Tag: Boston Globe

Metro Boston changes hands

The subway freebie Metro Boston and its sister papers in New York and Philadelphia have been sold to a newly formed company.

In Boston, the situation is complicated by the fact that the New York Times Co. owns 49 percent. Recently I argued that the Times Co.-owned Boston Globe should use Metro to promote more vigorously the paid print edition and Boston.com.

It’s possible that this deal will pave the way for that. But the Times Co. is still stuck with just enough of Metro Boston not to have a say over what goes into it. (Via Romenesko.)

Show us the money (II)

Boston Globe columnist Maggie Jackson yesterday gave us a feel-good story about families who are enjoying all kinds of togetherness now that they’ve had to downsize their careers and get by on less money than it costs to drive through the tollbooths on the Tobin Bridge every day. Jackson’s lead example: the Ayanna family of Somerville, mom, dad and two kids making it on $35,000 a year.

Well, now we know that they’re not making it, and that all is not the bliss that Jackson describes. We can thank Amiri Ayanna, who has been open enough about her family’s situation to leave a series of comments here about life since her husband, Ariel, was laid off from his $170,000-a-year job as a corporate lawyer. To wit:

  • The Ayannas pay $1,850 a month for the mortgage on their Somerville condo. But they are trying to negotiate that down, and may soon be forced to move into a studio apartment — with a 5-year-old boy and a baby.
  • Jackson wrote that Ariel Ayanna is “considering becoming a stay-at-home dad for a year.” Not true, says Amiri: “I wanted to clear up one other inaccuracy stated in the Boston Globe article: Ariel is enjoying his family time now, out of necessity, but is very actively and strenuously looking for work, since, as I stated, our financial situation is fairly tenuous.”
  • Amiri also has this to say: “I agree our finances were painted way too rosily by this article (many things were selectively excluded from the lengthy interviews with both myself and my spouse, and our family was used as a story ‘hook’ because we were willing to disclose specific dollar numbers, I think).”

What seems clear is that the Ayannas are doing a lot better on $35,000 than most of us would — but that it’s not their choice, and that Jackson massaged their situation to fit a pre-existing template. The result: a story that is accurate, for the most part, but that is fundamentally not true.

If Jackson and/or the Globe would like to respond, I will, of course, post it immediately.

Show us the money

There has got to be something missing [or maybe not? see below] from Maggie Jackson’s account of the Ayanna family in today’s Boston Globe. She reports that the Ariel and Amiri Ayanna and their two young kids are living in Somerville “on $35,000 a year in unemployment and savings” now that Ariel has lost his job as a $170,000-a-year corporate lawyer.

Jackson writes:

[T]he job loss had some unintended perks: The family was able to save money — and spend more time together — on a two-week camping trip to attend a cousin’s Texas wedding. And Ariel, who is considering becoming a stay-at-home dad for a year, is around more often to cook, practice violin with their 5-year-old son, and play with their 9-month-old son.

“It’s hard to slow down. It’s hard to step back,” says Amiri Ayanna, who plans to begin a master’s degree program at Harvard Divinity School this summer. But “it’s a blessing in disguise.”

Well, fine. But don’t you think there’s something awfully suspicious about that $35,000-a-year figure? We’re not told if the Ayannas rent or own. But Somerville is a high-cost community. If they were somehow able to get away with paying just $1,500 a month in rent or mortgage payments, then they’ve only got $17,000 left for everything else — heat, electricity, food and (unless he’s teaching himself) violin lessons for the 5-year-old. Their trip to Texas — which they write about on their blog — may have been cheap, but it surely wasn’t free.

Either there’s a large pile of money lurking in the background or the Ayannas are truly miracle-workers. But Jackson leaves us in the dark. Given how many people are struggling these days, it’s pretty cavalier to suggest, on the basis of no evidence, that we could all live like the Ayannas if we were only willing to eat at home more often.

Update: Amiri Ayanna checks in, and says it’s all legit. Hard to see how they make the numbers work, but there you go.

A tale of intrigue and resentment

It’s hard to imagine that members of the Boston Newspaper Guild won’t approve the deal offered by New York Times Co. management to keep the Boston Globe alive. But in today’s Boston Herald, Jessica Heslam tells a tale of intrigue and resentment so byzantine that it makes you wonder. Let’s just say this is unlikely to be a slam dunk.

Here’s the best part: among other things, some Guild members are upset that their leaders have been more forthcoming with their public-relations firm, O’Neill and Associates, than with the rank-and-file. And who speaks up on behalf of O’Neill? Cosmo Macero, former business editor of the Herald. Talk about what goes around.

The major parameters of the deal, according to Heslam’s piece and to Rob Gavin and Keith O’Brien’s story in the Globe, amount to an approximately 10 percent wage cut (8.3 percent plus five days of unpaid furlough) and an end to lifetime job guarantees for about 190 Guild members. As O’Brien and Steve Syre observe, the package could make the Globe more attractive to potential buyers.

As for the pain that lies ahead, the Herald’s Jay Fitzgerald takes a look at the San Francisco Chronicle, a paper similar to the Globe in circulation. Fitzgerald writes that the Chronicle is “now cutting about 150 jobs within its largest union alone, less than two months after it agreed to major contract revisions.”

