In the middle of Mark Jurkowitz’s meta-story on the Metro, the free daily newspaper, there’s this bit:
Anybody who takes public transportation in Boston will see that the tabloid of choice for straphangers these days is the Metro. And with the Herald having recently embarked on a series of major cuts and Purcell acknowledging that the company could be sold, the question of Metro’s clout in the Boston newspaper market becomes more critical.
I always love Jurkowitz’s flare for archaic journalist colloquialism, but his implication that the Herald was ever the paper of choice for subway commuters needs qualification. The Herald held hegemony over South Shore readership, including those on the Red Line, and over riders of many of the commuter rail lines. It’s a paper geared toward the white working class and the ethnic (Irish, Italian, et al) sububanites who’ve risen into the ranks of the professional class. It’s been years since I commuted on the red line or the commuter rail, so I don’t know how the Metro has affected these demographics, but I can attest that on the Green and Orange Lines, the Metro hasn’t supplanted the Herald so much as it’s filled in the void of those who read no paper during their commute.
As to Jurkowitz’s larger point, yes it’s maddening that a newspaper won’t talk to a media critic, but I suspect they’re banking on the fact that their readership doesn’t care about these things.
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