Tag: Boston Globe

A more optimistic take on the Times Co.

No one doubts that the New York Times Co. is in financial trouble, or that the Times as we know it will someday cease to exist.

But Rick Edmonds, who analyzes the news business for the Poynter Institute, has done a great job of demonstrating that there’s no there there in an attention-grabbing piece in the Atlantic arguing that the Times Co. is rapidly running out of money — and, in a worst-case scenario, could shut down as early as this May.

The Atlantic article, by Michael Hirschorn, is pegged to the writings of financial analyst Henry Blodget, who has been sounding the alarm about the Times Co.’s cash woes for some time now. Hirschorn says even the drastic measures that the Sulzbergers might consider could fall short of being enough: selling their share of the Red Sox (already under way, supposedly), selling About.com (even though it’s one of the few bright spots in their portfolio), even shutting down the Boston Globe.

But Edmonds carefully walks us through the numbers, demonstrating that the payment-due deadline the Times Co. faces in May is not at all what Hirschorn seems to think it is. Edmonds writes:

Long story short, the company will be able to meet the May deadline. And corporate finance is not like an auto loan, in which the repo man comes if you miss a few payments…. [C]reditors typically renegotiate the terms — as they have done to much sicklier newspaper companies than the New York Times Co.

Edmonds also shows that Hirschorn’s comparison of print and online readers isn’t just “not apples-to-apples,” as Hirschorn himself acknowledges, but more in the nature of apples to cinder blocks. In other words, Hirschorn doesn’t even come close.

There are three problems with the newspaper business right now: (1) the Internet is destroying its business model; (2) too many newspaper companies took on way too much debt in building their empires; and (3) the worst recession since the early 1980s, if not the ’30s, is wiping out the advertising that Craigslist didn’t already grab.

Right now, it’s the recession and the debt that are taking the biggest toll on the business; without those, newspapers might have some hope of making a downsized but successful transition to online.

The Times Co. took a couple of small but important steps this week, unrolling lucrative front-page ads in the Times and announcing that it will soon do the same in the Globe. The future of legacy media is going to look very different from what we’re all accustomed to, as Edmonds himself acknowledges. But the Times Co. should be able to make it through the recession. After that, we’ll see.

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

Why the Times’ front-page ads don’t matter

Three reasons why the New York Times’ decision to sell display ads on its front page is nothing to get excited about:

1. The Times’ most important front page is the home page of NYTimes.com, which, like nearly all news Web sites, has included advertising from the beginning. In a world in which the Web is your primary delivery vehicle, it’s silly to pretend there’s anything sacrosanct about print.

2. Back in newspapers’ heyday, the Times was one of the few quality papers to run front-page ads at all. The reason we’re all saying that the Times is now selling display ads on page one is that it’s always run classifieds. Remember those ads reminding Jewish women to light candles for Shabbat?

3. The Times actually held out longer than many. As Richard Pérez-Peña notes, a number of excellent national papers have been publishing front-page ads for a while, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times. Each of those papers has its own pathologies, but none is any more troubled than the New York Times is these days.

If front-page ads can help to offset newspapers’ mounting losses, then I’m fine with it. No doubt we can expect ads on the front of the Times Co.-owned Boston Globe in the near future.

Peering through the blue murk

The Boston Herald today tries to knock down yesterday’s Boston Globe story reporting that as many as 200 Boston police officers could be laid off because of the recession-driven budget meltdown. But it’s difficult to know exactly what is going on.

For instance, the Herald’s Jessica Van Sack writes that an aide to “enraged” (isn’t it ever thus?) Boston Mayor Tom Menino said, “It won’t be 200 police officers.” Well, what about 150? Not exactly reassuring.

For that matter, the online headline over Van Sack’s story goes quite a bit farther than her own carefully worded story: “Riled mayor Thomas M. Menino: Reports of cop layoffs untrue.” The cover line, “Menino vows to spare cops from budget ax,” strikes me as unsupported by Van Sack’s reporting as well.

Given the murk, it’s worth looking at what named sources have said. The Globe’s Donovan Slack and Maria Cramer yesterday cited “two officials” in their report that “as many as 200” officers could lose their jobs. It’s hard to know what to make of that, given that we don’t know who the “two officials” are.

