Tag: John Henry

The Boston Globe is headed for another round of buyouts

The Boston Globe is once again downsizing its newsroom, according to an email sent to the staff from editor Brian McGrory earlier this morning and obtained by Media Nation.

We’ll have to see how this plays out. But one intriguing theme is the idea that this comes at what McGrory calls “an inflection point.” The newsroom and business operations will be moving downtown early next year, a new printing plant is coming online in Taunton, and the “reinvention effort” McGrory announced a few weeks ago will soon yield results.

The optimistic spin would seem to be that the Globe of the future will soon be in place, and that if everything works according to plan, there should be no further need for cuts. A pessimist might observe that the newspaper business continues to shrink. But let’s hope owner John Henry and company can overcome the prevailing trend.

McGrory’s email:

Hey all,

Yet again in the world’s worst-kept secret category, we plan to put another buyout on the table, probably by the end of this week. These things aren’t really meant to be a secret. They just take a while to come together, despite our vast experience with them.

There’s no complicated math involved. There’ll be two weeks for every year of service, with the package capped at a year’s pay. Everyone in the newsroom will get an offer. The company reserves the right, as with all prior buyouts, to reject anyone who puts in for it.

To the obvious question of why, as in, why again, why so soon after the prior buyout of last autumn, the answer is pretty straightforward: The Globe’s numbers aren’t as good as our words (or photos, videos, and graphics). So we need to take down costs across the company, an exercise that virtually all other news organizations in the nation, legacy and digital-only, are focused on right now. Other parts of this building are doing this as well.

This particular buyout is being offered as the Globe arrives at an inflection point, which is why I’m hopeful that it will work well for a portion of our room.

First, we’re moving downtown come January 1. While this is great for the organization, on a personal level, commutes will be different, rituals disrupted, and parking will no longer be free and easy. Second, we’re undertaking a reinvention initiative that will in all likelihood lead to a profoundly different approach to a good part of our work. Everybody in this room should be prepared for their jobs to change in ways that may be significant. Change is as exhausting as it is exhilarating, and some people have had enough. We respect that, and are offering this enticement now so we can all be prepared going forward. To be very clear here: This will be the last buyout before the move downtown.

For those who plan to stay, please know this: There are fascinating times ahead. We can curse the economic problems that have beset the entire industry, and guilty as charged: I’ve done more than enough of that myself. But at the same time, we can and should feel privileged to be part of any solutions. Between a new printing facility in Taunton that will produce papers far sharper than anything in our history, to new offices downtown that will put us in the flow of this city, to the surge in readership on bg.com, the success in digital subscriptions, and the consistently amazing journalism that you produce day after day in the face of ferocious industry forces, there’s not a newsroom in this nation better positioned to succeed than ours. None of it is easy. All of it is vital – and noble. We, meaning you, can do this. You already are.

I’ll be in the Winship Room today at 11, 2, and 6 to talk a bit more, take your questions, and hear what’s on your mind.

Brian

Millionaires, billionaires, and the future of newspapers

tumblr_static_policycast_logoHard to believe, but my time as a Joan Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School will be ending soon. Recently I recorded an HKS PolicyCast podcast under the expert guidance of host Matt Cadwallader. We talked about my research regarding wealthy newspaper owners and whether the innovations they’ve introduced may show the way for others. I hope you’ll give it a listen.

As I’ve written before, I’m working on a book that will largely be about three such owners—Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who bought the Washington Post in 2013; Red Sox principal owner John Henry, who announced he would purchase the Boston Globe just three days before Bezos made his move; and greeting-card executive Aaron Kushner, whose time as publisher of the Orange County Register ended in 2015, but whose print-centric approach made him perhaps the most closely watched newspaper owner of 2012-’13.

Bezos and the Post will be the subject of the paper I’m writing for Shorenstein, so—in case any of you folks at the Globe were wondering—I’ve suspended my reporting on the Globe for the time being. I’ll be back.

