Tag: Boston Globe

Bailey, Donovan and Larkin to leave Globe

The big news out of the Boston Globe today is that star columnist Steve Bailey is leaving the paper. Bailey — along with executive editor Helen Donovan and deputy managing editor Michael Larkin — are taking early-retirement incentives as the Globe goes through another round of downsizing.

The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly has a long memo from editor Marty Baron, who comes across as wistful and nostalgic. Uncharacteristic, but perhaps unsurprising. He’ll have been in charge seven years this summer. And though he’s had his share of triumphs, his regime has been marked by repeated orders from the New York Times Co. to cut. (Not that that makes the Globe different from any other paper.)

Insiders may feel the loss of Donovan and Larkin just as keenly as they do Bailey’s departure. But to readers of the paper, Bailey’s “Downtown” column has long been a highlight. Not the most graceful writer in the world, Bailey nevertheless is a relentless reporter who consistently breaks news. His voice comes pretty close to being irreplaceable.

“I was reflecting the other day on Steve’s career here,” Baron writes. “And it got me to thinking about how a single journalist can make such an enormous difference at a newspaper and in a community. Certainly, that is true of Steve, and it is true of all whose departures or new assignments are being announced today.”

Moving up are Caleb Solomon, who’ll be managing editor for news; Helen Ellen Clegg (I knew that; jeez), deputy managing editor for news operations; and Mark Morrow, deputy managing editor for Sunday and projects, all of whom will be doing more with less. As Baron puts it, “With these changes, we will be reducing the overall number of senior editors, just as we are reducing the total number of newsroom employees.”

Making a statement

Nothing is going to stop the ongoing transmogrification of the Boston Globe into a smaller, mostly local newspaper. Still, the Globe really makes a statement about its national relevance today, leading with a Farah Stockman story on Halliburton’s use of a tax-exempt subsidiary in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying Social Security and Medicare taxes for its employees in Iraq.

Halliburton is no longer the parent company, but the scam continues, costing taxpayers perhaps $100 million a year, and cheating the employees out of Social Security benefits they should be earning. And just to show how sleazy this all is, it turns out that when Iraq-based employees tried to sue over alleged exposure to hazardous chemicals in Iraq, the subsidiary claimed immunity on the grounds that they were working for an American company that was working with the military.

Ideally, the Globe will continue to break occasional stories of national interest, as it did with Charlie Savage’s Pulitzer-winning reporting on President Bush’s use of signing statements to get around provisions in legislation that he didn’t like.

New math

From the Weekly Dig’s “Media Farm” column:

The Metro was widely ridiculed last month for erroneously reporting that “hundreds of layoffs” at the Globe were imminent. The Globe labeled the report “factually incorrect,” saying, “There are no plans for a staff reduction of the size cited in the Metro.” The Metro stuck by its story, and it turned out to be almost kinda correct. Or at least more correct than anyone gave them credit for (ourselves included).

The Globe is eliminating 60 jobs, which, the last time I checked, was somewhat less than “hundreds.” And while I’m being technical about it, there may not be a single layoff.

Trouble for a Globe columnist

Globe columnist Adrian Walker faces some serious trouble following his arrest Sunday on drunken-driving charges. The Herald runs with a fairly detailed story in which Walker’s lawyer, Michael Doolan, emphasizes Walker’s not-guilty plea and says that “we hope and expect he will be acquitted.” The Globe carries a brief item.

Walker is one of the good guys in local media. A respected Statehouse reporter, he landed a columnist’s spot following the Patricia Smith/Mike Barnicle meltdown of 1998. As a columnist, Walker has emphasized substance over flash. There are no verbal pyrotechnics in his pieces, but you generally learn something new.

At the Globe, “Dear Colleagues”

Media Nation has obtained an e-mail sent to the staff by Boston Globe publisher Steve Ainsley confirming reductions at the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. I’ve done a little guessing at where the paragraph breaks ought to be. Here’s the text:

Dear Colleagues:

As part of a company-wide effort to achieve greater operational efficiencies, we will be offering voluntary buyouts to employees of The Boston Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Boston Globe employees will receive offers next week. Telegram & Gazette employees will receive offers the following week. Boston.com and GlobeDirect employees are ineligible for this program.

We are expecting a total reduction of 80 positions, with approximately 60 from the Globe and roughly 20 from the T&G. This reduction in staff is a difficult but necessary step toward our ongoing goals of reducing costs and finding efficiencies that allow for the long-term health of our business.

As you all know, these are difficult times in the newspaper business. The good news is that our on-line revenue continues to grow although not yet at a scale that offsets the downturn in print. Going forward our newspapers must continue to adapt to changing patterns of media consumption while our on-line business expands our capabilities to present high quality news and information in new formats and new platforms.

For these strategic reasons we are excluding Boston.com from the voluntary buyout program. Instead, we will continue to invest in this growing area of the business as it scales up in content delivery, advertising and audience. We are also excluding GlobeDirect from the buyout program because it just completed a restructuring as part of its consolidation into the Millbury facility and further reductions are not warranted.

Finally, I should note the terms of this buyout — while still generous — are less generous than similar offers in the recent past. For most employees the basic severance payout will be two weeks of pay for every pension year of service with a cap of one-year’s pay. We are offering an enhanced package to some employees — those Newspaper Guild members at the Globe with lifetime job guarantees, in recognition of their many years of service to the company and the value to them of the job guarantee benefit. They will be eligible to receive three weeks of pay for every year of service with a cap of two years pay. This distinction will not be made in any future buyouts that may be offered. A complete package will be mailed to your homes shortly which will go into greater detail as to the payout components, timing and healthcare benefits associated with the package.

