Patrick "Glass Is Half Full" Purcell Says Scrappy Tabloid Not Headed For Scrap Heap: Is He In Denial Or Does He Know Something We Don't?
The Boston Herald is the distant second newspaper in a two-newspaper town where circulation continues to hemorrhage.
But the sun will come up tomorrow, insists Patrick Purcell, the Herald's owner and publisher. This, despite the $225 million sale late last week of a chain of Boston-area weeklies and small dailies that Purcell owned.
That basically leaves Purcell with the Herald, which is losing money, a reason the suburban papers' suitors declined to take on their big-city brother.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/05/06/heralds_owner_to_sell_suburban_papers_deal_is_put_at_225m/However, However, before you cue the Titanic's dance band, Purcell was in the Herald today, as sanguine as you could ever hope a newspaper publisher to be nowadays.
"I believe no paper does a better job at finding and telling the stories of Boston. We’re going to keep doing it. This newspaper and what it does are my passion. You bet we’re alive - and kicking."
http://news.bostonherald.com/opinion/view.bg?articleid=138352&format=&page=2'
Rah, rah, Pat.
There's optimism. And then there's advertising and readers. The latter two are in precious short supply lately for the Herald and Boston Globe, which saw its circulation plummet 8.5 percent compared to last year.
Exactly where is Purcell's optimism founded? Good question, as Dan Kennedy notes in his MediaNation blog.
http://medianation.blogspot.com/2006/05/citizen-purcell.html
Say what you want about the Herald, and many politicians in Boston have said plenty. A two-paper town is shamefully a rarity today. So, you have to root for the Herald's survival, even if you're not sure if Purcell really knows how he's going to ensure that will happen.
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