TO BOSTON GLOBE columnist Alex Beam, the reasons for the moves at the Herald seemed obvious. In his column of May 13, Beam noted that Chandler was back, that the paper was getting racier, and that yet another former Murdoch employee, Martin Singerman, was a member of Herald Media's six-person board.

"The betting at the Herald and in this space is that publisher Purcell is dressing up the paper for a possible sale back to News Corp.," Beam wrote, referring to Murdoch's company.

The effect of Beam's column at One Herald Square was immediate. That afternoon, Purcell met with an estimated 100 to 150 staff members in the Herald's newsroom. The message, according to some who were there: yes, he was jazzing up the paper — especially the anemic Sunday edition — in order to stop the slide in circulation; editor Andy Costello and managing editor Andrew Gully were still fully in charge despite Chandler's presence; and although he wouldn't positively rule out being acquired by Murdoch (or, for that matter, by another media company), he was more interested in buying than in selling.

In fact, the persistent Murdoch rumors — repeated again in the Globe on May 30 in a piece by Mark Jurkowitz and Peter Howe — appear to fly in the face of Murdoch's own daunting goals. Murdoch is currently trying to win regulatory approval for the $6.6 billion acquisition of the satellite-television service DirecTV, and a host of public-interest groups have vowed to fight it. "The DirecTV acquisition by News Corp. should be 'Exhibit A' in the case against the FCC's recent decision to relax media ownership limits," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Digital Democracy, in a public statement this past Monday.

And as Howe himself had reported the previous week, Murdoch, when asked at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing whether he planned to buy more television stations, replied, "I have no plans for anything other than what I have before you today." Granted, a newspaper is not a TV station. But it is almost inconceivable that Murdoch would do anything so provocative as buy a strictly local company such as Herald Media if it would endanger his dream of domination in the burgeoning business of satellite TV.

But if Purcell was at least somewhat reassuring on the ownership issue when he conferred with his anxious staff, his statements regarding the future of the paper were met with a mixture of understanding that the Herald is in a tough spot and unhappiness over the measures Purcell is taking to get out of that spot.

How bad is it? In 1989, the peak of the Murdoch era, when Purcell was the Herald's publisher and Chandler was the editor, the paper's Monday-to-Friday circulation was 360,261, and on Sunday it was 251,993, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. By 1994, the year Purcell bought the paper, weekday circulation had fallen to 312,779, and Sunday circulation was 207,814. The decline has continued more or less steadily since then, despite the 1998 redesign. And in ABC's most recent report, the Herald's weekday circulation was 247,885; on Sunday, it was a paltry 156,234.

Things aren't so wonderful at the Globe, either. According to ABC, weekday circulation at New England's dominant daily fell from 500,337 to 448,817 between 1994 and 2003, and, on Sunday, from 815,265 to 680,115. But obviously the situation is more dire at the Herald.

The solution, according to Pat Purcell, Ken Chandler, and Andy Costello, has been to re-emphasize the paper's tabloid appeal. Chandler notes that his old newspaper, the New York Post, has boosted circulation on weekdays from (according to ABC figures) 487,219 to 620,060 since 2001, and on Sundays from 368,636 to 420,179. All three men are too smart, and too experienced, to think that the tawdry, downscale approach the Post has taken will work in Boston. Instead, what they seem to be aiming for is something of a hybrid: celebrities, sex appeal, and gossip alongside the paper's traditionally solid coverage of local news, politics, business, and sports.

To be sure, part of the Herald's new strategy is to go hard with stories that have always appealed to its largely urban, middle-class readers, such as the search for Molly Bish's body and killer and the upcoming congressional testimony of UMass president Bill Bulger. And the paper continues to have its share of local exclusives, such as the recent front-page news — reported by columnist Peter Gelzinis — that state attorney general Tom Reilly wants Bulger to resign.

But the stories are getting shorter, the headlines are getting larger, and any sense of continuity is disappearing as the editors aim for the biggest splash of the day, regardless of what happened yesterday and is likely to happen tomorrow. The paper's endless coverage of Miss USA contestant Susie Castillo, of Lawrence — "Susie Cutie," in Herald parlance — admittedly made for good reading and, uh, good viewing. But it also served to shine a light on the new emphasis on celebrity.

Two changes stand out as emblematic of the new Herald. The first, of course, is the consolidation of the paper's two gossip pages into a two-page spread under the "Inside Track" brand, very much like Page Six in the New York Post.

The other — unveiled in the Sunday Herald on June 8 — is The Edge, a consolidation of the features, arts, and entertainment coverage, with a heavy emphasis on the titillating. In just the first few days, The Edge offered stories on nude recreation, women whose attire is too skanky for the office, and bras for summer clothing, complete with the lowdown on some sort of spray-on product that is supposed to harden breasts into position. Paging Lil' Kim!

Moreover, the shorter stories, bigger headlines, and — yes — the T&A send at least a subliminal message that a paper that had succeeded in having itself taken more seriously in recent years perhaps needn't be taken quite so seriously anymore.

As president of the Newspaper Guild of Greater Boston and as a Herald staff member, Lesley Phillips hears it all — the complaints about the shorter stories, the punched-up leads, the cheesecake photos, the "buzz" about Ken Chandler's visible new role and what it means for the Andy Costello regime.

