Category: Uncategorized

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.

Kazakh government admits to blockage

The official Kazakh communications agency has admitted to blocking the blogging platform LiveJournal, according to the International Foundation of Speech Freedom Protection.

In a recent interview with the newspaper Express K, Batyr Makhanbetazhiev, executive secretary of Kazakhstan’s Agency of Information and Communication, said LiveJournal had been blocked to stop the “distribution of illegal information.”

The translation is hazy, so it’s a little hard to follow. But free-speech activists in Kazakhstan have been campaigning against a proposed law that would crack down on the country’s relatively free-wheeling online culture. For background, see this and also this.

Counting blogs: One, two, many

Four years ago, Jay Rosen dropped in on a media-criticism class I was teaching at Northeastern University for a discussion about blogging.

One point he made I thought was particularly salient: the 97 bazillion blogs Technorati claims to be tracking are often used by critics as a way to discredit blogging. After all, how could anything so common be of much value?

Still, it’s hard to quantify the number of blogs that matter to news folks — that is, blogs doing some type of journalism, even if it’s just commenting intelligently on the news. When asked, I generally respond that it’s certainly in the hundreds, or even the thousands, but definitely not the millions.

So I was interested to see more useful Technorati numbers appear in a New York Times story today about bloggers who quit because they quickly learn that it’s hard work, or that it’s no way to make money, or that they decide revealing personal details about themselves isn’t such a good idea. (Not that that has anything inherently to do with blogging.) To wit:

  • Of the 133 million blogs that Technorati was following in 2008, only 7.4 million had been updated in the past four months.
  • The vast majority of traffic is generated by 50,000 to 100,000 blogs.

Those numbers make far more sense, and show that blogging is something that a small subset of dedicated amateurs (and a few professionals) take seriously. As Rosen suggested, the Golden Arches approach is a way of marginalizing rather than elucidating.

Critiquing Obama’s speech in Egypt

They don’t come any dumber than U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla. In a piece on local reaction to President Obama’s speech in Egypt, Inhofe tells his hometown newspaper, “There has never been a documented case of torture at Guantanamo” and “I just don’t know whose side he’s on.” (Via TPMDC.)

On the other hand, New York Times columnist David Brooks gets right to the heart of the contradictions in Obama’s speech, writing:

This speech builds an idealistic facade on a realist structure. And this gets to the core Obama foreign-policy perplexity. The president wants to be an inspiring leader who rallies the masses. He also wants be a top-down realist who cuts deals in the palaces. There is a tension between these two impulses that even a sharp Chicago pol is having trouble managing.

My own reaction: underwhelmed, despite the characteristically first-rate craftsmanship and delivery. I couldn’t really articulate why, but I definitely think Brooks is on to it.

Deval Patrick is shocked

Gov. Deval Patrick has discovered that there is — I hope you’re sitting down — offensive programming on WTKK Radio (96.9 FM), the station where he has been making monthly appearances since entering office more than two years ago.

Patrick, appearing on Jim Braude and Margery Eagan’s program, said he was “embarrassed to be associated with the station” after management decided to lift the month-long suspension it had handed out to Jay Severin for his vile comments about Mexicans. (Globe; Herald.)

But as I and many others have noted, Severin’s comments that day were entirely consistent with his rhetoric over the past decade. If his ratings hadn’t been sliding, it’s not likely he would have gotten into trouble.

Weirdly, Patrick had never expressed any misgivings about appearing on the station until Severin actually apologized. Governor, this may be the one moment when you don’t need to feel embarrassed — a moment that will last until the next time Severin goes off. Enjoy it.