Second, the very tendency that occasionally hurt McGrory as a columnist — i.e., an inclination to cover Boston with a suburban mindset — reflects a broader mediating sensibility that could become an asset. Ideally, McGrory won’t just be a bridge between generations at the Globe. He’ll also bridge the conceptual gap between Boston and the suburbs, and serve as the public face of an institution that’s often seen as aloof.
“Whatever you think about his column, a lot of people in this community — whether they know him or not — feel like they have a relationship with the Globe through him,” says one ex-Globe staffer. “That’s a really important thing at this time in the Globe’s history.”
This is McGrory’s first editing position. He tells the Phoenix that today’s Globe is tighter and “punchier” than past iterations, and adds: “My goal now . . . is to connect more to people’s lives; to do less stories that are institutionally based and more stories that get into how people live.”
Fortunately, this seems like more than a euphemism for soft news. McGrory cites a May 18 piece by David Abel, on football coaches at Roxbury’s Madison Park High School who’ve seen three of their former quarterbacks murdered. “This was a reporter-generated idea,” McGrory says. “We went out at Abel’s instigation and got this whole story that humanizes what’s going on over in that part of the city.”
Front-page news
Solomon’s promotion is a bit of a cipher, since his new position, which was created expressly for him, has plenty of structural ambiguity. To begin with, Solomon will be relying on (and occasionally reshaping) material created by other editors’ reporters. And with Baron and executive editor Helen Donovan above him on the Globe totem pole, he may have less control over his new domain than he did as business editor. (Donovan has been the de facto managing editor since Greg Moore decamped for the Denver Post.)
Even so, Solomon — who held three editorial posts at the Wall Street Journal before joining the Globe — doesn’t expect his promotion to prompt major turf wars. “I’ll work through moral suasion and the kindness of strangers,” he tells the Phoenix. “What I’m telling people is, I want to be their doctor and their lawyer. Their doctor, in the sense of having them work through stories, which can mean anything from major hands-on editing with an editor and reporter to saying, ‘Shit, that’s a really good idea you’ve executed brilliantly, and all I’m going to do now is smile,’ to everything in between. And their lawyer, in the sense that once I’m convinced a story is good, I’m going to be a tremendous advocate for that story with the Page One decision-making process.”
Solomon also says he wants to pack the front page with stories that immediately grab readers’ attentions. This won’t be easy. On May 21, Solomon’s first official day at his new job, the Globe topped Page One with a story on the impact a rumor of marital infidelity is having on the town of Hooksett, New Hampshire — an (ahem) interesting choice. Then again, the next day’s front page featured an intriguing story about an artist who’s obsessively photographed himself for decades — the sort of idiosyncratic cultural coverage that rarely shows up on A1.
Of course, McGrory, Solomon, and Leung are just getting started. It’s going to take a while to know if the new, reconfigured Globe hierarchy is good for the paper and good for readers. For now, one thing is clear: a paper that’s been struggling with depression just got a much-needed dose of Prozac.
On the Web
Adam Reilly's Media Log: http://www.thephoenix.com/medialog
