Boston Globe Asks Reporters and Business Staff to Help Deliver Paper

Monday, January 04, 2016

GoLocalWorcester News Team

Mark Arsenault, via Facebook

In one of the strangest outcomes in the dramatic contraction and re-engineering of the newspaper industry, the Boston Globe’s reporters and business staff have had to join in an emergency response to delivery the paper.

A new Globe delivery system has been so flawed that the union and the business staff were called in this weekend to help fold, stuff and deliver the paper.

In an effort to save money, the Globe switched to ACI, Last Mile Network, a company that specializes in “best in class” delivery systems for publishers.

It is unclear what the Globe expected to save by using ACI - Last Mile Solution.

Dan Kennedy, Journalism Professor at Northeastern and media critic published a statement from Peter Doucette, Boston Globe Vice President, Consumer Sales & Marketing the Globe staff helping to deliver papers:

Over this last week, The Boston Globe has received thousands of calls from customers reporting they had not received their daily newspaper as the Globe transitions its home delivery service to a new distribution partner ACI Media.

Establishing a new home delivery network with a new partner is a complex and major undertaking. Please know that we launched this transition because we firmly believed, and still do, that it was necessary to assure a higher level of delivery and customer service over the long term. In the short term, frustrating service disruptions have occurred as our new home delivery partner ACI Media deploys a new staff of 600 carriers who must learn new delivery routes and the addresses of the homes and apartments for every Globe home delivery subscribers.

In the past week, social media in Boston has been trending with complaints about the Globe’s inability to deliver the paper.