BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Monday, August 02, 2004
HARK, THE HERALD.
There's a hilarious piece
in this week's New Yorker on how the Herald covered the
Democratic National Convention. "If I produced a newspaper as boring
as the Globe, I'd kill myself," editorial director Ken
Chandler told John Cassidy.
I do want to take issue with one of
Cassidy's assertions - that the Herald outsells the
Globe in the city. He writes:
Although the Globe
is a much bigger, wealthier paper than the Herald, its
strength lies in the suburbs. Inside the city limits, the
Herald, which has a total circulation of about two hundred
and fifty thousand, outsells the Globe on
newsstands.
Now, that is absolutely true, but
it doesn't tell the whole story. The reason that the Herald
outsells the Globe in the city is that so few copies of the
Herald are home-delivered. According to the latest numbers
from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, the Globe's total
Monday-through-Friday circulation is 452,109, and on Sunday it's
686,575. By contrast, the Herald's daily number is 248,988,
and on Sunday it's just 152,625.
But look at the difference in
"single-copy sales," which basically applies to everything that isn't
home-delivered. Here the Herald has a huge lead Monday through
Friday, beating the Globe by a margin of 171,689 to 82,157.
(On Sunday, the Globe actually beats the Herald in
single-copy sales, 177,246 to 98,148.)
Do the math. From Monday through
Friday, 82 percent of Globe customers get their paper via home
delivery, whereas nearly 69 percent of Herald customers are
grabbing it at newsstands, from street boxes, at convenience stores,
whatever. Obviously a substantial number of Herald customers
are suburbanites who get the Globe delivered at home and who
then buy a Herald on their way to work. That's why the
Herald experiences such a huge dropoff on Saturday (176,454
total, and 120,063 in single-copy sales) and Sunday.
Of course, Cassidy is right when he
says that the Globe's focus is more suburban than the
Herald's. But the numbers don't tell the whole
story.
By the way, Globe columnist
Adrian Walker makes what I'm pretty sure is his debut
as a Herald critic today. And here
is a good piece by Tom Scocca in the New York Observer on how
Globe editor Martin Baron hopes the Kerry campaign will raise
his paper's national profile.
posted at 10:43 AM |
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1 Comments:
Want proof that the Globe is a suburban paper? Compare how the Globe played the young-Nomah-fans-are-sad story with the one about the 11-year old gunned down on a South End football field. Guess which one was on the front page?
-- Adam Gaffin
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
