Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Boston Globe

Editors Weblog: ‘What will happen to the Boston Globe?’

Judith Townend — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 09:59:37 +0000

A good summary from a variety of sources by the Editors’ Weblog on the future of the Boston Globe.

“As the Boston Newspaper Guild and Boston Globe management take a break in negotiations until next week, speculation has been mounting on possible buyers for the paper and what its future might be. The union and owner the New York Times Co are trying to come to an agreement on how to make $10 million of savings following the union’s narrow rejection of a deal and the Times Co’s subsequent imposition of a 23 per cent pay cut for all staff. The company is also looking at selling the paper.”

Full post at this link…

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Christian Science Monitor: Boston Globe closure by New York Times postponed

Laura Oliver — Tue, 05 May 2009 07:18:23 +0000

The New York Times has suspended a move to shut down the Boston Globe following an agreement with six of the titles seven unions.

The paper is reportedly set to lose NYTimes Co $85 million this year – but could it be saved and restructured to create a model for recession survival, asks Alexandra Marks from CSM.

Full story at this link…

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Affleck on the media: will ‘State of Play’ be the last film set in a newspaper?

Judith Townend — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 10:08:46 +0000

‘State of Play’ is on the publicity circuit, a film – based on a BBC series – which follows events in a fictional newspaper, the Washington Globe.

“The film’s fictitious Washington Globe, like its real-life counterparts, is struggling for survival, and within its walls are plenty of internal battles. Old-school reporter Cal McAffrey (Russell Crowe) resents the intrusion of young blogger Della Frye (Rachel McAdams) into his investigation of a murder seemingly connected to a local congressman (Ben Affleck),” reports the Seattle Times.

Ben Affleck has shared his thoughts on the demise of the print industry with a group of journalists.

His lengthy comments can be found at Hitfix and over at Collider.com and About.com.

HitFix reports:

“”I think this is the last movie that will be set in a newspaper. I don’t know how this movie will be perceived, but I do believe that people will look back and say, ‘Oh yeah, that was the movie that came out right around the time the internet destroyed newspapers’,” Affleck appropriately tells a room of online journalists at the “State of Play” junket. “I don’t think the verdict is in on what that means or what’s going to happen or what the integrity is of one institution versus the other.”

Poynter’s Romenesko has also picked up on his comments about the Boston Globe: “”I was definitely shocked to hear about the Globe,” says Ben Affleck. “I fundamentally misunderstood what was going on. Boston.com has 5.6 million readers a month, and yet this hugely successful newsgathering operation is going out of business.”"

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NYTimes.com: Could Times sell Boston Globe?

Laura Oliver — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:07:23 +0000

Parent firm the New York Times Company will close the Boston Globe unless staff unions agree to pay cuts and pension scheme changes, according to reports.

An ultimatum was delivered to union leaders last Thursday.

The company needs to save $20 million from The Globe.

Full story at this link…

Update: But, says Newsosaur’s Alan Mutter, reports of the Globe’s demise are exaggerated.

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Boston Herald: Gatehouse to sue New York Times Co over Boston.com

Laura Oliver — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 10:22:58 +0000

Gatehouse is taking legal action against the Boston Globe, owned by New York Times Co, over its news aggregator site Boston.com, because the site has been using Gatehouse content.

Geo-what? Oh, it’s coming to the UK soon…

Judith Townend — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:07:42 +0000

This week saw the launch of a hyperlocal news map for the Liverpool Echo, as announced by Sly Bailey at the AOP Digital Publishing Summit (follow link for report in MediaGuardian).

It geotags news content so each user can search for news by postcode.

Nothing new there, web-savvy newshounds might think, but actually it is:

Though Archant announced plans for geotagged sites last October (it started with Jobs24 – a winner at yesterday’s NS ADM Awards – and Homes24 and has plans to roll out geotagged news content in 2008) to date we’re still waiting for the official launch of geotagged news.

Yesterday we reported that American site outside.in will be launching in the UK, which will link news with local areas (as localised as users specify). Outside.in thinks its opportunity has come about as a result of:

“The demand for personalized information on the web, and the failure of the newspaper industry to capitalize on featuring hyperlocal content” (Nina Grigoriev, outside.in)

Journalism.co.uk thought it was time for a bit of a run-down on the development of geotagging in the UK.

First, what is it?
Journalists record the locations referred to in each story and add their postcodes as metadata when uploading their copy to the web.

In that way, geotagged content allows users to prioritise the news they see online according to postcodes.

Where are we at in the UK?
The Liverpool Echo is the first site (of the large publishing groups) to do so in the UK. Although other sites have incorporated mapping into their sites, no other places has successfully incorporated news content as well.

The BBC plans to invest £68 million across its network of local sites, which will be decided upon by the BBC Trust in February 2009. Online Journalism Blog reported a sneak preview in January 2008, though the BBC have since asked us not to refer to the sites as ‘hyperlocal’.

Critics such as Trinity Mirror’s CEO, Sly Bailey, have voiced concerns over the BBC’s local video proposals, saying they will provide ‘unfair competition’ for the regional media.

Northcliffe is also developing geotagged content on its revamped thisis sites, and told Press Gazette in June the process has been difficult: “Because not all stories affect only one specific point, the company is finding geocoding challenging,” Hardie said.

According to the article: “The localisation functions will remain hidden until journalists have built up enough stories with postcode data.”

Back in July 2007 we saw reports of Sky geotagging its news, but it hasn’t developed at the same speed or as widely as in the US.

What’s happening in the US?
Everyblock is developing fast across the US. It’s a new experiment in journalism and data, offering feeds of local information and data for every city block in Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, DC, with more cities to come. Not in the UK yet, but watch this space.

Elsewhere, the Washington Post has used outside.in’s maps for their own site, while the New York Times’ Boston.com (the online Boston Globe) uses MetaCarta’s geographic search technology for maps.

So, what does this mean for UK based geotagging?
With the arrival of highly efficient US based sites such as outside.in (who said an UK based office is a possibility) maybe it’s time for Archant, Trinity Mirror and Northcliffe to get their skates on before it’s too late.

Please send us your examples of UK based geotagged content, from formal publications or otherwise, as we want to track it as it expands in the UK.

(Then we can make a geotagged feed and map of geotagging in journalism. Then our heads might explode)

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Killthecliche.com: ‘more data = better media’

Laura Oliver — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:33:00 +0000

A website tracking the frequency with which journalists use certain cliches has been set up with the aim of improving journalism.

Killthecliche.com, which currently tracks five US newspapers and the Financial Times, aims to show ‘how smart data analysis can help us improve media’ – so this is more than a naming and shaming exercise.

The site currently has 167 cliches in its database, which it scours the feeds of the newspapers for.

According to the results, insurgent is the all time top cliche used, while amid tops the polls for today’s and the week’s most overused word.

The journalists behind the cliches are also ranked, as are the papers – the Boston Globe is currently coming out worst.

Please submit your most cliche-ridden sentences below and let’s get this post on the chart!

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Boston Globe enhances local search with MetaCarta

Laura Oliver — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:30:10 +0000

Boston.com, the website for the Boston Globe, has added MetaCarta’s geotagging technology to improve the localised search on the site.

Content from the site and others that are included by Boston.com’s search will be automatically tagged by MetaCarta allowing users to search by geographical area.

The aim, says a press release from the New York Times Company, is to increase the frequency of users and page traffic.

In March MetaCarta to launched a new website mapping news stories from across the globe, having previously teamed up with Reuters to offer a map of US news stories.

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