You probably remember the Boston Evening Transcript from T.S. Eliot.
That is, if you are old enough to have had Eliot on a reading list.
The Transcript expired in 1938.
Like many other metropolises in America Boston once had many newspapers.
Until last week it had three. Of course, the Christian Science Monitor--which was shuttered in its print edition a week ago Friday--was not
actually a local paper. Founded in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the
Monitor was in Boston because that's where the "mother church" was. In the old days, many intelligent people who did not believe in Mrs.
Eddy's theology nonetheless read the Monitor for its calming view of
the world. Not, mind you, soporific...but not hysterical either. I
used to know three or four individuals who took the Monitor, which
came out five days a week, from Monday to Friday, regularly. They were
older folk, all Protestant, all Willkie Republicans, which tells you
about the world from which they came so long ago. I know no one who
gets the Monitor now. Maybe it will make a demography on the web which
is the purgatory it has chosen for itself.
So there are still two newspapers in Boston. That is more than Seattle and Denver and more than many other metropolises.
For years, it was the Boston Herald which was expected to expire. The
last time I looked it was thin but still there. I also know no one who
I know takes the Herald.
So we come to the Globe. It is Boston's liberal newspaper, geared to
the suburbans who do not think that America is really a wonderful
country but (up to the recent discombobulations) were content in their
wonderful lives. They are folk who are highly self-conscious about
the ethics of others. And they do read. But the number of them who
read newspapers is fast declining. You know all of the bromides about
why the printed press is fast expiring.
Today, it is reported in the Boston Globe, that the New York Times
Company which owns it, has put the paper under the gun. "Get rid of
some more employees...or else." I don't blame the Times which, though
family controlled, is a public company with shareholders who thought
they had invested in a growing enterprise. Silly, I suppose.
Nonetheless, true. The companies also has loans out with usurious
interest, one at 14%. Maybe the Times can find a Muslim bank to lend
it money. After all, Muslim banks don't exactly charge interest. And the Times and the Globe do have a very friendly politics, even to very angry Muslim politics.
The several unions that represent the Globe will, of course, crumble.
They have no alternative if they want to save some of their members'
jobs. Moreover, the bare truth is that newspaper unions are deeply
responsible--though certainly not as much as the owners--for the fact
that the whole industry lags behind technology and enshrines the past
in the present.
Firing dozens of people and allowing some technical innovations will
save the Globe. But the Globe will get thinner and thinner, both in
heft and the depth of its editorial content.
One reason the Globe is losing readers is that the paper itself is so
full of cliches and stereotypes that truly intelligent readers have no
reason to read it. You can get the same cliches and stereotypes in the
Times...but still with much added value that the Globe never had.