N.Y. Times to File Notice It Will Close Boston Globe

[meegbear]

Source: Washington Post

The New York Times Co. said last night that it is notifying federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe, raising the possibility that New England's most storied newspaper could cease to exist within weeks.

After down-to-the-wire negotiations did not produce millions of dollars in union concessions, the Times Co. said that it will file today a required 60-day notice of the planned shutdown under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law.

The move could amount to a negotiating ploy to extract further concessions from the Globe's unions, since the notice does not require the Times Co. to close the paper after 60 days. The deadline, however, would put the unions under fierce pressure to produce additional savings, and the Boston Newspaper Guild promptly called the step a "bullying" tactic by the company.

Some industry observers have expressed skepticism that Times Co. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would want his legacy to include the shuttering of the Globe, which his company bought in 1993.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/03/AR2009050300269_pf.html

---

The Globe is a great paper and Boston Herald totally sucks. Please hang in there Globe!

[xchrom]

1. recommend -- it's horrifying to watch newspapers disappear. nt

[marshall]

16. And the NY Times itself is hanging on by an ever so slender thread

Like the town crier of old, newspapers are going out of fashion.

[democrat2thecore]

25. The future of the newspaper (literally) may be unveiled Wednesday

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?&entry_id=39543

[NashVegas]

31. I'm Glad to See This

I've been telling my print friends to consider Kindle.

Sorry folks, but free content that comes from professionals is going to have to come to an end.

[NashVegas]

30. What Will All the Bloggers Do?

When no one provides the facts they need to have something to base their opinions on, because no one can make enough money in cheap CPM advertising to pay reporters, editors, layout/art, admin and sales? (Let alone print machinists.)

[Sheltiemama]

34. Especially if you work at one.

[MADem]

2. Miserable bastards. That used to be a great paper, before they fucked it up. NT

[WriteDown]

3. Yikes!

Sulzberger, this is all on you.

[graywarrior]

4. So now it'll just be the Herald?!

That's really bad.

[RamboLiberal]

23. Idiot RW owner of Herald said if they lasted one more day

than the Globe it was a victory.

[msongs]

5. do you subscribe to this paper? oh. never mind :-) nt

[meegbear]

10. Why yes. Yes I do. ...

Have for years - it's great read.

[endarkenment]

15. me too

and this sunday's edition with numerous full page ads from the Globe urging us to buy the paper and urging advertisers to advertise was very depressing. The poster's assumptions are bogus.

[Fendius]

6. This is not because of any recession

Its primarily due to the internet and the ability to go online and find articles without leaving home or buying anything.. This is whats happening to the record companies, the dvd companies and so forth.. For businesses to NOT realize this shift in its market and for most to flat out call the internet "illegal" and try to punish those for getting things free online, shows us how the economy is "shifting" right now.. We can remember and celebrate these things, but to hold on and say they "must" survive is a very conservative approach.. Lets learn from this and adapt to change.. It is inevitable....

[frazzled]

11. Yo, you're going online to read articles written by Boston GLobe reporters

(or Seattle P-I reporters, or Chicago Tribune or LA Times reporters). If there is no Boston Globe, and no reporters hired by the newspapers, who is producing the news?

Online chatter is NOT news. I don't think most people realize the danger of all this. A vibrant and free press was the basis for the start of this country. Its loss will be devastating.

In order for the Internet to become a reliable source for news, someone will have to hire real reporters--with foreign correspondents in Beijing to Caracas to Brussels to Dakkar. Anyone doing that?

[nichomachus]

26. No -- that's the easy answer -- and it's wrong. Corporatism killed newspapers.

What killed the newspapers was corporatism -- pure and simple.

I spent my working life in newspapers and magazines. When I first started -- just as corporatism was taking hold -- most newspapers were owned by families. Even small chains were owned by families. The owners managed the newspapers.

These families wanted to make a profit, but were satisfied with a modest profit. They also wanted to be in the news business, so they would often let the profit slide a little to turn out a decent product. After all, they had to live in the communities they served.

As the families diluted by generation, the younger generation, with a little too much money, didn't want to be in the business. They just wanted the money -- so they either corporatized the newspapers or sold them off to corporate chains.

