Wondering how BostonGlobe.com is doing on the revenue-generating front?
Here’s a hint from the Globe’s piece (subscription required, of course) about outgoing BBC chief Mark Thompson becoming chief executive of the New York Times Co.
Paid subscribers to the Globe’s e-reader and replica editions and BostonGlobe.com were up about 28 percent, to 23,000 subscribers [in the 2012 second quarter].
At $3.50 per week for a Globe digital subscription, that adds up to $4,186,000.
The Times and International Herald Tribune, the Globe reports, saw their number of paid digital subscribers rise 12 percent to 509,000 at the end of the second quarter from 454,000 in March.
The hardcalculating staff admits that’s comparing Apples to PCs. But, really, $4.2 million is walking-around money, not a solution to the Globe’s financial problems.
At least not yet.
Campaign Outsider 
What are the numbers regarding paid, dead-tree editions of the Globe.
It would seem to me that a further decline in dead-tree subscriptions would indicate that the reader is switching to digital, and the Globe’s circulation revenues are still having issues.
They cut their own throats daily with Boston.com. We pay for the NYT’s online, and would likely do the same for the Globe if BDC didn’t give us essentially the same thing for free — with the caveat that they’d need to moderate their comments in the way the Times does. Not paying to read astro-turf.
What’s the number of Globe subscribers who downsized from a full paper subscription to a Sunday-only subscription that carries free electronic edition? I know a bunch of people. That’s lost revenue, not a success.