Author: Dan Kennedy

Show us the money (III)

The Boston Globe today runs an “Editor’s Note” saying that Ariel Ayanna, whose family was the subject of a feel-good story about people trying to get by with less money, “never meant to suggest” that he isn’t looking for a job.

It will be interesting to see if this is the end of it.

Update: And, no, that wasn’t the end of it. The Ayannas have posted a blog item taking issue with both the Editor’s Note and with a letter to the editor that they submitted and then retracted because of proposed cuts that they say eliminated most of their criticism of the Globe.

“I guess I was pretty naive to think I could express myself accurately and without censorship,” writes Amiri Ayanna.

My offer for the Globe to respond here remains on the table.

Globe gets ready to unveil GlobeReader

Thanks to rozzie02131, who discovered that an e-version of the Boston Globe will become available next month. Called GlobeReader, it will presumably be based on the same Adobe Air platform as Times Reader 2.0, which was unveiled earlier this week.

No word on pricing. The come-on says that it will be available with “all Boston Globe home delivery subscriptions.” If that means Sunday-only print customers can get it for free, that would represent quite a savings.

But being able to buy a separate GlobeReader subscription for $10 or $15 a month, as you can with Times Reader, would be better.

Is Geffen a source close to Geffen?

Yesterday the New York Post ran a pretty emphatic item reporting that entertainment mogul David Geffen is not interested in buying the New York Times or a share thereof. The Post’s Peter Lauria called the Geffen bubble a “myth,” citing “three sources with direct knowledge of the situation.”

Today the Times itself comes back with a story claiming that Geffen is “seriously interested” in buying the Times, either in whole or in part. Reporters Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Cieply one-up the Post, attributing their reporting to “people who are very familiar with his [Geffen’s] thinking.”

Far from being a throwaway, it’s likely that the word “very” was the subject of extensive negotiations between the Times and, uh, one of its sources. Very interesting, I’d say.

Figuring out the Globe’s new price structure

I’m not going to complain about the latest price increases announced by the Boston Globe, since I’m on the record as believing that newspapers can and should charge a lot more for their print editions. But does it have to be so confusing?

As home-delivery customers, we get charged by the month — $35.16, to be exact. But the new prices are by the week. Since we live in Greater Boston, the new price for us will be $12.25. As best as I can figure out, based on the Globe’s explanation, that’s an increase of $3 per week. Media Nation is an algebra-free zone. But if $9.25 is to $35.16 as $12.25 is to x, then I guess the new monthly price is $46.56.

Over at the Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly, ponders moving to online-only, and asks whether his readers will pay the higher price. My answer: I couldn’t rely solely on Boston.com, the Globe’s free Web site, because its ad servers are miserably slow. It’s fine for reading a few stories, but not the whole paper.

If I had a Kindle, I would certainly consider switching to the Globe’s Kindle edition, which costs $9.99 a month. And if there were a Globe Reader e-version similar to the new Times Reader 2.0, I would consider dropping print and subscribing to that instead.

As is the case with many newspaper observers, my sense is that the advertising market won’t come back that strongly even after the recession ends. There have simply been too many systemic changes — the rise of Craigslist and the fall of downtown retail businesses to name perhaps the two most important.

In such an environment, newspapers are going to have to find a way to get readers to pick up more of the cost. It may be a hopeless task, and it may fail, as Warren Buffett warned recently. But unless they try, failure is guaranteed.

Is the end at hand for David Ortiz?

I know I should be all fired up about the Celtics and the Bruins tonight, so my apologies. (I will never be fired up about the Bruins.) Instead, I’m wondering if today will prove to be a turning point for David Ortiz, who went 0 for 7, left 12 runners on base (including the bases loaded — twice), and struck out three times. If he’d had even a mediocre day, the Red Sox would have won.

Radio announcers Joe Castiglione and Dave O’Brien are virtual extensions of the team. So I thought it was interesting that O’Brien, especially, was pointing out that Angels pitchers weren’t even bothering to nibble at the corners when Ortiz was up, and was suggesting that there may be changes coming soon.

Ortiz was a great player and is a class act. It’s sad that it’s come to this, but he’s hardly the first player whose skills have eroded rapidly. As it is, it’s hard to picture him adjusting and settling in as, say, a .260-25-80 guy. It looks like the show’s over for Big Papi.

GateHouse cuts taking hold

I’m hearing a few reports from out in the field that the GateHouse Media cuts, which I mentioned here earlier in the week, are now starting to come down. I don’t have any details, and I have other matters to attend to for the next few hours. But I’m hoping that a clearer picture will emerge later on.

11:06 p.m. update. Still hearing scattered reports of layoffs here and there. Nothing comprehensive. One thing I’ve heard from several sources is that GateHouse is moving to paid obituaries, and that some typesetters who had formerly handled obits are losing their jobs.

Actually, I despise the term “paid obituaries.” An obituary is a news story, as important as anything in the paper. If it’s paid, it’s no longer a news story; it’s an advertisement.

Kazakh Web sites protest proposed law

Ruth Spencer of the European Journalism Centre, a sharp young journalist whom I met at the Eurasian Media Forum in Almaty, Kazakhstan, last month, has an update on efforts by the Kazakh government to censor the Internet.

Citing a Radio Free Europe report, Spencer writes that several leading Web sites in Kazakhstan shut down for one hour on Wednesday to protest the proposed law, which I wrote about here, here and here.

At Global Voices Online, Askhat Yerkimbay has a round-up of what the Kazakh blogosphere is saying about the proposed new law, which has passed the lower house of Parliament. Yerkimbay concludes:

In brief, the Kazakh language bloggers’ main disagreement is that this draft law would make it possible to ban a blog for any reason, while bloggers would have no rights.

There is some hope that President Nursultan Nazarbayev will veto the proposal, according to Adil Nurmakov, Central Asia editor for Global Voices, whom I interviewed in Almaty. For one thing, Kazakhstan is scheduled to assume the presidency of the Organiation for Security and Cooperation and Europe (OSCE), which is a very big deal.

It could be that Nazarbayev will decide that signing a restrictive anti-speech bill into law would harm his country’s image at precisely the moment that he is trying reach out to the world.

More on Geffen and the Times

Newsweek’s Johnnie L. Roberts reports that David Geffen would turn the New York Times into a non-profit institution if he should succeed in buying the paper. But someone — Roberts, Geffen, the unnamed Geffen “confidante” who’s quoted or perhaps all three — doesn’t really understand the model.

The example that’s cited is the St. Petersburg Times, which is owned by the non-profit Poynter Institute. But the Times itself is a for-profit organization. If that’s what Geffen’s really got in mind, then that might be the ideal ownership situation — unlike a true non-profit, the St. Pete Times is free to endorse political candidates, for instance.

But though the hybrid model eliminates the pressure of quarterly reports and shareholder discontent, a paper such as the St. Pete Times (the New Hampshire Union Leader has a similar ownership arrangement) still needs to break even. In the current economic climate, that’s a challenge.