Tag: Boston Globe

After a Globe deal, then what?

It could have been predicted, though it was looking pretty shaky over the past few days. But barring any last-minute snags, it looks like the New York Times Co. will have its $20 million in union concessions from Boston Globe employees by the (new) deadline of midnight on Sunday (Globe coverage here; Boston Herald coverage here).

Which raises a serious question. Given that the Times Co. will likely be able to declare victory, what will be its next step? After all, the Globe is reportedly on track to lose $85 million this year — or $65 million, presumably, once the concessions are in place.

There’s been a lot of speculation by media observers, including me, that the month-long standoff was a prelude to some dramatic action, including throwing the Globe into bankrupty, letting a judge restructure the paper and then selling it to a local owner. But I don’t see how that can happen if the unions give management what it wants.

Can the Times Co. afford simply to wait out the recession? I hope so. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

A $4.5 million whoopsie

I’ve been out of the loop all day, volunteering as a marshal at Northeastern’s commencement. Right now I’m hanging out at WGBH-TV (Channel 2), waiting to tape “Beat the Press.” And I am astounded at the news out of the Boston Globe, where apparently the unions will be forced to come up with another $4.5 million in concessions because of an accounting error on the part of management.

The New York Times Co. has threatened to close the Globe if the unions don’t agree to $20 million in givebacks by today.

“Management has done the impossible: they’ve reunited the Boston Newspaper Guild,” an anonymous source tells the Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly. Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well. For a crisis to be averted, it was essential for the unions to come to terms at least somewhat amicably. Now it’s not even clear that Globe staffers believe management claims that the paper is on track to lose $85 million this year.

“The Legend of Young Arthur continues to grow,” writes the Outraged Liberal, referring to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Unfortunately, you can’t make this stuff up.

The latest on the Globe

Not sure why I can’t find this on Boston.com, so I’ll give you the link to Joe Strupp’s report in Editor & Publisher that management and union officials may be making progress at the Boston Globe.

Also New England Cable News has an interesting report (above) in which former Globe reporter Peter Howe interviews former Globe reporter Kimberly Blanton. Nothing startlingly new, but good insights from two people who clearly know their way around 135 Morrissey Boulevard.

Finally, you must have seen this elsewhere already, but John Henry denies he has any interest in buying the Globe.

A one-two punch from the Phoenix

With negotiations at the Boston Globe now down to the wire, the Boston Phoenix weighs in with a major takeout by media reporter Adam Reilly and an editorial.

Reilly’s got lots of nice details, including a great quote from an anonymous (of course) Globe staffer about editor Marty Baron: “His hands are tied. I think he’s fucking heartbroken that he can’t do more.” Adam also has some insights into the ongoing tensions between the union leadership and the newsroom.

The editorial ponders the possibility of life without the Globe — an unlikely prospect, perhaps, but one that’s not completely out of the question given what’s happened during the past month. Know this: someone at the Phoenix really, really doesn’t like the Boston Herald.

It’s all over but the waiting

Not much to say about the ongoing drama at the Boston Globe, and I don’t imagine there will be until some actual news is announced. It’s now pretty clear that this is going to go down to midnight on Thursday, something I hadn’t expected when the New York Times Co. first issued its demand for $20 million in concessions from the Globe unions.

Reuters gives a boost to the John Henry angle, first reported by the Boston Herald. I’m intrigued. I don’t really see any synergistic possibilities between the Red Sox and the Globe (it hasn’t exactly worked out to this point, has it?), but Henry’s obviously a very smart guy. If he thinks he can make a go of it, then that’s pretty encouraging.

Coincidentally (or not), the Globe’s Names column today has some fun with a frothy feature in the new Boston Magazine on Henry’s romance with a much younger woman.

Meanwhile, the Herald reports on tensions between the newsroom and the union leadership. The best quote is from Globe reporter Scott Allen, who tells the Herald, “The union says we need to control leaks. It strikes some of us as Nixonian.”

