Sitting in his office last week, Brian McGrory, the new editor of The Boston Globe, described the relationship between the two websites — similarly named, often confused, one free, one paid — that his newspaper offers.
“I’ve always thought that the success of BostonGlobe.com was inhibited in a couple of ways by Boston.com,” McGrory said. “One, is this sense that people don’t need to pay for our journalism because they were getting enough of it for free on Boston.com. Two, we haven’t used Boston.com to its fullest potential to let people know what they are missing when they don’t pay.”
That was Thursday. Six days later, the Globe’s parent company, The New York Times Co., announced it was putting the newspaper, both websites, and the rest of the New England Media Group up for sale. Following years of rumor and speculation, the Globe and its New England siblings will be the final parts of the Times Company’s non-Times assets to be sold off. In a statement, Times CEO Mark Thompson said:
Another area Mayer wants improvement on BostonGlobe.com is advertising. Part of the sales pitch to readers is its clean, distraction-free reading experience. By limiting the number of ad positions on section fronts and article pages, the Globe hoped to get premium rates for its online ads. Mayer said many advertisers are now looking for more granular audience data as well as tools to evaluate the effectiveness of ads. The fenced-in nature of BostonGlobe.com does provide for some data, as users are required to register to use the site.
But Mayer said they need to improve their ability for targeted advertising and offer new advertising experiences in different products. Jeff Moriarty, vice president for digital products at the Globe and general manager of Boston.com, said the company is developing responsive ads for BostonGlobe.com that would adapt to screen size just like any other piece of content on the site.
As happy as they are with the responsive design, plans are in the works to launch a native BostonGlobe.com news app for smartphones in 2013. Moriarty said they wanted to create native apps that feel built for mobile from a design and utility standpoint, not just a desktop site stuffed into a smaller package. That could mean shorter stories and customization not available in the responsive site, but also using device-based features like geofencing and background downloading of stories, Moriarty said. “It’s really about not dumping the newspaper into an app, which a lot of people do, but rethinking it,” he said. “The other reason for that obviously is to get access to the frictionless commerce of the [app] store.”
Managing the Boston.com brand
For its part in the two-site plan, Boston.com was supposed to play the role of infotainment provider. It’s not exactly a new job for the site, which was one of the early local newspaper portals when it was created 17 years ago. In the new plan, news updates would be short, slide shows, listings, and entertainment would be front and center.
Boston.com has also taken on the role of experimental money maker. Now visitors to Boston.com can buy tickets to Patriots games, watch live video shows, listen to streaming radio, or find town- or neighborhood-specific news. Another plan in the works is for the site to sell .boston domain names to area businesses. And, thanks to a recent grant from the Knight Foundation, they’re partnering with MIT’s Center for Civic Media to build tools to help connect with readers and report the news.
By experimenting in the open, Boston.com has become even more important to the Globe’s future by becoming a laboratory for new ideas to reach audiences, but also a pipeline for new products. “We’re going to try a lot of new things and see what sticks,” Moriarty said.
They’re also trying new forms of advertising, like the recently launched Insights, which allows local businesses to create blog-like posts that are published on the site. Part Yellow Pages, part BuzzFeed branded content (though the posts don’t appear in-stream with other stories), Insights is another way Boston.com is trying move past traditional forms of advertising to pay the bills.
“As we look at Boston.com moving forward, the advertising opportunities are going to change,” Moriarty said. “The traditional banner positions — though they’re valuable and they work — we need to go above and beyond to really set ourselves apart.”
Even as the sites become more distinct, it’s clear BostonGlobe.com will still rely on Boston.com as a source of both traffic and new subscribers. BostonGlobe.com gets a prominent slot on the Boston.com homepage to promote subscriber-only content.
“Right from the beginning, it struck me as an unusual and creative approach, but I was skeptical as to how well it would work,” said Northeastern University journalism professor Dan Kennedy. “They have had some success, but the skepticism hasn’t entirely vanished.” Boston.com’s news offerings, while lacking the range or depth of the Globe’s, might be good enough for many. If you can get your fill of breaking headlines and Red Sox news on Boston.com, why would you pay for BostonGlobe.com? “Except for the people who want every last bit of The Boston Globe, you’ve got a very robust, free website to this day,” Kennedy said. “Which may explain why the success of the paid site has been relatively modest.”
Kennedy said pulling more news content away from Boston.com could, rather than strengthening BostonGlobe.com, instead send readers to local competitors like NPR affiliate WBUR or The Boston Herald. Overall, Kennedy said it may be too early to judge whether the Globe’s strategy is working.
But the state of the Globe’s double down will likely be a big consideration for any potential owner. Particularly, a new owner will have to determine how much time, and capital, they are willing to invest to see if the two-site approach can succeed long term. McGrory says he believes the paper’s digital strategy is headed in the right direction — even if the mechanics of the sites need tweaking. “I’ve always had strong opinions over the years about Boston.com and, in the last year and a half, the byplay between BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com. Now I’m in a position to exercise some influence on that and its been quite gratifying,” he said. The new Globe, he said, needs to be able to reach people no matter where they are, even if they “are reading us as they stand in line at a Dunkin Donuts.”
“None of this works — none of what we’re talking about works — if we don’t continue here to produce really high-quality journalism that people want to read. We can talk about digital ’til the cows go home. But unless we’re producing material that people feel they need to read, want to read, then we’re screwed on much of the rest of it.”
Photo of Globe presses by Scott LaPierre used under a Creative Commons license.