• huh? said:

  Great. So the Boston Phoenix media writer may stop reading the region's biggest newspaper. I assume you'll stop reading the Herald too, since the paper just raised its price. Maybe you can just write about the Metro and the Weekly Dig. They're still free.

  May 15, 2009 7:39 AM

• Dan Kennedy said:

  Reading the entire Globe online is too painful, because its miserable ad servers constantly stall. If I had a Kindle, I would switch. Or if the Globe had an electronic edition like the new Times Reader, I would definitely switch to that.

  May 15, 2009 8:54 AM

• Adam Reilly said:

  H., what are you talking about? I said I'd stop *subscribing*, not reading. (There's this new internet thing you should check out.)

  May 15, 2009 11:05 AM

• chmk said:

  What is the price now weekly?

  May 15, 2009 11:07 AM

• mike saunders said:

  Dan, I'd bet dollars to donuts you need to run a browser update and some do serious OS scrubbing in the nooks and crannnies of the machine.

  Boston.com runs fine for me on both my MacBook and iPhone, and on my kids' WinXP box....

  May 15, 2009 11:55 AM

• Karl said:

  I, too, got a kick out of your crack about canceling your Globe subscription. ("But maybe he's serious?")

  Sadly, though, the Globe is a far less compelling read than it was only a few years ago.  It dawned on my recently that they no longer have any "must-read" columnists, and that their op-ed page has become...boring.  

  And I used to enjoy the Arts/Living broadsheet--I felt flipping through it used to keep me better rounded.  Otherwise, I'd just head for the hard news and politics.  However "g" drives me nuts so I just toss it without reading now.  It feel like flipping through "Metro."  I feel bad for Ty Burr.  One of the country's best film critics has been banished to the Globe's version of a supermarket tabloid.

  May 15, 2009 12:19 PM

• Dan Kennedy said:

  Mike: I have no problems with any other news site, including BostonHerald.com. And a Globe reporter recently confirmed for me that the ad server is a constant problem. I have no idea why you don't have the same problem, but I know it's real, and I know I only encounter it with the Globe.

  May 15, 2009 12:36 PM

• Montgomery Burns said:

  I've been reading online for years. I know I'm part of the problem, but the Globe should have figured out a way to make the internet work for them by now. It's just basic common sense: if I can get an item for free, and legally, I'd be an idiot to pay for what is essentially the ephemeral nostalgia of print.

  Why not contract with Kindle to have Boston Globe-specific versions of the technology: a stripped-down Kindle with no features not needed to read the paper, that costs maybe 150 beans, and charge a monthly rate like a cell phone provider? It's easy enough to see coffee-stained little machines becoming prevalent on the T in place of the physical paper.

  May 15, 2009 1:08 PM

• Ron Newman said:

  (repeating what I said over at Media Nation)

  I do not understand how this price increase is going to restore the Globe to financial health.

  Fewer subscribers will result in fewer advertisers, or in advertisers buying smaller and cheaper ads, or in the Globe being forced to lower the rates that it charges advertisers.

  How can any of that help the Globe?

  May 15, 2009 1:54 PM

• George Williams said:

  I will be canceling my subscription because $637 is too much and there is far too little content to justify that $637 per year.

  May 15, 2009 3:07 PM

• Carly Carioli said:

  Dan: Ask and ye shall receive? The Globe apparently has an "electronic edition" ala Times Reader: www.bostonglobe.com/.../electedition.aspx

  Be curious to see what it's like. Not curious enough to buy the damn thing, tho.

  May 15, 2009 3:46 PM

• Dan Kennedy said:

  Carly: It's the whole paper as a PDF. I've tried it. It's painful.

  May 15, 2009 4:58 PM

• hylen said:

  This is somewhat confusing depending on where you live. Or is the Globe confused? At the link you give above, Adam, I enter my zip code (01719) and get this message: "You are within the Greater Boston area." Ergo a seven-day subscription for me should be $12.25. But what about newsstand prices? At this link: bostonglobe.com/.../faq.aspx they refer to the METRO Boston area. "In the Metro Boston area the daily single copy suggested retail price will now be $1.00." Does Metro refer to the daily paper and Greater to the Sunday paper? They have a pdf link for a list of towns.

  Towns in bold on this list are part of the daily Metro Boston area.

  All towns on this list are part of the Sunday Greater Boston area.

  Boxborough (which they mistakenly believe is spelled "Boxboro") is not in bold. So I'm in Greater Boston but not Metro Boston. I think. And if I DO want to read the (physical) Globe every day a home delivery subscription would be the only sensible way to go since the newsstand price here is, at least in theory, $1.50. Right?

  May 16, 2009 8:44 AM

• Dan Kennedy said:

  Make no mistake: The Globe had to raise print-edition prices by quite a lot. But they do seem to have managed to screw this up to a fare-thee-well, haven't they?

  May 16, 2009 10:12 AM

• eyeball said:

  I see that the Sunday Herald is still just $2 a copy -- with the same inserts as the Globe and more news and less blather for your buck. Wonder if any "boston media critics" even bother to read it.

  May 20, 2009 12:01 AM

• Adam said:

  Not me, eyeball--I wouldn't be caught dead reading the Herald!

  May 20, 2009 10:10 AM

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