Globe editor McGrory: It’s time to rethink everything we do

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Brian McGrory. Photo (cc) by the Newton Free Library.

A copy of Boston Globe editor Brian McGrory’s latest newsroom memo just wafted through an open window here at Media Nation. And it’s a doozy—an invitation to rethink how the Globe newsroom does just about everything, from the way beats are structured, to how many days the paper should appear in print, to how best to use technology.

“To help shape the discussion,” McGrory writes, “consider this question: If a wealthy individual was to give us funding to launch a news organization designed to take on The Boston Globe, what would it look like?” Needless to say, the Globe itself is already owned by a wealthy individual—John Henry, a financier who is the principal owner of the Red Sox.

Last fall I asked McGrory if the redesigned, thinner Saturday print edition was a prelude to cutting back on the number of print days. At that time he said no, but added, “We’re constantly thinking and rethinking this stuff.” Many newspaper industry observers believe it’s inevitable that daily papers will eventually move to a weekend print edition—where most of the advertising appears—supplemented by digital the rest of the week.

The conversation is being facilitated by three outside consultants, Tom Rosenstiel and Jeff Sonderman of the American Press Institute and Marty Kaiser, the former editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

So let’s get right to it:

Hey all,

It’s time to bring everyone up to date on a series of conversations I’ve initiated among senior editors over the past couple of months, conversations intended to lay the groundwork for a no-sacred-cows analysis of our newsroom and what the Globe should look like in the future. It’s also time to get the room fully involved in the process.

You know it as I know it: The Globe, like every other major legacy news organization, has faced what have proven to be irreversible revenue declines. The revenue funds our journalism. The declines have mandated significant cuts over the past dozen years.

There’s far too much good that goes on at this organization on a moment-by-moment basis to allow ourselves to be consumed by what’s wrong with the industry. But we can’t ignore hard realities, either, or simply wish them away. My own strong preference is to somehow shed the annual reduction exercise that seems increasingly inevitable here and everywhere. So I’ve asked senior editors to think about how we, at the very least, might get ahead of the declines, and in the best case, work to slow or even halt them. To help shape the discussion, consider this question: If a wealthy individual was to give us funding to launch a news organization designed to take on The Boston Globe, what would it look like?

There are important issues to raise and explore in what I’ll call a reinvention initiative: Do we have the right technology? Do we train staff in the right way? Should we remain in the current print format that we have now, same size, same sections? Do we have the right departments? Is our beat structure outdated? How can our work flows improve? Do we have too many of XX and not enough Ys? Should we publish seven days a week? Do print and digital relate in the right ways?

The questions could go on and on. They could become bolder still.

Easy answers, as you well know, are elusive. The good news is that we’ve got an absurdly smart, dedicated collection of journalists, many of the best in the nation, that has embraced profound and meaningful change over the years, always while maintaining our values. We’ve built two of the most successful websites in the industry, first boston.com, and now bostonglobe.com. The latter site is not only thriving, but growing rapidly, up more than 15 percent in uniques and page views this year over last, and leading the league in digital-only subscribers—the most important metric. We successfully overhauled key parts of the site last year. We’re about to launch a major sports redesign this spring, all while we confidently spread our wings with a broader array of stories and topics geared first to our web audience.

At the same time, we haven’t just maintained print, but enhanced it over the past few years, with a great new standalone business section through the week, a Sunday Arts section that showcases some of the best critics in the industry, Address, premium magazines, broadsheet feature sections. I’m missing things, I’m sure. We saw quite clearly in January just how much the physical paper means to an enormous swath of our readership.

The journalism, through it all, has been consistently exceptional. We drove the Olympics debate. We launched a national debate on concurrent surgery. We’ve been one of the smartest, freshest voices on the national political scene. We’ve chronicled poverty in rural Maine and economic segregation in greater Boston in deeply memorable ways. Day in, day out, we are one of the most thoughtful metropolitan news organizations in the land.

All of which is to say: We’re very good at change. We’re committed to high standards. We are well-positioned to go even further.