But they also quote Menino spokeswoman Dot Joyce as saying, “There is nothing official at this point, and it is way too premature to determine the impact on any department, including the Boston Police Department.” And Police Commissioner Ed Davis weighs in with this: “Everyone knows that if your budget is 90 percent personnel and you sustain deep cuts, then personnel would be on the table. At this point in time, it’s not something that I can comment on, because I don’t know what those numbers are going to be.”

I take Joyce’s and Davis’ comments as essentially confirming the idea that the two officials with whom the Globe spoke are knowledgeable, and that they are indeed throwing around the 200 number as a worst-case scenario, if nothing else.

Now let’s take a look at what’s on the record in Van Sack’s Herald story today. Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, tells her, “The mayor has assured me that while there are problems, there are no planned layoffs.” OK. But I don’t think anyone said there were at this point.

Joyce and Davis also pop up in the Herald story, and what they have to say is telling as well. Davis: “Somebody put this out to try to raise fear.” No doubt about it — it smacks of a political tactic. But does that mean it’s not true?

Joyce’s quote to the Herald is even more equivocal: “Any numbers are irresponsible to put out at this time, seeing as we have no idea what’s gonna happen with the state. There’s lots of employees at the Police Department. The mayor has made it clear that protecting the service to residents as much as possible is his first priority.”

Finally, the Globe’s Cramer today quotes an e-mail Davis sent out within his department following yesterday’s story: “At this time I want to be clear that no decision has been made to proceed with layoffs. Any suggestion to the contrary is premature.” That doesn’t contradict the Globe’s report that as many as 200 officers could lose their jobs, either.

So what is going on? It’s hard to say, but here’s one likely possibility. Two officials knowledgeable about discussions taking place at City Hall leaked to the Globe the possibility that as many as 200 police officers might face layoffs. More than anything, the leak was aimed at scaring Gov. Deval Patrick into ensuring sufficient local aid so that such cuts don’t have to be made.

Menino is angry — that’s a given. What we don’t know is if 1) he is genuinely angry because he didn’t want the layoff numbers to be leaked, at least not yet; 2) he is genuinely angry because the Globe’s emphasis on layoffs, rather than on Patrick’s options, puts more pressure on City Hall than he had intended; or 3) he is pretending to be angry but is actually pleased that he succeeded in floating this frightening trial balloon.

Because officials appear to be dialing back, that gives the Herald the opportunity to claim that the Globe got it wrong. The problem is that what officials are actually saying, on the record, does not contradict the notion that as many as 200 officers could be laid off if more money can’t be found.

Why GateHouse should settle its suit

In my latest for the Guardian, I attempt to break down the issues in the case of GateHouse Media v. New York Times Co. to their essentials — and urge that the two sides settle their differences lest the future of online journalism be harmed.

The Globe’s new op-ed columnist

I’ve been tied up with family business the past few days, so it didn’t immediately register when — out of the corner of my eye — I saw my friend the Outraged Liberal fulminating over something outrageous he’d spotted in yesterday’s Boston Globe.

I backtracked this morning. Sure enough, the Globe ran an op-ed piece by Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was responsible for the terrorist killings of 271 people over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. The Globe now presumes that Gaddafi may instruct us on how best to engage with Russia. Unbelievable.

Mr. O.L. writes that “it would be fascinating to know how this piece wound up in the Globe. No offense, but how many other newspapers rejected it? Who is representing Gaddafi? How much is the author being paid?”

In the New Republic, James Kirchick unloads thusly:

[G]iving shrinking editorial real estate to a dictator so that he may offer his thoughts on a subject that doesn’t even remotely effect the national interests of his country is a new low, not just for the general unseemliness of the exercise, but because of the more traditional and unremarkable concerns of journalistic responsibility. If Gaddafi were willing to write a signed op-ed revealing something new about Lockerbie, it would certainly be newsworthy, and the Globe would have obtained a genuine scoop in publishing it. But the thoughts of the Leader and Guide of the First of September Great Revolution of the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya about Russia are not only irrelevant, they also happen to be just plain unoriginal and uninteresting.

If the Globe still had an ombudsman, perhaps he or she could root around and tell us how this happened. Kirchick seems to think it was a deliberate act, but my own view is that you rarely go wrong in attributing such things to more mundane human frailties — laziness, stupidity or, given the time of year, vacations.

