A makeover at the Boston Globe

Uh-oh, Globe staff. I've seen this movie before.

Boston Globe editor announces initiative to reinvent newspaper

 

He could have cut down that 1,000-word memo to one sentence

"We're making a bunch of changes and a lot of people will be losing their jobs."

Short, simple and to the point.

 

I wish Baron would have written them a letter in 1998 about how to make money on the Internet.

 

Forget '98. 2004 would have been plenty of time.

 

The thing is they're doing okay with web subs -- they're the top outlet in the country outside the three national brands in terms of subscribers, and they've succeeded in extracting a fair amount of revenue from those folk ($30/month).

And here I thought the whole point of private ownership was to avoid cuts such as these. They're about to sell off a massive piece of land (one of the biggest freestanding parcels left in Boston proper) that's worth close to what John Henry paid for the paper, and their in-house printing operation dominates the market and still makes money. Clearly Jeff Bezos >> John Henry at this ownership thing.