Year: 2009

Balloon dad hits the 14:59 mark

Richard_Heene_20091017Yes, we should all be skeptical about checkbook journalism, and Gawker is right up front about having paid Robert Thomas, a former friend and would-be business associate of balloon dad Richard Heene (photo).

But if Thomas can be trusted, the picture he paints of Heene is devastating. Thomas portrays Heene as an increasingly paranoid, frantic man who believes shape-shifting reptiles are running the government and who would do anything to get on television.

The two had even talked about perpetrating a hoax with the balloon, Thomas claims, though getting one of the kids involved was supposedly not part of the original plan.

This story in the Denver Post only adds to the sense that it’s all about to fall apart.

Photo of Heene is from his MySpace profile.

Another distinguished nominee

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley throws her hat in the ring for a coveted 2010 Boston Phoenix Muzzle Award.

The Boston Herald keeps pounding away on Coakley’s absurd claim that she’s legally prohibited from talking about her campaign when she’s on state business — or even when she’s in the Statehouse.

It’s bad enough that she’d muzzle herself. But if she really believes what she’s saying, then she would muzzle others as well.

GateHouse reverses pay cuts

Despite having plenty of financial problems of its own, GateHouse Media New England will reverse pay cuts that had been implemented earlier this year. A little while ago Media Nation obtained a copy of an e-mail that president and CEO Rick Daniels sent to all staff members announcing the news. The full text follows.

Colleagues,

Based on the strengthened cash flows over the last several months, I am pleased to announce that the temporary pay cuts that were implemented in June and July are coming to an end, and our pay rates will be restored to full, pre-cut levels. For those whose pay was reduced as of June 1, the first workday that will be paid using the original, “pre-cut” rates will be Oct. 5th. The first paycheck that will reflect your original rates will be Oct 23rd. For those employees who received paychecks on Oct. 14th, your “retroactive pay” (from Oct. 5th onwards) will be reflected in your first post-announcement paycheck. For those colleagues who are represented by unions, the restorations will be done in accordance with the terms of the relevant agreements. These dates have been communicated to union leadership and your respective managers will communicate these dates to you under separate heading.

First and foremost: Thank you all — for your work, your dedication and your toughness. NONE of us were pleased about the need to take this step, yet the vast majority of employees did not choose to do anything BUT to put in their very best efforts to do their jobs so that we could reverse these cuts as soon as possible. We believed then, and still believe that this step allowed us to preserve the core assets and capabilities our customers value most. While the members of the senior management team had hoped we could restore these cuts prior to year’s end, at least partially, we are heartened that the time spent under the pay cuts will prove to be shorter than expected; that said, even had it been a week or a month, it would have still been an onerous sacrifice. Ending these cuts is not only a major relief for all of us, but it’s also an important affirmation of our business model, and an affirmation of the quality and effectiveness of our collective efforts, and the results we have been able to generate. We are in a position to restore the cuts because GHMNE is again generating sufficient cash flows to be clearly and safely in the black. If you remember, when we announced these cuts, I said there were two kinds of companies: Those that produced positive cash flow, and those that didn’t, and we could not allow ourselves to be among those that didn’t.

I don’t want to create any misimpressions that the economy, and its powerful effects on our advertising revenues, is improving all that much. Ask any of our sales personnel. Most of our advertisers are struggling. For the most part, most of our cash-flow improvements are being generated by very stringent spending reductions, NOT a rapid return to great revenue performance — (although there has fortunately been some strengthening in revenue comparisons vs. the year over year declines we experienced earlier in the year). NONE of these cost reductions has been “easy”, and while we’ve turned over many stones to reduce the structural costs of GHMNE by several millions of dollars, we need to continue to take all possible steps to increase our efficiencies — and we will. Going forward, we need to continue to evaluate all aspects of our operations to help ensure that we are operating in a smart and efficient manner. ALL of us hope that we will never have to cope with pay reductions again (and I’m sure we all hope we never see another “Great Recession” in our lifetimes). We have, once again, proven that highly focused and very efficient local publications (both print and digital), that are produced by a very focused, talented and dedicated group of team members are extraordinarily durable, because they provide exceptional and truly unique value to readers and advertisers. We have a GREAT, and now very much battle-tested, group of employees and publications that will allow us to get back to the business of growth, and probably in the not-too-distant future. There are a host of new business initiatives, both at local and at GateHouse-wide levels that are being put into effect, and both I and the members of the senior team will be scheduling site visits and employee meetings in just over a month to share details on some of these, as well as answer your questions and hear your thoughts and suggestions. Again, thanks very much — you’re talented, dedicated and durable and a group that’s a true privilege to work with and lead.

