pulitzer for that reporting, along with others for exposing presidential signing statements and covering stem cell research — a total of eight of the prizes since becoming part of the Times Company. Though unquestionably a journalistic success, it eventually found itself operating in the red.
Money-Losing Venture
On April 2, 2009, the New York Times Company announced plans to close the Globe unless $20 million in cuts could be made by the paper’s staff and the unions that represent many of its workers. The Times Company complained that the Globe was on track to lose $85 million in 2009, and that it couldn’t support a money-losing venture purely to save Boston’s most respected newspaper.
The Globe‘s unions were given a one month window in which to offer serious cost-cutting concessions, but negotiations dragged on as the deadline approached. Last-minute talks led to a few days’ extension, while the Times Company prepared their shutdown notice for filing with the state.
Finally, on May 6th, the two sides announced that a tentative agreement had been reached. That last-minute deal has now fallen through, but on June 9th, the New York Times Company said it no longer wants to close the Globe. Instead, it will impose pay cuts without union approval. The Globe may be safe from the imminent threat of closure, but the newspaper industry as a whole is faltering. The real question is “Will this be enough?”
Rebirth, or Stay of Execution?
Newspapers have been losing subscribers and ad revenue to the online world — and in many cases to their own free offerings on the web. Many people see this time as a transition from physical pages being printed once a day to the online fusion of traditional reporting and crowd-sourced citizen journalism. After all, more people are reading news than ever, just not in newspapers.
The Globe got a head start in the online world with the launch of Boston.com in 1995, and has grown that presence into one of the top regional websites in America. Innovation in the industry lags behind blogs at times, but newspapers are still the main trusted chroniclers of world events — both online and off. In fact, on the same day that the deal for the Globe‘s survival was struck, the paper announced a special digital subscription option for the new, larger Kindle e-reader.
Will the Globe survive another 137 years? Certainly not — at least not as an ink-on-paper publication. Perhaps it will still exist in another form, but remember: cutting $20 million from this year’s budget still leaves the newspaper $65 million short of making a profit.