Once management became divorced from ownership, all bets were off. Profit became the prime motive -- and the quality of the publication be damned.

The managers weren't family. Hell, they didn't even come from the community. They were just corporate tools, passing through town, with their eye on the next rung on the corporate ladder. Where once the owners -- even in family chains -- wanted to know how the newspapers served the community and what the community thought of the paper, things devolved to the point where all the corporate owners wanted to know was how much money they were getting.

At that point, the newspapers became detached from the community they served. When I started in a city of 50,000 people, you had to get the paper. If you didn't, you were just out of the loop. The type of stuff we carried, you couldn't get on the Internet.

Then, in chasing profits, newspaper stopped carrying the nuts and bolts local news -- mainly because they hired journalism grads (instead of local yokels) who were also just passing through with their eye on a bigger better job. They didn't know shit about the cities they wrote about. Many never bothered learning.

Also, they were suckers for any local politician or cop who wanted to scam them. I knew everyone in town. I knew the politicians and cops -- went to school with some of them and went to school or played sports with the kids of others. I wasn't alone. Trying to hoodwink one of us just wasn't going to work.

Once the newspapers went corporate, there was no need for locals to get the papers. There wasn't much in there that was of real interest, wasn't "must have" news, or couldn't be found on the Internet.

That's when the downslide started. The Internet played a role, but it only administered the coup de grace to a half-dead industry already in its death agony on the floor.

And it wasn't the fact that I can read the stories on the Internet. It was advertising. And there were two trends. The first was the "mallification" of America. When I started out -- back when Adam and Eve were riding dinosaurs to church -- we had tons of ads from local department stores, music stores, jewelry stores, blah blah, as well as classified ads.

Then, the malls came and killed the downtown. What used to be a vibrant downtown in my hometown, with three or four department stores, a bunch of nice clothing stores, six or seven jewelry shops, four movie theaters, four or five grocery stores -- all of whom took out full-page ads in the paper weekly -- is now just a depressing array of closed store fronts, bodegas, used furniture stores, and a few storefront holy roller churches. They don't advertise.

And, the malls don't generate the kind of advertising the other stores did. They concentrate their ads in circulars. Some mail them out, and others place the circulars in the largest metro papers, ignoring the locals.

That left the classified, which supported the papers until, as someone else noted, Craigslist and Monster came along. That was the coup de grace -- but by that time, newspapers were beyond recovery.

A good example of the corporatism effect was a magazine I worked for. Once a very well-read (niche) magazine, it was sometimes 350 pages in an issue. That was great, because we lived like kings. But then, the family that owned it sold it to a European corporation, which was only interested in making a 30 percent operating profit. Everything else was subordinate to that. We could run absolute drivel in the news columns and put in photos made of third-grade stick-figure drawings and top management wouldn't have cared -- as long as we made 30 percent. If we won the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Peace Prize together, but only made 29 percent profit, we would have gotten our asses kicked.

So, don't believe the current wisdom that says people reading newspapers on the Internet killed newspapers. That's a lie. Newspapers -- or the newspaper corporations -- killed themselves. The Internet just put them out of their misery.

[Fendius]

29. I agree with your regard to a free press is always needed

Though, i tend to look at this situation in a whole.. The Record companies, dvd and any other media company. Who is still making money? Online? I understand that the Corporations that own the newspapers are responsible for the "news", Though if they are not willing to shift with the dynamics of this economy, i recomend they find what "is" selling. I want them to survive as well, I also hope we notice the evidence toward our future markets "are" attractive and we need to change with them...

[Xithras]

17. Actually, it's because of Craigslist, Cars.Com, etc.

Newspaper operational costs passed subscription fees way back in the 1950's, and it's no great secret that the continued operation of the nations newspapers was dependent on classified and business advertising. That revenue stream has evaporated. Why pay a newspaper to advertise your garage sale, when you can reach more people on CraigsList for free? Why pay $20 to get two lines in a tiny box to sell your car in a classified ad, when you can post it on Cars.Com for the same price, reach ten times the audience, and include photos?

