Barnicle's out as a regular Herald scribe

Mike Barnicle, who joined the Boston Herald with great fanfare 13 months ago, will soon stop writing his regular column for the paper. The move will save the tabloid some money at a time when it is facing a fiscal crisis and the prospect of significant job losses.

''His twice-weekly column is ending, but he will remain as a contributor," Herald editorial director Ken Chandler said yesterday in an interview. ''It's my expectation that he will be giving up the twice-weekly column within the next month." Asked how often Barnicle would write for the paper after the column ends, Chandler said: ''This will really be an occasional thing."

Barnicle said yesterday he approached Herald publisher Patrick J. Purcell a few weeks ago ''with a proposal to phase things out," saying he has another time-consuming writing project to work on.

''I didn't want to be sitting around collecting a check from the Herald while someone who has been over there for 25 years or 25 minutes was getting laid off," said Barnicle, who had a year remaining on his contract. ''I like the paper. I like the people. I wish them well." Barnicle also hosts a talk show on WTKK-FM (96.9) and contributes to both cable outlet MSNBC and the WCVB-TV show ''Chronicle."

Barnicle's departure comes after Purcell, citing a difficult economic climate and declining ad revenue, said he is seeking $7 million in cuts at the paper. The publisher recently told the Newspaper Guild that he wants to eliminate nearly one-quarter of the union's 145 newsroom jobs, and there was speculation that some editors and columnists not covered by the Guild -- such as Barnicle -- might also be targeted for buyouts or layoffs. Guild president Lesley Phillips said she had been assured by management that some of those nonunion workers would be part of the cuts. Phillips declined to comment yesterday on news of Barnicle's departure.

Barnicle, who debuted at the Herald in March 2004, spent 25 years as a Globe columnist before he was asked to resign in 1998 after questions arose about sourcing issues related to his column. He left the Globe after the paper said he was unable to verify facts in a 1995 column about two children being treated for cancer at Children's Hospital.

It was the Herald that triggered the chain of events that led to Barnicle's departure from the Globe by breaking the news that some jokes in one of his columns resembled those in a book by comedian George Carlin. In an interview with The Washington Post at the time, Andrew Costello, who was the Herald's editor, said his paper was unlikely to hire Barnicle since ''I don't think he'd meet our standards here." Costello was replaced as the Herald's top editor by Chandler only days before Barnicle joined the paper.

Barnicle's hiring by the tabloid triggered a flurry of publicity and interest. Chandler called him ''a fabulous addition to the Herald." Barnicle said that Purcell, an old friend, had on various occasions offered him a job. The Guild, however, formally protested his hiring, issuing a statement that said: ''It wasn't long ago that the Herald took an aggressive role in helping expose the numerous transgressions . . . that led to Mike Barnicle's rightful banishment from the Globe."

The Herald ran Barnicle's first column on the front page. Over time, however, the promotion of his column diminished and its positioning in the tabloid grew less prominent. In an interview earlier this week, he said: ''I think the format is problematical for people like me. They have a short news hole, and they tend to put columnists in the back of the paper."