Globe reporters get cold shoulder

Neither Boston Globe publisher Steve Ainsley or New York Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis would speak to Globe reporters Robert Gavin and Robert Weisman for their story on the Times Co.’s threat to shut the paper down. Think about that for a moment.

The result is that the Globe’s own story is based entirely on union sources. According to those sources, management is saying the Globe lost $50 million in 2008 and is on track to lose $85 million in 2009. If those numbers are correct — and I don’t think anyone doubts them — that’s a lot of money.

At the same time, I’ve been told that the paper’s annual revenues are still north of $300 million. What that tells me is that the Globe is not at all beyond saving — but that it’s going to have to be reinvented as a drastically different paper. Here are some suggestions I made recently.

One more quick thought on the Globe

It was only this past Monday that the Boston Globe completed a painful round of downsizing that included its first layoffs ever. Afterward, editor Marty Baron sent a heartfelt memo to his staff that said in part:

The past two months have been very difficult. Those who are leaving us contributed mightily to our newsroom, and we will sorely miss their talent, dedication, and companionship at work….

This remains an organization of great strength and resilient spirit. We can all be proud that this newsroom continues to deliver journalism of the highest caliber.

Baron also referred to the “emotional toll” that the downsizing took.

Some questions: Couldn’t Times Co. management have made its $20 million demand during the downsizing and layoffs that just took place instead of waiting until now? Doesn’t it look like incredibly poor management to take this up just as the dispirited troops were starting to exhale? And doesn’t this put Baron in a miserable position?

Boston Globe threatened with closure

WBUR Radio’s Web site is breaking a story that I’ve been hearing in bits and pieces since mid-afternoon. All that’s there right now is a headline: “New York Times Co. Threatens To Close Boston Globe.”

I’ve heard more, but given that I’ve only talked with two people about it, I think it would be wiser just to let this develop. We’ll all know more soon enough.

Soon enough comes five minutes later: Adam Reilly appears to have broken the story, and he has more details. Those details are in alignment with what I’ve heard: $20 million in union concessions within 30 days, with possible cuts to pension contributions and the end of lifetime contracts.

I am told the Times Co. is serious as a heart attack regarding its threat to close the paper.

Update No. 2: In reading the chatter on Twitter, I now think ‘BUR broke the story, and Reilly quickly followed with details that he already had accumulated.

HuffPo finesses the revenuers

Poynter’s Bill Mitchell has an interesting piece on potential tax problems for the Huffington Post with regard to the new $1.75 million investigative-reporting project it announced last week.

The conundrum is that HuffPo is a for-profit, while the Huffington Post Investigative Fund is a non-profit. If it looks like the non-profit entity exists mainly to serve the for-profit, there could be a problem. That’s one of the reasons why the people who are in charge of the investigative project, Nick Penniman and Jay Rosen, say their work will be available to everyone, not just HuffPo.

Rosen and proto-blogger Dave Winer talk about the project in their weekly podcast. (Excuse my self-promotional indulgence; I come up, but only for a minute or two.)

Simply in terms of image, this is a great move for the Huffington Post, whose aggressive aggregation of other content, in my view, brings it right to the edge of copyright violation. “Someone is going to sue the Huffington Post,” the Nieman Journalism Lab’s Joshua Benton recently said.

By giving back and producing original content that everyone can use, HuffPo may be able to quiet the critics. Just as long as it can keep the IRS happy at the same time.

John Yemma on open-source news

Christian Science Monitor editor John Yemma has some sharp observations about the demise of Encarta, the struggles of Encyclopedia Britannica and the dominance of Wikipedia. And he argues that there’s a cautionary tale for the news media therein:

If all the big newspapers at once adopted a pay model, some upstart would come along and use a small group of journalists and a larger group of Wikipedia-like amateurs to build a multimedia newspaper. Like Wikipedia, it would be the butt of countless jokes about unreliability.

Maybe it would even report on its own unreliability. But it would grow stronger because it would be organically constituted on the World Wide Web. That’s the power of open-source knowledge.

And that’s the challenge the news media face as they dive into the Internet.

This, of course, is week one of the Monitor’s Web-mostly existence, as the daily print edition has given way to a 24/7 Web site and a weekly magazine. (Via Jeff Jarvis.)

Hard times for the Times

In my latest for The Guardian, I take a look at Mark Bowden’s exceedingly tough Vanity Fair profile of New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Bowden may be right in arguing that Sulzberger is not up to the job. But given the implosion of the newspaper business, would better leadership have made all that much difference?