Navigating the choppy waters of the mass media sector

THERE WERE JOURNALISTS compared to priests and ditch diggers, but a better comparison can be found on the high seas. Like sailors and the calling of the tide, reporters and editors are frantically chasing sensation.

But over the past two decades, the tide has been ebbing. Look no further than Boston Globe, which once boasted overseas offices from Latin America to the Middle East. Currently, it has largely established itself as a much smaller, regional outlet, which also employs teams of journalists covering the states of Rhode Island and New Hampshire, and a former London bureau chief who spends time in Vermont. Weird decisions to cover elections in suburban New England outside New York and Georgia, Globe maintains the DC office.

There is also a print edition that still appears seven days a week. “The truth is that the change hasn’t happened as quickly as I expected,” said Jon Chesto, director of Globeprolific business reporter who appeared by The Book of Patriots and Herald of Boston, when both newspapers were not as skeletal as they are now. “We’re still hanging on.”

The Globe, purchased by Red Sox owner John Henry in 2013, is not the only one. On Tuesday, Chesto participated in one of two panels featuring colleagues from Politico, the Dorchester reporterand Gulf state banner, among others. The “Meet the Media” event was hosted by State House News Service and its morning newsletter MasserList and sponsored by several public relations and strategy groups.

But when Globe and the rest float and paddle furiously underwater. “You’re fighting the phone and all the other ways the media is attacking us,” said Ronald Mitchell, a WBZ-TV veteran who bought the film with director Andre Stark Gulf state bannerwhich focuses on communities of color, from longtime owner Mel Miller last year.

The Internet has broken the monopoly – or in some cities duopoly – that major newspapers had on content and advertising. Boston is no longer a two-newspaper city, and many outlets are more easily accessible to consumers on multiple screens. The reordering also left destruction in its wake, such as Boston’s shuttering in 2013 Phoenix, a free alternative weekly that used to be full of ads. Layoffs continue, and this year there have been cuts at two Boston public media stations, WBUR and GBH.

The resulting gaps in coverage appeared in various places. For example, in Melrose, a small city north of Boston, there hasn’t been much reporting on the recent $7.7 million tax repeal vote. (It didn’t work out, by the way.) There used to be a Melrose in town Free press, who died in 2021 at the age of 119 after its owner Gannett closed the weekly. The headlines dominating its successor website focus on Cambridge, Framingham and Wrentham.

Kelly Garrity, who writes the Politico Massachusetts Playbook, as part of her job scours local news outlets and collects links to their articles, including them in her daily email newsletter. “To be honest, it’s looking really bad in a lot of places right now,” especially among those in national chains that aren’t interested in deep contact with the local community, she said. She singled out two institutions that stand out among corporations: the New Bedford nonprofit Lightand Pittsfield-based Berkshire Eaglewhich recently celebrated its eighth year as locally owned.

In Boston, Dorchester reporterBill Forry said he’s seen readers and sources outside the local weekly’s reach reach out to them because they want to see more than what they get in their part of town. “I think we are entering this void Banner does the same,” he said.

Mitchell, Bannerpublisher and editor, said they also moved under new ownership to diversify revenue streams. “Mel owned the paper for 57 years and acted like an old uncle, only grumpy,” Mitchell said of Miller, the paper’s founder and longtime owner.

For example, sports pages are now sponsored by the New England Patriots Foundation, and Mitchell’s team has introduced digital advertising to them. Bannerwebsite, bringing it into the 21st century, as he put it. “We are not out of the gate yet, but we will survive,” he said.

There are also smaller operators like Scott Van Voorhis, a longtime journalist who founded a development and policy newsletter Controversial Boston in 2021

“It’s a time of change and also a chance for people to try different things,” he said, adding that “some will survive, some will not.”

Van Voorhis publishes his newsletter through Substack, a platform that allows him to charge for subscriptions. He was recently the first to report on the shake-up at the state-owned MassDevelopment agency following the departure of its CEO, Dan Rivera.

According to Van Voorhis, scoops help increase reader subscriptions. “To me, that shows the value of the message,” he said.

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