Hey, there! Log in / Register

Globe moves to nytimes.com model for paid content, adds online staff

Poynter posts the memo from Globe editor Brian McGrory. Most immediate impact: You'll be able to read up to 10 Globe stories a month before being hit up for a subscription. Also announced: A bunch of staff changes and additions for the Globe's new Catholic and high-tech sites.

Dan Kennedy has some thoughts on what it means.

Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

Sometimes I go to Boston.com and see a link to an article. When I click to read it, it's shows the first 2 sentences and then a link to pay for a online subscription (if I want to read the rest)

But if I go to google, and then enter the authors name and subject/title of the article, I get a link to the whole article.

How does that work?

up
Voting closed 0

Cookies. You can bypass most of the roadblocks by browsing in private mode / incognito window.

up
Voting closed 0

You can also delete the cookies for a given site, say one that counts how many you've read and then cuts you off. Delete the cookies for its domain and that resets the counter.

up
Voting closed 0

So does that mean only suckers pay for the online content?

up
Voting closed 0

Shhhhhh.

up
Voting closed 0

So if you* have a paper subscription to the Globe do you still have unlimited access to BostonGlobe.com?

*family members, etc..

up
Voting closed 0

They aren't going to cut off their paper subscribers who want online access too.

up
Voting closed 0

where the market is for the Globe Catholic web site, and why they are focusing so many resources on one religion to the exclusion of others.

up
Voting closed 0

Despite the overall dumpster fire of the past 25 years within the Archdiocese of Boston, I still think you are going to find a few more Catholics, both doctrinal or like myself very, very lapsed than Sweedenborgs around these parts.

up
Voting closed 0

Only something like 10% of Catholics are practicing Catholics, hence Kathode's question about where the market is coming from? Someone who is "Catholic by birth" and doesn't attend mass certainly won't be interested in reading the Catholic section of the Globe. It's not like Jews who have a culture associated w/their religion even if they don't believe in God.

up
Voting closed 1

I guess as a lapsed Catholic, who doesn't believe in God, that you must think I have no culture. Because Irish (and Irish American) culture means nothing without the Catholic part, right?

It is obvious that you have zero credibility when you say what you said. There are so many pre-Patrician modes, behaviors, mores and worship patterns in Irish culture that have nothing to do with Catholicism, only certain things which were grafted onto the religion by the priests and bishops.

When it comes to "Jewish" culture are you talking Ashkenazi Culture or Babylonian Jewish culture? Yemeni Jewish Culture? Which is it? Not everyone who is Jewish got chased out of the fields by Putin's great grandparents. Just because Ashkenazi is the dominant "Jewish" Culture here, doesn't make it the only Jewish culture. You've been huffing the Topol a bit much, wouldn't you say?

up
Voting closed 0

So you're saying it's not Globe Catholic but Globe Irish? Thanks for clearing that up.

up
Voting closed 0

I agree. Will they start covering other faiths? Since Boston is no longer the Irish Catholic hub it was decades ago, I don't see how this makes sense and to me is a waste of scarce resources. Not sure if the Pilot is still in print but there's always that for catholics to keep abreast of news.

I wonder what people of other faiths think about this.

I say this as a Globe subscriber and Catholic who'll probably never read this section of the Globe.

Hopefully we'll see some changes, like making Boston.com even readable.

up
Voting closed 0

There are still tons of Catholics in the Boston area. It's a community. It has news. Sure, not everybody will want to read Catholic news, but it's not like that's all the Globe writes about. Same for the new high-tech site. I'm probably more likely to read that, but realize not everybody will. Let a thousand sub-sites bloom!

up
Voting closed 0

Think the Irish Riviera, the Italian North Shore, and the growing Haitian and Latino communities.

I know you and I are of like minds on John Allen writing from the Globe, but for others, look at it this way. New York City has a quite sizeable Jewish population. Not a majority, and most Jews are cultural rather than religious. However, if one of the New York dailies had a Jewish affairs columnist, it would be a wise move.

Speaking of which, former Globe religion writer and I believe one time rabbinical student Mike Paulson is writing for the New York Times now. Not the Jewish beat, I believe.

