By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
Los Angeles Times reporter Borzou Daragahi has an in-depth story on Neda Agha-Soltan, the Iranian woman whose death, captured on video (warning in case you haven’t seen it yet: extremely graphic and disturbing), has become a symbol of the post-election uprising.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that Iranian goons attacked and arrested people who tried to attend a memorial service for Soltan.
New York Times media reporter Richard Pérez-Peña has responded to my post of earlier today:
I enjoy your work, and obviously I’m biased, but I thought your critique of my piece was a little odd and beside the point. The point of citing those examples was that there was a lack of communication on even the basics. I think you agree with that.
I really don’t understand why you bring up the dollar figures, since I can’t quite figure out what (if anything) you’re claiming is the “questionable assertion.” You wrote, “there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that management has, in fact, been telling Globe employees that the paper lost $50 million last year,” as if I had cast doubt on that. I hadn’t. As far as I know, no one disputes that this is the number the company has cited. But it wasn’t cited to “Globe employees.” It was to union leaders, in private meetings, and maybe to a Globe reporter (I don’t know), but not to employees at large or to the public.
You note that the company publicly owned up to the $85 million figure for this year. But did you know that for three weeks, the company would not acknowledge that figure, either, even after it had been reported everywhere? An executive said it at the April 23 shareholders’ meeting (a slip, apparently), which I believe triggered the required SEC filing.
The point wasn’t whether these were the numbers being used; everyone knew that they were, and I never wrote anything to the contrary. The point was that the company wouldn’t state them publicly.
I confess that I wasn’t aware of Mathis’ June 4 e-mail to the Phoenix, but it doesn’t undermine the point. The e-mail does not explicitly acknowledge that the company had threatened the unions with closure of The Globe if they did not make serious concessions. As far as I know, there hasn’t been such an acknowledgment. I know first-hand that when asked to confirm it, the company declined. The e-mail says “closure is a very real path for the company to take” — a hell of a statement, I admit — but without explaining how or why that path might be taken. Also, that shut-down threat was first made in early April; the e-mail came two months later.
My comment: I stand by what I wrote. But, yes, I absolutely agree with Pérez-Peña’s assertion that there has been “a lack of communication on even the basics.”
With the New York Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild scheduled to resume negotiations today over $10 million in union givebacks at the Boston Globe, the Times’ Richard Pérez-Peña weighs in with some insights.
His lede, focusing on the Guild’s alleged failure to keep its members apprised of what’s been going on for the past year, is telling, and helps explain why talks between the two sides went off the rails this spring. Even political reporter Brian Mooney, who was outspoken in his support for a “no” vote several weeks ago, says, “It wouldn’t have been that hard to make this go a lot better. There’s plenty of blame to go around.”
Yet there are three questionable assertions in Pérez-Peña’s story. One isn’t that important, but two are. Those assertions pop up in one sentence about halfway through the story:
Throughout the long process, the company has publicly said little about the situation, and to this day it has not confirmed last year’s loss, or acknowledged that it had threatened to close the paper.
I’ll deal with the threat to close the paper first. From the moment on April 3 that news outlets began reporting that the Times Co. was threatening to close the Globe unless the paper’s dozen or so unions could come up with $20 million worth of concessions, it was a little unclear precisely where that shutdown threat was coming from.
I’m not going to try to trace it back to the beginning, though, because I don’t have to. Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis confirmed it, in an on-the-record e-mail to the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly, on June 4. Reilly had asked Mathis why, in the weeks leading up to the “no” vote, talk about a possible shutdown had seemingly stopped, and whether management had in fact taken that option off the table.
Mathis responded: “Closure is a very real path for the Company to take.” So there you have it: a declarative sentence in which a top Times Co. official, speaking on the record, asserts that the company might shut the Globe if it fails to obtain the concessions it has demanded.
As for the Globe’s losses, Pérez-Peña specifically refers to “last year,” when, it has been reported, the Globe lost an estimated $50 million. As with the closure threat, it is hard to find a statement in which that $50 million figure has been directly attributed to an identifiable Times Co. official — or, in most cases, attributed to anyone at all. Maybe one exists, but I couldn’t find it.
Still, there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that management has, in fact, been telling Globe employees that the paper lost $50 million last year. For instance, consider this, from an April 9 Globe story by Robert Gavin:
Without the union concessions and other cutbacks, the Globe is projected to lose $85 million this year, following a loss of about $50 million last year, according to an employee briefed on union discussions.
But it seems to me that the more important figure is the $85 million. Here, too, the company itself has been less than forthcoming — so much so that a few people warned me early on that I should be clear that the origin of that number was suspect.
Fortuitously enough, though, the $85 million figure shows up in the Times Co.’s most recent quarterly report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed on May 7. Here’s the language:
Before savings from changes to the union agreements or other cost-cutting initiatives or the effects of any revenue initiatives, we projected that 2009 operating losses at the Globe and Boston.com would be approximately $85 million.
