By: Lucia Moses Globe, Herald Battle For Suburban Readers
To spread the word about today's newspaper war in Greater Boston, Paul Revere
would have to take a long ride outside the city. He'd have to gallop far west,
to such places as Wellesley and Framingham, and south, to Braintree and Duxbury,
then journey north to southern New Hampshire and other parts of New England that
still consider Boston its hub.
These are the places where Boston's two daily newspaper companies are fighting
it out for increasingly diverse readers.
If they continued on their established paths, The Boston Globe, the No. 1
paper in the market, would keep growing regionally while the Boston
Herald, No. 2, would remain on its downward circulation spiral. But that
scenario could change now that Herald parent Herald Media Inc. has completed its
purchase of the Community Newspaper Co. (CNC) - a chain of nearly 100
papers, mostly weeklies, in the Greater Boston area - from Fidelity
Investments for an estimated $150 million.
With his greatly expanded coverage area, Herald President and Publisher
Patrick J. Purcell intends to compete for readers and advertisers with the Globe
on a regional basis. "It is a threat to their very existence," Purcell says with
a smile during a recent interview at his office in Boston's South End.
Globe Publisher Richard H. Gilman counters: "We feel extremely
comfortable and confident with our position as a market leader, both from the
circulation and advertising standpoint, both in Boston and the New England
region."
The competition is playing out regionally because Boston is not the city of Paul
Revere's day - nor, for that matter, of the 1950s, when the suburbs were
just taking off. Sprawl and the high-tech boom in the city's outer rings have
expanded the borders of the market. In the city, gentrification and immigration
have changed the makeup of its old neighborhoods.
The city's two major dailies, like its other institutions, are re-examining
their roles in this changing arena. For the Globe, the challenge is to
grow regionally while keeping its urban base satisfied. For the city-centric
Herald, whose urban base is shrinking, the question is whether it can
compete successfully against the Globe in the suburbs.
Capturing the interest of readers living farther and farther from the city is a
challenge for urban papers everywhere.
The Herald-CNC combo and The Boston Globe each think they've found
the right formula in New England.
How the rivalry evolved
In an industry where head-to-head competition is almost nonexistent, Boston,
along with New York and Chicago, remains one of the nation's few major cities
with more than one independently operated, competing daily paper (the jury's
still out on San Francisco).
Boston, as the capital of higher education and with a strong tradition of Irish
literacy, has always enjoyed high newspaper readership. In the 1930s, Boston had
13 newspapers, each with its own niche. In those days, the Globe
positioned itself as an enlightened Democratic paper for both the upper and
lower classes, while the Republican Herald took the affluent suburbs.
By the 1950s, the staunchly Democratic and Catholic Boston Post had
folded and left the Globe and Herald as the two principal
contestants. There was a brief attempt at a truce: The Herald, then owned
by local business interests, proposed marriage to the Globe's Taylor
family. The Taylors refused, and the ensuing war would transform the timid
Globe into an aggressive paper while the Herald tightened its grip
on the suburbs, which were expanding in the post-World War II boom.
As the Globe launched its own suburban strategy and soared to circulation
and journalistic dominance, the Herald stumbled. A major blow came in
1972, when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), citing improper
lobbying, stripped it of its license to operate its local Channel 5 TV station,
a major source of income. The weakened Herald sold to the Hearst Corp.
empire, which merged it with its own paper to form the Herald American.
In 1982, Hearst sold the paper to Rupert Murdoch, who paid $1 million and
shortened the name to the Herald. Twelve years later, in satisfying FCC
rules related to his purchase of a Boston TV station, Murdoch sold the paper to
his protege Purcell, a New York native who had been running the Herald
for 10 years.
In a major turning point for both papers, the Herald moved to independent
ownership just as the Globe became part of an out-of-town chain. The
Globe, after 120 years of Taylor family control, was bought by the New
York Times Co. Another turning point for the Globe came six years later
when the Times Co., following a hands-off period, fired a Taylor family member
and installed its first publisher. Gilman, a veteran Times Co. circulation and
operations executive, emphasized that the Globe would retain its
editorial independence.
Today, the Globe's readers are more likely to live in Boston's outlying
communities. But in trying to be the paper for the city, the suburbs, and the
region, the Globe has no end of competitors. Locally and in the 'burbs,
it faces the Herald and scores of community papers. Regionally, there's
The Wall Street Journal, which sells about 147,000 copies in New England;
USA Today, about 118,000 copies; and, despite their common ownership,
The New York Times, about 127,000 copies.
