Behind the face lift

The Globe's redesign is part of a larger agenda: transforming the paper into a more profitable enterprise. It's not sexy. But if it works, the paper may avoid the fate of its downsized peers.

by Dan Kennedy

MASTER PLAN: Globe publisher Richard Gilman's bottom-line strategy may enable the paper to escape the slash-and-burn of modern newspapering.

To judge from the self-promotional hype, you'd think the Boston Globe's redesign was the biggest deal in publishing since Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. "As the 21st century unfolds," the Globe proclaimed in a two-page "Inside Look" that it saw fit to print on two separate occasions, "we are happy to unveil a redesigned, reorganized Globe suited to today's news and ready for tomorrow's headlines."

But to judge from the reaction both inside and outside the Globe's headquarters, the changes are the worst thing to happen to journalism since Rupert Murdoch bought the New York Post. "It looks like the Dedham Daily Transcript," snorts one staffer. Another compares it to the Call of Allentown, Pennsylvania (whatever that looks like). Or, as Globe ombudsman Jack Thomas quoted one reader as saying, "Instead of the Globe joining the ranks of the New York Times in style and sophistication, it now has the look of a local paper like the Worcester Telegram."

Well, at the risk of appearing to treat this subject with something less than the gravity that many seem to think it deserves, here's an alternative view: it's no big deal.

It's not as if the Globe could have done nothing. After the switch was made earlier this year to the new, narrower paper width that is rapidly becoming the industry standard, the understated design that had been used for the previous decade simply looked too gray and pinched. The new typeface is a vast improvement over its predecessor, and that's the most important thing. The disappearance of rules and the more liberal use of white space might rob the paper of some sense of authority, as a few critics suggest, although I'm hard-pressed to say why. The introduction of ads on pages two and three has actually allowed for a better-organized "A" section. The op-ed page is too dense, but that can be tinkered with. Overall, I'd give a B-plus to Lucy Bartholomay, the deputy managing editor for design, and Daniel Zedek, the editorial-design director.

But rather than being an end unto itself, the redesign is important chiefly as part of a larger strategy for repositioning the Globe at a time when fewer people are reading newspapers and when advertisers are pulling back. Just last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that retail advertising is off throughout the industry, with the Globe down nearly 16 percent in July and 9 percent in August. This squeeze has helped create an environment in which innovation is seen as essential to survival. "Newspapers, and especially large metropolitans, are rather frantically trying to create new products or rearrange their products in new ways," says newspaper consultant John Morton.

The Globe's innovations -- expanded suburban coverage, more business news, and greater attention to job-hunters and local advertisers -- aren't sexy, and are driven more by the desire to boost revenues than to upgrade news coverage. Nevertheless, they represent an important statement of purpose by Richard Gilman, the New York Times Company veteran who was dispatched to 135 Morrissey Boulevard 15 months ago to replace publisher Ben Taylor, the last of the Globe's former ruling family.

In an era when publicly traded newspaper companies such as Knight-Ridder and Times Mirror have downsized once-proud regional papers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Miami Herald, and Long Island's Newsday, the Times Company's strategy points to another way: making enough money to pay for an ambitious newsgathering operation rather than lowering those ambitions. That won't make the Globe a better newspaper -- indeed, it remains a very good paper whose internal culture seems to hold it back from true greatness -- but at least the Globe may be able to avoid the slashing and burning that characterizes much of modern newspapering.

The idea is to use the Globe's redesign as an excuse to persuade non-readers to give the paper a look. What they'll find:

Expanded offerings of so-called news you can use, in areas such as personal finance and careers -- the latter in the form of BostonWorks, a job-hunting section linked to a new BostonWorks.com Web site that, in turn, constitutes the Globe's answer to the popular Monster.com jobs service.

Increased coverage of burgeoning local businesses such as biotech and Internet companies.

A new Life at Home section in place of the weekly At Home; the new section is being published in six regional editions, the better to serve local advertisers.

