The Massachusetts Miracle?

I'm not quite comfortable talking about what's going on in Massachusetts -- treading water -- as a "miracle," but it's a helluva lot closer to that than what Texas has done.

Doug Rubin "ran" Governor Patrick's "two" campaigns for Governor?

From the NYT, in what is surely news to John Walsh and Sydney Asbury, we learn Doug Rubin was Governor Patrick's campaign manager. Both times.Way to go, Doug!

(Oh, wait, Doug didn't run Governor Patrick's two campaigns? Well, who can blame the Times for getting it wrong. It's not like the New York Times owns a major daily or two in Massachusetts.)

Austerity doesn't work

Krugman points out the obvious... and shows why the Irish are now even worse off than Iceland, because they bought into the stupidity of punishing the working poor and middle class instead of allowing the wealthy who tore apart the financial markets to fall on their own swords.

Going Global

• Fake News Alert: Globe can't get past Gov's finances in article about Governor House Hunting. Shocker. The guy hasn't considered his Milton home home since he built the Richmond estate. Swapping the Milton digs for a comfortable condo within walking distance of the State House is a no brainer -- and not a real money-saving move. Luxury condos in Boston by the Commons don't go cheap.
• How does Globe come by the following sentence in Menino charter school article?
  

  Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who for years has expressed deep reservations about one of the most fundamental innovations in public education, abruptly shifted course yesterday and said he wants to turn the city's poorly performing schools into new charter schools.

  What makes Globe writer Michael Levenson or his editors experts in "innovations in public education?" Stick to the facts -- Menino's robbing Flaherty's chief education proposal.
  

• Times taking bids for Globe. I hereby offer my official bid of $.01. Any higher takers?
  

Globe Deal Reached... That was Fast

And here I was ready for a holdout lasting months. Nope. No details yet, but:

The Boston Globe's largest union reached a tentative deal with the New York Times Co. shortly after 3 a.m. this morning, agreeing to a substantial pay cut, unpaid furloughs, and modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions that protect almost 200 employees in the Boston Newspaper Guild, according to sources familiar with the deal.

Hmm... Perhaps the 400+ people who didn't have those lifetime guarantees had something to do with it? Regardless, it would have been nice for the NYT and Globe management to be honest about this whole process -- it wasn't about the $20 million. That was window dressing - window dressing that, as I said Monday, the Globe unions already agreed on.

This was always about the job guarantees. It's tough to argue against a union that would protect those jobs -- the NYT signed on the dotted line, after all. However, if this helps facilitate a sale, then it was well worth it. The NYT has done nothing good for the Globe.

Now, the NYT has one remaining task for their role in acting as publisher and corporate daddies of the Boston Globe: facilitate a sale. They've ruined a once-great paper. They owe it to the city of Boston to find a good ownership group for this paper, preferably local ownership. The Globe needs its version of John Henry or Bob Kraft. (Or maybe they just need John Henry or Bob Kraft?) If there's any way for the NYT to save grace for its treatment of the Globe, that's it.

Lost in the Times/Globe Shuffle

is the fact that the Globe's lone union still holding out did make the $10 million in concessions asked of them.

As the midnight deadline approached, union officials said they had essentially agreed to financial concessions that the Times Co. was seeking. The Guild, in a statement tonight, said the union had ‘‘presented the New York Times Company and Globe management with a proposal that exceeds the $10 million in cuts demanded.

Obviously, though you wouldn't know it by what the Times and Globe is reporting, this isn't about the money. It's about the lifetime guarantees. Can't sell the paper until you get rid of them. Maybe the Times should have thought about that before it agreed to those terms when it took on more than a billion to acquire the Boston Globe in 1993, money that's handicapping the papers now? Seems as if it's those two bad business decisions now that's crippling the paper, not the unions.

NYT: Benevolent Dictators?

The NYT was $4.5 million off on its estimates on what unions could cut to reach their $10 million share of the $20 million figure -- this they admit only hours before the deadline approached -- and they had the generosity to extend the bargaining deadline a whole 24 hours. Wow. Mass Lib was spot on yesterday -- and the NYT/Globe management only continue to dig themselves in deeper.

Oops

The NYT and Globe made a big whoopsie in its union negotiations. Now, the negotations truly must be extended out of fairness - at least a week or two.

Saving the Globe Millions, Instantly

Ask the execs to give their bonuses back.

Outrageous - they'd ask the poor schmucks loading the buses take huge benefit and pay cuts, many of them to lose their jobs, all the while they take large bonuses in years their business is tanking.

There's only one solution to the Boston Globe. Local ownership. If the NYT won't sell the paper, even if it's for next to nothing, it probably should close. Maybe a new one would take its place?

The unions should hold strong in making sure that the NYT's executives cough up all that bonus pay and take significant (50%?) cuts in salary. The publisher of the Globe, for example, probably doesn't deserve $1.9 million this year, plus the hundreds of thousands in bonus pay and stock options. The deeper one digs in this mess, the worse the Times and Globe management smells.

On Newspaper Online Advertising

I fundamentally disagree with David that boston.com can't at least provide a substantial profit to the Globe, one that could perhaps pay for an entire news staff (even if it's not quite as large as the present staff). Why? The LA Times does it - their online ads are enough to pay for 660 employees at the paper, making the paper sales and ads gravy.

David points to Kos and Perez Hilton as sites that get a lot more hits than the Globe and don't generate the type of revenue necessary to staff a newsroom. Well, true, but do those sites have entire trained staffs completely dedicated toward selling ads - seeking out those advertisers, making the case, using established contacts? Even if they do, how large, qualified and talented are those staffs? What sorts of numbers and figures from professional polling and marketing do they have to work with? This is just one of the many good points Stomv makes in David's thread - points that I think even Stomv underestimates in terms of how much more profitable online papers can be than websites where the writer draws cum on celebrity faces and you have to click on the website to find out how to advertise on it.

