The Boston Globe was founded in 1872 by a group of Boston businessmen led by Eben Jordan, co-founder of the Jordan Marsh department store. In 1877, Jordan, the majority shareholder of the Boston Globe, agreed to a financial arrangement that would clear the Globe’s debt from its first years in operation.
As part of the arrangement, the publisher and business manager, Charles Taylor, was granted stock in the Globe. When Jordan died in 1885, Taylor purchased enough shares from his estate to secure a one-half ownership stake in the paper.
The Globe was a private company equally owned by the heirs of Jordan and Taylor for a little over a hundred years. In 1973 the Globe went public under the name of Affiliated Publications. Over the following twenty years, Affiliated Publications expanded into television and radio stations, as well as magazines and community newspapers.
In 1993, the Taylor family negotiated the sale of Affiliated Publications, including the Boston Globe, to the New York Times Company for $1.1 billion and a promise that the Globe would retain its editorial independence. At the time, the Globe was among the top 15 newspapers in the nation, with daily circulation of 505,000 and Sunday circulation of 811,000.
In 2013, the New York Times Company sold the Globe for $70 million to Boston-based businessman and investor John W. Henry, who is also the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Sources:
Hatic, Dana. “History of the Boston Globe,” Boston.com, July 26, 2013. https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2013/07/26/history-of-the-boston-globe
Lyons, Louis M. Newspaper Story: One Hundred Years of the Boston Globe. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.