The Boston Globe

Boston Globe, and the Boston Sunday Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993. Its chief print rival is the Boston Herald.

The Boston Globe has won twenty one Pulitzer Prizes.

Editorial page

At The Boston Globe, as is customary in the news industry, the editorial pages are separate from the news operation. Editorials represent the official view of The Boston Globe as a community institution. Peter S. Canellos, former Washington bureau chief, is the editor of the editorial page. The publisher, Chris Mayer, reserves the right to veto an editorial and usually determines political endorsements for high office.

Describing the political position of The Boston Globe in 2001, former editorial page editor Renée Loth told the Boston University alumni magazine:

The Globe has a long and proud tradition of being a progressive institution, especially on social issues. We are pro-choice; we're against the death penalty; we're for gay rights. But if people read us carefully, they will find that on a whole series of other issues, we are not knee-jerk. We're for charter schools; we're for any number of business-backed tax breaks. We are a lot more nuanced and subtle than that liberal stereotype does justice to.

Magazine

Appearing in the Sunday paper almost every week is The Boston Globe Magazine. Susanne Althoff is the current[when? editor.

As of August 6, 2006, the magazine has seen a new look. This new look consists of the cutting out of the Inspirations section and moving it into the Boston UnCommon section. It also adds departments such as Q/A and Pierced.

On October 23, 2006, The Boston Globe announced the publication of Design New England: The Magazine of Splendid Homes and Gardens. The glossy oversized magazine will publish six times per year.

Contributors

Robin Abrahams writes Miss Conduct (see below)

Susanne Althoff, Editor

Charlie Pierce is a staff writer

Neil Swidey is a staff writer

Tina Sutton writes The Clothes We Wear

Regular features

Editor's Notes: Notes written that are relative to one of the features in that week's magazine.

Letters: Reader's correspondence

Q/A: A mini interview with a local person

The Big Deal: A profiling of a transaction that recently took place

Pierced: A column by Charlie Pierce

Tails From the City: Heartwarming stories from Boston and elsewhere

The Clothes We Wear: Style column

Miss Conduct: An advice column focusing mainly on good manners and properness.

The Globe Puzzle: A crossword puzzle

Coupling: Essay about social chemistry. Usually pertaining to someone's love-life.

Sunday Ideas section features reporting and commentary on the ideas, people, books, and trends that are shaking up the intellectual world.

Pulitzer prizes

2011 - Criticism, Sebastian Smee

2008 - Distinguished Criticism, Mark Feeney

2007 - National Reporting, Charlie Savage

2005 - Explanatory Reporting, Gareth Cook for "explaining, with clarity and humanity, the complex scientific and ethical dimensions of stem cell research."

2003 - Public Service, Boston Globe Spotlight Team for "courageous, comprehensive coverage in its disclosures of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Church"

2001 - Distinguished Criticism, Gail Caldwell

1997 - Distinguished Commentary, Eileen McNamara

1996 - Distinguished Criticism, Robert Campbell

1995 - Distinguished Beat Reporting, David M Shribman for his "analytical reporting on Washington developments and the national scene."

1985 - Feature Photography, Stan Grossfeld for a "series of photographs of the 1984–1985 famine in Ethiopia and for his pictures of illegal aliens on the Mexican border." The Pulitzer was also awarded in equal parts to Larry C. Price of the Philadelphia Inquirer for his series on the war-torn peoples of Angola and El Salvador.

1984 - Spot News Photography, Stan Grossfeld for photographing the effects of the Lebanese Civil War.

1984 - Local Reporting, The Boston Globe for a series on racism including self-criticism.

1983 - National Reporting, The Boston Globe Magazine for its article "War and Peace in the Nuclear Age".

1980 - Distinguished Commentary, Ellen Goodman, columnist.

1980 - Distinguished Criticism, William Henry III, for television criticism.

1980 - Special Local Reporting, The Boston Globe Spotlight Team for describing transit mismanagement.

1977 - Editorial Cartooning, Paul Szep

1975 - Meritorious Public Service, The Boston Globe, for its "massive and balanced coverage of the Boston school desegregation crisis."

1974 - Editorial Cartooning, Paul Szep

1972 - Local Reporting, The Boston Globe Spotlight Team for "their exposure of political favoritism and conflict of interest by office holders in Somerville, Massachusetts."

1966 - Meritorious Public Service for its "campaign to prevent the confirmation of Francis X Morrissey as a Federa

History

Boston Globe was founded in 1872 by six Boston businessmen, led by Eben Jordan, who jointly invested $150,000. The first issue was published on March 4, 1872 and cost four cents. Originally a morning daily, it began Sunday publication in 1877. In 1878, The Boston Globe started an afternoon edition called The Boston Evening Globe, which ceased publication in 1979.

The Boston Globe was a private company until 1973 when it went public under the name Affiliated Publications. It continued to be managed by the descendants of Charles H. Taylor.

In 1993, The New York Times Company purchased Affiliated Publications for US$1.1 billion, making The Boston Globe a wholly owned subsidiary of The New York Times' parent. The Jordan and Taylor families received substantial New York Times Company stock, but the last Taylor family members left management in 2000–2001.

Boston.com the online edition of Boston Globe was launched on the World Wide Web in 1995. Consistently ranked among the top ten newspaper websites in America, it has won numerous national awards and took two regional Emmy Awards in 2009 for its video work. On August 6, 2009, several media outlets in Boston reported that Boston.com might start charging for its services.

In 1998, columnist Patricia Smith was forced to resign after it was discovered that she had fabricated people and quotations in several of her columns. This raised questions of a double standard at The Boston Globe, as Mike Barnicle, who is European-American (Smith is African-American), had been accused of the same offense without being punished. In August of that year, Barnicle was discovered to have copied material for a column from a George Carlin book, Brain Droppings. He was suspended for this offense, and his past columns were reviewed. In their review, The Boston Globe editors found that Barnicle had fabricated a story about two cancer patients, and Barnicle was forced to resign.

The Boston Globe reporters were an instrumental part of uncovering the Roman Catholic Church sex abuse scandal in 2001–2003, especially in relation to Massachusetts churches. They were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for their work, one of several the paper has received for its investigative journalism.

In the spring of 2005, The Boston Globe retracted a story describing the events of a seal hunt near Halifax, Nova Scotia that took place on April 12, 2005. Written by freelancer Barbara Stewart, a former The New York Times staffer, the article described the specific number of boats involved in the hunt and graphically described the killing of seals and the protests that accompanied it. In reality, weather had delayed the hunt, which had not yet begun the day the story had been filed, proving that the details were fabricated.

The Boston Globe is also credited with allowing Peter Gammons to start his Notes section on baseball, which has become a mainstay in all major newspapers nationwide. In 2004, Gammons was selected as the 56th recipient of the J. G. Taylor Spink Award for outstanding baseball writing, given by the BBWAA, and was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame on July 31, 2005.

In 2007, Charlie Savage, whose reports on President Bush's use of signing statements made national news, won the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.