How the 'Boston Herald' Lost Another Subscriber

I spent most of the last week in the obviously beleaguered Boston newspaper market, where the hand-wringing over the possible demise of the Boston Globe resulted in this weird navel-gazing exercise in yesterday’s paper. Meanwhile the tabloid Boston Herald chugged along, happily coasting on a river of stories about the Vermont sea captain (local angle!) who, this morning, was released from the clutches of pirates.

That would suggest that all is (relatively) well with the Herald. But then the relative we were staying with explained that the edition of the Herald I was reading was likely going to be the last before she dropped her subscription. Why? Because, due to a decision last June by the Herald to outsource printing to a Dow Jones & Co. facility in Chicopee, 100 miles away from Boston, it no longer carried the late sports scores. (The Herald used to print its paper at its Boston headquarters, only miles from where we sat.)

At the time, Patrick J. Purcell, the paper’s publisher and president said:

“All I’ve ever wanted to do is make the Herald as competitive and successful as I can and to preserve Boston as a two-newspaper town. We’ve done that, and I want to continue doing that.”

That quote is now filled with irony, since it looks like the Globe may die before the Herald does. Still, if the experience of the former Herald subscriber above is any indication, the Herald is doing a fine job of cost-cutting its way to irrelevance.