"What I'm hearing right now is, 'Oh my God, here we go, more T&A, our credibility is going right down the blankety-blank-blank. We've worked so hard to get our credibility up a couple of notches. What is this going to do to us?'" says Phillips. She talks about the need for a balance between finance and journalism: "Whatever's going to keep us in business and profitable is very important. Certainly to be a credible newspaper is very, very important to us, too."

Expressing similar views is Tom Mashberg, a staff reporter who's the union shop steward.

"There's definitely been some candid conversation around the Herald about the fairly obvious changes that are taking place appearance-wise," he says. "But the staff is committed to working hard to cover the news and produce a good newspaper. And we're not shy about expressing our views about issues with certain features. But we're not losing sight of the big picture, which is to put out a strong newspaper."

As a union official, Mashberg is also able to express on the record some concerns I had picked up inside the newsroom on an off-the-record basis: "I think it is fair to say that many female staffers have come to me to express concern about the portrayal of some women in the pages of the Herald."

A CITY TABLOID can be a wonderful thing. Who can forget such classics as the New York Daily News headline FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD, which commemorated Gerald Ford's refusal to bail out the city from its 1970s financial collapse? Or HEADLESS MAN IN TOPLESS BAR, the New York Post's contribution to great tabloid journalism?

Boston's tabloid tradition is not nearly as colorful as New York's. When I was growing up in the 1960s, the Boston tabloid of note was Hearst's Record American, always available in the downtown barbershop. But I remember little about it except that it was where the acerbic sports columnist Larry Claflin held forth.

In 1972, Hearst acquired the staid Boston Herald Traveler — suddenly available after the FCC, pushed by the Globe and assisted by future House Speaker Tip O'Neill, stripped it of its television and radio stations. Hearst dumped its tab and renamed the combined paper the Boston Herald American, which lurched through the '70s as a gorgeously designed, boring, and slowly failing broadsheet. So keenly was the Record American missed in some circles that in 1981, when Hearst changed the Herald American back into a tab, you would often hear old-timers refer to it as "the Reck-id," as though the tabloid of their youth had never stopped coming out.

The last editor of Hearst's Herald American was Don Forst, now editor-in-chief of the Village Voice, who had great fun writing front-page headlines such as HINCK'S SHRINK STINKS (a commentary on the psychiatrist for John Hinckley, the man who tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan) and HANG ON, HEART MAN (a reference to Barney Clark, who was dying after having received one of the first artificial hearts). But it was too late, and in December 1982, just as the paper was about to go out of business, Rupert Murdoch swept in and picked up the pieces. The paper's name was shortened to the Boston Herald, a crop of new reporters was hired, and the front page took a turn toward the mean and sensational.

Under editor Joe Rabinowitz, the early Murdoch Herald was a sight to behold, if you could stomach it. Take, for instance, this WOMAN'S AMAZING CONFESSION from 1983: GANG RAPE WAS MY OWN FAULT. Ugh. On the same front page were a photo of Brooke Shields getting her high-school diploma and a come-on for Wingo, a bingo-like game aimed at luring those readers for whom gang-rape teasers weren't enough.

It took a few years, but Murdoch finally recognized that Boston wasn't New York, and that what worked at his Post wasn't necessarily going to work at the Herald. By the mid 1980s, he had in place a new team: Purcell as publisher and Chandler as editor. Working together, they proceeded to tone down Rabinowitz's excesses and transform the Herald into a real newspaper. Looking at some of the front pages from their 1989 peak is instructive: they are newsier than today's fronts, with more stories and more text, about local subjects such as a gangland hit, the Boston housing crisis (some things never change), the Reverend Jesse Jackson speaking at a Boston Against Drugs rally, and the widow of a police cadet who was being hounded by bill collectors. Those are all stories you'd be likely to read in today's Herald, of course, but not necessarily on the front page.

During Purcell and Chandler's watch, Murdoch bought Channel 25 — and was forced to turn around and sell it again when Senator Ted Kennedy, stung by the Herald's (and columnist Howie Carr's) nasty coverage, fought successfully against Murdoch's obtaining a waiver to the FCC cross-ownership rule. Eventually, Murdoch reacquired Channel 25 — and sold the Herald to Purcell in 1994 for an estimated $15 to $20 million.

Given that history, perhaps the easiest way to describe the new Herald — make that the new new Herald — is to call it a throwback, a return to the gritty old tradition of urban tabloids. But that's not quite right. For better or worse, the Herald is aiming for something new: a connection with pop culture, with television shows such as American Idol, The Bachelor, and The Bachelorette, and with a society that is awash in celebrity and gossip. The Herald as a revived version of the Record, after all, would appeal primarily to older readers. By contrast, Costello, Chandler, and company are aiming for young people who might not even read a daily paper except when they pick up a Boston Metro at a T station. Costello described the target audience as "a little bit younger," and jokes: "If I say 'hipper,' I'm dating myself."

Perhaps no one is more excited with the changes than "Inside Track" columnists Gayle Fee and Laura Raposa. No surprise there; the two-page spread has given them new prominence — even new headshots. But they also contend simply that it's time for the Herald to get with it.

"We're quite excited about it, frankly, because Gayle and I have always been trying to push the pop-culture thing," says Raposa. "I don't think that you can say that 2003 is the same as 1983. I think we're more of a tabloid society now. Monica Lewinsky, the president's getting a blowjob in the White House, reality TV.... It's a new world. That's why I'm not bothered by this at all, and frankly, it's why I'm surprised that everybody's making such a big deal out of it. We're a reflection of society. This is what people are talking about. This is what people are reading."