If you don't like the Globe having Allen write on the Catholic Church, read the Herald.

up
Voting closed 0

Once we hit the 10th version of Boston's Best Beloved Burger or the 10th version of Our Favorite Pizza Palaces, we have to start paying for content, right? Or Linda Pizzzutti in The News, version ten-plus.....

Oh, the Humanity!

up
Voting closed 0

... that graced the home page of Boston.com for so many years:
IMAGE(http://cache.boston.com/multimedia/2011/07/17bus19map/images/iris_thumb_on.png)

up
Voting closed 0

I wonder how many articles the linked memo counts for?

up
Voting closed 0

Dan Kennedy posts the memo.

up
Voting closed 0

To the print and online versions of The Globe. It's about $60 a month which is pricey, but I view it as keeping the Globe in business and my version of public TV donations.

up
Voting closed 0

?

up
Voting closed 0

Is not long for this world.

It's bigger problem has always been the inevitable conceit of gate keepers dumbing the product down.

One of the first things I did with the Google News aggregator when it launched was use the filter settings to kick out the Globe and Herald.

The Phoenix was always too stupid or paranoid to even show up in search engines so I didn't need to filter.

The jury will probably be out for a while on whether the New York Times will really hang in there for a long haul. I filtered them out as well.

They took a huge bath on the resale of Globby to the local sports mogul as a public charity project.

And the disgraceful Washington Post was purchased by Bezos with change he found in the Amazon couch.

A well set aggregator is a grand thing. Instead of the predictably insipid pap I've come to expect from Boston treeware I can get nice granular detail from here, the various Wicked Local and Patch things and Boston biz journal.

The web syndicate things like Wicked and Patch are sort of crappy and on the skids but some form like that will limp along.

Big picture stuff can be had from Reuters. The San Francisco Chronicle does surprisingly good articles on New England area stories.

The filter works very well. The Glob and Hairoil still show up, just way muted.

And once you find more engaging ways of informing yourself, those fossils sink ever further.

up
Voting closed 0

So you're aiming to be uninformed about our own region?

up
Voting closed 0

..I'd have to actually care about the sub par provincial old media here.

Look at Universal Hub. It has a very sturdy stream of basic useful granular detail about day to day Boston news.

I don't need Globe, Herald and TV/Radio newsies to hand me their bowdlerized crud. Greater Boston is a region and location that a surprising array of news outlets keep track of, many doing a far better job than the local hacks ever did.

And I certainly don't need the Glob etc for the vast broader world... What... "Tsunami in Japan.. Hub Man Dies!" ?

Nor will I ever need any of the local hack's stunning insights into the arts and I never cared about sports.

That doesn't even touch the elaborate detail resources about specific things in the area that are on the other side of a search query.

I make content. I do a web search on some local thing and if a blank comes up or the content is crap, I just head out, walk the thing and make content to upload to You Tube.

If I do think of what I'm missing in all that insipid fluff, I'll surely scurry back as fast as my stubby little legs can carry me but it's a real long shot.

up
Voting closed 0

Jeremy Eichler on opera (etc.) and Sebastian Smee on art, for instance. And Ty Burr is a pretty good movie critic.

up
Voting closed 0

There is a web 2.0 universe of 'pretty good' arts scribblers out there.

The whole role of all forms of art scribbling is increasingly mooted in a time where text no longer has to do as much heavy lifting.

One can just watch a video clip and make ones own mind up about the merit of said subject.

Where is the value added by more text?

The world changed and it is an exciting time if you want to explore new potentials in sharing information, telling stories, etc.

But if you are sill clinging to some kind of buggy whip job, it's gotta be grim.

Glib Boston old media needs to ask that tough question, what value can they really add anymore?

up
Voting closed 0

They already have a sort-of-metered approach to web traffic. I've hit a few times, mostly from clicking through their inane one-image-per-page slideshows. It can be defeated by disabling cookies for boston.com. I wonder if their high-tech new approach will be more technologically savvy.

Fun aside: remember when the NYTimes went this route a few years ago? Their high-tech approach cost them something like a half-million dollars, took two years to implement properly and was defeated by four lines of JavaScript.

up
Voting closed 0