Tag: media business

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.

The New York Times Co. is trying to force a 23 percent pay cut on the Newspaper Guild, which prompts the Outraged Liberal to ask: “What, no sacrifice of first borns?”

That really is one hell of a proposed pay cut. It’s hard to know what to make of such a move except to assume that management wants some sort of dramatic end game — a walkout by the Guild, bankruptcy, whatever.

Earlier today the Boston Herald’s Jessica Heslam — back from hardship duty — reported that Guild officers have gotten some mighty nice raises the past few years. But though Heslam’s enterprise might have sowed some dissension within the ranks at 135 Morrissey Boulevard, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and company seem intent on keeping Globe staffers united and pissed off.

You may have seen this already, but the Washington Post’s newly minted Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Eugene Robinson, has a smart take on the Globe’s woes today. And on and on it goes.

One final thought: Management’s latest offer could be thought of more as an opening gambit than a “last, best offer.” The 30-day deadline has passed, and the company has now said it will not close the paper until after a federally mandated 60-day warning period has passed — and it hasn’t even filed the necessary paperwork for that to happen.

What will management do when the Guild says no? Announce that it will close the Globe in two months? Sorry — now that we know the company wasn’t serious about closing the paper on Friday, and then on Sunday, that’s no longer credible. Unless you’re North Korea, you only get to make threats once.

Maybe this is moot, given that Boston Globe spokesman Robert Powers now says the company won’t file the paperwork necessary to start a 60-day process aimed at closing the paper. But the question arose earlier today as to whether management had really threatened to close the paper in 30 days if it didn’t win $20 million in union concessions.

That’s certainly the way many people interpreted it. When I opened our front door early this morning, it was with the expectation that the Globe might not be there. Late last week, when the first deadline passed, Adam Gaffin of Universal Hub went so far as to post a photo of the Globe on his walkway to prove the paper was still around. And as recently as Saturday, the Globe itself put it this way:

Last night’s announcement extends a grueling month of negotiations and uncertainty that began in early April when the Times Co. called together leaders of the paper’s 13 unions and told them it would shutter the Globe unless it gained $20 million in concessions by May 1.

The deadline was then extended two days after an accounting error was revealed.

Earlier today a colleague told me it was always understood that the Times Co. wouldn’t actually close the Globe after 30 days, but, rather, would merely begin the process of closing it. I think that’s Clintonesque. The Times Co., by all appearances, was ready to pay the price of ignoring the federally mandated 60-day shutdown period. If union leaders had known from the beginning that they really had 90 days, they wouldn’t have entered into frantic negotiations last week and over the weekend.

In any case, the latest statement from Powers makes it appear that all sides may be very close to a final agreement — or that management thinks it’s hit upon a plan to accomplish its goals without the consent of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the one union that is still holding out. I certainly hope this is just about over. It’s unfair to Globe staffers, and to the community, to have to go through all of this again in two months.

What could management have in mind? The Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly has some pretty interesting material suggesting that the lifetime contracts could be voided “[i]n the event of a dramatic and apparently irreversible downturn in the Globe’s business.” That event now appears to be upon us. Call it the nuclear option — management-employee relations would never be the same.

Finally, former Globe columnist David Warsh has a fascinating look back at how and why the Taylor family decided to sell to the New York Times Co. in 1993, as well as an analysis of subsequent events.

It could have been predicted, though it was looking pretty shaky over the past few days. But barring any last-minute snags, it looks like the New York Times Co. will have its $20 million in union concessions from Boston Globe employees by the (new) deadline of midnight on Sunday (Globe coverage here; Boston Herald coverage here).

Which raises a serious question. Given that the Times Co. will likely be able to declare victory, what will be its next step? After all, the Globe is reportedly on track to lose $85 million this year — or $65 million, presumably, once the concessions are in place.

There’s been a lot of speculation by media observers, including me, that the month-long standoff was a prelude to some dramatic action, including throwing the Globe into bankrupty, letting a judge restructure the paper and then selling it to a local owner. But I don’t see how that can happen if the unions give management what it wants.

Can the Times Co. afford simply to wait out the recession? I hope so. I guess we’ll find out soon enough.

I’ve been out of the loop all day, volunteering as a marshal at Northeastern’s commencement. Right now I’m hanging out at WGBH-TV (Channel 2), waiting to tape “Beat the Press.” And I am astounded at the news out of the Boston Globe, where apparently the unions will be forced to come up with another $4.5 million in concessions because of an accounting error on the part of management.

The New York Times Co. has threatened to close the Globe if the unions don’t agree to $20 million in givebacks by today.

“Management has done the impossible: they’ve reunited the Boston Newspaper Guild,” an anonymous source tells the Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly. Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well. For a crisis to be averted, it was essential for the unions to come to terms at least somewhat amicably. Now it’s not even clear that Globe staffers believe management claims that the paper is on track to lose $85 million this year.

“The Legend of Young Arthur continues to grow,” writes the Outraged Liberal, referring to New York Times Co. chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Unfortunately, you can’t make this stuff up.