Former Boston Globe President Rick Daniels leads an investor group that offered "more than $100 million" for The Boston Globe in January, Keach Hagey reported Friday night.

"The Times has been in quiet talks for the past year with the buyer group," Hagey reported. (more...)

The Boston Globe | The New York Times Co. | Bloomberg | Politico | The New York Times
The New York Times Co. has hired Evercore Partners to advise it on a possible sale of The Boston Globe, the Globe's Beth Healy writes, confirming a report by Bloomberg's Edmund Lee and Jeffrey McCracken.

“Our plan to sell the New England Media Group demonstrates our commitment to concentrate our strategic focus and investment on The New York Times brand and its journalism,” Times Co. CEO Mark Thompson said in a press release. The New England Media Group also includes the Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the Globe's online properties.

"We are seeing the first fruits of Mark Thompson's yet-to-be-fully-revealed new strategy," Poynter business analyst Rick Edmonds said in an email. "The Times Co. has a very full plate managing its flagship -- including ambitious and probably expensive plans for international expansion on top of a raft of digital initiatives. The Globe and its issues are a distraction from that work and possibly a strain on financial resources as well." (more...)

The difference between BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com isn't clear to "many people in this community and people in this newsroom," Boston Globe Editor Brian McGrory told Poynter in a phone interview Friday. "That’s understandable," he said.

So Job 1 is "to untangle them," McGrory said, a task that "will involve some pretty strong maneuvers here. We’re going to start removing our in-depth Globe journalism from Boston.com, which is not a small move."

The Globe launched the paywalled BostonGlobe.com in September 2011, offering it as a "true reading experience," as former Globe editor Marty Baron told Poynter's Jeff Sonderman at the time. Boston.com was envisioned as a site for "the more casual audience that may visit infrequently, scan news briefly, or come for shopping or entertainment information rather than journalism," Sonderman wrote.

The free site will remain a destination for breaking news summaries, "more social media, more community bloggers, hopefully edgier content," McGrory said. "Boston.com will be in many ways the front page of Boston. BostonGlobe.com will be the front page of the Boston Globe." (more...)

The Boston Globe is giving iPads, projectors and free Boston Globe digital subscriptions to local public school classrooms in a digitally reimagined version of the Newspapers In Education program.

A major goal of longstanding NIE efforts has been to hook young readers on the print habit by dropping off free newspapers in schools and incorporating their content in lesson plans.

But that logic has faltered in recent years, the Globe's Robert Saurer told me.

"We kind of walked away from NIE a little bit -- we didn't know what to do with it. We didn't really believe that a 10- or 15-year-old reading print in school is going to continue on later to be a print reader in their 20s and 30s," said Saurer, who is director of customer experience and innovation. "But a digital Globe reader in schools today might, in fact, turn into a digital Globe reader in their 20s and 30s." (more...)

The Boston Globe | The New York Times
Metro columnist Brian McGrory has been named the new editor of The Boston Globe. McGrory's appointment follows the departure of Marty Baron, who left to become Executive Editor of The Washington Post. In a story announcing his appointment, McGrory says, “What I want is more digging, more narrative journalism, more reporting that holds people accountable and more enterprise stories on the front page."

McGrory was a paperboy for the Globe, Christine Haughney reports in The New York Times, whose parent company also owns the Globe. Globe publisher Chris Mayer praised McGrory's ability to "inspire the talent and attracting and retaining the talent.”

Globe staffers were informed of McGrory's appointment by email. Thursday, they were live-tweeting his subsequent introduction to staff as the boss:

Brian McGrory enters newsroom in suit and tie, newsroom BURSTS INTO APPLAUSE

— Martine Powers (@martinepowers) December 20, 2012

(more...)