The Globe and Mail has announced some fairly serious changes in the last week, and it’s hard not to see them as part of a much larger strategic shift at the paper. If so, it’s been a long time coming: compared to the big strategic bets at Postmedia and at the Star (and at La Presse as well, in Quebec), the Globe has had a quieter time of it. There have been layoffs and cuts, and obvious changes to the product but on the for-profit media side, the Globe and Mail seems to have been more insulated than anyone else to the wrenching transformation and revenue decline affecting the news biz.
The changes at the Globe include the cancellation of the print edition in the Atlantic region (so no paper Globe east of Quebec); the cutting of standalone arts, sports, and life sections during the week (so going to basically a two-section paper focused on news and business); and the end of two long-time (and quite popular) columnists, Leah McLaren and Tabatha Southey.
These changes have led to renewed concerns about the health of journalism in Canada and proposals for state intervention, while the dismissal of McLaren and Southey has raised questions about the Globe’s alleged sexist culture, about the editor’s judgment, and about the business strategy of the paper.
Applying the principle of charity as forcefully as I can, here’s what I think is going on:
1. The G&M is no more immune from what is going on in the news biz than is the Star, Postmedia, or anyone else. It just has had more runway in the form of a better capital and ownership structure.
2. That said, the rumours are that the Globe is losing as much as half a million dollars a week. If it is really losing in the ballpark of $20 million or more a year, that’s a lot of money even for billionaires to float. It’s one thing to break even or eat a small loss, but $20 million is real money, especially if the lines on the chart are pointing the wrong way.
3. And so the Globe is probably going to start going through a number of iterative cycles: strategic innovation, followed by retrenchment and tweaking, some further cuts or new changes, further strategic changes, repeat as necessary until success or failure.
4. It seems clear now that the Globe’s strategy is going to be largely based on paid content; that is, it is going to try to get subscribers to pay for news, New York Times-style. This contrasts with the Postmedia 2.0 strategy and the Star’s tablet strategy, which were both about selling an audience on different technological platforms. It is also distinct from what appears to be the current strategy at Maclean’s, which seems to be about raw page views.
These strategies are different in important ways. Most crucially, while the Postmedia, Star, and Maclean’s strategies were neutral with respect to quality, the Globe’s strategy hinges on monetizing quality journalism.
It’s worth stating that again: The digital revenue strategies at the major legacy print news outlets in Canada do not hinge on producing and selling quality journalism. The Globe and Mail is (probably) unique in betting its future on asking readers to pay for quality.
UPDATE: I could have been clearer on this: the question isn’t whether quality can be compatible with page-view driven journalism, or whether you can use quality to drive page views or to gather an audience. It’s that what is being sold isn’t the quality, what’s being sold are the page views or the audience. How the those page views are obtained, or how the audience is gathered isn’t really relevant. On the Globe’s strategy, the journalism itself is actually what is being paid for.
5. That is why it is very important to pay attention to how the product is evolving at the Globe, because it is crucial to its success that it continue to be seen as a high-quality product by the targeted subscriber base. This is where the laying off of Southey and McLaren becomes relevant. (Disclosure: I count both Tabatha and Leah as friends, and I’m really sad to see them lose their gigs. I even tried to hire Tabatha away from the Globe back when I was at the Citizen and the Globe was treating her badly. I also think the way they were let go is bad management.)
6. The twitterverse complaints about the axing of Southey and McLaren seem to come in three types: a) It’s bad business, because they are both really popular columnists. b) It’s bad journalism, because Southey and McLaren are both excellent columnists, while serial plagiarist Margaret Wente remains employed; c) it’s just sexism, because two women were let go while no-name or useless male columnists remain employed.
7. Ignoring the incompatibility of b) and c): Regarding c), my understanding is that a number of freelancers were let go, with Southey and McLaren just the highest profile. I don’t know the gender or content mix of the other ditched freelancers — if anyone has the full list, please post it in the comments.
