Globe to shift stock data to its website
Standard listing will end while new services, data added
Beginning June 20, The Boston Globe will stop publishing daily stock and mutual fund listings and will offer enhanced online investment tools and market news as well as a new Money & Markets page in the paper.
The newspaper will replace its Tuesday through Saturday tables with a one-page package of stories, graphics, and photos highlighting the most significant market events of the day. The Globe will continue to publish weekly stock and mutual fund listings on Sundays.
The Globe's online partner, Boston.com, will offer a new, more robust package of interactive tools and market information that includes personalized e-mail alerts about stocks and mutual funds. The Globe also will continue to offer access to up-to-the minute price quotes on stocks and mutual funds by telephone.
In eliminating daily publication of stock and fund listings, the Globe joins a growing number of large newspapers, including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Chicago Tribune, that have moved those tables from the newspaper to other platforms to reduce costs and provide a more compelling package of financial news and information.
``Readers have been turning to the Internet at an accelerating pace for stock and mutual fund quotes," said Martin Baron, editor of the Globe. ``That has prompted many newspapers like ours to shift away from spending heavily on pages of financial tables in favor of enhanced Web-based investor services."
In print, the new daily package will include stories and graphics describing market activity and highlighting five companies whose stocks moved significantly. Tables will show local and national stocks that were most actively traded and gained or lost the most on a percentage basis.
Additional graphics and tables will show the movements of major overseas exchanges; trading in major world currencies; and data on markets that affect regular consumers, such as mortgage rates, oil prices, and gold prices.
The Globe's Stock Quote line -- 617-822-5722 -- will continue to operate, providing stock and mutual-fund prices 24 hours a day.
Online at www.boston.com/business, financial offerings will be significantly enhanced.
Users will be able to create a personalized portfolio of stocks and funds they are interested in and request daily e-mail updates or alerts when news occurs in stocks they have specified.
A comprehensive package of news, data, and information will be available for all companies, integrating regulatory filings with news from the Globe and other sources onto one Web page. Mutual fund data will be greatly improved, including ratings from Lipper Inc. and lists of each fund's top five stock holdings.
``The planned upgrade in Boston.com will allow readers to get easy, customized access to a vast array of useful investment data while a page in the Business section will focus on the market trends that are making news," Baron said. 