It's a Small Globe After All

Back when people read newspapers, The Boston Globe was a titan. Even as recent as 10 years ago, the Globe had more than a half-million daily readers, easily holding its title as the largest paper in New England.


Today the Globe tells a different story. Just last week, the newspaper reported a pitfall in circulation: a 13.6 percent drop from last year, leaving it with just more than 300,000 copies a day.

Falling readership had been the cause of what looked like the paper's slow death, but in early April, a quicker illness reared: the Globe's owner, The New York Times Co., threatened to shutter the newspaper if it didn't find $20 million to cut. The newsroom union is still working out a deal with management to postpone the Times from filing a notice allowing it to close the paper within 60 days.

The Times Co. has said the Globe is on pace to lose another $85 million this year, an enormous but still not entirely surprising figure for a company operating in the faltering, changing field of print journalism. Ads have been down more than ever. The recession makes it worse. Subscribers are less loyal -- when I worked on the paper's City Desk last winter, I got angry calls from readers saying they were canceling their subscriptions because the Sunday issue no longer included the TV guide.

Many observers have said that this year is the worst year for journalism students to graduate. The papers we want to work for are firing some of their best reporters, and even prized internships are dropping their stipends.

Yet at the Globe, a handful of college students are able to find work on various news desks, writing briefs and stories and doing other office work. This job used to be a "foot in the door" at one of the best papers in the country, but now there are no guarantees.

My friend Kase Wickman, who works on the City Desk, sits next to a doodle of a sinking ship with "The Boston Globe" written on its side, with stick figures jumping off of it. "It's both totally discouraging and weirdly beneficial to be an aspiring journalist at a newspaper that literally may or may not be around two days from now," she wrote to me. "There's a sort of skeleton staff, so showing any semblance of skill or capability means that you are thrown into stories and see your stuff printed the next day, and editors give you one-on-one time because, let's face it, there isn't anyone else here to pay attention to, really."

I've noted before that as newspapers crash, it's the best time to be an intern, because your chances of getting a big assignment or even a front-page story are heightened by a noticeable lack of reporters. Sadly, though, internships that once led to jobs at profitable papers are now just summer stints. On many papers' applications, including The Washington Post's, disclaimers make it very clear that an internship will not guarantee a job.

Last summer, I reported for the Hartford Courant as an intern. "Get out of this business," a veteran reporter told me on my first day.

This story is not unique to New England. A reporter friend of mine in Colorado said he cried on the night of the Rocky Mountain News's final issue. The Scripps Co., which owned the paper, was also breaking its co-ownership with another Colorado publication where my friend had been an intern.

Another reporter friend who had applied to more than 20 internships across the country had received rejection letters from papers saying that they were not filling internship positions this year. One letter, from the Modesto Bee in California, specifically said that its decision was because of the grim financial times that newspapers are facing.

Perhaps no case is as terse and sobering as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which had once offered promising summer internships for student journalists. In March, the paper stopped printing, although its website is still updated with scattered briefs and wire stories. Students looking for an internship under the "Job Openings" section are now greeted with this:

"The Seattle P-I has no current openings."

The slim job field is one reason that journalism majors are seeking work in other areas, mostly public relations, where they will find themselves trying to dupe reporters and spin facts. This is a dire truth that journalism educators must be aware of. Boston University's journalism department, to its credit, has sent out blast emails plugging rallies to "save the Boston Globe."

You could say that this breeds a healthy, competitive fight for the most ambitious student reporters trying to get entry-level, low-paying jobs at a select few news organizations.

"Nothing's going to stop me from wanting to do journalism," Wickman said. "I just spend a lot more time thinking about what kind of journalism I'll be doing, and who will see it, if anyone."

Or you could say it's just depressing.