A few weeks ago, the Boston Globe stubbed its toe in major fashion when it changed the company it uses to deliver ~115,000 hard-copy versions of the daily paper in the Boston metro area.

And the problems continue to persist even now.

No doubt, the decision to switch home delivery services was made out of a desire to save money rather than to improve service.  And one can understand why management might have been looking for ways to cut production costs on the print version compared to the “go-go” online/digital realm.

But focusing on solely millennials and other younger customers can come back to “bite you on the bottom line” – which is exactly what happened in the case of the Globe.

Evidently, the new delivery service was untested – at least in terms of taking on a client with volumes as large as Boston’s leading newspaper.

As it turned out, tens of thousands of papers weren’t delivered, sparking a cataclysm of loud, negative feedback.

The pique of customers went well-beyond failing to receive something that had been paid for. In the case of the Globe’s extensive Baby Boomer subscriber base, missing home delivery struck at the heart of the time-honored rituals of how they receive and consume their news.

Consider this: The average subscriber to the Boston Globe pays around $700 per year for their home-delivery subscription.

That’s more than $80 million per year in income for the paper – before factoring in advertising revenue.

Of course, the costs of producing and delivering the print product exceeds that of digital. But this subscription base is more loyal than digital news consumers precisely because they value how the news is presented to them.

Let’s not forget that for people born before 1965, most are emotionally attached to print far more than those in other demographic groups. As Gordon Plutsky, a director of applied intelligence at IDG, writes about the Boston Globe snafu:

“[It’s] not just the physical paper, but the ritual of getting the paper off their driveway or front steps and starting their day spreading out the broadsheet and scanning the news. They missed curling up with coffee or tea and working the crossword puzzle or cutting coupons.  It is easy to forget that until the mid-‘90s, this was the only way to read the news and, for Boomers, it is how they learned to read and interact with the world.  Their brains are wired for print in the same way Gen Z is wired for mobile.”

Perhaps the Globe’s business and administrative staffers lost sight of that fact. Maybe they treated their “unsexy” print subscribers as an afterthought while forgetting that this segment of their customer base is critical to the very survival of their paper – and the industry – in a period of transition.

True, delivering the news to print customers is more expensive than doing so digitally. But these customers are more predictable and loyal, versus fickle and finicky.

… But only if the product is delivered. Fail in that fundamental function, and the gig is up.

The Boston Globe’s print readers are hardly unique. Recently, Pew Research Center surveyed consumers in three urban markets.  Despite the differences in these markets (geographic, economic, social), a highly significant percentage of respondents in all three metro areas reported that they read only the print version of their local newspaper:

• Denver, CO: ~46% read only the print version of their local newspaper

• Macon, GA: ~48% read print only

• Sioux City, IA-NE-SD: ~53% read print only

This isn’t to suggest that Boomer audiences are a bunch of rubes who aren’t connected to the digital world. Far from it:  They tend to be better educated and more wealthy (with more disposable income) than other demographic segments.  Their attachment to print isn’t in lieu of digital, but more in concert with their online habits.

Unlike other generations, they’re not single-channel as much as omni-channel consumers. The keys to newspaper publishers’ continued relevance are bound up in how they serve this older but critically important segment of their customer base.

Speaking personally, I can “take it or leave it” when it comes to print.  I don’t subscribe to a daily print paper, and the bulk of my news comes to me from digital sources.  But there’s something quite comfortable about sitting down with a quality daily paper and reading the news stories therein — including long-form journalism pieces that are difficult to find very many places these days.

There are millions more people across the country that are happy to continue paying for the privilege of consuming the news in just such a fashion.  Indeed, they’re the newspaper industry’s most loyal readers.