As much as I hate Tomase I can't see how we will be betteroff with one newspaper the Globe. I think we need to hope the Herald survives this move
We haven't had two newspapers in this town for several years now. We have one plus tabloid fish wrap. That was Purcell's brilliant plan to keep the Herald afloat. His only interest in maintaining two voices in Boston is that one be his.
I love this line:
‘‘We appreciated the opportunity to consider printing the Herald but, in the end, determined that making that commitment was not in our best interests at this time,’’ said Globe publisher P. Steven Ainsley."
That would be the baseball equivalent of asking George Steinbrenner to lease the Sox excess space at his training camp in Tampa so they could save money to spend on more pitching to beat him with...not that he too wouldn't relish the mere fact that you had to ask...
Once upon a time the Herald's sports department could have saved it, but Purcell managed to kill that too with his tabloid shock journalism mentality. Once he sells the 6 acre lot to developers there won't be anything tangible left to save of the Boston Herald. The only reason to buy in recent years was it was easier to handle on public transit. The move to Chicopee and land sale will buy him another year as a "Boston" publisher to be reconed with. But the handwriting is on the wall, has been for some time now. I doubt if Murdoch will buy back into this market in the current climate even in a fire sale, and he may even be precluded from doing so if he foolishly wanted to. He again owns WFXT, the Fox affiliate in Boston he had to sell to the Celtics ownership to retain the Herald back in the day. He bought it back when it floundered under that ownership after he sold the Herald to his boy Purcell. It was just two years ago that Purcell sold the only money making asset he had managed to add to his holdings, his community newspapers, to supposedly reinvest in the Herald and wipe out it's mounting debts. He had no personal wealth from the outset - Murdoch engineered his ownership of the Herald because he was a favored son employee of the mogul with a pit bull streak. His specialty was squeezing unions and margins to keep his bosses rags like the Post afloat. So once the 6 acres are gone the Herald is reduced to the paper it's printed on. Purcell is a fighter though so he won't go quietly and will likely bankrupt himself in the process of refusing to surrender.
I feel bad for the employees without bylines. The rest of the outfit have little or no sympathy for. Sports reporting or writing in Boston period isn't a birthright, which is what many of them have come to treat it as. It's a priviledge, especially in this era, and one many of them have come to cavalierly abuse as their personal profiles grew. They will either have to settle for post game/mediot debate table scraps or que up in the WEEI stipend line or move into the 21st century perhaps blogging for a living for some national site or freelancing or pounding a beat in another area code... For most it will end what they really craved throughout this, their psuedo celebrity status as Boston multi-mediots and their bs self righteous claim to be first and foremost print journalists - which in their minds always set them apart from mere mediots they hustle alongside to pay those mortgages in Wellesley and Weston.
