Mediocrity Rising

By Media Farm

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BUYOUTS STOPPED gutting the Globe (for now) two weeks ago. Those buyouts were brought on because neither the Globe's parent New York Times Co, nor the Globe itself can figure out how to stop shitting money like a goat that's gotten into a Taco Bell dumpster.

The decimation continued this week, as two of the paper's biggest young names fled for journalistic organs that are failing far less quickly or spectacularly than our beloved hometown daily. From our vantage point, this indicates the paper will continue to suffer all sorts of indignities until the thing is unrecognizable and unrecognizably mediocre. There's no other conclusion we can draw from the departures of Pulitzer winners Charlie Savage and Sacha Pfeiffer. You expect the old guard—Steve Bailey, Jackie MacMullan, Colin Nickerson, Peter May, Thomas Palmer and Michael Larkin—to bite on a fat buyout offer. That's how these things are supposed to work.

But the sight of good young talent running for the exits is certainly not a vote of confidence in the present state of the paper, nor in its future.

Pfeiffer, who won her Pulitzer for work on the Spotlight Team's sexual abuse series, is jetting for a position reporting on health and science for WBUR. That's not some awful PR velvet coffin, but it's also far from being a marquee job in this town. When compared to Pfeiffer's current gig—which carries the potential for making not just news, but real, meaningful change—this new one almost seems like a step down. Except that, thanks to Cambridge's deep-pocketed cat ladies, the 'BUR newsroom will still be around in five years. Clearly, if the same could be said for the Globe, we wouldn't be writing this item right now.

Likewise, Savage's decision to jump to the New York Times is anything but a sign that the Globe will be able to maintain a brawling, enterprising Washington bureau in the face of recent cuts to its national and foreign desks. Savage is one of the country's best young talents. His work, more than anything else coming out of the paper's Washington desk, sustained the Globe's reputation as a national newsmaker in the face of recent, painful cuts. Just a month ago, Boston magazine cited the "peerless" Savage as one of the main reasons the Globe "remains one of the finest dailies anywhere."

Sorry to say, but from the looks of things, anywhere is catching up, and it's catching up quickly.

OR MAYBE NOT? Tim McGuire, the former head of the Minneapolis' Star Tribune, delivered an address on the future of newspapers last week that's been rocketing around that cyber-thing at a great velocity. His advice: You're not all going to die, but most of you are. If you live in some Podunk town, you might be OK. So get a Facebook page.

Newspaper people are wallowing in self-pity and wishing for a return to a yesterday that is gone. It will never exist again ... Some ARE dying. The next several months will likely bring several to the brink of death and some might die. At the same time some medium size and smaller newspapers are going to rock along for a very long time and reward owners handsomely. All newspapers are not created equal and it is naïve to condemn all with the fate of the few ... You have to go ding around Facebook and Myspace. You need to deeply understand the capabilities of your cell phone and go to web sites like Digg and other sites that 17-year-olds tell you are important. All of these innovations have profound implications for our business and its future.

FINALLY, cheers to Time for getting Paul Steiger, the editor who fled the Wall Street Journal ahead of Rupert Murdoch's invading hordes, to write Murdoch's profile in this year's Time 100 issue. But please, Paul, tell us how you really feel: "There is, to be sure, a darker side to Murdoch's influence and legacy. He has at times subordinated the journalism operations he controls to further his own business interests, undermining their credibility if not their long-term profitability. His own test of journalism sometimes seems to be what sells—no less but also no more." Amazingly, revenge also sells—and generates a wicked lot of clicks on your website. Who knew?