I know that it can be a stressful time for eligible employees at the Globe and Telegram & Gazette who must make an important decision about their careers. Our Human Resources and Employee Relations departments are on hand to help you with any questions you may have about this offer.

I’d like to thank everyone for their continued dedication while we redirect our business to future success.

— Steve

These are very ugly times in the newspaper business. What this tells me is that Ainsley and company are merely trying to keep up with the deteriorating revenue picture, and are making no pretense of knowing where the bottom is.

It’s also interesting — and smart — that Boston.com is being spared. When you add print and online readership together, you can make a case that the Globe isn’t losing readers at all. It’s the business model that’s falling apart. What the Globe and every other paper need to do is hang on to those readers while figuring out what comes next.

Is the anvil ready to drop?

This is depressing, but not unexpected. The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly hears that 60 jobs will be eliminated at the Boston Globe, as well as another 80 20 at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. (Both papers are owned by the New York Times Co.) An announcement could come as soon as tomorrow.

Reilly notes that the cuts, which would shrink the Globe’s newsroom by 16 positions, would leave the paper with 75 fewer journalists than it had a little more than two years ago. Since we can expect the Globe to focus more and more on what it can uniquely offer, as opposed to what readers can find on other Web sites, look for the paper to accelerate its move toward almost exclusively local coverage.

Photo (cc) by Steve Garfield, and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

The feeding frenzy is under way

The John McCain story has led to the media-ethics feeding frenzy of 2008. We’re going to know a lot more in a few days. Right now, we should just hang on. Still, I can’t resist posting a few tidbits.

The New Republic’s backgrounder, by Gabriel Sherman, is a must-read. It seems possible — even probable — that it was Sherman’s nosing-around that finally led the New York Times into running what it had. Bill Keller sounds really steamed. I’d love to hear a recording of him sarcastically spitting out the phrase “special correspondent.” Except that it was in an e-mail.

I and others have already speculated how miffed Mitt Romney must be that the Times waited until after McCain had all but wrapped up the nomination before dropping its bombshell. Well, Charles Kaiser of Radar now says one of the Times’ tipsters was former congressman Vin Weber, who just so happened to have been an official with the Romney campaign. Weber has denied it, but Kaiser’s not taking it back. So who knows?

Adam Reilly points out that the Boston Globe chose to run the Washington Post’s version rather than the Times’ more incendiary (i.e., sex rumors included played up) story, even though the Globe is owned by the New York Times Co. Interesting. But last night, I noticed that there was a link to the Times story featured prominently on the home page of the Globe’s Boston.com site.

Finally, no offense to Ryan Lizza, but I don’t think I’m going to get around to reading his New Yorker article on whether McCain can remake the Republican Party. Talk about bad timing.

File photo of Cindy and John McCain (cc) by Chris Dunn and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

30 years ago this week

I hadn’t thought much about the 30th anniversary of the Blizzard of ’78 until I saw Tom Gagen’s op-ed piece in today’s Globe, in which he describes the futile efforts to put out a paper the morning after.

Gagen brought back my own memories of trying to publish a paper that night. I was an editor at the Northeastern News, and we had two sports reporters — Steve Silva and Mike Tempesta — at the Beanpot. By all rights, Steve and Mike should have been trapped at the Boston Garden. But the editor, Anthony Pastelis, and I implored them to come back after the game, insisting we were going to get that week’s edition out one way or another.

Somehow, Steve and Mike managed to walk back to Northeastern, arriving in the newsroom at 2 or 3 a.m. and looking like frozen snowmen. We put the finishing touches on the paper. But later that morning, when we got in touch with our compositor/printer — the Boston Phoenix — we were told that it wasn’t going to happen. I’m not sure it would have mattered if the Phoenix’s printing plant was right down the street, but the fact that it was in Auburn, in Central Massachusetts, made our hopes of getting a paper out impossible.

These days, of course, we’d have just published the paper online and that would have been that.

Questions about a tragedy

My heart goes out to Globe sports columnist Bob Ryan and his family. Ryan’s son, Keith, was found dead in Pakistan yesterday. Bryan Marquard has a warm, well-rounded portrait of Keith Ryan in the Globe, and online sports-media columnist David Scott offers a tribute.

Ryan’s death is being cast as a suicide, but Mike Underwood’s story in the Herald raises another possibility. Here is the article that Underwood is apparently referring to, from the Pakistani paper Dawn. An excerpt:

The [U.S.] embassy said no “foul play” was involved, but senior police officers thought otherwise.

They said it was too early to determine from the bullet wound in the skull of Mr Keith Ryan whether it was a case of suicide or homicide.

The article goes on to say that there is some forensic evidence suggesting that murder was more likely than suicide, and that a full post-mortem will be conducted in Germany.

Keith Ryan was working as a U.S. agent in one of the most dangerous areas in the world. Regardless of whether this was a suicide or a homicide, he died in service to his country.

Globe denies layoff story

Globe spokesman Al Larkin calls the Metro report “factually incorrect,” according to accounts by the Phoenix’s Adam Reilly and the Herald’s Christine McConville, although he doesn’t rule out the possibility of some layoffs.

Credit where it’s due: Looks like Lisa van der Pool of the Boston Business Journal was the first to report the Globe’s denial. Meanwhile, in today’s Metro, Saul Williams says he stands by his story. (9:40 a.m.)