Boston Globe will kill City Weekly section after March 22

[ron_newman]

I am appalled and distressed to read that the Globe will discontinue the Sunday City Weekly section after March 22.

The Globe internal memo says that "the suburban zones [Globe North, Globe West, and Globe South]... are too important to readers to dramatically reduce." Well, how about us Cambridge and Somerville readers? Without City Weekly, the Globe provides almost no local news coverage of either city (or of Brookline, for that matter). Why are we less worthy than suburban readers who will still get TWO zoned sections a week?

Every home I've ever lived in has had home delivery of at least one daily newspaper, for over 50 years. But I think I'm about to break the chain and cancel my Globe subscription.

(x-posted to b0st0n)

Comments

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

What??? That's terrible!

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

We already cut our subscription down to Sundays only; this reduces the value of even that tremendously. Are they trying to lose their few remaining subscribers?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely convinced that they are.

[ron_newman]

So what do you think they are trying to do?

[m00n.livejournal.com]

I think they, and a lot of other paper news sources, are convinced that their defeat is inevitable, and have thus stopped trying to find any radically new revenue sources. They seem to be among the news organizations that believe there is not enough money to be made in online publication to sustain their organization. This is a death knell because paper WILL become an obsolete way for people to get their news.

What bothers me is that even though their online readership is bigger than their paper circulation ever was, their web site has never gotten the attention to readership design that the paper got. Compared to the Times, for example, their web site is a mess. It's difficult to find articles of interest from the main page. The links to the editorials, for example, have summaries that are so short that it's impossible to figure out which ones I'd want to read. It's just not a pleasure to use.

And the thing that really boggles my mind: Why is it, when online readership is so much more popular than print readership ever was, that it's so hard for papers to extract an equivalent (or greater) amount of money from their advertisers? It seems like advertisers, having now been given the opportunity to learn how many people actually see, or even click on, their ads, are now convinced that online ads are somehow less compelling than print ads were, and thus, not worth as much. IMHO, this is hogwash, and it is vital to the survival of these papers that they find a way to extort more money from their online advertisers.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The Globe is clinging to the old ways, rather than being creative and learning to go with the flow...

[m00n.livejournal.com]

It's pretty much exactly like The Big Three, except the Globe isn't going to get a government bailout.

[nonnihil.livejournal.com]

Which isn't to say that they won't try...

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I think that the New York Times Co. wants to run the Globe into the ground and then have a "New York Times: Boston Edition" in its stead.

I am not kidding about this.

[tfarrell.livejournal.com]

If that's what they really wanted, they could just do it, they aren't obligated to run The Boston Globe as The Boston Globe if they don't want to.

[turil.livejournal.com]

The reason is likely because we liberal urbanites are far more likely to get our news from independent sources, particularly on the internet (for example this community), and NOT from paper newspapers, or even their online equivalent... We simply aren't much of a source of revenue anymore. Thus we aren't their priority.

[ron_newman]

I hear this "bloggers are replacing newspapers" meme a lot, but I don't believe it. A fair amount of the news reported in davis_square, for instance, still originates from the traditional news media.

[turil.livejournal.com]

Er, what? Other than this post, what percentage of posts and comments on this community in the past week has the information people are talking about come from traditional newspapers or their websites? From what I've seen most information people offer here is from their own life experience.

[georgy.livejournal.com]

This is also doing a real disservice to non-hipster, non-"liberal urbanites" who deserve to read a publication that covers their community and their issues. City Weekly did some good, grittier coverage of homelessness and drug abuse-related subjects, too, as well as human interest stories about people in Roxbury and whatnot.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Heck, I have an RSS reader loaded to the gills and just got back from Whole Foods, and City Weekly is still one of the first sections I read.

Dear Globe reporters: I know you're reading this, because (contra ron_newman above), I see stuff reported in DSLJ end up in the Globe all the time. Do tell your corporate overlords that we love our City Weekly, mmkay?

[djdreilinger.livejournal.com]

Hi guys—Definitely I've often drawn ideas from DSLJ (though I found out about the snow emergency remix via Twitter!). I appreciate your concern and passion. Normally I don't get a lot of reaction/feedback... y'know, it's not like anyone ever checks my credit card and says "Oh, I read your article on x-y-z." (What? You're saying non-mediahounds don't notice bylines? Unimaginable!) So it's been very gratifying to hear so much affection for the section.

[craigindaville.livejournal.com]

I cancelled my weekend subscription a few months back when I actually did the math, and realized that they were charging me $9 more a month to subscribe than to just pick it up at the news stand (about a third of the overall monthly cost, if I remember). I know they need to pay delivery folks, but don't they realize that this also helps drive subscribers away, and hence circulation down, hence ad revenues down, etc etc?

[bettyw.livejournal.com]

I'm a weekday online Globe reader, but get the paper Sunday copy specifically because I want to see the ads - yes, mainly the inserts and coupons, BUT also the ones in the body of the newsprint. I *miss* seeing those in the online edition. I might actually pay to get a full PDF of the daily paper WITH THE INLINE ADS - but only if they did NOT charge me significantly more for that than the cost of the paper copy (which I believer was the case when they briefly tried that experiment some years ago).

