Free Republic

IT IS ONE OF those moments when I feel like a time traveler. I look out the airplane window and watch a young woman on the tarmac directing our jet to its gate. As she waves the signals, I fall into a silent, familiar reverie: “I remember when.’’ What I remember, of course, is a time when no woman would have been hired for this “man’s job.’’ What I remember is when my generation opened the door for hers. If I talked to her about the old days, I wonder, would she listen as politely as if I were talking...

It seems that the flat out health care flip-flop performed recently by Massachusetts Democrat candidate for the U.S. Senate was too hypocritically self serving for even the very liberal Boston Globe to spin in a way to make her look good. Either it was that or the fact that that they aren't worried about how such a story would affect Coakley's chances in the special election on January 19 since it is widely assumed that a win in the Democrat primary leads automatically to a coronation in the general election in that liberal state. Whatever the case, Boston Globe writer...

Congratulations Massachussets! You have just chosen the person last night who will succeed the late Ted Kennedy in his senate seat. The Boston Globe's Derrick Z. Jackson declared the winner a week ago on December 3 in this story, Coakley gets the keys to the Senate: MARTHA COAKLEY will be the state’s next US senator. Michael Capuano handed her the keys to the late Ted Kennedy’s office by getting caught up in one last dumb shouting match with the sure loser in the race, Stephen Pagliuca. One can only imagine the smile inside Coakley’s head as Capuano and Pagliuca descended...

After months of hunting for a buyer, The New York Times Company said on Wednesday that it had decided not to sell The Boston Globe, the newspaper it threatened last spring to close because of mounting losses. The Globe did not draw high bids, and the company chairman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., said last month that the paper’s finances had improved enough that the company no longer believed it had to sell if the offers were not attractive enough. Executives said this year that the paper was on track to lose $85 million in 2009, before making painful cost cuts that...

....Platinum has replaced or laid off six of the Union-Tribune’s top eight managers since taking over, and it cut 18 percent, or 192 people, of the staff three days after the deal was completed. It has also hired consultants to monitor the productivity of reporters and editors and is looking to rent out the top two floors of the newspaper’s headquarters.

The Boston Globe will soon begin charging for its Web site, publisher P. Steven Ainsley told the paper’s union bosses yesterday as the Globe’s parent New York Times [NYT] Co. confirmed in a regulatory filing that the money-losing Hub broadsheet is for sale. News of the Globe’s intention to charge for Boston.com came a day after News Corp. [NWS] Chairman Rupert Murdoch announced his company would start charging for content at all of its news Web sites, including the New York Post, The Times of London and The Sun, a popular British tabloid. News Corp. already charges for some access...

(UPDATE: The Boston Globe has now posted what it calls a redacted revised docket although it is described as a "police report" on its site. And redacted it certainly is since it has redacted out almost the entire narrative section of the original report. To read the full highly revealing narrative, check out the original police report.)

A little tip for anyone who gets stopped by a police officer for a possible traffic violation. Be polite. Very polite. Even if you think you were wrongly stopped, do not under any circumstances start yelling at the police officer. Follow this advice and your chances of being given a traffic ticket, instead of just a warning, go way down. The same applies for any encounter with a police officer because the surest way to get yourself arrested is to act act arrogantly and aggressively when questioned. Whatever you do, do not act like the arrestee in the Henry Louis...

BOSTON — The Boston Globe’s owners have postponed a deadline for potential buyers of the newspaper to submit their initial bids. The New York Times [NYT] Co., which owns the Globe, had set a Wednesday deadline for nonbinding bids. But the Globe reports Tuesday that Goldman Sachs & Co., the investment banking firm hired to manage the sale, has told interested parties they will be given more time to prepare offers for the Globe and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

Former advertising executive Jack Connors and private equity investor Stephen Pagliuca have joined forces to prepare for a potential bid to buy The Boston Globe, according to people briefed on the sales process. This week the two got approval from the Globe’s owner, The New York Times Co., to team up for a potential bid, the sources said. Connors and Pagliuca had been weighing separate bids for New England’s largest daily. Nondisclosure agreements had stipulated bidders could not work together, but the two sought permission to collaborate. As that team and at least one rival local group craft preliminary bids,...

