Tuesday's Globe hits

--The Herald reports that the Globe is raising the price of its print edition, to $1.50 on weekdays/Saturdays (outside of eastern MA) and to $3.50 ($4 outside of Eastern MA) on Sundays. The people who made this decision have financial skills I can't claim. But how will this not exacerbate the migration of (formerly) paying print readers to the web?

--Eileen McNamara's column in today's Herald reminded me how much the Globe misses her as a metro columnist. I'm not sure I buy her entire argument, though. Yes, there's reason to question Arthur Sulzberger Jr.'s judgment; and yes, the recent ultimatum suggests that the Globe always has been and always will be a second-class journalistic citizen to the Times Co. But how, exactly, did the Times Co. "pimp...out" the Globe when it was making money in the '90s? What did the Times Co. make the Globe do in that period that was so degrading?

--If, as some claim, the Huffington Post represents the future of newspapers, it'll have to figure out a way to deal with contributors like James Boyce. Here's a sample of Boyce's good-riddance-to-the-Globe analysis (via Universal Hub):

 The Globe is not failing because of the recession, or because of the 'advertising climate' - it's failing because when the whole world went left, the Globe continued to go arrogantly to the right and continues to this day. It didn't help that its reporting was turned into absolute crap by newsroom cutbacks.

In 2005, I was working on a corporate turnaround project for a large business here in Boston. In 2004, they had spent $3,000,000 advertising in the Globe, it was too much money for too little return so we proposed to the Globe that we would spend one million dollars and we wondered what rate discount we would receive.

The answer was zero, that's right, zero. Rack rates, which, as the subscription numbers were falling, were being raised so we were going to pay more, receive nothing and like it. Well, let's just say we passed on that opportunity.

So: here we've got a guy who thinks the Globe is Newsmax; who's got an axe to grind because a former employer was (he claims) ill-used by the Globe; and who says--with absolutely no explanation--that cutbacks have turned the Globe's reporting into "absolute crap." Point 2 speaks for itself; on Point 1, I'd draw Boyce's attention to (among other things) the Globe's endorsements of Deval Patrick and Barack Obama and its steadfast support of equal marriage rights. As for Point 3, I invite Boyce to click here, here, here, here, and here--and then try to justify the "absolute crap" label.

--Steve Ainsley is finally talking, at least a little bit. Why the ---- did it take so long?

--Dan Kennedy has a nice wrap-up of recent Globe-related events at the Guardian. His conclusion: the Times Co. probably won't shut the paper down, but the Globe we'll see when this all shakes out will be a shadow of its former self.