In any case, we deserve an explanation. It will be interesting to see if one is forthcoming.

Photo (cc) by Amanda Slater and republished here under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

Monday morning odds and ends

I don’t plan to do much blogging this week, but I do want to call your attention to a few items:

  • Chuck Tanowitz and Adam Reilly have both written sharp analyses of GateHouse Media’s lawsuit against the New York Times Co. I think Reilly is on the mark with his observation that the Globe, through its Boston.com Your Town sites, is going beyond mere linking and is trying to establish itself as a substitute for GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites, while using GateHouse’s content.
  • Joe Dwinell of the Boston Herald has also weighed in with a good item [link now fixed] on the suit. I do disagree with his characterization of this as “David vs. Goliath.” Both GateHouse and the Times Co. are large, publicly traded media companies that are fighting for their financial lives. Call this Wounded Goliath I vs. Wounded Goliath II.
  • Sean Polay, a top Internet guy for Rupert Murdoch’s Ottaway Newspapers (including the Cape Cod Times and the Standard-Times of New Bedford), says he wouldn’t mind at all if Boston.com linked to Ottaway content. Interesting, given that Herald publisher Pat Purcell recently accepted Murdoch’s offer to run the Ottaway papers.

Finally, a source has provided me with a copy of Barclays’ most recent report on the New York Times Co., the one that placed the value of the Globe at a mind-bogglingly low $20 million. I have posted it (PDF), so you can have a look for yourself. Perhaps a few gimlet-eyed Media Nation readers can find some gold.

I’m dubious. As you will see, Barclays values the Globe at somewhere between $12 million and $20 million — lower than the value of the “Worchester Papers,” which it places at somewhere between $15 million and $25 million. That can’t be right.

And, come on — the “Worchester Papers”? Does someone at Barclays think the Worcester Telegram & Gazette are two different papers?

What happens to the Globe and NESN?

No doubt many folks at the Boston Globe are breathing a sigh of relief at the news that its corporate parent, the New York Times Co., plans to unload its 17.5 percent stake in the Red Sox. The conflicts of interest have been many — not over game stories, but over various Red Sox business ventures the Globe has had to cover over the years.

But hold on. I thought the main reason the Times Co. made this investment was because of the Sox’ 80 percent ownership of New England Sports Network. Globe sportswriters have been all over NESN, and some — especially Bob Ryan — have been quite good.

I imagine NESN would still want Globe people on the air. But doesn’t this mean the end of Globe exclusivity? I suppose NESN and the Globe could sign some sort of agreement, but that’s not the same as ownership.

Among other things, it strikes me that Sean McAdam, formerly of the Providence Journal and now of the Boston Herald, is an accomplished on-air performer, and would fit right in at NESN.

More: Adam Reilly wonders the same thing that I did when I first read the story: Is the Globe really worth just $20 million? I think it’s a typo. This suggests the Globe is worth $120 million. Of course, that’s shocking enough, given that the Times Co. bought the Globe for $1.1 billion back in 1993.

More resources on the GateHouse case

Soon it will be Christmas Eve in Media Nation, so I don’t want to get too bogged down with blogging today. But I do want to call your attention to the excellent work the Citizen Media Center is doing on the matter of GateHouse Media’s lawsuit against the New York Times Co.

First, there is Citizen Media founder Dan Gillmor’s nuanced take. (Is Jeff Jarvis going to call his ally Gillmor “clueless”? It’s time for Mr. Buzz Machine to settle down with a nice cup of decaf and take another look at this.) Next, the Citizen Media Law Project offers an analysis of GateHouse’s legal claims. The center is also aggregating information about the case as it unfolds. Indispensible stuff.

Yesterday U.S. District Court Judge William Young rejected GateHouse’s request for a temporary restraining order, which would have prevented the Times Co.’s Boston.com from linking to GateHouse content immediately. (GateHouse story here; Boston Globe story here.)

A trial date has been set for Jan. 5, which seems pretty aggressive, given that Media Nation hears the Times Co. has been given a deadline of Jan. 6 to respond to GateHouse’s complaint. In all likelihood, the Jan. 5 session will just be a chance for everyone to exchange business cards and New Year’s greetings before getting down to work.

