Year: 2009

So much for a decent interval. Just hours after the Boston Globe blew out its front page with the news that the New York Times Co. will shut the paper down if it can’t come up with $20 million in savings, the Globe has unveiled a print and television promotional campaign built around the theme of “One Story.”

A source passes this along, from the Globe’s internal Web site:

Globe launches new brand campaign

On Sunday the Globe will launch a new brand campaign that reinforces the value of the Globe’s journalism among our core readers. A TV commercial showcases the Globe’s award-winning photography while focusing on the compelling stories found in the Globe. The spots (60 sec. & 30 sec.) will initially run on NESN during the highly rated Red Sox games. More than 24 print ads were created to run in the Globe and Metro. On-line ads will run on Boston.com. The campaign also has a Web page with all the creative where readers or advertisers can find more information. The entire campaign was conceived and executed internally by our marketing and creative services teams.

Globe executives have got to keep moving forward, so in principle I’ve got no problem with this. But the timing is exceedingly odd, given the very public face-off now taking place between management and the unions.

Even better, the Globe has posted an angry story about reaction to the Times Co.’s ultimatum. One Story, you might say.

Newspaper analyst and blogger Alan Mutter argues that the New York Times Co.’s $20 million demand isn’t that big a deal, and that the Boston Globe may have hurt its prospects by playing up the story beyond its importance. He writes:

The story not only was vastly overplayed but also may serve to unnecessarily damage the newspaper’s already weakened business. The editors, who evidently let emotion overcome their news judgment, should have known better.

To which new-media advocate Jeff Jarvis replies: “Was this a negotiating move? Of course. But it’s a credible threat.”

And he’s got every right to.

Jay Fitzgerald makes some excellent points about the Boston Globe’s projected losses even after another $20 million cuts are extracted from the paper. But I’m not sure that we know whether the remaining $65 million gap to which he refers includes the cuts that were completed last Monday. It may not be quite that bad. Or it could be worse. Who knows?

In reading the Boston Globe’s coverage of the New York Times Co.’s threat to shut the paper down unless another $20 million in savings can be found, I’m feeling slightly more sanguine.

Based on the comments of union executives, one possible — and maybe even likely — outcome is that the unions will quickly come to terms, and the crisis will be averted.

The problem is, I don’t think anyone believes this is a one-time deal. What will the next demand be?

On Thursday, Boston Globe editor Marty Baron delivered the 2009 Ruhl Lecture at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication. It’s worth reading in full, but Nicholas Kristof has the highlights. Here’s an excerpt:

We do not know, long-term or really even short-term, what our actual financial resources will be.

All the nipping and tucking, and shaving and trimming, and chopping and full-scale amputation raises perhaps the most important question: Will news organizations — the Globe and many others — be able to adequately cover their communities when the financial pressures are so severe and so unrelenting?

I believe we can. But that is a belief and maybe just a hope. It is not a prediction — and well short of a promise. And it will require us to get our costs in line with the reality of diminished revenue and to be more creative at making money, both in print and online. It requires us to move quickly because the pace of economic decline is breathtakingly rapid, entirely unforgiving of timidity, delay, and nostalgia for old ways or attachment to old work rules.

Baron closes with the story of 14-year-old Acia Johnson and her 3-year-old sister, killed in a fire traced to their mother’s dysfunctional life. Baron continues:

The story elicited an outpouring of sympathy, but fortunately there was more than that. There was action.

The child welfare agency instituted reforms that would affect the placement and monitoring of about 500 children a year. Shortly, the governor asked the state’s child advocate to launch an investigation. The advocate issued a report in December describing fundamental failures by the state and calling for better training for social workers, improved information-sharing with law enforcement, and more comprehensive documentation of neglect and abuse. The governor pledged to follow through.

Baron is no nostalgist, and he frankly acknowledges that perhaps newspapers can’t be saved. But how, he asks, will journalism be saved? Even if bloggers and community Web sites do some of the things that local papers used to do, who will provide deep, time- and money-intenstive investigative reporting?

Tonight, that question seems more unanswerable than it did just a few hours ago.

Somewhere, Douglas McIntyre is laughing. At me.

Neither Boston Globe publisher Steve Ainsley or New York Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would speak to Globe reporters Robert Gavin and Robert Weisman for their story on the Times Co.’s threat to shut the paper down. Think about that for a moment.

The result is that the Globe’s own story is based entirely on union sources. According to those sources, management is saying the Globe lost $50 million in 2008 and is on track to lose $85 million in 2009. If those numbers are correct — and I don’t think anyone doubts them — that’s a lot of money.

At the same time, I’ve been told that the paper’s annual revenues are still north of $300 million. What that tells me is that the Globe is not at all beyond saving — but that it’s going to have to be reinvented as a drastically different paper. Here are some suggestions I made recently.