The Globe "tries to serve, and has succeeded in serving, an unusually
large segment of the socioeconomic ladder," says Ralph Whitehead Jr., a
journalist and political consultant who is a longtime observer of the Boston
media. "It's a good spot to be in, but a difficult one to maintain."
The difficulty shows in the circulation numbers. In the past decade,
Globe circulation declined 9.5% weekdays, to 464,472 (despite a gain in
the past year), and decreased 7.7% Sunday, to 721,859. Publisher Gilman
attributes the slippage mainly to general trends facing newspapers, not to
competition.
Sprawl has been even harder on the Herald. Migration of white Irish
Catholics to the suburbs, combined with the shrinking blue-collar work force,
has eroded the Herald's city base. As Boston shifted from a manufacturing
to a technology and service economy, service jobs rose from less than half to
more than two-thirds of the labor force from 1960 to 1990. In the same period,
blue-collar employment fell from 34% to roughly 16% of the work force, Boston's
decade-old central artery and tunnel project known as "The Big Dig"
notwithstanding.
Even a major redesign in 1998 could not check the Herald's daily
circulation decline, as it slipped 28.3% in the past decade, to 257,761. Worse,
Sunday circ decreased 32.5%, to 163,742; the Herald has the unfortunate
distinction of being one of a few daily papers that sells fewer copies on Sunday
than on a weekday. But Publisher Purcell says he's comforted by data that show
Herald readership has been stable at nearly 900,000, and he points out
that circulation has been tough for all dailies in the market.
Though the Herald may have limited ability to grow in the city, Purcell
sees the suburbs as a gold mine. He plans to cross-market the Herald to
CNC readers in Herald-friendly suburbs closer to the city and cross-sell
CNC papers to Herald advertisers against the Globe.
"There's roughly a billion dollars in print advertising in eastern
Massachusetts," he says. "If there's a 1% to 2% shift in share to the Herald
combo, there's a significant difference."
MetroWestward, ho!
Key to both companies' growth are suburbs to the west known as "MetroWest" and,
to a lesser degree, to the south.
Loosely defined as the crescent between Interstate 495 and state Route 128,
MetroWest has flourished from the high-tech and electronic industry that's
turned the 128 corridor into New England's Silicon Valley. Both companies have
expanded their presence there.
In local news, CNC has the area covered. The MetroWest Daily News, based
in Framingham (daily circulation 54,274), is the jewel in its crown. Last year,
it was named best midsize daily by the New England Newspaper Association for the
second year in a row. A string of weeklies rounds out CNC's holdings in the
region.
Though CNC has the local end locked up, the Globe's selling point is the
regional, national, and international news that comes in the paper along with
its semiweekly regional section of local news, "Globe West." The Globe
extended its presence last year when its parent Times Co. bought the Worcester
Telegram & Gazette, which bumps against the MetroWest Daily News'
circulation area. The Globe has begun cross-selling advertising with the
Worcester paper, and sharing of news content may not be far off.
It's likely that no one news-coverage model will dominate in MetroWest. Its
residents are diverse, ranging from locals with a longtime interest in their
town to newcomers who are less inclined to care deeply about local news. The
area's high-tech newcomers may be more likely to be Globe readers, but
they're also more likely to get their news via the Web.
"When you move into Boston proper, if you want to find your way around, you pick
up the Globe," says Whitehead. But in the 495/128 crescent, he adds, "The
information needs are diverse and fluid, and I don't think any media
organization has a fix on them."
Though the "Globe West" section has nibbled away at CNC's edges, CNC seems to
have the advantage for now. Michael Short, who served as Boston bureau chief for
The Associated Press from 1978 to 1999, says efforts such as "Globe West" have
failed to impress readers, perhaps because the paper is relatively new to
suburban coverage. "I think the Globe has to put more into it," he says.
"There's no reason why they couldn't dominate suburban coverage."
To the south, workers in the high-tech and finance sectors have been moving in,
thanks to the reopening of a commuter rail line to Boston and the availability
of affordable housing. Historically, the Herald has sold well in some of
the suburbs to the south, where South Bostonites tended to migrate in the post-
war decades. Through CNC, the Herald now has a dozen weeklies serving the
South Shore and plans to cross-sell the Herald to CNC readers.
The Globe, through its regional edition, "Globe South," still outsells
the Herald there by a ratio of more than 2-to-1, however. Its advantage
widens on Sunday, when The Patriot Ledger in Quincy doesn't publish. The
Globe plans to take "Globe South" semiweekly this year, economic
conditions permitting. As it expands, it may dip into the knowledge reservoir of
William B. Ketter, a veteran Patriot Ledger editor whom the Globe
recently hired to run its community-relations
department.