So I’ll frame the discussion one more way: Is it possible to build something bold rather than shrink what we have?

It’s perfectly reasonable to ask whether this reinvention initiative is an excuse for more cutting. The glib answer is that we don’t really need an excuse to cut. The revenue declines require it. The more involved answer is that even without declining revenue, we should still be exploring reinvention, given the massive advances in technology and massive changes in reader habits. And even without a reinvention initiative, we’d still have to cut. So the honest answer is that a reinvention would naturally take into account the realities of declining revenues.

I’ve sought some outside counsel to help facilitate the process, people who have thought long and hard about these issues and are deeply knowledgeable about what’s been tried at other news organizations and how it’s worked. Tom Rosenstiel and Jeff Sonderman, the executive director and deputy director respectively of the American Press Institute, plan to be in the newsroom on Friday—tomorrow—to meet in small groups with some staff. They’ll be joined by Marty Kaiser, the highly respected former editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who has worked with Tom on these exact issues. After Tom, Jeff, and Marty get an initial sense of our newsroom, we’ll discuss a path forward and how they might help. The key is to create a process that involves as many people as possible, at all levels, tapping into the wealth of creativity that is this newsroom’s trademark.

This is a significant and important undertaking. It’s also an exciting one. We’re in a moment in this industry and at this organization that requires us to be bold (have I used that word enough yet?) and imaginative, always in our journalism, but also in determining how we best fulfill our civic responsibilities. There’s not the tiniest bit of doubt that we’re up to the challenge.

I’ll be reaching out to some of you about meeting with Tom, Jeff, and Marty tomorrow, and then I’ll report back soon in a series of Winship Room gatherings about the road ahead. We’re committed to a process in which everyone can effectively share their thoughts, ideas, and concerns. In the meantime, feel more than free to reach out to me directly.

Brian

Maybe now they’ll revive the slogan ‘The Globe’s here’

$_35If only the delivery folks at The Boston Globe could turn the clock back to December 27, 2015. That’s the last day that Publishers Circulation Fulfillment delivered the print edition. It’s also the last day that Globe customers could be reasonably sure the paper would show up on their doorstep as promised.

Well, the Globe is going to try to do just that. After a disastrous debut by a new vendor, ACI Media, followed by an emergency move to bring back PCF to handle many of the routes, the Globe is ditching ACI and going back to PCF exclusively, according to this report by Mark Arsenault.

In the early weeks, the region was in an uproar. Improvement appeared to be around the corner on the weekend of January 2 and 3, when hundreds of Globe staffers helped assemble and deliver the Sunday paper. But then the Globe itself ran a devastating story by Arsenault and Dan Adams reporting that delivery would not return to normal for four to six months. That, in turn, led to the partial restoration of PCF and an apology by publisher and owner John Henry.

Even though the delivery situation had partly recovered from the initial disaster, I’ve continued to hear complaints from readers right up through last week. It is mind-boggling that ACI was never able to get it right. You have to wonder what kind of promises they made that convinced Globe executives they could handle the job, and why those executives believed them.

No word on how much pain was inflicted on the Globe in terms of lost circulation or financial setbacks.

Your Saturday media round-up

No, not the debut of a new feature. But there’s a lot going on today. So let’s get to it.

• Jason Rezaian is coming home. Rezaian, who’s a Washington Post reporter, is being released by Iran along with three other prisoners as part of a swap. Meanwhile, Iran is moving closer to compliance with the nuclear deal, and, as we know, it returned without incident a group of American sailors who had drifted into its territorial waters even as the Republican presidential candidates were calling for war or something.

What President Obama’s critics refuse to acknowledge is that Iran is complicated, factionalized, and slowly lurching toward better (not good) behavior. Obama has invested a considerable amount of his moral authority into trying to nudge along a less dangerous Iran, and his efforts are paying off.

And kudos to Post executive editor Marty Baron, who has kept the spotlight on Rezaian’s unjust imprisonment for the past year and a half.

