Tag: media business

GateHouse faces downsizing

Media Nation is picking up reliable buzz that GateHouse Media, which owns some 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts, will be announcing significant downsizing moves in the very near future.

GateHouse owns midsize dailies such as the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham, the Patriot Ledger of Quincy and the Enterprise of Brockton as well as scores of weeklies, from the Cambridge Chronicle, the Somerville Journal and the Newton Tab to tiny papers in the exurbs.

Not good news.

Times Reader 2.0 is a big step up

I’m trying out the new Times Reader software. It’s based on the Adobe Air platform, so there are no longer separate Windows and Mac versions. I was ambivalent about the previous version, but Times Reader 2.0 is faster and more attractive.

The new version abandons the Times print-edition font — too fussy for the computer screen — with what appears to be Cambria, an excellent choice. Photos are better integrated. Videos are part of the mix. Scrolling is smoother. You can even do the crossword puzzle on your computer — something you were supposed to be able to do on the previous version, though I couldn’t get it to work on my Mac.

The questions remain: Where does this fit in the hierarchy of news products the Times offers, and does it point the way for other papers? Times Reader costs $3.45 a week. It’s definitely a faster, smoother read than the regular, free Web edition, and, once you’ve downloaded the paper, you don’t need a WiFi connection to read it.

But free is free. In addition, the Times Web edition is a livelier place, with more ads (perhaps that will change as Times Reader gains in acceptance), blogs and other extra content. In addition, if you’re a blogger and you want to post something you see in Times Reader, you have to leave, access the Web edition and find the story again in order to grab the URL.

On the other hand, Times Reader really does offer a superior online reading experience. You’re more likely actually to read the paper rather than just skip around. And it’s a lot cheaper (we get the Sunday print edition delivered, so there’s no extra charge for us) — not to mention more environmentally friendly — than the print edition.

Might there come a day when the Times and other papers can dump their print editions and instead offer various paid electronic versions via Times Reader, the Kindle and the like? I don’t know. But I do know that Times Reader 2.0 is a huge improvement over its predecessor.

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.)

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.