Again, I say there's too many questions regarding the NYT's claims about the Globe to take at face value. But whether or not the Globe's really projected to lose $85 million this year, it doesn't mean online ads can't sustain a news staff. For all we know, the NYT/Globe's losing that $85 million through distribution costs alone, or from not maximizing ad sales (online or otherwise), or some combination of the two. Unfortunately, no one really knows what the heck is going on at the NYT and its management of the Globe. However, whatever it is, it's nothing to inspire confidence -- so people shouldn't be so quick to jump to conclusions.

Questions for the NYT & Globe

Why $20 million? David says the paper's operating at a loss of $1 million a week. The NYT seems to say it's even more, now. If it's that bad, are they just content to eat the remaining $30-50 million? Seems to me that's not a good business plan, especially considering the NYT remortgaged its HQ in NYC for hundreds of millions, to have spare cash. That spare cash is out the door quickly if the Globe's truly losing that kind of money. It just seems like there's something we're missing.

How poorly is the NTY doing? What's the Globe earning for its Boston.com website? Why isn't the company able to leverage more from that, despite the fact that Boston.com is one of the nation's most successful newspaper websites, far exceeding its distribution numbers? Has the Times investigated whether it could sell the paper? Finally, what's the paper's debt service, especially debt taken from when they bought out the Globe? How much of that represents the $20 million/year the NYT is asking the Globe to eat? Perhaps buying each other out is a bad business model.

Via the second link, the unions are open to making major concessions. They just want to make sure management feels the pinch, too. Note management did take a recent hit. For the next nine months, they're taking a 5% pay cut -- but also getting 10 extra (paid) days off for the year. Kinda seems like a wash to me. The union should not be alone in taking this $20 million hit.

Update: I'm not the only one who thinks there's something fishy here. Either the NYT is fudging the numbers, or they've run the Globe to the ground to such an extent that it probably should die. If it's truly the latter, not only is it inept, but it's truly unforgivable.

Further Stimulus

While I wouldn't bet against a second stimulus bill over the next few years, I think it's more likely that we'll get health care, education and infrastructure bills. Basically, more stimulus, but packaged with a different name and sold as direct solutions to individual lives, not just more jobs. Furthermore, look for plenty of the projects that never made it into the actual stimulus bill to get into the regular budget, a bill that can't be filibustered in the Senate.

The People Want Government Healthcare

Good news. 49% want government health care versus 32% that think it should be up to private enterprise. Is anyone in DC or on Beacon Hill listening?

Personally, I don't think Massachusetts should wait for DC. There's no reason why we can't do single-payer on our own and leverage a similar level of health care savings. Just give everyone Commonwealth Care. It's a transition we could probably make in just a few years and it would save the average person in Massachusetts a lot of money over their current health insurance premiums - not to mention saving cities and towns everywhere within our borders.

The poll had some other interesting results: major swings have taken place on opinions about marijuana and gay relationships, with huge generational differences among both groups. I wouldn't be surprised to see 70-80% of people support gay relationships in another 15 years, as well as a majority supporting the legalization of marijuana.

Weirdest Op-Ed Byline Ever

It must have been fate - because I never visit the NY Times unless there's a link someone specifically feeds me - but last night I did for whatever reason.

What did I see?

An Op Ed written by

1. Billy Beane, the General Manager of the Oakland A's
2. John Kerry
3. Newt Gingrich
   

I was thinking of reading it, but I was worried it would be a case of crossing the streams.

The Globe's State of Affairs: Not Good.

As angry as I've been with the Globe for certain stories, I can't help but think that news like this is contributing - more than anything - to the shaky articles that have been printed as of late. From Massachusetts Liberal:

The Boston Globe is about to undergo another round of buy-outs that will be devastating to what was once a great newspaper -- before The New York Times came to town.Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Eileen McNamara is bolting for academia. That moves follows a similar one in the last round from investigative reporter extraordinaire Walter Robinson. Also rumored to be looking to the door are veteran reporters and editors such as Steve Kurkjian, Charles Radin, Bob Turner and Peter Howe.

The NY Times is killing the Boston Globe, that much is for certain. They're turning it into a regional paper at best - and not a very good one at that. Mass Lib is right: these cuts are a self-fulfilling prophecy - by creating these cuts, the paper has a smaller depth in the news it covers, therefore less people will read it, necessitating even more cuts.

I can't remember where I read it - which is truly a shame - but there was an interesting article I read within the past year on a new trend in businesses: leaving publicly traded status to return to private hands. Why? Because when you're a publicly traded company, not only is there a responsibility to bring profits, but rather large ones at that. Newspapers are still profitable across the country, but not to the tune that makes investors happy. A 5-10% profit just isn't going to move the stocks up - and in fact could very well go way, way down. However, a private owner may be more than happy with 5-10% profits, especially when that 5-10% could be millions of dollars. An insulated environment would allow those companies to grow, in both profitability and what they deliver to costumers - and you just can't get that when you're pressured to axe jobs and cut expenses.

It's well past time for the NY Times to sell its subsidiaries - at least the ones that were once great papers, like the Boston Globe. The Times has forced the Globe to cut all of its international bureaus, national desk and much, much more. They've cut great columnists like Thomas Oliphant - and now people like Eileen McNamara. When does it end? When will the Times just sell the company, hopefully to someone from Boston - who cares about Boston having an established, at least national newspaper. The people of Boston - and the investors of NY Times, who clearly aren't getting their money's worth - deserve no less.