• The routes are at the root. Boston Globe reporter Mark Arsenault today has the most thorough examination yet of what went wrong with the Globe‘s home-delivery system when it switched vendors at the end of December. Arsenault takes a tough look at the decisions made by the paper’s business executives, who clearly did not do enough vetting of the plans put together by the new vendor, ACI Media Group. And he opens with Globe publisher John Henry amid thousands of undelivered papers at the Newton distribution center, sending a message that, yes, the owner is engaged.

As has been reported previously, but not in as much detail as Arsenault offers, ACI’s routes just didn’t make sense. And what looked like a mere glitch at the end of day one turned into a catastrophe as drivers walked off the job once they realized there was no way they could make their appointed rounds.

It’s the Globe itself that has to take primary responsibility, of course. But based on Arsenault’s report, ACI officials—who did not speak to him—clearly sold the Globe a bill of goods. If ACI has a different perspective on what happened, we’d like to hear it soon.

• Digital First workers revolt. Employees at Digital First Media are fighting for their first raise in seven to 10 years, according to an announcement by workers represented by the Newspaper Guild. These folks have been abused for years by bad ownership as hedge funds have sought to cash in.

The effort covers some 1,000 Guild members. It’s unclear whether employees at non-Guild papers—including the Lowell Sun and the New Haven Register—would be helped.

Five takeaways from the likely end to the Globe‘s crisis

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

First came the news that The Boston Globe’s previous distributor has re-entered the picture. Next came an apology by Globe publisher John Henry. And with those two steps, the Globe seems to have essentially brought its week-and-a-half-old home-delivery crisis to an end, even though problems will likely linger into next week. Here are five takeaways.

1. Management is convinced that the problem has been solved. Henry’s apology is proof of that. It’s a basic principle of public relations that you don’t bring out the Big Dog until you believe the crisis is under control. Henry’s statement wasn’t risk-free—the previous vendor, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment, won’t be back on the job until Sunday or Monday, and it’s still unclear how quickly delivery service can be fully restored. The new vendor, ACI Media Group, will share the work, and needless to say it has yet to prove itself. But there’s no longer any talk of having to wait four to six months.

2. John Henry is really, really sorry. Yes, his apology is a little bit defensive (blaming previous ownership for getting rid of the in-house delivery system) and a little bit geeky (no, we don’t care if the paper is “6 inches to the right of the first step”). But he struck me as genuinely, truly contrite that he had let down his customers. “I want to personally apologize to every Boston Globe subscriber who has been inconvenienced,” he wrote. “We recognize that you depend on us, and that we’ve let you down.”

3. There could be negative repercussions for the newsroom. Both Henry and chief executive Mike Sheehan have said that though the main impetus for switching carriers was to improve service, they were looking to save money as well. Sheehan has said Henry intended to reinvest those savings in the Globe. If that money fails to materialize, it could mean further cuts in a newsroom that was shrunk by some 45 positions just a few months ago.

4. Print still matters. During the past week and a half I’ve heard numerous suggestions that the Globe switch to online-only distribution—and even a few conspiracy theories suggesting that Henry and company had deliberately botched home delivery in order to smooth the way for such a move. (But couldn’t they switch to home delivery via black helicopter?) In fact, the Globe and nearly all other newspapers still make most of their money from print. “Subscription revenue is going to be the primary source of revenue in the future for newspapers,” Henry wrote. And though the Globe has had some success in persuading people to pay for digital subscriptions, print remains a lot more lucrative.

5. People really care about their newspaper. In an era when you often hear about how irrelevant newspapers as standalone products have become, it’s got to be heartening to see how much people care about their daily newspaper and how upset they are when it doesn’t arrive. It’s not so much print-versus-digital; it’s the continued viability of newspapers, whether in print or online, as living, breathing voices of the community. The future—and even the present—may be articles disaggregated from their sources and repackaged by Facebook, Apple News, and the like. For now, though, newspapers still matter.