Lynch’s non-signing statement

Meaghan Maher, press secretary to U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, has sent along the following statement as to why Lynch didn’t sign the Massachusetts congressional delegation’s letter to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. asking him not to shut down the Boston Globe:

Congressman Lynch felt that, while he respects the decision of others who decided otherwise, given his own position, it was inappropriate and a conflict of interest for him to sign onto this letter.

The congressman who wasn’t there

Every member of the Massachusetts delegation except one has signed a letter to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. asking that he keep the Boston Globe open past the Thursday deadline he’s set for the Globe’s unions to come up with $20 million in concessions.

The one: Rep. Stephen Lynch of South Boston.

The letter, signed by Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry as well as the other nine House members, reads as follows:

Dear Mr. Sulzberger:

We are concerned over the future of The Boston Globe in light of reports that the New York Times Company is seriously considering shutting the doors of our hometown newspaper.

For well over a century, The Globe has been an immense asset to Boston and all of New England. It’s been the paper of record; a force for positive change and civic activism; a cultural touch point; and a workplace that has always valued the contributions of every employee from typesetters, press operators, mailers and drivers to reporters and editors. It’s been a consistent source of news for the people of Massachusetts, and a constant reminder that the press serves an indispensable role in our free society.

We understand the serious financial challenges facing the newspaper industry today. The ramifications, however, of closing The Boston Globe would far outlive the current recession. The Globe has a long-established public trust with this community and the New England region. Its closure would be an irreplaceable loss for our city, state, and region and for countless readers across the nation.

The hard-working men and women of The Boston Globe know better than anyone that sacrifices will be necessary to continue the newspaper. We urge you to treat The Globe fairly and to work together on a solution to this immediate crisis that preserves the newspaper for the future.

We appreciate your consideration of this request and we look forward to discussing The Globe’s future with you at your convenience.

I’ve sent an e-mail to the Boston Newspaper Guild office, which released the letter, asking about Lynch’s absence. I’ll send an e-mail to Lynch as soon as I’ve posted this. If I hear anything, I’ll let you know.

Of course, it hardly needs to be said that the letter is another example of the awkward embrace between Globe staff members and the political establishment that we’ve seen from the moment that this drama began to unfold — something Jessica Heslam and Hillary Chabot wrote about in the Boston Herald last Friday.

Newspaper circulation slide continues

Daily newspaper circulation continues its seemingly unstoppable slide, and the Boston Globe once again has been hit particularly hard. According to audited figures reported by the trade magazine Editor & Publisher, weekday circulation of the Globe for the past six months has fallen 13.6 percent, to 302,638. On Sundays, the Globe has fallen 11.2 percent, to 466,665.

I do not have direct access to the figures, reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, so I can’t tell you what’s going on at the Boston Herald. E&P is only providing numbers for the top 25 papers.

Two bits of perspective.

First, for many years, the Globe’s advertising rates were based on a guarantee that its Sunday circulation would remain above 800,000, and its weekday circulation would be north of 500,000. So this is pretty devastating, especially in light of last week’s news that advertising revenue at the Globe, Boston.com and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette was down 31.6 percent over the first quarter of 2008.

Second, as always, it’s important to keep in mind that Boston.com attracts more than 5 million unique visitors each month, making it the most successful regional newspaper Web site in the United States. If only there were a way of translating that success into revenue.

Globe ad revenues down more than 30 percent

The New York Times Co.’s demand that the Boston Globe’s unions come up with $20 million in concessions may have gotten a boost this morning, as the company reported that advertising revenues at its New England Media Group — the Globe, Boston.com and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette — are down 31.6 percent.

According to the Times Co.’s latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, advertising revenues at the New England group for the first quarter of 2009 were a shade under $55.7 million. Overall, revenues for the group were nearly $104.5 million, a drop of 20.6 percent from the first quarter of 2008.

Though the Times Co. does not break out separate numbers for the Worcester paper, they are thought to be a small proportion of the New England group’s overall income and expenses.