A bigger presence in the affluent western suburbs, achieved by publishing a Globe West supplement (formerly West Weekly) on Thursdays as well as Sundays. Globe West, which will debut this Thursday, is itself divided into four zones of just a few towns each, which means that it will be focused narrowly enough to compete directly with local papers. The Globe's other regional Sunday supplements -- North, Northwest, New Hampshire, South, and City -- are expected to follow suit, probably within the next year.

Also on tap: changes that will allow the Globe to put out its "bulldog edition" -- the early edition of the Sunday Globe -- by 7 a.m. on Saturday, rather than late morning or early afternoon, the hope being that circulation will rise above its current, disappointing level of about 20,000.

The Globe's decision to expand to the west first is interesting not just because that's where the most money is, but also because it means the Globe's coverage will overlap with that of the aforementioned Worcester Telegram & Gazette. The T&G became a sister paper to the Globe last October, when it was purchased by the New York Times Company for $295 million. The combination of Globe West and the T&G also represents a threat to Fidelity's Community Newspaper Company (CNC), whose strongest weeklies are in the western suburbs and whose flagship MetroWest Daily News is headquartered in Framingham -- almost equidistant between Boston and Worcester.

New England by the numbers The New York Times Company is a New England powerhouse. The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette are the first- and third-largest papers in Massachusetts, respectively, and the Times' circulation in New England makes it a force in its own right. Here's how the Times Company papers stack up with some other significant papers within an hour's drive of Boston. Times Company M-F Sunday Boston Globe 477,074   722,729 Telegram & Gazette 107,234   131,357 New York Times 60,000   100,000 The competition Boston Herald 265,695   170,042 MetroWest Daily News 57,023   41,297 Providence Journal 162,099   232,634 Manchester Union Leader   61,548   82,429 Wall Street Journal 130,000   -- New England circulation figures for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal are based on estimates and past reports from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. All other figures are from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

CNC president and chief operating officer Kirk Davis has responded by purchasing the weekly Westborough News, by starting a Sunday edition of the Milford Daily News, and by expanding his papers' real-estate coverage. "Obviously, the whole Globe assault presents some challenges, but we feel that if we stay close to our customers and serve them well, we'll be all right," Davis says.

According to Globe editor Matt Storin, the changes are designed mainly to appeal to a key constituency: affluent, well-educated residents of the outer suburbs (for the most part, people who live between Routes 128 and 495), many of whom work in high tech. Research shows that these people are considerably less likely to read the Globe than those who live closer to the city.

"We are trying to introduce them to the Globe through coverage of their local area," says Storin; the hope, he explains, is that once they've paged through Globe West, they'll stay because of the expanded business offerings.

Needless to say, even if these exurbanites fall in love with the Globe's new offerings, they are also the very people who are more likely to read the paper online than to sign up for home delivery. The Globe, like every other paper, will take readers any way it can get them. But the Internet remains a money-losing game for newspaper publishers. In order to attract advertising dollars, newspapers need readers who actually buy the paper; if they also use the Web site as a supplement, so much the better.

"Every newspaper, it's very clear, has a challenge with regard to circulation," says Storin. "Many people are going to use a combination of vehicles to get their information."

Richard Gilman says the idea behind the expanded biotech and Internet coverage is "to excel in all those areas where Boston excels"; he adds that increased coverage of ideas and the arts is also in the works. What's of primary importance, however, is what he -- and Storin -- say the strategy is not. Both men say they are pursuing what is emphatically a Globe plan, and not a Times Company plan for Eastern Massachusetts under which readers would be parceled out to the Times, the Globe, and the T&G depending on demographics and geography.

Gilman was given responsibility for coordinating the Globe's and the T&G's business and circulation operations not long after the Times Company purchased the T&G. As a consequence, T&G subscribers in towns covered by Globe West will receive it as a stand-alone supplement. But both Gilman and Storin say the Globe will continue to compete with the Times for elite Boston-area readers, and T&G editor Harry Whitin says he'll keep competing with the Globe on local stories. Asked if it's as much fun to beat the Globe as it was before the two papers shared a common owner, Whitin replies with a laugh: "It would be more fun now."

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.dankennedy.net

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy@phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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