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Bankrupt Boston Herald sold to newspaper chain that already owns most of the area's suburban papers

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Herald Publisher Pat Purcell just announced the sale of paper to GateHouse Media - and the Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the Herald, Herald business reporter Bob McGovern reports. Purchase price: $4.5 million.

Gatehouse already owns many of the newspapers left in Massachusetts, including the Worcester Telegram, the MetroWest Daily News and the Quincy Patriot Ledger, and often make dramatic staffing cuts as it centralizes production and reporting in locations often far from the communities its newspapers cover.

Boston will remain one of the few American cities left with two competing daily newspapers, although it will now lose the distinction of having two locally owned daily newspapers.

The Herald once owned many of the suburban papers that now make up GateHouse's holdings in eastern Massachusetts. The Herald sold them off for $225 million in 2006.

McGovern adds:

Red eyes in the newsroom. Hung heads.

More coverage by McGovern.

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Comments

Could this mean the end for such forward thinkers as Adriana Cohen and Tom Shattuck?

What will become of Howie Carr now that Pat Purcell isn't around to make excuses for having a blatant racist on the paper?

The mind reels!

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CVB reports that everyone will need to re-apply for their job. rumor is they will only keep 75% of staff positions

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is if the new owners announced to all the re-hired staff that the era of Shirley "Shill-y" Leung at the other paper was an opportunity to become the city's most respected news outlet.

No more playing one lower-class group of Bostonians against another lower-class group, no more pandering to anti-intellectualism, no being buddies with any officials, no more opinion columnists. Each staff member must be writing like journalism professors and a Pulitzer committee are scrutinizing each piece.

Would advertisers, subscription revenue, and awards committees signal approval?

Would the Globe be so humiliated that it is sold to a non-profit for $1, where they can aspire to emulate the Herald's new greatness?

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You obviously don't know GateHouse, though.

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maybe they have to change strategies.

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the Herald comments section to Yahoo.

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Howie will always get his opinion out there. You'll just have to read the next klan newsletter to get it.

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He'll go to Breitbart. He already has his head up Bannon's ass.

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I mean, Bannon has a strong following of white power nazi cuckoffs and Carr is supposedly a Jew ...

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several pieces on Breitbart or don't you peruse that though catalog run by a Nazi and his Hitlerjugend regularly?

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I use toilet paper.

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I cancelled my Sirius subscription today after ten years after the fawning press release they issued Tuesday heralding the expansion of Bannon's presence on it's airwaves.

Fuck that.

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Howie's day job is is PR flack for that murderer.

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daily during the sales push for the book. Its about the money and the culture of victimhood perpetuated by the angry white guy demo they made hay with.

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Howie has radio show that is on 25 times as many radio stations as Jerry Williams used to have.He's not in the Klan, which was started by southern Democrats.

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Of the racist GOP.

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He’s a fixture on right wing sites as a vocal supporter of that fat old turd Carr.

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Roy?

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I thought they might be on their last legs when they didn't understand the point of a clown running for City Council making light of the fact that no journalism is being done in this city (Adam excepted) and that the politicians and government are running amok.

Watch Herald reporter Dan Atkinson steer the conversation from any substantive journalism to my makeup and the size of my wallet just a few months ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EI-Dkflg83c&t=59s

The lack of quality journalism not just in Boston but America is only going to exacerbate the stratification of America as the rich control the media and government with no independent oversight.

“Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”

― George Orwell

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Well the Herald can't get any worse and the various Gatehouse Transcripts are basically devoid of news, so I don't see how either can get any worse. We've hit rock bottom and it's all up from here!

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Can we even consider the Globe (press release mill) or the Herald (sports/talk radio gossip tabloid) real newspapers anymore?

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The Globe sucks but don't knock it too much. It broke the Stan's Rosenberg story last week. It has covered other major state house stories that go beyond the UHub headlines.

This just makes it easier for the Globe since they'll have less competition. I never read the Herald but it served a purpose to at least embarrass the Globe when they caught something first. It's a shame that's going away.

Now resume normal Globe bashing. They deserve most but not all of it.

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Consider the possibility of Boston becoming a one paper town, with that paper being the Gatehouse Herald:

"The Boston Globe paid a hefty price this summer in terms of subscribers for its disastrous and well-documented transition from printing its newspaper in Boston to its new facility in Taunton.

The Globe’s Sunday print circulation numbers were down 9.4 percent year-over-year — a total of 22,621 readers — for the three-month period from July to September this year, according to figures the newspaper recently filed with the Alliance for Audited Media.

Its weekday circulation during that period was even worse, falling 9.8 percent year-over-year."

https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2017/12/01/boston-globe-print-ci...

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They were a reasonable conservative paper until Murdoch bought it in the 1980s. No place for them anymore, I guess.

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You might recall the Herald was on the verge of shutting down back then when Murdoch swooped in.

