March 29, 2024

Media Decoder Blog: Brian McGrory Rises From Boston Globe Paperboy to Become the Paper’s Next Editor

Brian McGrory, the new editor of The Boston Globe.Suzanne Kreiter Brian McGrory, the new editor of The Boston Globe.

The Boston Globe announced on Thursday that Brian McGrory, a columnist and former metro editor and a Boston native with deep roots in the community, would be its next editor. The appointment is effective immediately.

Mr. McGrory, who has worked at The Globe for the past 23 years, will replace Martin Baron, the newspaper’s editor for the past decade. Mr. Baron has been named the editor of The Washington Post, and officially left The Globe last week.

Chris Mayer, the Globe’s publisher, said he chose Mr. McGrory from a pool of internal and external candidates because of his ties to Boston and his ability to motivate the newsroom. “He’s a terrific mentor and leader in terms of inspiring great journalism,” Mr. Mayer said. “It’s that ability to inspire the talent and attracting and retaining the talent.”

Mr. McGrory said that he plans to build on “the accountability journalism the paper has been known for” and doesn’t plan to make drastic changes.

“After Marty Baron’s extremely successful tenure here, we don’t need any overhaul,” said Mr. McGrory. “We don’t need a drastic change in direction.”

Mr. McGrory, 51, grew up in Weymouth, Mass., and began his connection to The Globe as a paperboy for the newspaper. In a video posted on The Globe’s Web site, he recounted how he started his own newspaper for his fifth-grade social studies class. “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do and, oddly enough, the only place I ever wanted to do it was The Boston Globe,” he said.

After attending Bates College, and working at The New Haven Register and The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Mass., he joined The Globe in 1989. His career at The Globe has included reporting for the metro desk, and working as a roving national reporter and as a White House correspondent.

He is the nephew of the longtime Washington columnist Mary McGrory, who died in 2004.

In a column that year for The New York Times by Maureen Dowd, Ms. Dowd quoted Mr. McGrory as recalling his aunt’s advice about navigating the mores of Washington: “Always approach the shrimp bowl like you own it.”

He became a metro columnist in 1998 and later the section’s editor.

A statement released by The Globe highlighted his work leading the metro desk on investigating corruption on Beacon Hill and enhancing the desk’s narrative journalism. In the last couple of years, he wrote a twice-weekly column.

He recently published his first nonfiction book, “Buddy,” about raising a pet rooster as he adjusted to suburban life with his fiancée and her children from her first marriage.

The announcement was somewhat of a surprise in a search closely watched by local journalists.

The Boston Phoenix reported the leading finalists for the job were Caleb Solomon, the paper’s managing editor, and David Shribman, a former Washington bureau chief for The Globe and currently the executive editor of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Peter Kadzis wrote in The Phoenix about Mr. McGrory that “having left the trenches of management for the lotus fields of opinion mongering, I just don’t see McGrory getting tapped.” Peter Canellos, the head of The Globe’s editorial page and a candidate mentioned for the job, will continue to report directly to Mr. Mayer.

Mr. McGrory is stepping into a drastically changing job at the newspaper, which is owned by The New York Times Company. A newsroom that is currently staffed with 370 people, a decrease by roughly 40 percent over the past decade.

The paper’s circulation has shrunk by nearly half during that time to a circulation of 230,351 from Monday to Friday, from 438,621 readers in 2002. The Globe is also battling a struggling advertising market. According to The New York Times Company’s third-quarter earnings report, the New England Media Group, which includes The Globe, had a 6 percent decline in advertising revenue.

Mr. Mayer stressed that he recognized that Mr. McGrory did not have a strong digital background at a time when the paper is becoming more dependent on readers who receive access to content digitally. As of Thursday afternoon, Mr. McGrory had only 813 followers on Twitter. But Mr. Mayer said that he was not concerned because the company had plenty of other employees with digital expertise.

“He has some good, strong ideas,” said Mr. Mayer. “We have a lot of digital talent in the organization.”

Mr. McGrory said that while he is just getting into social media, “I’ve been pretty fascinated by it in the short time I’ve been doing it.”
He said he reads the Boston Globe on an iPhone and iPad daily.

“I don’t remember the last time I read the paper by flipping the pages,” said Mr. McGrory. “I’m not a digital guy. But I’m not a printing press guy either.”


This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 20, 2012

Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this post misstated the size of The Globe’s newsroom. After shrinking over the decade, the newsroom’s staff is currently 370 people; it didn’t shrink from 370 people.

Article source: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/20/brian-mcgrory-rises-from-globe-paperboy-to-become-its-next-editor/?partner=rss&emc=rss