Boston Phoenix – Page 13

Adam Reilly is leaving the Phoenix

My friend and former (and future!) colleague Adam Reilly is leaving the Boston Phoenix to become an associate producer for “Greater Boston,” at WGBH-TV (Channels 2 and 44).

Adam has ably handled the media beat since 2006, writing the “Don’t Quote Me” column and the media blog. Before that, he’d served as the paper’s political columnist.

Since the late 1980s, just three people have covered the media for the Phoenix — Mark Jurkowitz, now associate director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington; yours truly; Mark again; and then Adam. For a press critic, it’s one of just a handful of jobs in the country where you really get a chance to make a difference. No doubt a long line of applicants will form outside the Phoenix’s door.

Good luck and best wishes to Adam, a transplant from Minnesota who’s managed the difficult trick of establishing himself as a true Bostonian.

A big night for my old friends at the Phoenix

This past Saturday, Mrs. Media Nation and I had a great time spending the evening with old friends from the Boston Phoenix at the New England Newspaper & Press Association awards dinner. I was there because Harvey Silverglate and I had been nominated in the right-to-know reporting category for the 2009 Muzzle Awards; we ended up taking second place.

Overall, the Phoenix cleaned up. I was especially pleased to see Mike Miliard win Journalist of the Year, one year after Phoenix political columnist David Bernstein took the honor. There were so many first-place awards that I will just point to this rather than try to list them all. If I may, I’ll just single out one other — Kristen Goodfriend, who won first place in design, and who always makes all of us look good in print.

You can find all the NENPA winners here.

The 12th annual Muzzle Awards

The Phoenix Muzzle Awards, my annual round-up of New England violators of free speech and personal liberties, is online now, accompanied by Harvey Silverglate’s sidebar of outrages against freedom of expression in academia.

I’ll be on “NightSide with Dan Rea,” on WBZ Radio (AM 1030), tomorrow at 9 p.m. to talk about the Muzzles and maybe a little politics. Hope you’ll tune in.

A primer in getting to “no”

In this week’s Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly observes that New York Times Co. executives mangled things with the Boston Globe and the Newspaper Guild so thoroughly that you’re left wondering if a “no” vote was what they wanted all along.

I’ve been wondering the same thing, though for the life of me I can’t see how this benefits the Sulzbergers. Now that they’ve made it official that they want to sell the Globe, the last thing they need is an unfair-labor case before the National Labor Relations Board, which could drag on for months.

Over at the Beat the Press blog, former Globe staffer Ralph Ranalli explains how Globe publisher Steve Ainsley and Times Co. management snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

More on GateHouse pay cuts

GateHouse’s Patriot Ledger of Quincy has posted an admirably straightforward story about what’s going on inside the ailing newspaper chain. The article, by Jon Chesto, describes the 7.75 percent pay cut announced by GateHouse New England chief executive Rick Daniels as “temporary.” The goal, Chesto writes, is to save $2.5 million this year.

Chesto explains:

The size of the pay reduction will vary depending on an employee’s salary, ranging from 7 percent up to just under 15 percent for the company’s top earners.

The average pay cut would be 7.75 percent. If the reduction lasts through the end of 2009, it would have the effect of an average pay cut of 4.5 percent for the full year. They will take effect next week except at the chain’s three [not two, as I wrote earlier] unionized papers: the Ledger, the Enterprise of Brockton and the Herald News of Fall River.

We also learn more about the downsizing that’s taken place recently. According to Chesto, “GateHouse cut its New England work force by about 10.5 percent since the start of the year through a mix of layoffs, voluntary buyouts, attrition and work-week reductions. After the latest round of job cuts, GateHouse Media New England will have the equivalent of more than 1,100 full-time employees.”

That amounts to a bit more than 100 positions lost since the beginning of the year.

This is miserable news if you’re a GateHouse employee. But it’s encouraging that Daniels has committed himself to reversing the pay cuts if and when the advertising market recovers. I’m also impressed that GateHouse — like my friends at the Boston Phoenix — is cutting higher-paid employees by a larger percentage than those at the bottom of the pay scale.

Some background on Rhode Island’s A.G.

Hey, Joe Dwinell: You should see what people talk about on the phone. Sex, drugs — all manner of illegal activity. Maybe it’s time we brought Verizon to heel, eh?

My friend and former employer Stephen Mindich, publisher of the Phoenix newspapers, is doing a perfectly fine job of defending himself. I just thought I’d point out that Rhode Island attorney general Patrick Lynch, who wants to crack down on adult advertising on Craigslist and in the Phoenix following a recent murder linked to a Craigslist ad, was the proud recipient of a 2004 Phoenix Muzzle Award.

In brief, here’s what happened: a man died in the custody of the North Kingstown police. Local officials refused to release public records pertaining to the case. And Lynch, whose duties include enforcing the state’s open-records law, not only refused to order the release of those records, but coached local authorities on how to keep them private.

Here’s what Providence Journal columnist Edward Achorn wrote at the time about Lynch’s behavior:

He would have served the public much better had he acted immediately to get the facts out, and let the investigation proceed. It is hard to see and no one has explained how sharing basic information with citizens would have impeded such an investigation. And it presents a clear conflict for the attorney general to join police in keeping records secret, when he is the government official charged with enforcing the Open Records Law.

With regard to Craigslist and the Phoenix, Lynch should concentrate on punishing illegal behavior, not speech. Prostitution and the dangers accompanying it, after all, have been with us forever.

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.

More on the Phoenix cuts

I had not realized until yesterday that the two Boston Phoenix editorial staff members who’d lost their jobs were senior managing editor Clif Garboden and theater critic Carolyn Clay. The Boston Globe reports on their departures today.

Clif and Carolyn are among the most senior members of the Phoenix staff, valued colleagues and respected by everyone. The Phoenix is not going to be the same without them. Unfortunately, this stands as further evidence of just how desperate the state of the newspaper business is these days.

Cutbacks announced at the Phoenix

Adam Reilly provides the details of cutbacks at the Phoenix newspapers and related media properties — six layoffs (two in editorial), and some pretty significant salary cuts. According to a memo from Stephen Mindich, the chairman, CEO and publisher, the larger salary cuts are reserved for higher-paid employees, which is the way a company ought to be run. (Mindich and Reilly seem to be saying two different things about the percentages, but there may be a nuance that I’m missing.)

Having worked at the Phoenix for more than 14 years, I know how bad Mindich must feel about this. The man is simply the most talented and dogged media executive in Boston, having created the Phoenix, WFNX Radio (101.7 FM) and several other properties literally out of nothing starting in 1966. In addition, he is a person of great integrity and loyalty.

Mindich attributes the Phoenix’s problems almost entirely to the recession, and predicts a recovery down the road, writing:

Like so many other companies in and out of the media business, we’re in a tough spot. But I have every faith in the future. I have no doubt that we have the collective ability to out think our competition and out last these challenging circumstances. Companies that succeed today will be in an extraordinary position tomorrow; we intend and expect to be one of those companies.

Media Nation extends its best wishes to everyone at the Phoenix.