Keller @ Large: Where's My Globe?

BOSTON (CBS) - Remember the old Boston Globe advertising slogan: "The Globe's Here"?

That jingle has been turned on its head this week as unspecified problems stemming from a change in home-delivery provider has resulted in subscribers in more than 80 zip codes across the region experience either delays or no paper at all.

"They're going to have to earn back the goodwill of their subscribers as a result of doing this," says Stephen Michaels of Cambridge, who hasn't seen a delivery since Sunday and has made many frustrating, fruitless attempts to get answers out of the Globe. "When I finally did get through on the 800 number to the automated attendant, it told me the wait on hold to speak to an actual person was going to be in excess of an hour," complains Michaels.

"The Globe's not handling this well at all," says media-industry expert John Carroll of Boston University. "This is gonna convince a number of people that it's just not worth it to take the paper. If you pay full price for home delivery, you're talking $600 a year, that's a lot of money for not getting your paper."

Carroll is unimpressed with the Globe's exhortation to its customers to read the paper online while they get their delivery debacle sorted out. "People get the paper at home because they don't want to read it online, they like the paper," he says.

And Michaels adds: "If I'm going to the web I may not need the Globe to get local news because I can go to any of the broadcast web sites as well as other independent websites. I think they have to fix this quickly and figure out a way to fix the means by which they're communicating with their subscriber base."

Prof. Carroll's message to Globe Publisher John Henry: "Get in your car and start delivering some newspapers."