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Three-city news war

Press releases
The Portland Press Herald is really under the gun right now, from within and without its walls.
By JEFF INGLIS | September 21, 2011

Sometimes, even accuracy is misleading
The Boston Globe's need for a public editor — a reader's advocate of the sort employed by the Globe's corporate parent, the New York Times — once again becomes painfully clear.
By EDITORIAL | August 24, 2011

Calling MaineToday in Honduras

Offshoring
Maine's largest daily-newspaper group has outsourced its circulation customer-service work to Honduras, letting five Maine-based employees go, reassigning another, and allowing one to retire early.
By JEFF INGLIS | August 03, 2011

By | January 01, 0001

The uncertain future of Rhode Island media

Breaking news or broken news?
The endless, anguished debate over how to deliver local news in the Age of the Internet has not reached anything like a satisfying conclusion.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | April 06, 2011

War on the average Joe

Press releases
Right now, Maine can afford to pay its state employees' pensions for the next 10 years with no additional investment — without any sort of supplement, not even workers' biweekly paycheck deductions.
By JEFF INGLIS | March 09, 2011

LePage’s numbers

Gubernatorial scorecard
This week, we introduce a regular feature, Gubernatorial Scorecard. We'll evaluate Governor Paul LePage's recent moves.
By PORTLAND PHOENIX STAFF | February 09, 2011

Making waves

Can WRNI supplant the ProJo as the state’s news king?
Rhode Island’s upstart National Public Radio affiliate, WRNI, aims to be nothing less than a major media player here. And in the space of just a couple of years, the station has taken some impressive first steps.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 10, 2010

Pols and blowhards beware: PolitiFact is coming

As the ProJo turns
The Providence Journal , facing the newspaper industry's twin demons of declining circulation and plummeting advertising revenue, is in an intense period of reinvention.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | June 09, 2010

Secret desires

Who's going to win the election?
Everywhere I go, people keep asking me, “Who’s going to win the election?” Often, my answer depends on my mood (which ranges from bad to horrendous).
By AL DIAMON | June 02, 2010

A media market splintered

Online
The fragmentation of the local media market, long predicted, is finally a reality.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | May 05, 2010

Nondeductible charities

Big Fat Whale
"Thanks for the foie gras!"
By BRIAN MCFADDEN | April 08, 2010

Protecting liberty

Press Releases
Newspapers need to be stronger watchdogs about government attempts to intrude on individual rights.
By JEFF INGLIS | February 10, 2010

The Phoenix cleans up at NENPA

Tooting Our Own Horn Dept.
Was 2009 a good year for newspapers?
By LANCE GOULD | February 10, 2010

Brave new Globe?

With a new publisher and a bevy of edit changes, is the Boston Globe poised for a new chapter?
Sizing up the Boston Globe 's recent past is easy: simply put, in the past 12 months, the paper has seen enough gut-wrenching drama to change the name of Morrissey Boulevard to Melrose Place. But forecasting the paper's future is another matter.
By ADAM REILLY | January 29, 2010

Good starts

Maine journalism shows some promising new lights
It's a new year, and Maine journalism is worse for the battering it took in 2009. But there are some new lights appearing on the horizon that might just make things a little brighter.
By JEFF INGLIS | January 13, 2010

Through a glass darkly

Forecasting the media year to come
Predicting a Super Bowl winner doesn't make you a genius: after all, given a pool of 32 teams, one of them is bound to capture the trophy. But predicting the future for an industry that's been buffeted by new technologies and economic vicissitudes, and sometimes seems to have all the substance and staying power of sea foam? That's an accomplishment.
By ADAM REILLY | January 08, 2010

Fourth-estate follies, 2009 edition

The Phoenix's second annual year in media malfeasance
Between the rise of the Web, the ADD-addling of America, the fragmentation of any national political consensus, and the devastated economy, working in the press can feel a bit like manning the Titanic — and this year, the entire industry seemed to teeter on the edge of oblivion.
By ADAM REILLY | December 28, 2009

Crossing the line

Press Releases
When an increasingly conservative newspaper company fires an already publicly conservative employee for apparently offending a liberal interest group, it leaves some people scratching their heads.
By JEFF INGLIS | December 16, 2009

Crossing the line

Belo Sells out. Plus, talk like a Brit, Chicago Vin acts up, and faithless football.
The news from the Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corp., owners of the Dallas Morning News and our own Providence Urinal, hit home hard and quickly last week in Our Little Towne.
By PHILLIPE AND JORGE | December 09, 2009

News worth paying for?

The ProJo considers charging for access to its Web site
The Providence Journal , offering a rare window onto its own affairs, recently reported that the newspaper could start charging for access to large swaths of projo.com as early as the first quarter of next year.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | December 02, 2009

Newspapering the hard way

As the ProJo Turns
Tom Heslin, executive editor of the Providence Journal , does not say much in public about the broadsheet. And little surprise. The ProJo , which demands transparency elsewhere, has issued a long string of “no comments” about its own affairs.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | November 04, 2009

No alternative

Authentic Journalism Dept.
“I got very tired of being called an ‘alternative journalist’ for so many years,” says former Phoenix reporter Al Giordano. “Alternative to what?"
By MIKE MILIARD | October 14, 2009

Philadelphia Story

What Steve Taylor needs to know if he succeeds in buying the Globe
The local-media story line of the moment is the push by Stephen Taylor — Milton resident, Yale media lecturer, and former Boston Globe executive VP — to recapture the paper his family ran for more than a century, a goal he's pursuing with the backing of (among others) his cousin Benjamin Taylor, the former Globe publisher.
By ADAM REILLY | October 01, 2009

Menino's junked mail

The Globe ratchets up the intensity in Boston's mayoral race. Plus, the Times Co. gets some love from the Globe newsroom and BU books blowhard Bill O'Reilly.
Two years ago, when I wrote a column griping about the Boston media's apathy-inducing disinterest in city politics, Boston Globe metro editor Brian McGrory told me his paper had given the lackluster 2007 elections as much coverage as they deserved, but hinted that things would be different in 2009.
By ADAM REILLY | September 16, 2009

Newport Web site tests an old-school daily

Online
The Newport Daily News made headlines this summer when it began charging for access to its online edition in a bid to send readers scurrying back to the more profitable paper product.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | September 16, 2009

Talking points

Press Releases
Rich Connor's reforms have brought a much-needed sharpened focus to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram and its sister papers. Certain changes, though, are raising eyebrows not just for what they are, but because of how Connor is doing them.
By JEFF INGLIS | August 26, 2009

Short-sighted?

The Projo 's ultra-local approach could save the paper — or spell its demise
There may, in the end, be no way to save the American metropolitan newspaper. Plummeting advertising revenue and competition from the Internet often seem forces too daunting for even the savviest of publishers.
By DAVID SCHARFENBERG | August 26, 2009

Press Releases: Memo to Rich Connor

Press Releases
Memo to Rich Connor
By JEFF INGLIS | July 29, 2009

The Times Co.'s super-potent silent treatment

If a tree falls in the Forest Dept.
In an earnings conference call last week, Janet Robinson, the president and CEO of the New York Times Co., had choice words — make that one choice word — for published reports on the Times Co.'s attempts to unload the Boston Globe.
By ADAM REILLY | July 29, 2009