John Henry speaks: Why he purchased the Boston Globe

Craig Douglas
Managing editor/online vertical products and research- Boston Business Journal

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In Sunday’s Boston Globe, new owner John Henry penned a 2,800-word guest column to explain his motivation in purchasing the newspaper company, outlining in the process the shared role that both he and the Greater Boston community have in sustaining the Globe going forward.

Here are excerpts from his piece that ran Oct. 27:

On his role as an owner:

Truth is, I prefer to think that I have joined the Globe, not purchased it, because great institutions, public and private, have stewards, not owners. Stewardship carries obligations and responsibilities to citizens first and foremost — not to shareholders. This is especially true for news organizations. As the respected Supreme Court reporter Lyle Denniston once said, “Only one industry throughout America carries on its day-to-day business with the specific blessing of the Constitution.”

How his $70 million bid for the Globe materialized in August:

I didn’t get involved out of impulse. I began analyzing the plight of major American newspapers back in 2009, during the throes of the recession, when the Globe’s parent company, the New York Times Company, considered shutting down the paper. As I studied the problems that beset the newspaper industry, I discovered a maddening irony: The Boston Globe, through the paper and its website, had more readers than at any time in its history. But journalism’s business model had become fundamentally flawed. Readers were flocking from the papers to the Internet, consuming expensive journalism for free. On the advertising front, print dollars were giving way to digital dimes. I decided that the challenges were too difficult, so I moved on.