Jack Shafer of Slate Raps on the Globe's Fate; Jack Welch of GE Tweets Hypocritically

We all know that the Globe is on life support, or minimum wage, or something like that. To add insult to injury, Jack Shafer reminds us in Slate (owned by the struggling WaPo) that Jack Welch of GE thought about buying the paper (now valued at barely $113 million) for a cool $600 million just three years ago. Oddly enough, Dan Kennedy reveals that Jack Welch is now tweeting (somewhat ironically, perhaps) about the NYT's "brutish labor practices." What a show!

In his piece, Shafer goes on to say that newspapers were once estimated to have about 20% of their value wrapped up in physical assets like real estate, leaving 80% "goodwill" value, which Shafer defines as "the marketplace's assessment of the newspaper's trademark, history, reputation, and standing in the community." Papers' recent value plummets are, Shafer theorizes, the result of a decline in goodwill value and a focus on more concrete assets. It's a plausible theory, but we think (hope?) said goodwill value exists at least to some extent for the Globe, and might come back soon.

Shafer has some recommendations for the Globe:

They should accept that non-news readers have stopped reading dailies, accept that newspapers can no longer satisfy everybody all the time with an "all-you-can-eat" buffet, and concentrate on publishing content of higher value. And they should "peel back" to their core functions of news, investigation, analysis, and interpretation "in a print product that appears less than daily, combined with constant updating and reader interaction on the Web."

Do you think the Globe should follow the CSM and become a print weekly, focusing on online community? With the quality of Globe commentary, we're not so sure that's a good idea, but maybe it could work. However, the Christian Science Monitor itself takes a different tack, saying that the Globe has to get down off its sisal rug and relate to the community, offering "a strong voice of moral leadership" in addition to "serendipity and surprise, originality, readable-to-good writing, a sense of purpose and shared experience."

Can the Globe do it—print less, engage more? It might be the only way for the paper to save itself. But would Jack Welch (or anyone) buy it in that case?