Author: Dan Kennedy

A primer in getting to “no”

In this week’s Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly observes that New York Times Co. executives mangled things with the Boston Globe and the Newspaper Guild so thoroughly that you’re left wondering if a “no” vote was what they wanted all along.

I’ve been wondering the same thing, though for the life of me I can’t see how this benefits the Sulzbergers. Now that they’ve made it official that they want to sell the Globe, the last thing they need is an unfair-labor case before the National Labor Relations Board, which could drag on for months.

Over at the Beat the Press blog, former Globe staffer Ralph Ranalli explains how Globe publisher Steve Ainsley and Times Co. management snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Close to home

Eighth-graders from Danvers as well as Swampscott were inside the Holocaust Museum in Washington earlier today when a white supremacist pulled out a gun, began shooting and killed a security officer. The Salem News and the Danvers Herald both report that none of the students were injured.

Two years ago, our daughter was on that annual trip and I was a chaperone. I’d been to the museum several years before that to do research for “Little People,” my book on dwarfism. What happened today was a horrifying event.

We’ve now had three terrorist murders in the United States in the past few weeks — abortion doctor George Tiller, assassinated by a prolife extremist; Army recruiter William Long, gunned down by an apparent Muslim convert enraged by U.S. policy; and now this. What is going on?

Jack Welch (“Jack Welch”*?) on the Globe

A Boston Globe insider led me to this Twitter page, purportedly by retired General Electric chief executive Jack Welch, who was interested in buying the Globe back when the New York Times Co. wasn’t selling. Check this message out:

So ironic to see NYT act so brutish toward labor. Certainly would be crucifying any Company with labor practices like theirs.

Not quite getting the point? Here’s a Welch (or “Welch”) update:

My New York Times labor tweet a few min ago refers to their BRUTISH dark age labor relations with their Boston Globe employees

There is nothing obviously fake about the Welch Twitter page. It’s mostly about sports, and the site links to his book. Times business columnist Joe Nocera recently wrote that Welch has a Twitter account, though Nocera didn’t supply the address. I think this is Welch, although I’m open to evidence that it isn’t.

Which raises an obvious question. Is Welch still interested in buying the Globe? If so, is this a ploy to reach out to employees?

Granted, I’m not sure what the logic would be. It’s management he needs to reach out to.

*Update: Dave Hersam nails it. It really is Welch.

Update II: The Boston Newspaper Guild has now sent out an e-mail publicizing Welch’s tweets.

Update III: Welch is certainly not my idea of a white knight for the Globe. Click here and here.

Photo (cc) by Josh Greenstein and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Talking about the Globe at the Mirror Awards

Alas, my work in the Guardian came up short for the second year in a row in the Syracuse University Mirror Awards, as I lost out yesterday to Clive Thompson of Wired.com in the category of online media commentary.

There was plenty of buzz about the Boston Globe at the luncheon, held in the not-very-spacious confines of New York’s Harmonie Club. Several New York Times people I spoke with, including media columnist David Carr, were speculating about why the Newspaper Guild voted “no” and what might happen next.

We also heard from Arianna Huffington, founder of the Huffington Post, whose receipt of a lifetime achievement award was controversial given her perceived role in harming the news business.

She got off the best line of the day, saying (this is a close paraphrase; I should have taken notes, but I couldn’t extend my elbows sufficiently), It’s not true that I single-handedly destroyed the newspaper business. I had help from Craigslist. Ho, ho.

Buy high, sell low

There’s an ugly symmetry to the news that the New York Times Co. is soliciting bids for the Boston Globe.

Having paid $1.1 billion for the Globe in 1993, half the market capitalization of the entire Times Co., the Sulzberger family may now find there is virtually no interest in what once once its second-most-prized asset after the Times itself.

After the Boston Newspaper Guild narrowly rejected a proposal to cut salaries by about 10 percent and eliminate about 190 lifetime job guarantees, the Times Co., as expected, imposed a 23 percent pay cut. And the Guild, as expected, has appealed to the National Labor Relations Board.

