Goodbye Boston Globe?
April 6th, 2009 by Katelyn D'Eramo
This past Saturday, hundreds of thousands of people across New England peeled open their Boston Globe, just as they’ve done every Saturday for many years. But the news on the front page was different this time. The New York Times Co., the Globe reported, was threatening to shut the paper down within 30 days if unions didn’t agree to $20 million in immediate cuts. Now news pundits, other media outlets and Boston people of all stripes are wondering, are we losing our paper?
The Globe is how I start out each day and has been a Sunday tradition for as long as I can remember. But my daily habit doesn’t involve newsprint anymore. My twenty-something friends and I just aren’t buying the paper. In my case, it’s not even the extra cost of print that’s a deciding factor. It’s just habit. Even with the paper delievered to my house on Sundays, I notice that I opt to read it online. During the week, I start each day reading Boston.com’s Daily Headlines newsletter sent to me via email. Is this why we may be seeing the end of the print media?
It’s hard to imagine Boston without the Globe. No one wants to see the Globe leave Boston, or to see Boston become a one paper city. It’s happened to other cities recently (Seattle and Denver) and the way things are going, it looks like we may eventually share the same fate. Let’s hope not, because that would be a sad day for New England indeed.
This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 4:57 pm and is filed under Journalism, News & Commentary, PR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I agree, it will be sad to see the Globe go, but not just 20-somethings are ditching print. I’m in my 40′s, I grew up in the Boston area and now I live in the South End and I don’t read the Globe in print. I get all of my news online. And for hyper-local news, I read my neighborhood newspaper – The South End News. Even on those occassional Sunday when I treat myself to the paper, I’ll buy the NY Times because I like the Book Review and Arts coverage.
Sad to say it, newspaper readers like my parents are from another era. My parents still read The Lowell Sun and The Boston Globe – in print – nearly every word. I have fond memories of the newspaper pages piling up at their feet as they made their way through, section by section.
But that’s just it. Those are memories and I haven’t had any newsprint stains on my fingers for about a decade now.
April 7th, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I agree it will be a sad day if the Globe folds. We still get the Sunday Globe at home as both my husband and I enjoy reading the paper (when we can). Sincerely hoping that, at the very least, the Globe will take the same approach as the Christian Science Monitor – digital during the week and a printed edition on the weekends. Perhaps this would be a good way to satisfy folks like me who still want to read print in a limited way but most of the time will only be logging on.