"The Globe has an opportunity to provide a sense of place to the South
Shore," Ketter says. "A large percentage of people living on the South Shore
work and recreate in Boston."
Politics no longer local?
As social lines have blurred, in and around Boston, so have consumers' tastes
for news. Most dramatically, the famed Boston obsession for politics seems to
have waned. As Whitehead sees it, the economy began to take on a more important
role in the 1990s as Boston recovered from the recession, while Massachusetts
political figures nearly dropped from the national radar screen.
"Thirty years ago, politics was the meat and potatoes of both newspapers," says
Michael Goldman, a Democratic political consultant and radio talk-show host in
Boston. "Politics is less important on the food chain. People live in the
suburbs, and they're looking for stories that affect their lives."
Under Thomas Winship's editorial leadership from 1965 to 1984, the Globe
vastly improved, but in taking unabashed liberal stances on such issues as
Vietnam and Boston's school desegregation plan, it alienated Irish Catholics
both within and outside the newsroom - and drove many disenchanted readers
to the conservative Herald.
So, although political coverage remains one of the Globe's strong suits,
its coverage today strongly reflects where people live and what they do. Editor
Matthew V. Storin has tried to play the news pages straight, acknowledging a
perceived liberal bias left over from the Winship years (he has nothing to do
with the paper's editorial page). There's an emphasis on high-tech, education,
and employment news. In the past 12 years, it's launched six regional Sunday
sections to provide community news.
It started with New Hampshire, where high-tech growth has made its southern
counties an extension of the Boston market. The effort has paid off: The
Globe sells nearly 25,000 copies there, making it the state's third-
biggest paper behind The Union Leader in Manchester and The
Telegraph in Nashua. (The Herald sells only about 12,000 copies in
the state.) "With this growth farther out, we came to terms with the fact that
people were less oriented to Boston," Storin says.
The Herald, too, has changed with the times. Aggressive local news
coverage is still its hallmark, but after its redesign came full color, improved
arts-and-entertainment coverage, and features targeted to kids and teens. If the
Globe lacks the pizzazz it had in the Winship years, the Herald remains
staunchly conservative and pro-business. "The Globe's always gone back
and forth - is it regional, national, local? The Herald knows that
it is a local paper," comments longtime Herald journalist Kevin Convey,
now editor in chief of the CNC papers. "We're not in the middle of an
existential crisis."
Articles and confederation
Knitting together a city tabloid and suburban weeklies won't be easy, however.
"In theory, this is a home run," says CNC President Kirk Davis, a holdover from
the previous ownership. But, in reality, CNC has had a hard time convincing
national advertisers of the benefits of buying weeklies. National buyers tend to
overlook weeklies, and CNC's dailies are too small to make their radar screens,
Davis says.
Then there's the content. As Fidelity learned from its 10-year experience with
newspapers, cobbling a newspaper empire out of many longtime independent
properties isn't easy. When it tried to leverage its size by consolidating
operations and pooling content, readers felt their hometown papers had lost
their individuality.
CNC's Convey, whose early career was in community journalism, wants to change
all that. From now on, he says, the papers will focus on covering their local
towns, although they'll have the option to pick up columns and arts-and-
entertainment news from the Herald. He still has to figure out how to
handle shared coverage areas and where it makes sense to collaborate, bearing in
mind that doing so risks turf battles between staffers. Adding staff to the
papers is another goal but isn't likely to be affordable any time soon.
Purcell hopes to exploit his new weeklies to sell more Herald
subscriptions, but the logical places to do that are limited to the suburbs
close to Boston. Nearly 2 million readers - the reach of his combined
company - has a nice ring to it. But with a large portion of free, weekly
readership, the Herald-CNC combo doesn't match the Globe's paid,
daily readership, which is more affluent and educated. CNC's 94 weeklies have a
total circulation of 607,085, and 44.6% of it is free. If the economy keeps
worsening, advertisers may drop their second buy - which, in many cases, is
the Herald.
Purcell is unrattled by such a prospect. As the independent owner of a No. 2
paper, he's used to running lean in both good and bad times. In the 1990s, the
paper weathered the recession and 80% spikes in newsprint prices. Last year was
the most profitable ever for the Herald, he says, but what worked
yesterday may not work in today's economy - and the ever-expanding Boston market.
Lucia Moses (lmoses@editorandpublisher.com) is an associate editor covering business for E&P.
Copyright 2001, Editor & Publisher.
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