Boston herald
Boston Herald is a household name in the city of Boston and a must with a warm cup of tea in the morning. Boston Herald, a tabloid newspaper, can trace its roots back to two lineages and two media groups. The Herald was established way back in 1846, when a group of Boston printers came together under the name of John A. French and Co. At that time, it was a single sheet newspaper printed on both sides and sold for a penny per copy edited by a 22 year old editor, William O. Eaton. With the advent of the Civil War and the role Boston played in the war, a need was felt for a more elaborate newspaper, and thus, was born the Sunday Herald.
With the growing importance of Boston in the US history, the Boston newspaper industry also flourished. In 1912, The Herald purchased the Boston Traveler, a rival newspaper and merged the same to become the Boston Herald Traveler in the year 1967. In the year 1813 Nathan Hale, established the Daily Advertiser to serve the wealthy Republic audience of Boston. As the Daily Advertiser grew in popularity, so it grew in size. It had acquired five other older Boston newspapers by the year 1840. In 1904 William Randolph Hearst started promoting a new newspaper by the name of The American, and slowly acquired both the Daily Advertiser as well as the Afternoon Record (a group newspaper of Daily Advertiser). In the year 1938 all the three newspapers, Daily Advertiser, Afternoon Record, and The American, underwent a name change and were now known as Daily Record, Evening American and Sunday Advertiser. Eventually in 1961, Daily Record and the Evening American merged to become the Record American. With the advent of 1970s, both the Record American as well as the Sunday Advertiser merged with a number of newspapers and finally became a part of the old Boston Herald.
The Boston Herald as we see it today came into being only after being merged into the Hearst Corporation in 1972, such that the Boston Herald-Traveler and Record American were sold in the morning and Record American and Boston Herald-Traveler were sold in the evening. Slowly the evening edition was phased out and the new edition came to be known as the Boston Herald American, which further became a tabloid edition in year 1981.
However, it was only after 1982 when Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News America, acquired the newspaper, did it acquire its present form. This again brought about a change in the name of the newspaper and it came to be known as the Boston Herald, the name with which we recognize it today.
The journey of Boston Herald had still not ended, News Corporation had to sell the newspaper and it came under the ownership of Patrick Purcell, existing editor of Boston Herald and a News Corp executive. Patrick Purcell went further ahead and acquired the Community Newspaper Company from Fidelity Investments and gave the newspaper a suburban presence which the newspaper had never enjoyed previously.
Boston Herald has enjoyed being the only single newspaper to receive four Pulitzer prices in the years, 1924, 1927, 1949 and 1954 for editorial writing. The Herald Photographer Stanley Forman further received two Pulitzer Prizes in the years 1976 and 1977, followed with the Herald winning two SABEW awards in 2006 for its report on takeover of the local company Gillette Co.
However, with the passage of time and advent of the television and internet, Boston Herald has also had to face its stroke of bad luck. Once again the question of the Herald being on sale is being raised due to declining sales. It had lost nearly 4% in daily sales and 14% in Sunday sales by the end of 2005 as compared to the previous year. On the brighter side, despite the decline in retail sales, the Herald has been able to increase its bulk sales by nearly 60% in the same period
Boston Herald derives more than 19% of its daily circulation from bulk sales, whereby a single party, say a school, hotel or airline would purchase a number of dailies at a discounted rate and distribute them for a nominal price or free of cost. Most advertisers are not willing to support the Boston Herald in these bulk sales, since its not possible to analyze the kind of audience reading the newspapers and the advertising companies arent able to ensure if their message is going to the right public. This hesitation on the part of the advertisers has brought about doom for the newspaper industry. Further, with there being a possibility of inflation of the circulation data, there being no effective method through which the exact circulation figures for bulk deals can be calculated, has resulted in most of the data publishing companies declining to estimate and publish the figures.
Boston Herald has also been looking at improving it profitability in the coming months by cutting costs significantly. Patrick Purcell has been talking with officials of the papers labor unions for reducing staff. Other measures like shrinking the size of the paper, narrowing its coverage area and restricting its reach to Boston and nearby communities are also being considered.
This change in scenario and lackluster performance is not only the case with Boston Herald, the newspaper industry as a whole has been facing decline in the US. It has become more and more difficult to attract young readers. The Globe, major competitor of the Herald in Boston, has had to face a 8.25% decline in its sales in the same period. However, all is not lost, publishers are urging the advertisers to go beyond the published circulation figures and also take into account the readership of online editions. As said by Stephen Burgard, director of Northeastern University's School of Journalism. ''Paid circulation has been the fulcrum, but the model is changing. It's clear the industry on both sides -- publishers and advertisers -- needs to reevaluate."
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