Despite recent financial difficulties, including nearly being sold by its parent company in October, there is still hope for The Boston Globe’s future, officials said Thursday.
Publisher Steven Ainsley and editor Marty Baron discussed the financial crisis and its impact in an open forum at Emerson College to an audience of more than 100.’ ‘
‘Given our financial performance, we are in good shape,’ Ainsley said.’ ‘The New York Times Co. made an important and big decision to not sell The Globe and that’s not a decision you revisit unless something dramatic happens.’
The Times Co. decided not to sell The Globe after seeing vast improvement in finances, The Daily Free Press reported Oct. 15, but the victory for the paper came at some cost to its staff and production, Ainsley said, including layoffs, benefit cuts and, one of the most contentious decisions, union concessions.
Asking for union sacrifices, Ainsley said, was one of the most difficult decisions he faced as publisher. The talks were widely publicized over the course of The Globe’s struggle to survive.
‘I was less concerned about the professional embarrassment, since if we didn’t make these concessions, The New York Times might have sold The Globe,’ he said. ‘But the unions did an extraordinary job in helping The Globe.’
Baron said he was also forced to make difficult choices on the newsroom side of the business. Closing foreign bureaus in Jan. 2007, he said, was one of the most significant impacts of the financial problems.
‘We have fewer resources now since that number depends on the success of the business,’ Baron said. ‘If I kept the foreign bureaus then we would have less local coverage. We still have international news, it is just not our reporting.’
Another cut in the physical paper was the removal of the classified section in the Monday-Thursday issues of the daily paper. Ainsley attributes this cut to Craigslist’s new dominance of classified business.’
‘Craigslist can provide people with services or jobs in a matter of hours,’ he said. ‘Newspapers just cannot compete with that.’
While Baron and Ainsley agreed on most changes made to The Globe, one in particular caused tension between the two, Ainsley said. In June 2008, Ainsley brought in consultants from McKinsey & Co. to look at finances and make recommendations.
‘In my perspective it was largely successful, since they helped us focus on the core reader, a subscriber of two years or more,’ Ainsley said. ‘But the decision was met with, shall we say, dismay in the newsroom.’
Baron said he did not think outside consultants should have contributed to the decision because they are not journalists and do not understand the industry the same way.’
‘I was afraid they would apply metrics to staff and measure us against other news organizations that don’t have the same quality product as we do,’ Baron said. ‘At the end I was just happy to see them go.’
The results of the research led Globe editors to focus more on the core reader online and in print, Ainsley said. Currently, The Globe’s website Boston.com receives 5 million unique visitors per month.
‘The media is exploding all around us and it’s good,’ Baron said. ‘We wouldn’t be an international newspaper without the Internet.’
Baron said too many people see a bleak outlook for print journalism, rather than new directions emerging.
‘We have new tools and new ways of telling stories,’ Baron said. ‘The opportunities for journalists are expanding, not decreasing.’
Emerson journalism graduate student Katrina Paczosa said she was surprised Baron took this view.
‘I have never thought of the situation in this way,’ she said. ‘A lot of my friends went to grad school because they thought they wouldn’t be able to get jobs.’
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