One interesting aspect of the report is that the Globe does not stand out as a particular drag on the company. Ad revenues are down 27.3 percent at the New York Times Media Group (the Times and NYTimes.com) and 29.3 percent at the Regional Media Group, which comprises smaller papers, mainly in the South.

Yes, things are worse in New England, but not by that much. So if folks at the Globe are inclined to feel that New York is picking on them, this may give them some ammunition.

Overall, this is pretty ugly. The Times Co. lost $74.5 million during the first quarter, compared to just $335,000 a year ago. Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson predicts a miserable second quarter as well.

“In time, however, we believe that the economy will grow and the advertising market will improve,” Robinson said in a prepared statement, according to the Associated Press. “While we are looking forward to that day, we are not waiting for it.”

Re-Kindling the Globe

Warning: Fuzzy math ahead.

As we know, the most deadly problem the newspaper business faces is that very little advertising has migrated from the print to the Web. A dollar’s worth of print advertising translates to pennies online. Thus we have initiatives like Steven Brill’s Journalism Online aimed at getting people to pay for Web content. As I argued earlier this week, it probably can’t be done.

But we do need to shift to a model by which consumers will pick up a decent share of the cost. Even after the recession, classified ads are not going to move back from Craigslist to newspapers or their Web sites. And with far fewer local businesses, display ads bring in less revenue than was the case at one time.

What are people willing to pay for? A premium, well-edited news package, portable and easier to use than a typical newspaper Web site. The print edition meets that definition, which is why I think the Boston Globe ought to charge a lot more for it, even though it would, inevitably, drive down paid circulation. The logic: As it stands, circulation revenue barely covers the cost of printing and distribution. If ad revenue is not going to recover, then readers are going to have to pay.

But there’s another possibility. Fifteen years ago folks like Roger Fidler, then of Knight Ridder, suggested that portable digital devices he called “tablets” would one day be so cheap that newspapers would give them away so they could shut down their presses. It’s possible that moment has come in the form of Amazon’s Kindle — not as cheap as Fidler had envisioned, but maybe cheap enough.

The Globe’s Sunday circulation is about 500,000. Let’s say around 400,000 of those are home-delivered. What if you gave every one of those households a free Kindle in return for a three-year, seven-day subscription to the Globe?

Let’s do the math, such as it is. A Kindle costs $359. Assume the Globe could get a price of $300 apiece in return for buying 400,000 of them. That’s $120 million. Spread it over, say, six years, and that’s $20 million a year.

The Globe already charges $10 a month for its Kindle edition. If it extracted that from 400,000 households, it would come to $48 million a year in guaranteed income for three years. (And I’m not so sure you couldn’t charge double that.) After that, subscriptions would renew automatically once a year, which is how the few online news organizations that charge for online access (the Wall Street Journal, The New Republic) handle it.

And here’s where the big savings come in: You shut down the presses. Permanently. No more paper, ink, trucks, fuel and the like. No more jobs for a lot of hard-working people, either, which would be a tragedy, but not as big a tragedy as closing the Globe.

I’ve never gotten my hands on a Kindle, but I have played with a Sony Reader, which is a similar device. The portability and the clarity of the e-ink are both well ahead of even the smallest, sharpest laptop. The Globe’s Kindle edition gets mediocre reviews. But with no more print edition to think about, I’m sure it could be upgraded considerably. And with a large regional customer base, it might prove to be an attractive platform for new kinds of advertising.

Can this work? I have no idea. As a last-ditch effort, though, I definitely think it makes more sense than simply closing the print edition and trying to sell ads on Boston.com. If we come to that point, then I definitely think the Kindle would be a better option.

Credit where it’s due: There are very few original ideas out there. Although I wrote favorably about the Kindle as a newspaper platform way back in November 2007 (here and here), I want to point out that Mike B1 floated a proposal very similar to the one I’m making today just recently.

And Tim Allik points out that Silicon Valley Insider, in January, looked at the numbers behind moving the print edition of the New York Times to the Kindle.