Boston Globe at a crossroads

This is just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. It won't be long before the corporate beancounters will come back demanding more cuts and again threatening to shut down the paper.

 

At this point, if I'm the union, I'm getting myself a provisional list of Boston biggies who would be willing to cancel their NYT subscriptions in a public way for the next fight.
If you don't work for the Times itself, it's a simple situation-it's you or them.

 

Yeah, if one of the Minneapolis papers folds it will be the Strib, which is just beyond stunning.

 

I'm curious to see how the final agreement looks. If management proposed a 23 percent cut, guessing they must have gotten at least half that.

 

It's a little less than a 10 percent cut, plus language that will alllow for the major layoffs that were the point of the exercise. By Labor Day, by Christmas for sure, most familar Globe bylines will be on the street, and the paper will shrink by 33-50 percent.
I'll never get this. All newspapers say they must make cuts to survive. But the reader, who knows damn well this means they're getting less news in the newspaper, is supposed to blithely keep on consuming the product. What about MY survival? The Globe costs money that could go for a six-pack a week.
The "we'll keep giving the product away until something turns up" business plan isn' going so well.

 

Whoa! Most familiar bylines? Shrink by 33-50 percent?

So you're saying that perhaps a third or half of the sports staff -- who have pretty damn familiar bylines, even after exits already made -- could be gone? Or will sports become the tail that wags what's left of a decimated dog?

Thanks for the insights, Michael, but this is scary stuff. Even for a gloom-and-doom guy like me.

 

Nice idea, but BFD. Half of those biggies (the intellectual set) would rather just read the Times anyway. As for the other half - civic/business crowd - unfortunately Boston just doesn't have the corporate swing it used to. The Times will give up Jack Connors, John Henry and the CEO of Fidelity to save $85 mill a year. Now, maybe if you could get them to quit advertising in the Times...
But no, if I'm the union, I'm trying to line up potential friendly buyers, right now.