How the Globe’s home-delivery woes became a crisis

Previously published at WGBHNews.org.

Boston Globe owner John Henry now has a full-blown crisis on his hands. Before Sunday night, the Globe’s inability to deliver newspapers to its paying customers looked like an annoying but manageable problem—provided it was solved within the next few days. But the stunning revelation by the paper’s new distributor that it could take four to six months for home delivery to return to normal changes everything.

Following Sunday night’s devastating story by Globe reporters Mark Arsenault and Dan Adams (it’s also on the front of today’s print edition if you can find one), it’s clear that there is going to be an ugly—and very public—standoff between the Globe and the new distributor, ACI Media Group of Long Beach, California.

Earlier claims that only 5 percent of customers were being affected have given way to reality. The Globe’s chief executive, Mike Sheehan, now says the number is 10 percent, citing ACI’s own figures. Anecdotally, that still seems low. As of this morning, people living in 112 zip codes are still experiencing delays. Or, as many customers have been complaining, no delivery at all.

Other than the four- to six-month timeframe, I thought the most mind-boggling part of the Globe story was a quote from Jack Klunder, the president and chief executive of ACI, who claims he told Globe executives exactly what to expect:

“I said ‘I cannot describe to you how painful it is,’ ” Klunder said, recounting his warning to Globe officials. “I used the expression ‘massive disruption.’ … You’re going to get thousands of calls, emails—social media is going to be blistering you. The news media is going to be blistering you. You’re going to like where you are at the end of this cycle but you’re going to go through this.”

Sheehan essentially denies being told that, saying the problems of the past week go “far beyond any reasonable definition of disruption.”

Incredibly, Arsenault and Adams also report that ACI can’t be held liable for any performance problems during the first three months of the contract.

Despite all this, I suspect there’s more than a little posturing going on. Both sides have to know that a months-long delivery crisis is unacceptable and will set off an avalanche of canceled subscriptions (I’ve already heard from people who want to cancel but can’t because the phones are jammed), refunds to advertisers, and severe damage to the Globe’s brand and reputation. (Klunder seems to think this isn’t going to hurt ACI’s reputation at all. “We’ll be fine,” he’s quoted as saying. And why not? The Globe hired him despite similar problems in 2014 at the Orange County Register.)

But what can be done? We can safely assume that Globe executives don’t want to give ACI more money. Although Sheehan is quoted as saying the switch was mainly made to improve service (oops), he adds that he was aiming to save money as well. Perhaps the Globe could cancel the contract and re-up with the previous vendor, Publishers Circulation Fulfillment. But the network of hardworking, underpaid delivery people has already been so thoroughly upended that there’s probably no sure way of restoring the status quo.

Among the many threads to this ongoing story, one emerging theme may be tension between the Globe’s newsroom and the business side. The era of good feelings engendered by John Henry’s ownership suffered a setback this fall, as the paper eliminated about 45 positions through buyouts and layoffs at the same time that Henry was launching Stat, a well-staffed website covering health and life sciences.

On Saturday night and into the early-morning hours on Sunday, many dozens of Globe journalists volunteered to deliver the Sunday paper. It was a feel-good story, to be sure, and it would have been seen as a nice gesture if the delivery woes were just a few days away from being solved. But there was an edge to it as well. I spent some time at the paper’s Newton distribution center, and unhappiness was clearly evident among newsroom staffers toward their colleagues whose job it is to manage the paper’s business operations.

“We’re fighting for our survival here, and I like doing what I’m doing,” technology columnist Hiawatha Bray told me as he assembled papers alongside reporter Todd Wallack. “Not just because I get paid, but because I love journalism.” When I asked him why he thought the switch in vendors had been so painful, Bray replied, “I’m sorry, I have no idea. We have nothing to do with whatever it was that happened, and we’re just mystified.”

Added Wallack: “People deserve their paper. I agree with all our readers. They have a right to expect the paper to be there every morning.”

