Dan Kennedy

Thinking about public pensions

The Boston Globe’s Todd Wallack reports today that investment losses suffered by government pension funds will force even more draconian cuts in local services than had already been anticipated.

Let me speak out of ignorance for a moment. It’s OK, because mainly I’m advocating that we start asking some tough questions. I have no answers.

Haven’t most private-sector businesses and non-profit organizations phased out pensions in favor of 401(k) and 403(b) accounts? Isn’t governmental employment the last redoubt of pensions?

I’m sure there’s nothing we can do about pensions owed to current retirees. But isn’t it time to take a hard look at whether we should keep paying a benefit to public employees that very few of us in the private sector enjoy? Lord knows I want to tear my hair out when I read about a former elected official receiving a big pension. Let them plan for their retirement like everyone else.

Obviously there are some special circumstances that need to be considered. There are good reasons to offer early-retirement incentives to police officers and firefighters, for instance — you don’t want 57-year-olds putting their health at risk every time they go out on a call.

But other than unusual cases like that, it’s time to get serious.

Cutbacks come to NPR

Like a number of media observers, I’m bullish about National Public Radio because (a) its distribution model — reaching people who are stuck in their cars — still works and (b) its nonprofit funding system removes many of the pressures facing for-profit media corporations.

Note that these are organic advantages, having nothing to do with the excellence of its content. Although it’s pretty damn good.

But even non-profits need to make money. So it was inevitable that NPR would suffer cutbacks due to the economic downturn. According to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, “Day to Day” has been axed, as has “News & Notes,” a program I’m not familiar with that was aimed at African-American audiences. A number of journalists have been laid off as well.

Much as I don’t like to see people lose their jobs, it strikes me that there may have been a little bit of mission creep — or mission bloat — going on here. By far the majority of NPR listeners tune in during drive time, which makes “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” among the most-listened-to radio programs in the country.

As long as those franchises are safe, I’m not too concerned.

Locally, it’s end-of-the-year fundraising time at WBUR (90.9 FM), as I’m sure you’ve noticed. Let’s hope enough money rolls in so that its own franchise shows, “On Point,” “Here and Now” and “Radio Boston,” are able to thrive.

The dynamic duo behind Tribune’s fall

There may not be a healthy newspaper company in the United States right now. Even so, the dynamic duo running the now-bankrupt Tribune Co. — real-estate mogul Sam Zell and radio consultant Lee Abrams — seem to have done everything they could to make things worse. At least that’s what I argue in my latest for the Guardian.

Channeling my fears about David Gregory

Mickey Kaus: “The secret of Gregory’s success seems to be that he always spouts the CW that his mainstream producers want to hear (and think their viewers want to hear too).”

As I said the other day, I’m willing to give Gregory a chance. Essentially, though, I’m looking for him to be something he’s never been before: ~~gusty~~ gutsy [heh, heh] and interesting.

And his welcome-aboard interview with Tom Brokaw on Sunday was almost nauseating.

Look out below

For the newspaper business, it suddenly feels like September, when huge chunks of the financial services industry collapsed after many months of teetering on the brink.

Since this morning, bankruptcy for Tribune Co. has moved from theory to reality. The New York Times Co. is borrowing against the ill-timed monument the Sulzbergers built to themselves several years ago.

And a post I wrote this morning already seems out of date.

You have the sense right now that anything is possible. Anything bad, that is.

Boston is still a newspaper town

The latest news about the newspaper business is of the sort that no one ever thought we’d see. Tribune Co., which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, may seek bankrupcty protection. McClatchy has put the Miami Herald up for sale, but no one wants it.

So I thought this would be a good time to pause for a moment and ponder something that we all take for granted around here. How is it that the Boston Globe continues as one of our great daily newspapers? How can our number-two daily, the Boston Herald, keep chugging along in this environment?

First the Globe. The paper and its corporate parent, the New York Times Co., are in dire straits. The Globe may be losing as much as $1 million a week, and company executives are now on a salary-cutting binge. International and national coverage has been largely ceded to the Times and the wire services. And yet this may be the only city in the country other than New York or Washington where our major daily newspaper isn’t the subject of daily, heated rumors about its imminent demise.

No doubt the Times Co. is a more benevolent owner than Sam Zell, the foul-mouthed real-estate tycoon who runs Tribune. But maybe things aren’t as bad at the Globe as they are at most other papers because Boston remains, fundamentally, a newspaper town. Yes, print circulation is way down, but the Globe’s Web site, Boston.com, is thriving (though its ad revenues don’t come anywhere near offsetting print losses).

Surely there’s no explanation but Boston’s special relationship with newspapers to explain the continued existence of the Herald. For several decades, the tabloid has survived as one of the very few number-two dailies in the country. The Herald has gotten awfully small. Earlier this fall, the paper started jobbing out its printing to the Wall Street Journal, which now trucks the paper in from its plant in Chicopee each day. (As with the Globe, the Herald’s Web site is doing quite well.)