8. Regarding a) and b), it’s true that both writers, Southey especially, are very popular in my realm of the twitterverse, while Wente is decidedly unpopular. But here’s a quick story about Margaret Wente: When Joe and I were doing our book tour for The Rebel Sell (a long time ago now) we were following Margaret Wente, who was touring her own collection of essays called An Accidental Canadian, with the same publisher. Every stop on the tour the story from our publicist was the same: Good turnout guys, but you should have seen crowd that came out last night for Wente. Like it or not, she’s enormously popular amongst a segment of the population most of my Twitter cohort don’t know, and probably wouldn’t like if they did.
9. And so it’s worth keeping in mind that Twitter is not a representative sample of Globe and Mail readers. More to the point: It’s probably not a representative sample of the Globe’s target market for their evolving strategy. I personally think it sucks that Tabatha and Leah aren’t welcome at the Globe anymore. But the downside of developing an actual strategy for paid content, as opposed to simply spraying and praying for clicks, is that you need to make hard decisions about who you actually want as a reader, and who you probably don’t.
10. Notwithstanding all of this, the Globe remains the best hope for for-profit quality journalism in Canada. I hope they succeed, and I also hope that Tabatha and Leah find other outlets for their writing very soon.
the best government intervention would be the defunding of the main competition for all things media in this country the CBC.
“Like it or not, [Wente is] enormously popular amongst a segment of the population”
Well then, better hope that aging demographic can carry the Globe. I cancelled my long-running subscription several years ago because of Wente and related or similar editorial issues, and now just read a handful of online articles each week.
The risk that owners and publishers take in such cases is that annoyed subscribers can and do learn that reading the Globe and Mail (or the Star, or any Postmedia paper) is just a habit that isn’t that hard to break.
Same here, a deliberate decision not to support a supposed quality paper that knowingly keeps a plagiarist in its employ.
I tend to agree that that one specific decision does severely undercut objective claims to (and an objective appearance of) quality. On the other hand, I think it’s reflective of a retreat to a core strategy that actually isn’t best described as “quality” per se but rather opulence, the “rich Corinthian leather” of the Chrysler Cordoba (that was of course flimsy crap). I don’t think the Globe is really selling quality. It’s selling up-market.
Wente fits that perfectly; her prejudices are rather neatly those of the broader managerial and owner classes.
It’s a market that the Globe has long been selling to, and I think they might continue to find success there.
I’m well outside (northern BC) the Globe’s geographical target market, so a pox on them! I’m happy to donate instead to non-profits like The Tyee. At least they actually attempt to cover the province’s hinterland and points of view that have trouble getting aired in the mainline press.
To me, it seems like the Globe is trying to hold on to its “old” readers, instead of looking for ways to get the younger readers involved. They must look forward if they want to succeed: they can’t stay still and they can’t look back!
where is the quality you talk about? I have not seen it for many years. I have seen little or no investigation. I have seen far too few actual news stories. The comment is predictable and in many cases, Margaret Wente being the prime example, either borrowed or boring. The days of Canada’s National Newspaper are long gone. The Globe is Southern Ontario’s national newspaper.
Wente’s popularity may well be as Potter casts it. But I can’t imagine another columnist or reporter with her record of plagiarism who would continue to draw a paycheque. She is a spreading stain on their brand.
The method of terminating Southey and McLaren was certainly poorly executed. That said, the decision not to accept further submissions from them should be applauded. The best thing McLaren has written in a long time was her response to her termination. That in itself indicates just how irrelevant she had become. As for Southey, it is a wonder it took the Globe so long to jettison her. Those people who consider these two writers to be “brilliant” “witty” and whatever other hyperbolic adjectives they can think of really need to read more.
There have been some columns in the Globe that went too far in terms of general criticisms of men as a whole. All you had to do was read the comments online, they weren’t too offside in respone. I hope the Globe is giving that stuff up for good.
I would be intrigued to read an ethnography of Globe and Mail readers. I don’t think anyone on Twitter has the slightest clue what the average G&M reader wants or which columnist they prefer. Twitter in general seems best at convincing each of us that politically popular viewpoints are more popular than they may be among the non-Twitterati.