The problem isn't that news has been devalued, it's that newspapers depend on revenue sources unrelated to their primary product, and those revenue sources don't exist any longer.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

7. As a "yoot"...every Sunday after church meant a copy of the Sunday Globe

Sunday morning Mass, a trip to the local newsstand, and home for bacon and eggs...the only day of the week that my mom actually cooked breakfast.

There goes another piece of the childhood.

[endarkenment]

8. This is bullshit. Shame on the NYT.

They are doing this to the Globe in order to cannibalize its subscription base. The Globe subscribers will have no where else to go.

[One_Life_To_Give]

12. NY Times Boston edition

Good point. Most won't replace the Globe with the Herald, but instead subscribe to the Times Boston/New England edition. Unfortunatly I don't think writers sitting in New York are going to be able to capture much of what happens in our town meetings and all the other local stuff.

[Blue_Tires]

9. so Bostonians will just have the Herald now?

if so, that city's collective IQ is about to drop 40 points

[smirkymonkey]

19. The Herald is Boston's version of the New York Post...

basically a useless rag. Too bad.

[Demit]

13. Last 3 grafs of the story very telling:

"...The Globe says the parent company is seeking $10 million in savings from the Newspaper Guild -- the paper's largest union -- as well as $5 million from the mailers, $2.5 million from the drivers and $2.2 million from the pressmen.

Negotiations were disrupted when the Times Co. acknowledged a $4 million accounting mistake in the talks, requiring the Guild, which represents 600 editorial, advertising and office workers, to dig even deeper for savings.

The Globe quoted the head of the Teamsters local, which represents the newspaper's drivers, as saying his union had come up with the $2.5 million in salary and benefit cuts demanded by the company. But the Times Co. is also said to be seeking to eliminate seniority rules and lifetime job guarantees for some union members."


The thing is—the way the thing always is—the unions do their part, make the concessions, and management still wants more. Management will not rest till the unions are completely broken. Prevailing economic forces will lead to the NYTimes Co. closing the paper anyway, but this way they are conveniently able to blame the unions. And sympathetic managements everywhere will conveniently ignore larger economic trends and the Times' own gross mismanagement decisions and agree.

[Blue_Tires]

14. very true

I used to be in the guild for a short while...and they could be getting setup to take the fall...(the op-ed page at the WSJ is gonna cream itself writing about the downfall of another union...)

[NashVegas]

32. Do You Know What's Happening in the City Rooms?

Editorial staff is being forced to take unpaid furloughs.

People will probably go back to buying print copies when papers start charging for online content.

[musiclawyer]

18. I still think this is the beginnig of superpapers

maybe 2 or three that will hire real reporters and still have buereaus, but they will have to charge.

people will pay eventually, including the news aggregators that don't have their own professional in-house reporters

[jmowreader]

35. What do you think...

The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and a paper in the south?

[druidity33]

20. and the NYT just upped their prices too.

$2 per daily and $6 for the Sunday. Ugh.

It was a pleasure to use that fucking rag to start a fire yesterday...

[Psephos]

28. Two bucks for a (downsized) newspaper...these guys are like the boy who lived in a bubble

no connection to actual real life

[nichomachus]

21. Update: Closing notice WON'T be filed

http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2009/05/globe_says_it_w.html

Boston Globe management said today that it won't file a plant closing notice required to shutter the newspaper after reaching cost saving agreements with six of seven unions involved in negotiations for concessions.

"We expect to achieve both the workplace flexibility, and the financial savings that we sought from these unions," said Globe spokesman Robert Powers. "We are not , therefore, making a filing today" under the federal plant closing law. The law requires companies to give 60-days notice to the state and employees before closing a business.

Globe management last night said it would file the plant closing notice as it approached a midnight deadline to reach agreement with four of the paper's major unions. The Globe's owner, The New York Times Co., early last month threatened to close the Globe unless it gained $20 million in concessions from the newspaper's unions. The Globe is projected to lose $85 million this year with significant cost savings, according to the Times Co.

The Globe has agreements with unions representing delivery truck drivers, mailers, press operators, electricians, machinists and technical services workers. The agreements still must be ratified by a vote of members in each unions.