Last week, Herald publisher Pat Purcell went back to work for his old boss, Murdoch, who owns the Journal and everything else.

Few people other than Purcell know what the true financial condition of the Herald is, though it’s believed to be right on the edge. And few know what Purcell’s real motivation was in agreeing to run Purcell’s Ottaway community-newspaper division. But it’s possible that it was about finding efficiencies that will shore up the Herald’s position.

This is such a difficult moment for the news business that it would be ridiculous to make any predictions. A month from now — a week from now — these observations might seem pollyannaish and naive.

For the moment, though, with the exception of New York and Washington, there’s no better place in the country to be a newspaper reader.

Kudos for Stockman’s Iran story

I don’t like to state the obvious, but sometimes the obvious needs to be stated. Farah Stockman’s story on how a semi-American company took advantages of loopholes to bring a dangerous technology to Iran shows that the Boston Globe is still capable of competing at a national level — not all the time, not on every story, but when it picks its shots.

According to Stockman, an oil-services company called Schlumberger developed a drilling tool being used in Iran’s oil fields that contains radioactive materials capable of being converted into a so-called dirty bomb. The technology arose out of work in Schlumberger labs in Connecticut and Texas — yet because Schlumberger is not an American company, it was able to avoid U.S. rules prohibiting such technology transfers.

Scary stuff.

Casino jobs without an actual casino

The $1 billion casino that will never be built in Middleborough is already producing jobs, according to reporters George Brennan and Stephanie Vosk of the Cape Cod Times:

Consultants providing legal, lobbying and public relations services were paid $2.2 million by investors, according to internal financial records for fiscal 2008. In total, the casino investors provided $4 million for the [Mashpee Wampanoag] tribe’s budget including nearly $1 million for pay and benefits of tribal council officers and staff members.

Nice to see that the South African moguls who are the real forces behind this miserable idea are providing some much-needed economic stimulus.

Once was enough

The Boston Globe has a terrific story today on a small group of backpackers who hike “the grid.” There are 48 mountains in New Hampshire with an elevation of 4,000 feet or more. The idea is to hike each of them during each month of the year — 576 summits, in other words. Why? Who knows?

Given that it took me from 1968 to 2007 to do all 48 peaks just once, the grid is not on my horizon. Earlier this year, though, when I went to a recognition dinner for those who had completed the 48 (cold pizza in a high school cafeteria), I was struck by how mundane my achievement seemed.

There were people who’d hiked all 48 peaks in the winter. People who’d hiked all 4,000-foot peaks in New England, or the 100 highest in New England. I, on the other hand, was in by far the largest and least-distinguished group.

Yet I felt liberated. I’m never able to go hiking as often as I’d like, and for years I had planned my trips around the need to check off a particular peak or peaks. Now I can hike wherever I want to. And I’ve found that I enjoy the Appalachian Trail in the Berkshires and Vermont as much as the White Mountains, but for different reasons.

The hiking is less intense (not such a bad thing now that I’m in my 50s). You’re closer to roads and small villages, yet there are fewer hikers. And if it’s summer, you don’t have to worry about freezing to death above treeline, always a concern at the White Mountains’ higher elevations. Sorry, but no grid for me.

The Globe story, written by Tom Haines and photographed by Mark Wilson, appears in “g,” the new, tabloid-size home for features and arts. Strictly from an aesthetic point of view, the story justifies the format change — it takes up the entire centerspread, with a post-to-post graphic across the top featuring all 48 mountains. It never would have looked this good on a standard newspaper page.

More: I was remiss in not noting that the Globe story is accompanied by a slideshow, an interactive graphic and a video. I would have liked to see more video, though.

Jerry Schechter

Media Nation’s best wishes go out to Danny Schechter and his family. Danny’s father, Jerry, died on Tuesday at the age of 90. Danny writes:

He had achieved all that he wanted when confronted with the reality of a terminal illness. He decided to prolong his life as long as he could and enjoy it as much as he could. He did. He wanted to die at home. He did. He wanted to be surrounded in his last hours by his family. He was. He wanted to avoid becoming dependent. He never complained, and faced his fate calmly. He was philosophical and practical about it. He left us in dignity and without pain. He was gutsy throughout. He had even instructed us to have the body removed immediately so no children in the neighborhood had to be scared by the sight of a dead person. All of the nurses, doctors and health workers who helped him became his friend and he ended up helping many of them. He was like that.

Three years ago I met Jerry Schechter, who lived in Brookline, when Danny was up from New York to speak at Northeastern. Despite his advanced age, he was sharp and energetic. I know Danny had been dealing with his father’s illness for a long time. But that doesn’t make it any easier to lose a parent.