How the GateHouse suit looks from both sides

I don’t want to prejudge the lawsuit GateHouse Media filed against the New York Times Co., which owns the Boston Globe and Boston.com, except to say it’s a fascinating case that will be watched closely by everyone in the news business.

There’s a lot that cuts both ways. Here’s how I think it looks from the Times Co.’s point of view.

By putting together a series of Boston.com Your Town sites that link to content in the Boston Globe, independent blogs and other newspapers, including GateHouse papers, the Times Co. is doing exactly what new-media experts are advocating. Currently there are three, in Newton, Needham and Waltham. But Boston.com’s Bob Kempf has said the goal is to roll out 120 Your Town sites throughout Eastern Massachusetts.

Rather than treating your news site like a walled community, the idea is to offer intelligent aggregation, linking not just to your own content but to that of other news organizations as well. An example of a mainstream news organization doing this is the Washington Post with its Political Browser, which offers a roundup of what its editors believe is the best political coverage online, regardless of whether it resides on the Post’s servers.

Act as a trusted guide, so this thinking goes, and readers will reward you by coming back, even though you keep sending them to other sites. And as for the news organizations to which you’re linking, it’s a win-win for them, since they’re receiving more traffic than they otherwise would.

Then there’s how this looks if you’re, say, Kirk Davis, the president of GateHouse Media New England.

From Davis’ point of view, what Your Town is doing is not offering intelligent aggregation; it’s simply scraping headlines and ledes off GateHouse’s Wicked Local sites and presenting them as Boston.com’s own news.

Even if Your Town drives traffic to individual GateHouse stories, it is destroying the value of the Wicked Local home pages — including those in Newton, Needham and Waltham. There are GateHouse papers in some 125 communities in Eastern Massachusetts, and the prospect is that Your Town and Wicked Local will be going head to head in each one.

Yes, Boston.com gives credit to the GateHouse papers, and yes, you have to click through to read the stories. But in many cases you don’t have to read the stories to get the gist of it. This is not a novel proposition — earlier this year, the Associated Press went after bloggers for reproducing its headlines and ledes, arguing that represented most of the value of its news stories.

By offering what copyright lawyers refer to as the “substantiality” — that is, the best and most marketable part — of GateHouse’s stories, Boston.com, GateHouse charges, is not complying with the notion of “fair use,” which defines the circumstances under which a copyright-holder’s work can be re-used without permission.

And, of course, both the Times Co. and GateHouse are trying to sell advertising. I’ve seen several observers attempt to draw parallels to Google News. But you will not find any ads on Google News. That doesn’t necessarily solve the fair-use problem; to oversimplify, the test is whether the copyright-holder is being hurt, not whether those re-using the content are making money. But it does make a difference. (And it definitely makes a difference with GateHouse, since it publishes its content under a non-commercial Creative Commons license.)

In this case, both the Your Town and Wicked Local sites feature local advertising, which, ultimately, is what this dispute is all about.

Here’s a round-up of some of the latest developments.

  • The Recovering Journalist, Mark Potts, has no sympathy for GateHouse’s position, and speculates that “a dinosaur or two in GateHouse management” are behind the lawsuit. Potts is entitled to his opinion, but his speculation is wrong — it’s not the dinosaurs. Or at least it’s not just the dinosaurs.
  • I’m quoted in accounts this morning by Russell Contreras of the Associated Press (formerly of the Globe) and Christine McConville of the Boston Herald.
  • More coverage by GateHouse News Service reporter Neal Simpson and by David Kaplan of PaidContent.org.
  • Jeff Jarvis jerks his knee in such a predictable manner that he risks dislocation.
  • At Boston Daily, Paul Flannery offers some smart thoughts.
  • Yesterday I posted GateHouse’s complaint (PDF). This morning I’ve added an affidavit (PDF) filed by Greg Reibman, editor-in-chief of GateHouse’s papers in Greater Boston. I look forward to posting the Times Co.’s response as well.

Times Co. responds to GateHouse lawsuit

The New York Times Co. has responded to the GateHouse lawsuit. Boston Globe reporter Todd Wallack quotes Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis:

Far from being illegal or improper, this practice of linking to sites is common and is familiar to anyone who has searched the Web. It is fair and benefits both Web users and the originating site.

This is going to be fascinating to watch.