Global News Puts a New Spin on “Foreign” News
Important Details: Global News is unveiling its intentions, and has announced the appointment of a new executive editor. Charlie Sennott will leave a well-regarded 15-year career at the Boston Globe, taking a buyout, on Friday, April 4 and on Monday, April 7, he’ll start his new job.
In an interview with Outsell, Sennott laid out the site’s plans:
- The site will launch in early 2009.
- The business (Global News Enterprises, LLC) is a for-profit company. Sennott says he and Global News CEO Phil Balboni had come up with a similar notions of a global news reporting site. Sennott’s idea was non-profit and special projects-oriented, and Balboni’s was profit-seeking and with broader and more current coverage. They decided to adopt both the breadth and depth goals, with the number of special projects ramping up each year. They also opted for profit-seeking and Balboni, the founder of the award-winning New England Cable News network, brought in well-known investors from the Boston area including Benjamin Taylor, Akamai president Paul Sagan and Continental Cablevision co-founder Amos Hostetter, Jr. So far, almost $8 million has been raised, with a goal of $10 million pre-launch.
- Global News will start with a full-time staff of 10. Its reporting strength (built on Sennott’s contacts, “his band of brothers”) will be stringers, many of whom are well-known names from the daily trade. The evolving plan calls for them drawing stipends for weekly and other reports. Sennott says correspondents will also get stock options in the business.
- Reporting will be multimedia-oriented, with Sennott’s recent report on Iraqi war veterans returning home (New England’s Own) a “raw prototype of what the in-depth reports might look like on GlobalNews”.
Sennott grew up in Boston – “I wanted to work for the Globe my whole life. I started at a NPR affiliate, painted houses, went to Columbia Journalism School, got my ticket punched and then worked at the Bergen Record and the New York Daily News, before landing at the Globe.” After 15 years at the Globe, he saw the paper cutting back generally, closing foreign bureaus and then offering buyouts. He says he has longed for the time when “newspapers allowed reporters to go deep to understanding for their readers,” believing that’s being lost. He hopes to regain it through Global News.
Implications: Global News’ entrance into the international reporting field comes at a time when US-based dailies are cutting back on their own foreign correspondents (down by at least 25% since 2002, with 141 the last reported number). But the news reading audience’s appetite for global news has never been greater due to the impacts of war and of globalization that affects both paychecks and national priorities. Global News could see a vast, growing audience and market. It will join the dwindling number of news outlets maintaining worldwide presence. These are big brands (Reuters, AP, BBC, ABC, NBC, the Guardian, the New York Times and the Washington Post) all seeing global growth, while figuring out how to pay the monthly bills as legacy revenues ebb.
Coincidentally two of those companies announced plans to reorganize themselves for this new online-dominant, multimedia future. AP announced the streamlining and reshuffling of its sales operation, while the Washington Post moved forward with its reorganization of editing, to better facilitate web-publishing. Both are further attempts of savvier older media to get their ducks in a row for emerging challenges.
Global News’ foray makes a good case for co-opetition. While Global News can create its own site and business, it can also partner, selectively or exclusively, with the major outlets. That’s a potential win-win-win for Global News, for major partners, who can always use more higher-quality, lower-cost content, and thirdly for the readers, as they come to grips with the fast-spinning globe under their feet.