Outgoing Globe editor McGrory leaves legacy of paper's attitude and profitability, media analyst says

Longtime Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory is stepping down at the end of this year. The announcement went out Wednesday. McGrory has led the Globe for the past 10 years, and he's now leaving to lead Boston University's journalism program.

Northeastern journalism professor and GBH contributor Dan Kennedy joined GBH's Mary Blake on All Things Considered to discuss McGrory's leadership at the Globe and where the news organization may go next. What follows is a lightly edited transcript.

Mary Blake: Do you have any sense of what precipitated this move? Is this a shock?

Dan Kennedy: I think half the city knew about this months ago, and we've been waiting for this announcement. But, you know, Brian has been the editor of the Globe for a very long time. It's a high-stress, high-burnout job and people want to move on from that, so this seems like a good and interesting move for him.

Blake: Can we talk briefly about his career here? He had been with The Boston Globe for a long, long time.

Kennedy: He really had — I mean, he had been a very popular metro columnist for a number of years before he became editor. He was a longtime reporter at the Globe before that. So this is a really long career for McGrory at the Globe.

Blake: Yeah. And he also had big shoes to fill. Marty Baron when he left to head up the Washington Post. Do you feel he did do that? Did he fill those shoes?

Kennedy: Yeah. I mean, not in the same way. I mean, Marty Baron was a legendary editor who became even more of a legend once he went to The Washington Post. But I think that the Globe continued to be a very good paper under McGrory, and I think it was a little different then Marty Baron's Globe. He brought back some of the voice and the attitude that the Globe had traditionally had that I think Baron might have been a little bit uncomfortable with. And he also steered the Globe to a point where — and I don't want to overstate this, because the business side of the Globe would have had at least as much to do with this as McGrory — but the Globe has emerged as one of the very few financially viable, large metro newspapers in the country.

Blake: Right. And I know John Henry had an awful lot to do with that. And McGrory is a very popular figure at the paper. What does it say with the Boston Globe now in the media landscape, but direction? Is there any sense of what might happen on that front?

Kennedy: You know, it's hard to say. One thing I've been thinking about what direction the Globe might go in choosing a new editor. And it's hard not to overlook the reality that every single editor of the Globe in its history has been a white man. And I doubt that that's going to happen again. It may be a woman. It may be a person of color. It may be both. But as to whether they'll recruit from inside or outside, it's really anybody's guess right now.

Blake: How about the idea of the paper versus online? I know that he had an awful lot to do with that, and has freely admitted that he had to learn along the way. Do you see the Globe going more in that direction?

Kennedy: Well, the Globe will keep its print edition as long as they're able to find a decent number of people who are willing to pay a premium for it. But certainly the Globe's success in recent years has been based entirely on selling digital subscriptions to people. And that's going to continue. There's a lot of journalism in the Globe that appears online days before it appears in print. And I have no question that that's going to continue. I mean, every newspaper in the country is doing the same thing. And the Globe has been particularly effective at that, I think.

Blake: All right, Dan, thank you very much for being with us and your insight here.

Kennedy: Thank you, Mary.