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Does anybody besides me remember that throughout the 70s the Herald (as the "Herald American", I believe) was not a tabloid but a Globe-size paper with a slightly more conservative slant than the Globe, but not the ultra conservative tabloid slant it had before (as the "Record American") and since. A lost period.

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Going all the way back to Lincoln.

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... it was still even the Herald American for a short time after going to tabloid format. It has a crazy history with all the buy-outs and mergers with other papers (the American, the Record, the Advertiser to name a few)
The Herald has always been up against the ropes as long as I can remember. I hope it sticks around, but if it becomes about as relevant as the Metro I guess, what's the point really?

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There were two papers that leaned conservative, The Herald Traveler and the Record American. The Record was the tabloid format the Herald is now and I can't recall if the Herald was also tabloid form.

When they merged it became the Herald-American for a while before it devolved into the shitshow known as just the Herald that was just mercifully destroyed like a sick animal.

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....was a broadsheet until the very early 80s. It was then produced in tabloid format and shortly thereafter (prior to Murdoch? Not sure) truncated the name to just the Herald.

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The Herald Traveler was a broadsheet. I remember it from the 60s. I seem to recall it always seemed tertiary to the broadsheet Globe and the tabloid Record American. Circa 1971 or so the Herald Traveler and the Record American merged and became the Herald American, which was a broadsheet. So, throughout the 70s, Boston had no daily in tabloid format. In the early 80s Murdoch bought it and reverted it to the old tabloid format as the Boston Herald. I recall thinking at the time that it seemed like a step backward. But a lot of things abut the 80s felt that way to me after the 60s and 70s.

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The Herald Traveler, which I delivered, was an afternoon broadsheet published by the same outfit that published the Boston Herald. The Globe 's afternoon broadsheet was the Boston Evening Globe.
During the depression, my mother's sister, Julie, worked in the Herald's classified advertising department. My grandfather was happy to see her paycheck coming into the house but not so the newspaper. " I will not have that Republican rag in
this house," was his edict.

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The Herald American adopted the tabloid format in Sept 1981, Murdoch purchased the paper Dec 1982, hours after the date the paper was set to close down.

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That was when The Hearst Corporation (who owned The Record American) bought the Herald.

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Bird.

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I didn't get rid of my bird when I got rid of the Globe. Even after lining the cage and the floor underneath, there's plenty of leftover junk mail to recycle.

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You still get the grocery ads in the mail every week, right?

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">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SldBtvWFhM[/youtube]

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I continue to read both papers, though on-line. I don't agree with much of the Herald, but read it anyway. There is some worthwhile local reporting, and local reporting is what most of the media in this city lack. I've always believed in reading what I don't agree with and what I agree with. I am not happy to read this, especially with staff losing jobs. Not you, Howie.

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McGovern reports many longtime employees now have to worry about ever getting their pensions, because of the bankruptcy filing and because GateHouse is basically saying screw you to them.

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Those employees laid down with the dogs.

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an outraged column from Howie about how his fellow employees are being screwed.

Oh, look up there! It's an American Landrace!

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Sad!

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Most of the Herald's target audience can no longer read anything longer than a facebook meme. Still the same, 2 paper towns are better than just letting the Globe inflict their ever-slidding standards on us. (Yes, I know this is another news outlet.)

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$4,499,999.00 more than Newsweek.

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owner thinks he can take $4.5 million and walk while telling the staff "sorry no money left for your pension" and vendors "sorry can't pay you--we're bankrupt".

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They had pensions?

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With the Boston Herald filing for bankruptcy, I wonder by doing that do they stiff the Boston Globe for printing since Gatehouse will find the capacity somewhere with what they own for presses to print the Boston Herald in-house?

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I'd be curious to see if they would argue any performance issues with their contract with the Globe regardless of the bankruptcy. I don't know where the printing operation for Gatehouse is, but since the publish the Patriot Ledger, I don't see how wherever it is would be worse than Taunton.

And if that contract falls through, who knows what the future of the boring broadsheet will be.

I used to debate this with people. The Globe had the readership, but I swear it always looked like the Herald had the advertising, and that's the element that keeps a newspaper in business. The counter always was that the Globe printed the Herald, making the Globe the more powerful paper.

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Yup - I called into to the Herald Subscription Dept but was transferred to a very pleasant women in Manila. She practically begged me not to cancel - but in the end she said she was not surprised because she was getting hundreds of similar calls daily - wait - wait - got that wrong - it was the Globe I was cancelling -hmm - or was it the Herald? Damn I can't remember - anyway I cancelled something

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Blame it on Fake News?

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I'm sure the woman in Manila was lovely.

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I'm dying to know! Oops! Wrong account! He's still there.

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Steve Buckley

My sentiments exactly.

Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com

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I will be appearing on Mike Crawford's show, The Young Jurks, on WEMFRadio.com at 6PM this evening talking about the Herald and Stan and dogs and why I keep getting booted from Twitter.I'll be the old Jurk.

Call in and communicate with me live! It's fun!

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