Surely this is just Another Tactic

This morning I clicked on The Washington Post for my morning headlines and then, as it was loading, said to myself that it likely wouldn't have any news on The Globe.  But, I let it roll, planning on going to Boston dot Com next. But, there it was, five down:  "Boston Globe Faces Shutdown."  (The article from The Globe is here.)  The actual article, by Howard Kurtz, was headlined "N.Y. Times to File Notice It Will Close Boston Globe."  The story has a dateline of 6:19 this morning.

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. Talks between the two sides continued early today, wire services reported, after a midnight deadline to forge an agreement came and went.  The threat of a shutdown puts the unions under fierce pressure to produce additional savings; the Boston Newspaper Guild promptly called the step a "bullying" tactic by the company.

Mr Kurtz then goes on to tell us something about The Boston Herald that I had not realized, and am not sure I believe:

A Globe shutdown would leave the city with only one daily newspaper, the tabloid Boston Herald, which has just 10 news reporters and is battling its own financial difficulties.

I believe it is battling its own financial difficulties, but having only 10 news reporters seems a bit short.  Maybe he isn't counting sports reporters.  But, then again, maybe he has counted them all.

But, The Herald still has columnists like Howie Carr and guest columnists like Eileen McNamara:

"From the moment the Times Co. purchased The Globe in 1993, it has treated New England's largest newspaper like a cheap whore," former Globe columnist Eileen McNamara wrote last month in the Herald.  "It pimped her out for profit during the booming 1990s and then pillaged her when times got tough. It closed her foreign bureaus and cheapened her coverage of everything from the fine arts to the hard sciences."

McNamara, who now teaches journalism at Brandeis University, ridiculed Sulzberger as "the boy genius whose crack management skills have helped drive the parent company of two of journalism's most respected newspapers to the brink of bankruptcy."*

The "bottom line" is that the Times Company, apparently being led by Pinch Sulzberger, is acting just the way you would expect it to report on some other organization, except it would attribute such behavior to some ruthless "Republican" Social Darwinism:**

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.

This is not pretty.

UPDATE

The Globe says it won't file with the Feds (today).

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.

And so it continues.

Regards  —  Cliff

*   The column was from 7 April 2009 and costs money to view. Does The Herald have a model that will work?
** My wife says, "or some vast right wing conspiracy."