This Just In: Missing in action

Have you seen the Globe today?

By Dan Kennedy

It's getting hard to find a Boston Globe -- especially a Sunday Globe -- at retail outlets in the western and southern suburbs. The reasons: kinks in a new, in-house distribution system and delays caused by the debut of the New York Times's New England edition, which the Globe prints at its Billerica plant. And store owners are seething.

"I've had nothing but problems," says Joe Keating, owner of Charlie's Variety, in Wellesley, who's been shortchanged on Sunday deliveries, has found stacks of papers left out in the rain, and even had his Times order accidentally canceled for about a week.

At Atlantic Bagel, in Hingham, manager Greg Taylor says he got so sick of the Globe's not picking up unsold papers that he stopped selling it inside the store, except on Sundays. "They absolutely suck," Taylor says. "The distributor's got his head up his ass."

The problems arose in February, when the Globe began printing and distributing the Times and, around the same time, dropped its network of independent distributors south and west of Boston in favor of RSI, which is owned by the New York Times Company, parent company of both the Times and the Globe.

"They're hiring people who haven't done it before. There's a lot more to the job than people realize," complains Peter O'Kane, whose O'Kane News Agency, in Randolph, had previously handled much of the Globe distribution south of Boston.

But Globe spokesman Rick Gulla calls the problems "growing pains." The goal, he says, is for RSI -- which distributes the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, and several other publications in addition to the Globe and the Times -- gradually to take over the entire region.

Any timetable? "We've got to solve the problems we have first," Gulla concedes.