Mike the Mad Biologist

Regarding its political news coverage, I don't mean that The Globe is biased. It's just incredibly uninformative. For example, MA recently adopted a sales tax increase in order to make up a budget shortfall. Reading The Boston Globe's coverage of this story, I couldn't learn these relevant things:

1. How much money would the sales tax increase raise, and how much of the budget shortfall would be eliminated? That's kinda germane.
2. The story kept referring to concessions from the State Legislature in the areas of ethics reforms and transportation. Well, what were the transportation concessions? A couple of extra sentences wouldn't have hurt, as opposed to dedicating space to MA legislators bloviating about their hurt feelings.
3. Was pension reform also part of this multi-part package? (The article hints at this, but I didn't think this was the case). If so, what were those reforms?

Instead, there is a lot of typical 'analysis' about how this helps or hurts Patrick's re-election chances. While this is just one instance, the reality is that I'm far more likely to learn what the State Leg and Governor are up to by reading The Boston Phoenix or The Weekly Dig. Unfortunately, they have very limited resources (not to mention that they're weeklies, not dailies), so they can only cover one story, maybe two at most per issue. On line, I'll probably find the relevant information from a blog such as BlueMass Group.org versus The Globe.

Then there's the dreadful decision by The Boston Globe to disband its science staff. Scientific research, particularly in biology and medicine, is vital to the Massachusetts economy. NIH funding alone brings in $2.25 billion, which is second only to California (and CA has a bajillion people in it, unlike MA). If you add in NSF funding, you wind up with over $2.5 billion of federal science funding (and this leaves out all of the other alphabet soup that throws money around too). To put this in perspective, the MA state budget is roughly $25 billion. Science is a massive employer and economic stimulus for this state, and The Globe eliminated its science section (and the coming post-buyout cuts won't help). Basically, the paper is running away from what should be a Boston newspaper's niche: science and biotech.

The Globe, by not highlighting a major local industry, is not doing Boston or Massachusetts any favors. Most importantly, it's hurting science in this country: our local (science) news is the country's national science news. A section that focuses on science helps science journalists elsewhere--losing it hurts the national coverage of science.

So The Globe is failing (me, anyway). Should we worry about it's demise?

Well, they do have a nice tits and ass section.... (this was on the front page of the website for at least two straight weeks)

Boston needs a good newspaper, but The Globe isn't it.