By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions
While everyone is focused on the looming 50-person cut in the Boston Globe’s newsroom, the Boston Herald yesterday quietly announced that it would soon shed 20 jobs.
Lisa van der Pool reports in the Boston Business Journal that the cuts won’t come exclusively from the Herald’s newsroom: publisher Pat Purcell says the reductions will involve “editorial and commercial” employees at both the paper and its Web site.
As at the Globe, the Herald will look for volunteers first.
There’s a howler near the top of former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld’s op-ed in today’s Boston Globe that any sharp-eyed editor should have caught. Weld and John Stimpson write:
In 1981, the United States was in the midst of what President Jimmy Carter had labeled a “national malaise” and a “crisis in confidence.”
Trouble is, as this PBS article explains, “Though he never used the word — [political adviser Pat] Caddell had in his memo — it became known as Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech.”
Big news out of little Batavia, N.Y. As I was expecting he would, Howard Owens has announced that he’s taking over the Batavian, the online-only “paper” he launched last fall when he was still working for GateHouse Media. He’s going all-in, selling his house and getting ready to start covering the news and selling ads next week. He writes:
My wife and I are listing our house in Pittsford for sale and as soon as it sells, we will rent a place in Batavia (or maybe elsewhere in Genesee County). I expect we’ll see my wife’s byline in The Batavian before too long.
Best of luck to Howard. If he can make this work, it will be a model for a business desperately in need of some good news.
Local media and political activist Ron Newman has written an open letter to the Boston Globe asking that it save the City Weekly section, currently targeted for elimination on March 22. Newman writes:
Dear Boston Globe folks,
As a resident of Somerville, I am distressed to read that you plan to discontinue the only section of the Globe that consistently covers news about our city (and our neighbor, Cambridge).
Your internal memo, published at Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation blog, says that “the suburban zones … are too important to readers to dramatically reduce.” Does this mean that the Globe no longer cares about readers who live in Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and Brookline? How do you expect to keep readers and advertisers if you keep slashing away at the content that makes the Globe unique?
For over 50 years, I’ve lived in houses that received home delivery of at least one daily newspaper. But I’m seeing less and less reason to keep my Globe subscription.
To see the reaction that this decision is getting, I recommend you read the comments on these blog entries:
http://community.livejournal.com/davis_square/1665644.html
http://community.livejournal.com/b0st0n/6482970.html
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23506
http://www.universalhub.com/node/23389You still have several weeks to reconsider this bad decision. Please do so.
My own take? Probably unrealistic. But I’d certainly like to see the Globe take some steps to pump up its city coverage online.
Michelle Malkin fails to do her homework on Joe Biden and his accurate assertion that Louisiana is losing 400 jobs a day.
A sad day in Colorado. And yes, I see the place where you can click to subscribe. I guess no one had the heart to take it down.
I’m posting some incomplete findings in the hopes that someone else might be able to fill in the blanks.
The right-wing blogosphere is on fire right now with claims that Joe Biden “lied” when he said that Louisiana is losing 400 jobs a day. Biden made his remarks in the course of criticizing Gov. Bobby Jindal’s refusal of more than $90 million in additional unemployment funds. A local newscast in Louisiana, citing the state employment agency, claims that the state actually added jobs in December, the last month for which numbers are available.
Well, now. If you take a visit to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, you will see that Louisiana’s unemployment rate rose from 3.8 percent in June to 5.9 percent in December. During that time, 45,065 people in Louisiana lost their jobs. That adds up to approximately 250 per day — not 400, I’ll grant you, but a damned high number, and certainly one that contradicts the notion that the state was actually adding jobs. [Actually, yes. Biden was right. See update, below.]
Now it’s nearly March. We know that the recession and unemployment have accelerated over the past two months. I don’t have January and February numbers of Louisiana, but I may just be looking in the wrong places. But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if an average of 400 people a day have been losing their jobs in Louisiana since the first of the year.
Yes, I realize that the local report I’m linking to claims that Louisiana’s unemployment filings actually declined through mid-January. But remember, that same report says Louisiana gained jobs in December, which is directly contradicted by the federal numbers.
Anybody know where I can get credible preliminary unemployment estimates for January and February?
Update: The answer was staring me right in the face. Steve points out that Louisiana lost an average of 430 jobs a day in December.
This is too funny. It’s amusing enough that Bobby Jindal’s anecdote about the sheriff and the boats the other night was, when you think about it, the story of a heroic Democrat standing up to heartless Republican bureaucrats. (Did no one vet his remarks?)
Even better, it seems that Jindal may have made it all up.
Turns out the former GateHouse new-media guy was converting his blog from WordPress to Drupal. Don’t ask me why — that’s well beyond my meager technical knowledge.
Media Nation has obtained a memo sent to the staff by Boston Globe metro editor Brian McGrory and regional editor David Dahl. The full text follows.
All,
We just wanted to bring you up to date on the proposed changes that we went over last week. The publisher and his senior management team approved the recommendations late yesterday involving Metro. This means that City Weekly will shut down, and Globe North West will disband as a freestanding zone, its geographic areas split between North and West. The final issue of City Weekly will be published on March 22; the final issue of Globe North West on March 26. The three suburban zones will continue to be published two days a week, Thursdays and Sundays, as they are now.
On City Weekly, we wish there was an upbeat spin to put on this. There’s not. It’s been a singular section since its launch in 1992 — vibrant, filled with voice, often with an edge that the rest of the paper would do well to replicate. Lately, under Veronica [Chao]’s leadership, it’s only grown stronger. The sad reality, though, is that advertising revenues simply don’t sustain it, so we’re losing a strong section put out by a group of talented and committed people.
Where we can sound more upbeat is in the suburbs. For the second year in a row, a group from across the paper studied the viability of the suburban zones and decided that they are too important to readers to dramatically reduce. It’s testament to everyone who works hard on those sections, and we expect that the hard work, the high quality, and the reader popularity to continue. And our suburban coverage will be greatly enhanced as we continue to roll out more Your Town sites — as many as 15 by year’s end.
As far as the zones copy desk, there will be substantial changes made, along the lines of what we said last week — the four day week becomes a five day week, with editors playing a stronger role in the Your Town sites. We’ll brief you on that when we have more, which should be soon.
Thanks for your cooperation and all your strong work through these really frustrating times.
Brian and David
No surprises — the City Weekly and Globe NorthWest cuts were already all but certain. Depressing nevertheless.