For that matter, Sunday night’s bombshell story was something of a declaration by Globe editor Brian McGrory that the paper can best serve its readers by holding powerful institutions accountable—including the Globe itself.

A final point. If you feel tempted to snark about the Globe’s dependence on print circulation some 20 years into the digital age, you need to understand a few things about the newspaper business. Digital is both the present and the future, of course. But print is still where the money is, not just for the Globe but for nearly all newspapers. Online, advertising is ubiquitous and therefore cheap. In print, advertising remains a lucrative if declining source of revenue.

Moreover, if we’ve learned anything from the past week, it’s that a lot of people still like to read the newspaper in print. On one end of the scale are the Globe readers who took to Twitter and Facebook to complain about the delivery problems. On the other are the total digital holdouts. I’ve heard stories that Globe employees took calls from customers who don’t even have an email address.

One person who hasn’t been heard from throughout the chaos of the past week is John Henry himself. This is his first real crisis since he purchased the Globe in 2013. But if there’s anything we’ve learned throughout his long tenure as principal owner of the Red Sox, it’s that he has a tendency to let bad situations play out—sometimes too long—before he acts.

It would be nice to hear from him. But it would be even better if he commits to doing whatever it takes to fix this mess. The Globe doesn’t have four to six months to get it right.

The Globe’s home-delivery problems continue

2009 photo (cc) by jtu
2009 photo (cc) by jtu

The situation with home delivery for Boston Globe customers doesn’t seem to be much better today. Judging from Twitter and other online comments, the only good news for the Globe is that people really miss their paper.

I’ve seen a few conspiratorial-minded commenters suggest that this is a deliberate attempt to get people to switch to digital. In fact, newspapers still make most of their money from print, especially on Sunday. Which makes the meltdown all the more inexplicable.

A few data points. A website called Customer Service Scoreboard reports that the Globe has received 193 negative comments and just one positive. The oldest comment goes back to 2010, and it’s certainly true that people aren’t going to check in to report that their paper arrived on time. Still, the top of the thread is loaded with comments from folks who haven’t received their paper this week and can’t get a response from the Globe.

In a “Note to Subscribers,” the Globe says in part, “This disruption is not unexpected, as the transition involves the hiring and deployment of approximately 600 drivers.” I find that statement surprising. Given the importance of getting it right, you’d think there would have been multiple meetings over many months beginning and ending with: “We can’t screw this up.”

The Globe‘s Beth Healy quotes chief executive Mike Sheehan as saying that, on Wednesday, only 5 percent of customers did not receive their paper in a timely manner. But look at all the zip codes where the new delivery service is still having problems.

Over at WBZ-TV (Channel 4), Boston University’s John Carroll tells Jon Keller that he has a message for Globe publisher John Henry: “Get in your car and start delivering some newspapers.”

Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub continues to track the story and post tweets. Comments are rolling in at my WGBHNews.org story from Wednesday as well.

Boston Globe identifies a downtown spot for its new HQ

Not long after John Henry bought The Boston Globe in 2013, he announced that he planned to move the paper to a downtown location and sell the more than half-century-old plant at 135 Morrissey Blvd. News is now breaking that the Globe will move to 53 State St., a building known as Exchange Place. The memo from Globe Media chief executive Mike Sheehan follows.

Over Memorial Day Weekend in 1958, The Boston Globe left our home on Washington Street’s Newspaper Row and moved to Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester. The move was a catalyst for the most dramatic transformation in our history, both in the depth and quality of our journalism and in the scope of our media operations. Under the leadership of seven world-class editors, 23 Pulitzer Prizes were earned here, and we’ve grown from a single media offering to over a dozen print, digital, and broadcast properties.

Today, we signed a Letter of Intent with UBS to move our editorial and business operations to 53 State Street, Exchange Place. Assuming this leads to a signed lease, and we have every expectation that it will, the move will mark a bit of a homecoming, bringing BGMP back to the same neighborhood we vacated 58 years before. We plan on occupying the second and third floors, which are the largest floor plates in the building, integrating the former Boston Stock Exchange space with the glass tower that was built in 1985.

