The incredible shrinking Globe
Today's Boston Globe has one fewer section than before. Instead of separate Living|Arts and Food sections, Wednesdays now feature a mishmash called "Food & Arts, with a couple of Travel pages thrown in for good measure.
Earlier: Boston Globe kicks Calendar section aside
What daily or weekly section will the Globe discard next?
Comments
Oooooh, I know!
Would it be cheating if I answered? I've been told that the purpose isn't to reduce content, but to reduce free-standing sectins. But there will be 3 more consolidations this month, one of which comes this week.
It certainly de-emphasizes content
even if it doesn't actually reduce it. Any movie that opens on a Wednesday will now have its review pushed back to an inside page, instead of being featured on the Living|Arts section front. The Big Apple Circus can't be happy with the positioning of its review in today's paper.
The Thursday Sidekick also feels like a de-emphasis of content formerly contained in the Calendar section. The Thursday Globe used to often have a front-page headline above the nameplate, advertising the theme of that week's Calendar. No longer.
No more Saturday Sidekick section
And today we see what the next step is. The Saturday Sidekick section is no more, with its content folded into "Living & Arts". (Which used to be "Living|Arts" until today.) Is there some rhyme or reason for this?
I may be speaking heresy,
I may be speaking heresy, but isn't it about time the public realizes that the news we read every day will become thinner and thinner unless attitudes about paying for online news change?
I don't like spending money any more than the next person, but if the Globe could reverse its downward spiral by charging a small monthly subscription to its digital version, I'd pony up.
I know, I know .... putting my flame suit on...
Ron
I get the Globe home-delivered every day
Reading a daily newspaper is a lifelong habit for me, from the age of about 5 when my hometown paper was the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
But I find I'm less and less interested in the Globe as its content and local flavor ebb away. If the trend keeps up, sooner or later I'll drop the subscription. Then what?
I think its time the sports
I think its time the sports section gets merged with classified.
Why Not?
It seems the career section has been merging with lifestyle and fashion sections for some time.
Remember when the Globe had
Remember when the Globe had a Science section once a week? They turned it into "Health/Science", and of course the science content withered as the "is bad for you" content increased.
The truth is, I can get far more science info here on the interweb now than I ever did in the Globe.
The Death Spiral
There's an ominous whirlpool forming around the entire news industry. Sales are down, ad revenues are down. To make ends meet, papers and TV newsrooms cut staff and decrease content, which makes their product less appealing, which causes revenues to fall, more staff to be cut, etc.
(There's been lots of news coverage on this issue, e.g. this installment of Radio Boston.)
Saying the Internet will take over isn't realistic. As Eric Alterman wrote in last week's New Yorker, much of the content of the most popular online news/blog sites like the Huffington Post and Drudge Report originate with traditional journalism, repackaged or re-framed for the site's point of view. Online ad revenues are not growing fast enough to support full-time, thorough investigative journalism.
And nobody seems to know what to do about it.
Interesting project to watch
MinnPost - Online startup staffed by a fulltime reporters including some Pulitzer-Prize winners. And run as a non-profit:
Overseas Media
I have also noticed that many of my friends prefer various overseas news outlets to US news outlets for a number of reasons.
This tells me two things:
1) A fair amount of the US media hasn't been trustworthy for some time (e.g. "Faux" news)
2) US news outlets have been downsizing for some time and don't have the scratch to cover the territory that UK and EU news outlets do. They don't have the inclination to cover the same sorts of issues - even when most of the story is from the AP.
Really kind of sad when your best outlets for reporting of US issues aren't based in the US, but that is what it seems to be coming to.
Keep an eye on Phil Balboni
And his new venture, partly funded by Ben Taylor (as in the former Globe Taylors).
I would guess that foreign
I would guess that foreign outlets like the BBC, CBC etc. continue to do good work because they receive almost all their funding from their governments.
The worse the problem becomes here in Boston (and everywhere here in the States), I wonder if people aren't beginning to realize they'll have to pay for online news.
It seems that a 'free and open' web may not always be in our best interest.
My $0.02.
Ron