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Goodbye, Globe

According The Quill & Quire, The Globe & Mail will be folding it’s weekly standalone Books tabloid into the Focus section of its Saturday paper in the new year:

Globe editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon argued that the move is aimed at bringing more eyes to the books pages, and is not an attempt to reduce books coverage. “The Books section itself is a little bit of a ghetto, and the Focus section is one of the best-read sections of the paper,” he said. “There should be more traffic, more eyeballs going through it, both in print and online.”

In the new, combined print section, the number of pages devoted to books will ultimately depend on advertising revenue, Greenspon said, which he admits has been suffering of late. But he said the ramped-up books website should pick up any of the slack in coverage.

After the precipitous decline of book coverage in newspapers across North America in recent years, the Globe‘s decision is hardly unexpected. Standalone book sections have been dropping like flies in the US, and here in Canada the Toronto Star halved its books coverage to two pages in the summer, and the Montreal Gazette has turned its weekly standalone books section into a monthly. The writing was on the wall for the Globe‘s Book section, especially after its unexpected two week ‘hiatus’ in August.

So, no surprise. But the thought occurred to me that what advertisers now want from the Globe & Mail is clearly very different from what I want as a subscriber to the newspaper. And the Globe is — rightly or wrongly — going with the ad revenue. Thus they can maintain a weekly standalone Auto section — bloated with ads — that I don’t read, and scrap their prestigious standalone Books tabloid — with very little advertising — that I read cover to cover.

For newspapers, there is surely a tension between the interests of advertisers and the interests of readers, and whilst trying to strike a balance, the temptation, inevitably, is to follow the money. The question is though, when newspaper readers like me decide that you’re no longer reflecting our interests and cancel our subscriptions, what are the advertisers and, in turn, the newspapers going to do then?

One Comment

  1. […] As announced in December last year, The Globe and Mail replaced its standalone Books tabloid with a combined ‘Focus and Books’ section this weekend, simultaneously launching a new Books website that will feature, amongst other things, daily book reviews, news on books and the publishing industry, and blogs by Globe Book’s online communities editor Peter Scowen and Books editor Martin Levin. […]

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