A half-century of bad blood

Earlier today the Boston Globe posted a 1982 article about the day that Rupert Murdoch saved the Boston Herald. Interestingly, the story, by David Wessel, now economics editor for Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, gets into precisely why some old-timers at the Herald, like Joe Fitzgerald, remain angry at the Globe more than 26 years later.

As you will see, in the midst of Murdoch’s efforts to buy what was then the Herald American from Hearst, Globe publisher William Taylor sent a telegram to unions at the Herald informing them that any concessions they granted to Murdoch would have to be granted to the Globe as well. The move was seen at the time as an attempt by the Globe to nix the deal and hasten the Herald American to its grave, though Taylor denied that was his intent.

Murdoch threatened to file a lawsuit against the Globe charging the paper with violating antitrust laws, but was also quoted as saying: “I might have done the same thing in their circumstance.”

For those interested in tracing the feud back even farther, let’s not forget that the Herald American was formed as a result of the Globe’s journalistic and extra-journalistic efforts to persuade the Federal Communications Commission to strip the Boston Herald Traveler of its television and radio licenses, which the Herald held despite the FCC’s ban on cross-ownership.

The FCC ruled against the Herald Traveler in 1972, and the paper was acquired by Hearst’s Record American.

And while we’re at it, let’s go back to the 1950s, following the death of the once-dominant Boston Post. As recounted in the late J. Anthony Lukas’ masterpiece, “Common Ground,” then-Herald publisher Robert “Beanie” Choate suggested a merger with the Globe. When Globe publisher Davis Taylor turned him down, Choate reportedly told him: “You fellows are stubborn. Worse than that, you’re arrogant. You better listen to us or we’ll teach you a lesson. I’m going to get Channel 5, and with my television revenues I’ll put you out of business.”

Choate got his license — apparently with the help of Joseph Kennedy, whose son Ted, ironically, tried to put the Herald out of business in 1988 by forcing Murdoch to give up either the Herald or Channel 25. Murdoch chose to keep the Herald and sell Channel 25, although several years later he sold the Herald to longtime protégé Pat Purcell and repurchased Channel 25.

So there you have it: a half-century of bad blood between the Globe and the Herald.

Paulson versus Warsh

Boston Globe religion reporter Michael Paulson responds to the David Warsh piece I linked to yesterday, and takes umbrage with Warsh’s suggestion that the Globe hurt itself with readers by pursuing the pedophile-priest story so vigorously.

Let’s assume for a moment that Warsh is right, although I don’t think he is. Isn’t a good newspaper supposed to ignore public opinion in pursuing an important story? Warsh’s piece is smart and well-informed, but I do disagree with him about that.

It’s alive

In what can only be described as great news for the city and the region, the New York Times Co. and the Boston Newspaper Guild have reached an agreement, ending an increasingly tense and ugly standoff over the future of Boston’s largest and most important news organization.

The Globe’s Rob Gavin and Keith O’Brien report on the deal here; the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam and Christine McConville’s story is here. Not many details yet, but it sounds like the Guild agreed to take significant pay cuts (though not the 23 percent cuts that were being bandied about yesterday), and to yield at least to some extent on those lifetime job guarantees.

If you want to know what’s happening at the Globe, just read my predictions and go with the opposite. After the Times Co. made it clear earlier this week that closure of the paper was at least 60 days away, I was certain that the two sides would break off talks for a while. Instead, they got it done.

There seems little doubt, though, that the $20 million in union givebacks is just the beginning. Guild president Dan Totten has warned his members that management is hinting at a massive round of layoffs. And the easing of lifetime job guarantees, the Globe notes, could clear the way for a sale of the paper, as no prospective owner wanted to take on the task of revitalizing the Globe without maximum flexibility.

In the long run, I suspect that the major metropolitan daily is a doomed relic of the Industrial Age. Still, I’d like to think papers like the Globe can survive another five to 10 years as we transition to whatever’s next. The Globe produces the lion’s share of public-interest journalism and investigative reporting in Greater Boston. The challenge will be to preserve that function with a much smaller staff — keeping in mind that the newsroom has already shrunk from 550 to 330 full-timers in recent years.

In today’s Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby challenges those who believe the Globe and papers like it are being punished for their liberal bias. Jacoby’s premise is based on the common-sense observation that the Globe isn’t actually losing readers. There’s an apples-and-oranges quality to to readership numbers. But there’s a strong case to be made that when you factor in online readers, the Globe is reaching as many people as it ever has, regardless of its plummeting print circulation.

George Snell offers some worthwhile thoughts on what’s next for the Globe. He has correctly identified the biggest challenge: How can the Globe reinvent itself while simultaneously slashing its news coverage? It’s already cut much of its international and national reporting and closed its foreign bureaus. In order to thrive as a great local paper, it’s got to offer compelling local coverage. Will it be able to continue doing that?

Finally, Herald columnist Joe Fitzgerald sanctimoniously tells us why he’s got no problem with the Herald’s snarky comments on the Globe’s meltdown. He says the Globe was mean to the Herald 27 years ago, when Rupert Murdoch saved the tabloid from what had seemed like certain death.

Good grief. Talk about a long, long, long memory. Howie Carr wasn’t around in 1982. Neither was current Herald owner Pat Purcell. The Herald American, as it was then called, was being mismanaged into extinction by Hearst. For that matter, the Globe was under different ownership, too.

I guess this is why they say the two favorite sports in Boston are politics and revenge.