• The Phoenix, Friday, May 12, 2006 11:15 AM

Mark Jurkowitz, the highly regarded media critic of the Boston-based weekly The Phoenix, does an excellent job of sizing up a messy newspaper situation, explaining how The Boston Herald, despite a mounting array of challenges, intends to keep publishing. The latest obstacle to The Herald's survival: A previously small-time outfit, Liberty Publishing, just paid more than $225 million to purchase a group of local papers that entirely encircle The Herald's Boston market. "The big prize was snatched by a largely unknown eight-year-old Illinois company--one that has never operated in Massachusetts --with an undistinguished track record and a history of buying monopoly papers in small towns," writes Jurkowitz, a former Boston Globe reporter. "Suddenly, Liberty--soon to be renamed GateHouse Media--has control of a big chunk of the local-media chessboard. And no one seems quite sure what to make of it." But Pat Purcell, long-time owner of The Herald, a daily once owned by Rupert Murdoch, says he's in for the foreseeable future. According to a Herald reporter who attended a staff meeting last week and then spoke to Jurkowitz about it, Purcell "seemed to be still debating what direction to take, soliciting staff suggestions, indicating that he has examined a number of business models, and suggesting that the flagging Sunday paper was being looked at." Purcell's remarks were "upbeat, but a little scary," the staffer told The Phoenix's media reporter.

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