Finally there is the small matter of Pérez-Peña’s claim that “[t]he Globe’s troubles did not explode into full view until April 3, when its Web site, Boston.com, posted an article reporting that the Times Company had threatened to shut the place down unless unions agreed within 30 days to major concessions on wages.”
Maybe it depends on your definition of “full view.” But, in fact, WBUR Radio (90.9 FM) broke the story on its Web site on April 3, followed a very short time later by the Phoenix’s Reilly, who reported both the $20 million giveback demand and the closure threat.
It’s impossible to ascribe motive when doing this type of analysis. And I suppose these discrepancies don’t add up to a whole lot. But, inevitably, when the Times covers the Globe, every sentence and phrase is going to be scrutinized.
Boston Herald reporter O’Ryan Johnson has been charged with assault and battery following an altercation with a 74-year-old man in a Groveland laundromat, the Eagle-Tribune reports.
The story is leading Romenesko at the moment.
More: It turns out that Johnson was part of an Eagle-Tribune team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003. The Tribune story mentions that Johnson is an alumnus but omits the Pulitzer. Odd oversight.
Johnson’s byline appears on only one of the Pulitzer-winning stories, but it was the first — an account of a tragic accident that claimed the lives of four boys who fell through the ice on the Merrimack River.
At the Nieman Journalism Lab, Martin Langeveld has some smart ideas for saving the Boston Globe. The one idea over which I disagree with him strongly is that the Globe should move away from a daily print edition. Langeveld writes:
My prediction is that, ironic as it may seem, Pat Purcell’s Boston Herald will be left as the only daily paper in Boston, and that the Globe will evolve into something different. That doesn’t mean the Herald wins, because in the long run, daily print is just not a sustainable business model anywhere. Or almost anywhere, if we want to hedge that bet a little.
Hard to disagree, but it all comes down to how you define “the long run.” Newspapers still make most of their money from print. Yes, Boston.com is the Globe’s most important news vehicle, but the print edition is still where the money is, and will be for some time to come.
Legendary anchorman Walter Cronkite is gravely ill, according to TVNewser columnist Gail Shister, citing “multiple CBS News sources.”
Cronkite, 92, wasn’t the first anchorman, but in many ways he invented the role. You can see the images just by thinking about them: Cronkite overcome with emotion after announcing the death of John Kennedy; the space flights; coming out against the Vietnam War; paving the way for the Israeli-Egyptian rapprochement by interviewing Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin even before President Jimmy Carter could get involved.
Cronkite, with his famous nightly sign-off (“And that’s the way it is”), was the embodiment of something close to a national cultural consensus, which doesn’t remotely exist today. Of course, there was much that was phony about that. But there was nothing phony about Cronkite. He was the real thing.
Photo of Cronkite in 1973 by Vin Crosbie and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Comcast has finally completed its long-in-the-making takeover of New England Cable News — and the first thing it’s done is part ways with president and general manager Charlie Kravetz. According to the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam, Kravetz will be replaced by Bill Bridgen, executive vice president and general manager of Comcast SportsNet New England.
Johnny Diaz’s Boston Globe story is here. And here’s the official word.
I know nothing about Bridgen. I do know Kravetz, and he’s a first-rate newsman with a lifetime of experience. I don’t see how this can be good news, although it’s certainly possible that it was voluntary.
It’s hard not to worry that the crisis in Iran will end in a Tiananmen Square-style massacre. Here is the Boston Phoenix editorial page:
Hope, even under a brutal medieval-minded regime, can be a political aphrodisiac. But hope alone, as the Chinese students who sought reform in Tiananmen Square 20 years ago found out, is no match for armed forces. Whether the death toll in Iran will come to equal that of the Tiananmen massacre and its aftermath remains to be seen.
Juan Cole has similar thoughts.
Sharp analysis of the crisis in Iran by former Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway, now writing for GlobalPost. He begins:
Protests in the streets, angry crowds in numbers not seen since the revolution in 1979, have some people wondering if Iran is on the verge of revolution. But it’s more likely, if the street protests get out of hand, there will be a China-style Tiananmen, with voices crying for reform silenced by gun fire.
Greenway also gives President Obama high marks for not saying anything that would help Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “play the Great Satan card.”
We’re debating whether Obama has said enough here. It was also the subject of a Jeff Jacoby column in today’s Globe.
Weinberger (left) and SearlsLast night I had a chance to see David Weinberger and Doc Searls, two of the co-authors of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” speak at Harvard Law School. The conversation was moderated by law-school professor Jonathan Zittrain, co-founder of the school’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
The sound was not great, so I missed a lot. VisiCalc founder Dan Bricklin, credited with the invention of the spreadsheet, finally became frustrated enough that he got out of his seat and ran around with a little handheld microphone. But I did get a chance to score a signed (by Searls) copy of “Cluetrain,” which has been reissued on the occasion of its 10th anniversary.
I read “Cluetrain” online a couple of years ago as research for this. I anticipate getting a lot more out of it this time around, now that I have a print edition. A computer screen is still no way to read a book.
