Friday, May 26, 2006

Noooze Judgment

While the Globe's got a lot of legitimate action on its front page today, including some important follows to its work on departed Caritas chief Robert Haddad, how can you relegate the conviction of the Enron boys to the Business front, particularly when today's Business section is wrapped inside Sidekick? Any case, that as the Globe subhead notes, "came to symbolize coporate deceit in US" has to be on page 1.

Considerably more egregious, however, is the Herald's burying the news of Haddad's resignation in a three-paragraph AP brief on the bottom of page 15. That apparently makes the story 10 pages less newsworthy than the page 5 scoop that an Ohio couple is upset because their home phone number is inconveniently similar to the toll free number used to cast votes for "American Idol" contestants.

5/26/2006 10:33:11 AM by Mark Jurkowitz | Comments [2] |

Saturday, May 27, 2006 3:59:37 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Well, the Globe just really, really hates putting any non-local news on the front page. I don't know exactly when it happened, but there's been a huge change sometime in the past year -- there used to be a sense that the most important news was on Page One, regardless of where it happened. Now, the front page is almost exclusively Boston and Massacusetts, and everything else (Iraq, Congressional scandals, NSA, Darfur, etc.) is somewhere on the inside. And usually the stories are shorter than they used to be.

I have two theories on why this change has been made: (1) the Globe thinks it can reach its core market better by emphasizing local news, or (2) its corporate masters want no competition for the Times as the "national newspaper." I suspect the latter, and I suspect that part of the Globe's circulation losses are due to the fact that it has drastically cut its commitment to original coverage of the nation and the world. There are a lot of newspaper readers in New England who want the whole package, not just a good local paper.

johnw

Tuesday, May 30, 2006 2:25:12 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

I believe change in the Globe's p. 1 coverage away from national and international news began after layoffs/buyouts last November.

To be fair, let's not forget recent key national reports from Charles Savage (re: Bush's signing statements and this Sunday's lede).

Bob Sprague

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