Richard Daniels,
President and Chief Executive Officer

“What’s the end-game there?”

Former Boston Globe columnist John Ellis, a venture capitalist who disclosed earlier this year that he’d done some work for a potential buyer, warns that things are still bad at 135 Morrissey Blvd. and likely to get worse.

“How long can the NYT afford to carry the net operating losses?” he asks. “When does it make more sense to just shut it down?”

Ellis also argues that the Globe must do everything it can to hang on to what’s left of its big-name sports talent, namely columnists Dan Shaughnessy and Bob Ryan.

I revere Ryan, who, despite his veteran status, happens to be one of the hardest-working folks at the Globe. Shaughnessy’s a good read even when he’s sending me over the edge. But the idea that management might have to shell out more money to keep its stars from jumping to the Internet is galling at a time when everyone else is being asked to sacrifice.

Which is not to say Ellis is wrong. He’s probably right.

Surveying the Globe-al manscape

Tom Gores
Tom Gores

A grateful Media Nation extends its thanks this morning to Tom Fielder, dean of Boston University’s College of Communication, for giving me an excuse to run this photo of Platinum Equity chairman Tom Gores one more time.

Fiedler cites the photo in explaining why Gores would have been all wrong for Boston if he had succeeded in purchasing the Boston Globe. Jessica Heslam and Christine McConville of the Boston Herald write:

Fiedler said if there was one story that signaled the sale wasn’t moving ahead, it was the Oct. 7 Globe piece on Platinum founder Tom Gores that included a photo of him “with his chest open, chest hair just puffing out.”

“This said to me, number one, the Globe editor who laid out this page doesn’t like this guy, and number two, this guy doesn’t understand Boston,” he said.

“Chest hair just puffing out”? Really? As I noted on Oct. 7, the day the Globe ran the photo, Gores was “[w]earing a flamboyantly pinstriped black suit jacket over a black shirt strategically unbuttoned to show off his smooth chest.” And I’ve had some serious and substantive discussions with fellow media analysts as to whether Gores may have partaken in some manscaping to achieve his smooth look.

It’s likely that Fiedler was too horrified to look closely.

In other Globe-related news, we learn in the Herald story that ballooning pension-liability costs were a major reason that the New York Times Co. ultimately failed in its attempt to sell the Globe either to Platinum or to a group led by former Globe executive Stephen Taylor. That was a story the Herald broke a week ago, so good on them.

In the Globe, Beth Healy and Robert Weisman report that Globe publisher Steve Ainsley would not rule out further cuts when he and Times Co. president Janet Robinson met with employees yesterday.

Over at Beat the Press, Ralph Ranalli quotes Globe staff member Scott Allen’s downbeat take on the meeting: “I think people probably came away from that meeting feeling like well, we know who our owner is, but we don’t see any improvement in our working conditions for some time to come.”

Talking about paid content

I’ll be moderating a panel on Friday evening for the Boston chapter of the National Writers Union on how writers can make a living in an era of free online content. The panelists — truly an all-star group — are:

With a crew like that, I shouldn’t have to do much more than introduce them and get out of the way.

