NYTimes coverage of sister paper Boston Globe is lacking

Clark Hoyt, the public editor of the New York Times, writes Sunday that the paper didn’t push hard enough in its coverage of the potential closing of the Boston Globe, which the Times’ parent owns.

Hoyt writes, “Alex Jones, the director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, said: ‘This is not a normal labor story. It’s a life-and-death story.’ And Jones, who once covered the newspaper industry for The Times, expressed disappointment in how the paper had handled it. ‘This was a very significant moment for American newspapers,’ he said. ‘This was a story that begged coverage — at least more penetrating and sophisticated coverage than it got.’

“The Times has published two longer articles about The Globe, both on the front of the business section. The first, in mid-April, focused on the shock in Boston at the prospect of losing an institution that plays a central role in the cultural and political life of the region. The second came on Thursday, after the Guild agreed to put the company’s offer to a vote. Pérez-Peña, who reported both of the articles, said, ‘A lot of newspapers have had serious labor disputes and financial crises in recent years, and we haven’t reported blow-by-blow on any of them, but we do try to hit the most important moments.'”

Read more here.