The other question is whether *any* name-brand columnist is going to enhance the value of a subscription-based publication in this era. Opinions are everywhere. They’re hard to avoid, really, even if you want to. I suspect they are good for pageview-based revenue models (“omg can you believe what she said TODAY?”), and nearly worthless in the long run as people assess what they want to pay for month after month.
I enjoy Ms. Southey’s writing but I pay for the G&M for original news reporting and to read about issues that don’t seem well-covered elsewhere. Like others, I don’t actually think the paper is doing a great job of this stuff lately, but the competition is weak to say the least. But the era of every newspaper needing to check the boxes of What A Newspaper Is — columnists, arts, sports — are clearly over. I think the Globe is more likely to succeed by retrenching to what they can do that nobody else does. I suspect there will always be people to pay for content they can’t find elsewhere, and, sad as it makes me to say it, Southey and McLaren are not it.
Southey is Canada s Mark Twain. She s unique. Social satire worthy of a national paper, if we ever get one again.
There are a few really good journalists at the Globe. Top of my list are Oliver Moore and Robin Doolitle. I would happily pay for their work, but resent paying more for garbage like Wente and Ibbitson, and lament Tabatha and to a lesser extent Leah McLaren leaving. Also, they could have built an intelligent sports brand with Mirtle, but it seems to me they are wedded to am older and more conservative demographic.
I may be among the first Boomers, but I have no idea who these old folks are that support the cheating wente and the blue boys at the G&M. No one I know. Once upon a time I used to buy it up to 4 times a day to catch the latest developments on a story(long before the internet). The writing was instructive and compelling, informative and national, the ideas challenging and competing views were actually balanced. It set a tone for the whole country even though I lived in To then.
I haven t subscribed in years, and I can afford to AND I ‘m a newhound, because it became a narrow hardright nasty and uninsightful little stuffed shirt of a – what was it Howard Nernstein said- southern ontario s national newspaper. I m happy they won t be cluttering up our Maritime streets with what s left over from wrapping fish. And I do pay good money even when not required for other news outlets that offer what I am looking for today. Much the same as 40 years ago.
Someday someone will figure out how to charge reasonably for downloads to my tablet,articles or packages, and we’ll all be the better for it. Meanwhile, I’ll seek out and pay anything to read the wonderful Ms Tabatha, whatever she has to say. I may be 30 years her senior but I learn from her words every time. And I would actually buy copies of the paper just for her columns. Freed from that.
The G&M has not been a paper of record for some years now since its investment in actual journalism dropped, the editorial approach skewed right &, squatting in 905/519/416 territory, it became irrelevant to any national discourse. I stopped subscribing seven years ago & rarely go to it any longer.
Since I am from rural Manitoba, I need journalists to cover all of the country as well as Ontario. I would be willing to pay for that digital content. Let’s be clear, any Canadian national newspaper has to be digital. But in order for me to justify paying for an online newspaper the journalism has to be top notch. I subscribe to the digital New York Times because I am willing to pay for their top quality journalism and investigative reporting. I also have a digital/ Saturday subscription for the Winnipeg Free Press. My funds are limited though so the Globe’s articles have to be just as insightful as the Times, although from a Canadian perspective.
“The best hope for for-profit quality journalism in Canada”??? Obviously you’ve never read The National Post. Try it, you’ll like it if you’re into quality writing.
I as a 23 year old guy have to put myself down as a Wente supporter. She’s the only one whose opinions manage not to be leftist trash
The issue, as it is with all of the papers, is clearly ad lineage and the inability of the ad staff to sell digital in a meaningful way that returns value to the advertiser. This has existed since the very early days of the internet, when editorial was given away free to readers, and digital was ‘tacked on’ to print deals. THAT, more than axing a columnist who tried breast feeding the baby of a PC leadership hopeful or an obtuse satirist compared to Mark Twain (!) is the reason why the Globe is failing financially. And it becomes a vicious circle, because young hot shot sales guys won’t go into a field such as media sales if the trend continues to go downwards. Why would you, when there are luxury condos and Ferraris to sell?
Journalists love to gossip nastily about each other while pontificating from the lofty heights of journalistic integrity.