The program will be held from 7 to 9:30 p.m. at Northeastern’s John D. O’Bryant African-American Institute*, one of the co-sponsors. Other co-sponsors are PEN New England, Grub Street, Open Media Boston, the Women’s National Book Association and the Organizers’ Collaborative.

The Friday panel kicks off the two-day event, titled “Shall We Write for Free or Shall We Write for Pay? Writers Face the Digital Age.” For more information and to register, click here. Please join us.

*Note: Venue now corrected.

Bring lots of quarters

50_states_obv

State officials have ruled that it’s all right for the Cambridge Police Department to charge the Cambridge Chronicle $1,215 for nearly a month’s worth of public records. The Chronicle had sought descriptions of criminal suspects, the addresses of those who had been arrested and the addresses to which police responded between July 1 and 27.

“Given that a large number of documents, which may contain sensitive information about the identities of the victims and witnesses, are required to be properly viewed, I consider this to be a reasonable fee estimate provided by the department,” the Chronicle quotes Alan Cote, the records supervisor for the secretary of state’s office, as saying.

Trouble is, the Chronicle contends that, before June, the police had routinely been making most of that information available. Even though the state has now found that the police are not doing anything illegal by withholding certain types of information from its daily public reports, the police department is nevertheless moving in a direction of less openness — not a good thing for any law-enforcement agency, let alone one that is in the midst of an investigation stemming from the arrest of Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates.

As I wrote when this first came up in August, the fees being imposed by the police department are an outrageous breach of the public’s right to know. And it’s not being done in isolation. Last month the Boston Globe reported on public officials who are using high fees to discourage bloggers and financially struggling news organizations from obtaining public records.

It’s time for elected officials who believe in governmental openness to rethink the practice of charging high fees for information that, by right, ought to be freely available to the public.

Times Co., Globe renew their vows

I ducked into a Starbucks in downtown New Haven so I could write this. So, for now, just a few preliminary thoughts about the New York Times Co.’s announcement that it has decided against selling the Boston Globe.

Like most observers, I thought the happy talk last month from Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and president Janet Robinson was aimed mainly at driving up the price. So even though I had been hearing since last week that things were not going well with the two interested buyers (Platinum Equity and a group led by former Globe executive Stephen Taylor), it still struck me as plausible that the Times Co. would sell — at any price. In hindsight, it’s now clear there was a price below which Sulzberger and company were not willing to go.

I do think the Times Co. damaged its credibility in Boston this year by being so uncommunicative about its battle with the Globe’s unions (especially the Boston Newspaper Guild) and about the would-be sale. The company’s got some work to do on the community-relations front.

But there were certainly worse possible outcomes than this. Platinum Equity, by all accounts, would have relentlessly focused on the bottom line. I was rooting for a Taylor comeback, but if that group was as under-capitalized as I was hearing, then you can be sure that more cuts would have been the first order of business.

Besides, people who buy newspapers tend to want to bring in their own editor. I think Marty Baron has done a terrific job under incredibly difficult circumstances this year, and if this means he stays, then that’s a good thing.

Overall, today’s announcement is not bad news. Which is not quite the same as good news, but close enough.

More from the Times, the Globe, the Herald and Beat the Press.

And then there was one?

Venture capitalist John Ellis, a former Boston Globe columnist who’s been nosing around the Globe situation for months, posted an intriguing tidbit [update: but apparently wrong; see below] on Twitter a little while ago:

there’s a rumor about that Platinum Equity declined to make a “final” bid on the Boston Globe. I wonder if its true.

If Platinum is out of the picture, that would presumably leave the group put together by former Globe executive Stephen Taylor as the only remaining interested buyer. But do Taylor and company have enough capital to get the New York Times Co. to say “yes”?

I also wonder if this might pave the way for a comeback by Boston businessman Jack Connors, whose proposal to take the Globe non-profit was left by the side of the road a few months ago.

Wednesday morning update: Well, so much for that rumor. The Globe’s Beth Healey reports that both groups submitted bids for the Globe, and that a third group submitted a bid for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.