Not surprising

[secretlyironic.livejournal.com]

The Globe is basically a regional edition of the NYTimes anyway.... there's no reason to read it for anything BUT the local news. Obviously, cutting out some of their few key differentiators is how they plan to hold on to the prestige of yet another boringly adequate national news organization they don't need.

(OK, I'm being unfair. There are maybe 3 reasons to read the Globe: Local news, local sports, and feeling smug about how much smarter than Jeff Jacoby you are).

Re: Not surprising

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

If local food coverage counts as local news, I agree.

[aquaflame16.livejournal.com]

This sucks. I subscribe to the Sunday paper and the City Weekly is often the first section I pull out to read. Why the $%$#^#%$ are we so much less "important" than suburban readers? How insulting.

At this point I'm planning to call and ask them to cancel my subscription as of March 23 unless they reinstate the City Weekly section.

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Send a letter to the publisher and to circ services--the phone calls are logged but not collated for anyone higher up, so the message doesn't reach anybody but a $9.50 hour employee.

[ron_newman]

I found a lookup directory for the Globe here:

http://bostonglobe.com/about/contact/default.asp

Steve Ainsley's e-mail address is sainsley@globe.com , and Circulation Services is circulationservices@globe.com .

You should find in your private e-mail box the letter I sent to the Globe. Dan Kennedy also posted it at Media Nation:

http://medianation.blogspot.com/2009/02/push-to-save-city-weekly.html

[icecreamempress.livejournal.com]

Ron, did you send this to the Globe?

Send it to Steve Ainsley's office (he's the publisher) and cc it to Circulation Services.

If we all sent a similar letter, that would be something.

[trtls.livejournal.com]

Ironic that canceling subscriptions is the way people are going to deal with this. This is most definitely happening due to a steep decline in subscribers. It seems a letter to the paper would be a better way to handle it. This has been coming for a long time. Newspapers all over the country have been cutting back or failing altogether. Hopefully, these companies will put better effort into their websites so we still have diversity in journalism.

[catskillz.livejournal.com]

Dammit, no! I have a Sunday subscription and City Weekly is one of the reasons. I can get national/international news from any source, but City Weekly is always reliable for Boston local interest stories I wouldn't have heard otherwise - charity efforts, old-fashioned eateries, students doing neat things, all of the down-to-earth stories that don't have enough hipster appeal to get much coverage on the internets.

I am incredibly disappointed. This section is one of my primary reasons for subscribing.

Brian McGrory's response

[jlauspitz.livejournal.com]

When I read the report from Ron Newman that the Globe was dropping the Sunday City section, I left a voice mail for Brian McGrory, the Metro editor, to say that the business logic of this step escaped me: the fact that the Sunday City section did not sell on-page advertising was not a reason to dump it, since its readers were the locally oriented people who read and clip the half pound of circulars, coupons and sale brochures that come with the Sunday Globe. I also noted that Somerville had been frozen out of Globe coverage for many years, so that the City section provided long overdue recognition.

To my surprise, he called me back with a detailed explanation of the Globe's dire financial situation (classified ad revenue, which used to yield over $100 million was now down to $14 million, circulation down, etc).

He also had a piece of interesting news: Brookline and Somerville coverage will be moved to the North and West suburb inserts that appear on Thursday and Sunday.

So Somerville news readers will be served by the Globe twice a week instead of once. The downside is that Somerville is the only town in its new "suburban" coverage area with 2 a.m. bar closings, so this will help to advertise it to the burbs as a the nearest destination for late-night drinkers, with predictable results. A similar destination status for suburban drinkers persuaded Lynn to roll back its bar-closing hours to 1 a.m. last year.

Re: Brian McGrory's response

[ron_newman]

If we're moving to one of the suburban zones, I guess that's good news. Is Cambridge coming with us? And which zone will we be in, North or West? (The Globe is abolishing the NorthWest zone.)

Re: Brian McGrory's response

[jlauspitz.livejournal.com]

A definitive answer must come from the Globe. McGrory did not mention that Cambridge would be moved to the suburbs, just Brookline and Somerville.

Re: Brian McGrory's response

[sunshineyellow.livejournal.com]

What is so wrong with people in the suburbs wanting to go to bars? This reminds me of San Francisco when people would talk contemptuously of the 'bridge and tunnel crowd.' I don't get it.

Re: Brian McGrory's response

[jlauspitz.livejournal.com]

I am reading this message at 2:40 am because like clockwork on weekends I have been awakened at 2-2:30 by the loud late night drinking crowd getting into their (illegally parked) cars. This will, of course, get worse during the summer months when the noise carries. The Burren, for example, does not serve any food after midnight and explicitly cites its need stay open an extra half hour to compete with Central Square. Unlike Central Square, however, Davis Square has few buffers to the residential areas, and no steady police or parking enforcement presence during the wee hours. I don't begrudge people a late night drink, but there are ways of integrating this into a dense urban setting that Somerville has yet to master. But this should really be on a different thread from the Globe issue.