I have a particular fondness for the building, having moved another company there eight years ago. The reasons for choosing Exchange Place extend far beyond the inarguable fact that I am a creature of habit. First and foremost are location and accessibility. For a journalistic enterprise, there is just no substitute for being able to walk to City Hall, the State House, and virtually every corporate headquarters in the city. If you had to drop a pushpin on the single location that’s most accessible by public transportation, this would be it. The MBTA’s Blue Line and Orange Line have a stop under the building, the Green Line is a block away at Government Center, and the Red Line is just down the street at Downtown Crossing. The building is equidistant and walkable from the North Station and South Station commuter rail terminals as well as the commuter boat.

This move would materially change the answer to “where do you want to meet for lunch?” Cosi and Au Bon Pain are in the building, and there must be a few hundred other dining options within walking distance.

What excites me most about the move is the ability to design our space around the vision of where we want to go. We have retained Gensler (gensler.com) to help us create our new work environment, and they have begun the process of space planning and design.

I honestly believe there is no greater opportunity to redefine and transform the culture of The Boston Globe than to move to and work in the ideal location, right in the heart of the city, in an environment designed for the future of journalism. It worked for us when we moved to Morrissey Boulevard in 1958. And it’ll be equally powerful when we move to Exchange Place which, if all goes according to plan, will be on January 1, 2017.

I should note that Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub beat me by a few minutes.

No word in Sheehan’s memo regarding the fate of the Morrissey Boulevard plant.

Also: By coincidence, Sheehan’s announcement comes at the same time that The Washington Post is moving into a new building.

Globe watch: A lawyer’s lament, and Stat’s discontents

Two items of note regarding The Boston Globe.

1. Eric MacLeish, a prominent lawyer who represented numerous victims of pedophile priests, is objecting to his portrayal in the movie “Spotlight.” An item in the Globe’s “Names” column notes, “Curiously, MacLeish hasn’t seen the movie.” Yet someone must have given MacLeish a good briefing, as the bill of particulars he posted on Facebook is pretty accurate in summarizing his character in the film: a lawyer who reached confidential settlements with the Catholic Church on behalf of his clients, thus helping to delay the truth from coming out.

Also of note is that Stephen Kurkjian, a legendary Globe investigative reporter who also does not come off well in “Spotlight,” has posted a comment saying in part: “I can attest to how committed you [MacLeish] were — within the confines of attorney-client relationships — to assisting The Globe in getting the story out.”

Of course, such complaints are to be expected when a fictional movie is made about a real-life story and actual people. I experienced this first-hand when the movie about the Woburn toxic-waste story, “A Civil Action,” came out. (I covered the story for The Daily Times Chronicle of Woburn.) I was so incensed by some of what I saw that I wrote about it for The New Republic.

“Spotlight” is a far better — and truer — movie than “A Civil Action.” But it’s not a documentary.

2. Craig Douglas of The Boston Business Journal reports that the Newspaper Guild has some issues with Stat, a website covering health, medicine and life sciences that is part of John Henry’s Boston Globe Media holdings.

As I wrote last week for WGBHNews.org, Stat launched with about 40 journalists just weeks after the Globe eliminated about 40 newsroom positions through buyouts and layoffs. The two developments are said to be unrelated in the sense that Henry is not funding Stat through cuts at the Globe. As Gideon Gil, Stat’s managing editor for enterprise and partnerships, told me, each property has to pursue its own business plan.

Still, Douglas reports, it has not gone unnoticed that union jobs at the Globe have been eliminated while positions at Stat are non-union. Douglas quotes an anonymous union official as saying: “The feeling is, those weren’t the last layoffs we’re going to see. It feels like they are trying to expand by killing us from inside.”

Surely Henry can’t be blamed for making cuts in a shrinking business while trying to find innovative ideas that could lead to growth and profitability. But it’s not hard to sympathize with the fears voiced in Douglas’ article.