'Globe' Potential Buyer Has Been Subject of Paper's Critical Stories

By: Joe Strupp Jack Connors, who is reportedly among three potential buyers of The Boston Globe, is no stranger to the newspaper. His company, Partners HealthCare, was the subject of an in-depth, three-part series in late 2008 that claimed Partners contributed to the rising cost of health care in the area.

"No company has thrived more in this sharply competitive world -- or has had more impact on the cost of medicine here -- than Partners HealthCare, a company formed in 1994 to fight back against what its founders saw as the stinginess and lopsided power of insurance companies, which had brought many hospitals to their knees," the first story in the series, published Nov. 16, 2008, stated. "By bringing together two of the most prestigious hospitals in Boston -- the Brigham and Mass. General -- Partners became what some called the '800-pound gorilla' of Massachusetts healthcare, able to bend insurers to its will."

More recently, The Globe ran a May 31, 2009 piece on Connors himself, which discussed his potential outside conflicts. That sparked a lengthy rebuttal from Partners on its Web site, which stated: "This is the fourth article in a series which has made several assertions about Partners hospitals which are not supported by facts."

Editor Martin Baron declined to comment to E&P on Connors as a potential buyer. But when asked why the paper chose to focus on his company in the series, he stated: "It is the largest, most powerful medical institution in all of New England." He said the series required just one minor correction and no major requests for changes or clarifications.

The series won two awards from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and prompted an investigation by the state attorney general's office.

The Globe Sunday Magazine, meanwhile, wrote a profile of Connors back in June 2007 that noted his charitable causes. At one point, the story states: "The Connors Family Foundation donates an estimated $7 million annually, the biggest gifts going to places closest to the family's heart: Boston College, Mass. General, Brigham and Women's, Harvard Medical School, and Connors's favorite, the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women's Health and Gender Biology at Brigham and Women's, named for his mother and where his eight grandchildren were born."

It also said that Connors had previously shown an interest in buying the Globe, and improving it: "Last year Connors and Jack Welch, the former chief executive of General Electric Co., joined forces to make a pitch to buy The Boston Globe from The New York Times Co. In typical Connors fashion, Welch got the headlines, but it was Connors who brought Welch into the deal, because, he says, he wanted to improve the paper. 'Could it be better? It was better,' he says. 'Circulation is down, so they cut back on the product. I have a counterintuitive notion. You invest in the product. You make the product better. I think it is disappointing that the Globe has been forced to cut back, cut back, cut back.'"