BOSTON (MA)
Poynter
By Benjamin Mullin • April 7, 2016
The Boston Globe on Thursday became the latest newspaper to announce it’s undertaking a major reassessment of its strategy and coverage priorities to keep pace with the ongoing tumult of the digital age.
The announcement, an internal memo from Globe Editor Brian McGrory, tops 1,000 words and touches on several major aspects of The Boston Globe’s operation. Among other things, it calls into question the viability of longstanding editorial processes at the newspaper:
There are important issues to raise and explore in what I’ll call a reinvention initiative: Do we have the right technology? Do we train staff in the right way? Should we remain in the current print format that we have now, same size, same sections? Do we have the right departments? Is our beat structure outdated? How can our work flows improve? Do we have too many of XX and not enough Ys? Should we publish seven days a week? Do print and digital relate in the right ways?
The questions could go on and on. They could become bolder still. …
At The Boston Globe, the changes come during an era of simultaneous pride and newsroom austerity. The dramatization of its investigation into the Catholic Church, “Spotlight,” recently won an Oscar and brought the Globe a measure of Hollywood fame. But The Globe has executed multiple rounds of staff cuts in recent years, once in 2014 through voluntary buyouts and again in 2015 through layoffs.
Meanwhile, the owner of The Boston Globe, billionaire Red Sox owner John Henry, has presided over a company on a mission to build standalone publications focused on specific coverage areas. STAT, a Globe publication that covers the life sciences, launched last year. The Globe also launched vertical focused on coverage of the Catholic Church, Crux, that it relinquished after failing to find enough advertising support.
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