WEDNESDAY, JUNE 13 -- The Boston Globe’s year-and-a-half-old bulldog edition may be facing the canine graveyard. According to knowledgeable sources, the early edition of the Sunday paper — available at retail outlets in Greater Boston on Saturday mornings — could be published for the last time in the next few weeks.

Globe spokesman Rick Gulla, reached just before press time on Wednesday morning, said he could not confirm the bulldog’s demise, but added that it’s one of a number of possible cost-cutting measures under consideration. “The bulldog, like many other things, has been the object of discussion,” he said. Sources say the bulldog costs about $1 million a year to produce.

The bulldog, which made its debut on October 23, 1999, was one of the first major initiatives of publisher Richard Gilman, a veteran New York Times Company executive who had taken the helm four months earlier. The goal: keeping Sunday circulation north of 700,000.

Unfortunately for the Globe, the bulldog was never more than a partial success. In a recent interview, Gilman said the early edition had topped out at about 22,000 to 23,000 copies, some 10,000 to 20,000 below his goal (see “Squeezing the Globe,” www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/dont_quote_me/multi-page/documents/01669257.htm). Meanwhile, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, total Sunday circulation has continued to slide, from 730,420 in March 1999 to 722,729 in March 2000, the first six-month reporting period to include the bulldog. The latest circulation figures show Sunday dropping to 710,256.

Two weeks ago Gilman appeared sanguine about the bulldog, saying that despite its disappointing numbers, research showed the edition had attracted a core of younger readers who spent more time with it than regular Sunday readers. But editor Matt Storin, in a separate interview, said the disappointing numbers indicated that buying habits had changed in ways that hadn’t been anticipated, and that perhaps it was no longer possible to sell more than a handful of papers at the retail level on weekends. Neither Gilman nor Storin offered any indication that the bulldog was in danger, however.

Even though the bulldog’s demise would be the latest in a string of painful cutbacks driven by the economic slowdown, this one is unlikely to cause too much consternation among the Globe’s staff, many of whom have long been critical of a project that consumes valuable resources yet produces no additional journalism. Sources say that when the official announcement is finally made, it is likely to be accompanied by news that at least some of the savings will be diverted to increased suburban coverage — possibly by converting South Weekly, a Sunday supplement, into a twice-weekly zoned edition to be known as Globe South, as was done with West Weekly last fall.

Eventually, according to Gilman and Storin, the remainder of the Sunday suburban supplements — North, Northwest, and City — will undergo the same metamorphosis. A sixth regional supplement, New Hampshire Weekly, is shutting down this month.

Issue Date: June 13, 2001