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Globe to shrink online staff; end original news reporting at boston.com

The Globe plans to turn boston.com into a travel, entertainment and forum site that also serves as a "portal" to Globe news content, as it concentrates on bulking up the news at bostonglobe.com, boston.com managers told their staff today. And that means a bunch of them will be asked to leave.

Eleanor Cleverly, the site's general manager, and Anthony Bonfiglio, who recently took over as the person in charge of "digital operations" for John Henry's media companies, wrote in a memo today:

There will be a clearer differentiation between the in-depth journalism of Globe.com and the community-centered resources of Boston.com. With resulting efficiencies anticipated, we are offering a voluntary buyout program for those who work in dedicated digital roles across Boston Globe Media Partners. A reorganization of the digital operation is under way. This will create fewer redundancies, increased collaboration, greater efficiency and cost savings across the company.

After John Henry took over the Globe, he hired a new staff for boston.com, including reporters, and put them in a separate space from the rest of the Globies at Morrissey Boulevard. This was not the first time the Globe tried something like that; when boston.com first launched, it had its own team of reporters housed in an office with exposed brick walls near the Children's Museum.

The complete memo:

Boston.com is now more than twenty years old; and this year, Globe.com celebrates its fifth anniversary. These sites are the two most popular digital news and information destinations in New England. As the digital landscape continues to change, we too must change and evolve.

The number one, long-term priority of our organization is to significantly grow our digital subscriber base at Globe.com. In order to do so, we need for our two sites to become more complementary in their day-to-day content and businesses.

Boston.com will continue to be the region's best free go-to site for things to do, where to live, what to drive, where to work, destinations for travel and so much more, while also evolving to more closely focus on the needs of our audiences in key demographic segments and advertisers who are trying to connect with our audiences. It will be the indispensable guide, resource, and forum for the region. Boston.com will also be a portal to news from The Boston Globe for millions of visitors every month.

The Boston Globe will continue to build on its remarkable Pulitzer Prize-winning journalism and its position as a leader in paid digital subscribers among metro dailies in the country. Globe.com will remain the foremost site for news, information, and journalism from our region. The recent launch of our in-depth, graphically enhanced sports site is just the beginning of what is in store for Globe.com.

There will be a clearer differentiation between the in-depth journalism of Globe.com and the community-centered resources of Boston.com. With resulting efficiencies anticipated, we are offering a voluntary buyout program for those who work in dedicated digital roles across Boston Globe Media Partners. A reorganization of the digital operation is under way. This will create fewer redundancies, increased collaboration, greater efficiency and cost savings across the company.

You will undoubtedly have questions about these changes, particularly how they will personally and professionally impact you. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will host Q&A sessions for departments across Boston Globe Media Partners, beginning this afternoon. We will also address, with more specificity, how this new vision will be reflected in our core digital products.

For those of you who are staying as we move ahead, know that you will be part of a team of smart, collaborative, digital-first thinkers who will generate stories of great relevance and innovative products we can all be proud of. For those who choose to take this buyout, thank you for making our digital experience such an important part of our future.

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Comments

death spiral?

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More like thoughtless undead menace shuffling towards the living with the intent of spreading zombification.

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live up to her name?

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What does it say about their marketing prowess that I only realized RIGHT NOW that they own globe.com?

I'm amazed that they don't lead with that branding, especially if they want to have a reach beyond New England.

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And what does it say about their reporting that they got their own URL wrong? Globe.com? Perhaps they meant bostonglobe.com?

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they do own globe.com and it redirects to bostonglobe.com

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I just get a dead end if I try to go to globe.com.

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They should've just said bostonglobe.com.

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They use it at the Globe, but publicly, bostonglobe.com is their "public" domain. Which make sense - it reinforces the Bostonishness of the site - at least until they decide to try to take on the Times or Post or something.

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Seriously? Most of their re-hashed, Buzzfeed-esque articles say "read more at BostonGlobe.com..." And that's just in the last 2-3 years since they updated boston.com to the current black/red layout. Prior, all of the Globe's stories were on boston.com and said "Globe Staff" or "Globe Correspondent" next to the reporters' names...

Sure, it may not be incredibly in-your-face obvious, but there's a lot of connections and always has been...

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I'm amazed that they don't lead with that branding

If you're not a subscriber, their pages say "Get unlimited access to Globe.com today"

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boston dot com hasn't had original news reporting for some time now.

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Hey, Adam, when are you launching the Kickstarter to buy boston.com?

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I'll refinance my condo if that's what it takes to get boston.com into the right hands.

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When Bostonglobe.com came about the content of boston.com went way down hill. Recently I've noticed that aside from short introductions to bostonglobe.com there was some interesting reporting on boston.com. Once again it is time to drop boston.com.

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No snark here, I thought this already happened.

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Last year they tried to explain that fiasco with the new home delivery service as "we were trying to save money which we would then put into the news room". Unfortunately that was right after they went through another huge round of layoffs in the same. Henry is running the paper like a guy who buys pork-bellies for a living.

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I hope they have listicles.

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... but "Which Patriot are you most compatible with based on your zodiac sign?" type quizzes are worse.

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Can right the ship here.

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Judging by the content of the comments on bdc over the years, I'm sure those new forums will be really civil and productive.

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Not that BDC has been much of a reliable news source in recent years anyway, but many of us will be relying on you even more now!

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donate to Universal Hub!

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Click on the "support now" on the right column and you can use Paypal to make a 1-time contribution or subscribe monthly through Paypal.

If at least 100 of us give Adam $100 - he can probably buy BDC and get some change back!

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why do they insist on keeping two separate sites if they're trying to grow a digital subscriber base on one? they say:

Boston.com will continue to be the region's best free go-to site for things to do, where to live, what to drive, where to work, destinations for travel and so much more

wouldn't you want all that 'great content' to live on bostonglobe.com? you're still giving people who don't want to subscribe an escape valve... the only thing i can think of is maybe the ad revenue from BDC is still too high to kill off?

either way, this doesn't seem like a winning strategy.

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Every one of the things listed there is something to make money off of. Travel pages have of course always been free advertising (you never saw an article that says Don't Go There, It Sucks). All of this "free" info looks like a revenue stream from the people who are getting the recommendations. Basically the Improper Bostonian model.

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And get rid of the whoring in the Globe. That would be a great news organization.

There's just the small matter of some of the Globe whoring being Red Sox promotions and pandering, so I don't see that going away.

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Don't you mean "news?"

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the NY Times paid a billion $ for this turd?

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It was 1993. Yeah, they bought it for $1.1 billion then - and sold it (and the Worcester Telegram) to John Henry for just $70 million in 2013.

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Will Boston.com remain the top destination for crashing my browser and drive-by malware downloads disguised as Flash updates?

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I can't even go on that website anymore because my (admittedly aging) laptop simply can't handle all the junk on the homepage. And that doesn't even include the "journalism." Crash and burn.

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