What’s unclear today is the status of the lifetime job guarantees, widely thought to be a major stumbling block to any effort to sell the paper. Today’s Globe story, by Keith O’Brien, isn’t quite as explicit as I’d like it to be, but the gist seems to be that the guarantees remain in effect at the Guild — at least for the time being — and the paper’s other unions have given them up.

In the Boston Herald, Jay Fitzgerald and O’Ryan Johnson interview Poynter Institute business analyst Rick Edmonds, who wrote an excellent post the other day suggesting that the Globe was closer to break-even than is generally assumed.

Edmonds tells the Herald that the lifetime guarantees and the ongoing labor crisis remain major stumbling blocks to a sale: “Having these different things going on makes it considerably harder, if not impossible, to sell this newspaper.”

The Globe is not losing $85 million

So says Poynter Institute business analyst Rick Edmonds.

In a revealing post — made all the more interesting following the Boston Newspaper Guild’s narrow defeat of a package designed to save the New York Times Co. about $10 million — Edmonds reports that Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis has clarified some of the murk. (Via David Folkenflik.)

Edmonds writes that the $85 million operating loss the Globe is said to be ringing up in 2009 actually “includes depreciation, amortization and special charges.” His best guess: the Globe is on track to lose about $20 million this year, and the concessions demanded by the Times Co. would roughly cover that.

Of course, following today’s Guild vote (the deal lost by a heart-stopping margin of 277-265) management only has $10 million in hand, in the form of concessions agreed to by unions other than the Guild. Management has threatened to impose a 23 percent pay cut, which the Guild, in turn, says it will appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.

It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen next, at least not tonight. But one thing that ought to be acknowledged is that the folks at 135 Morrissey Blvd. have continued to put out a very good newspaper despite months of uncertainty, even chaos, with respect to the Globe’s future. I’m sure that will continue.

Update: The Globe itself made some of the same points on April 24, though Edmonds’ main argument — that the paper’s true operating loss this year is likely to be $20 million — doesn’t quite emerge.

Differing takes on today’s Globe vote

Interesting difference in emphasis in the New York Times’ and the Boston Globe’s coverage of today’s vote by the Boston Newspaper Guild.

The Times story, by Richard Pérez-Peña, quotes three Globe employees, all reporters, all of whom say they’re voting “no” — Scott Allen, Brian Mooney and Beth Daley. The story also notes that Guild president Dan Totten’s less-than-enthusiastic public comments have been “widely interpreted as urging rejection.”

The Globe story, by Rob Gavin, works into the lede the news that the paper’s delivery-truck drivers approved $2.5 million in concessions on Sunday. Gavin, like Pérez-Peña, also quotes three reporters, but with a different emphasis — Mooney (no), Erin Ailworth (yes) and Scott Helman (maybe).

The picture you come away from in reading the Times is that the deal — which would cut pay by about 10 percent and eliminate 190 lifetime job guarantees — is all but certain to be rejected. The Globe, by contrast, makes you think things are truly up in the air.

The Guild concessions, if approved, would add up to about $10 million, half the $20 million that the New York Times Co. is demanding. If the Guild votes “no,” management has said it would impose a 23 percent pay cut, which the Guild, in turn, says it would appeal to the National Labor Relations Board.

Management has not ruled out shutting down the paper, although that threat seems to have diminished since it was first leveled more than a month ago.

We’ll know tonight.

Guilding tomorrow’s vote

On the eve of Monday’s vote by members of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Guild has posted a press release on its “Save the Boston Globe” campaign.

In keeping with Guild president Dan Totten’s past comments, the union is not explicitly urging its members to vote one way or the other on the pact, which calls for a pay cut of roughly 10 percent and an end to lifetime job guarantees for about 190 Globe employees.

Twenty-four hours from now, we’ll know a lot more than we do today.