[democrat2thecore]

22. Here's a great place to follow all the newspaper changes

http://news.newspaperproject.org/

[EFerrari]

24. Thank you! Bookmarked. n/t

[NashVegas]

33. An Even Better One, Here

http://poynter.org/

[autorank]

27. How "liberal" of them.

They hate unions just like the Washington Post hates unions.

What a fitting testament to them - why can't the employees just pick it up?

[tpsbmam]

36. Devastating piece on Sulzberger in the May '09 Vanity Fair

Full article at http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/05/new-york-times200905?currentPage=1

It's a really interesting article & worth reading.

<snips>

He has been shrinking ever since. In 2001, The New York Times celebrated its 150th anniversary. In the years that have followed, Arthur Sulzberger has steered his inheritance into a ditch. As of this writing, Times Company stock is officially classified as junk. Arthur made a catastrophic decision in the 1990s to start aggressively buying back shares ($1.8 billion worth from 2000 to 2004 alone). This was considered a good investment at the time, and had the effect of increasing the stock’s value. Shares were going for more than $50. Now they are slipping below $4—less than the price of the Sunday Times. Arthur’s revenues are in free fall: the bottom has dropped out of both newspaper and Internet advertising. He has done more than anyone in the business to showcase newspaper journalism online. It hasn’t helped much. The content and page views of the newspaper’s Web site, nytimes.com, may be the envy of the profession, but as a recent report from Citigroup explained, “The Internet has taken away far more advertising than it has given.” Layoffs have occurred in the once sacrosanct newsroom.

--------------

No one can plumb another’s depths. Arthur certainly seems clever enough, but try as he might, he fails to impress. He comes off as a lightweight, as someone slightly out of his depth, whose dogged sincerity elicits not admiration so much as pity. While no one blames him for what is clearly a crisis afflicting all newspapers, he has made a series of poor business moves that now follow him like the tail of a kite. He has doubled-down on print over the last two decades, most notably with his own newspaper but also spending more than a billion dollars to buy The Boston Globe and the International Herald Tribune. These purchases appear to have been historically mis-timed, rather like sinking your life savings into hot-air balloons long after the first excited reports from Kitty Hawk. Back when he had the money to do it, Arthur failed to adequately diversify the Times Company’s holdings, stranding it in an ocean of debt with no flotation device—unlike, say, The Washington Post, which is being buoyed through this industry-wide depression by the highly profitable Kaplan Inc., an education-services company that provides test-preparation classes and online instruction. (The Post’s diverse investments were made under a board that included Warren Buffett and like-minded business gurus.) Except for his admirable Web site, Arthur has failed to expand the Times effectively into other media. Back in 2000 he announced that television was “our next great frontier,” but his one timid step in that direction, a partnership with the Discovery Channel to produce news-related documentaries, was halfhearted (and abbreviated). The Times still lacks a presence in television. Arthur has not missed the boat entirely with digital start-ups—his decision to buy the online information site About.com, which provides assisted Internet searching, has paid dividends—but he passed up (along with a lot of other people) early opportunities to invest in the great search engines, such as Google, which today is sucking ad revenue from the paper while at the same time giving away its content. Arthur’s oft repeated assertion that he is “platform agnostic”—that is, doesn’t care what medium delivers the Times, and is open to all of them—is both misguided and revealing. It sounds fancy and daring and forward-thinking but betrays a deep misunderstanding of the forces at play.


There are other knocks on his leadership. His choice for executive editor, Howell Raines, played favorites in the newsroom, overlooked shoddy journalism, and so alienated his reporters and editors that they forced Arthur to dump him. So goes one version of the story. Not everyone thinks jettisoning Raines was the right thing to do. Raines was shaking things up, presumably with Arthur’s blessing, and when you shake things up you upset the rank and file. As one former Times man puts it, “If the sheriff of Nottingham gets mugged on his way through Sherwood Forest, and can’t do anything about it, then the thieves are running the forest.” Whichever take on Raines you prefer, Arthur’s reversal looks bad. It suggests either poor judgment or a lack of conviction.