Since Digital Worst – sorry, First – Media bought it in 2018, the Boston Herald has been, to borrow a phrase from the great Raymond Chandler, thin as the gold on a weekend wedding ring, officially making the Herald the flimsy local tabloid.
And getting flimsier all the time.
Take yesterday’s edition: Of the paper’s 48 pages, four-and-a-half were given over to house ads such as this one.
Something under two pages were occupied by display – that is to say, paid – ads.
That’s non-business-as-usual for the fading local tabloid, which is suffering knee-buckling decreases in both circulation and ad revenue.
As the redoubtable Don Seiffert noted in the Boston Business Journal last month, “[a]s of September 2014, the Herald had weekday print circulation of 60,960. As of this past September — six years later — that number was down to 33,337. Over the past year, the Herald’s weekday print circulation fell 16 percent.”
The paper’s Sunday circulation is even lower than its weekday readership, a distinction few metro dailies can claim.
Bottom line: The Boston Herald is disappearing in slow motion right before our eyes.
No wonder the hardreading staff has kissin’ cousins at It’s Sad to Live in a One-Daily Town.
And it will be, whatever you might think of the dodgy local tabloid.