Talks between the Boston Globe's largest union and management wrapped up around 4 a.m. today, after two marathon sessions in two days failed to resolve disagreement over how to achieve $10 million in cuts. Globe spokesman Robert Powers said that talks are tentatively scheduled to resume next Monday. Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten released a statement early Wednesday saying, "We are optimistic about the prospects for reaching an agreement after our most recent talks with the Company. The discussions will continue today." The two sides are scheduled to talk informally by phone today, with formal negotiations resuming next week....

So now The New York Times is quoting “experts” saying the Boston Globe may only be worth one dollar - a buck! Eight bits! OK, here goes. I’ve got a hunch, I’m gonna bet a bunch. Pinch Sulzberger, if you’re listening, I am going to offer you a premium for your dreadful sheet - two bucks. I will take the entire rag off your hands - even the weekly editorial about how wonderful Barney Frank is. Terms: cash. I just counted out eight quarters from the change cup in my car. That’s my last best offer. I still have three...

Not that long ago, owning a metropolitan newspaper guaranteed a seat at the civic table, immediate respectability and, given that many papers were near-monopolies, a press practically capable of printing money. Now it seems that the dollar that buys you a copy on a newsstand may buy you the whole organization behind it. And it doesn’t help that the last three big sales involving metropolitan newspapers — the Tribune Company, the Philadelphia papers and The Star-Tribune in Minneapolis — all ended in bankruptcy. It appears that The Boston Globe may be put in play by its owner, The New York...

The Boston Newspaper Guild will meet with managers at The Boston Globe and the National Labor Relations Board this week as it tries to block a 23 percent pay cut imposed by the newspaper’s parent company. The cut imposed by the New York Times [NYT] Co. came after the Guild narrowly rejected a new contract with $10 million in annual wage and benefit concessions. The Times Co. says it needed $20 million in annual savings from Globe unions to keep the paper open. After the cut was announced, the Guild filed an unfair labor complaint with the labor board, which...

BARRANCA DE PUNTARENAS, Costa Rica - At the time, he had no way to know it would trigger a high-stakes controversy that reached all the way to Boston, but Jose Antonio Gonzalez remembers clearly the day he first heard that there might be a drug to help his little daughter.

Some of us have speculated that many newsrooms in America are so hell-bent on maintaining their supposedly hallowed positions -- and that by their way of "thinking" they are exempt from the normal laws of economics -- that they will have be dragged kicking and screaming from their keyboards when the repo men come around to turn out the lights. This week's events at the Boston Globe give validity to that theory. Let's take it on faith that the Globe, the onetime New England jewel of the New York Times, really has been losing money at the rate of...

Three Boston businessmen - a Boston Celtics owner, a former advertising mogul, and a member of the family that ran the Globe for generations - have emerged as prominent potential buyers of the Globe, according to people knowledgeable about their interest in the city's leading daily. Actively mulling bids for the newspaper, according to these people, are Stephen Pagliuca, a private equity executive and Celtics co-owner; Jack Connors, cofounder of a major advertising firm and chairman of Partners HealthCare; and Stephen Taylor, a former Globe executive and member of the family that sold the Globe to the New York Times...

Boston Globe employees, in rejecting contract concessions, let anger trump self-interest. Now, says Alex S. Jones, a longtime observer of The New York Times Company, their future looks even dimmer. The Boston Globe Newspaper Guild’s narrow defeat of the New York Times Company’s demands for contract concessions has almost certainly made it less likely that the paper can be sold. This is a bitter irony, as many of those casting "no" votes presumably want a sale to happen. The Globe reports that The Times has put the paper up for sale and hired Goldman Sachs to manage the process. But...

The New York Times Co. has hired an investment bank to manage the possible sale of The Boston Globe, and the company plans to request bids for Boston's major daily in the next couple of weeks, according to two people who say they may make offers on the newspaper. The Times Co., which has declined to comment in recent months on whether it is selling the Globe, has hired Goldman Sachs, the same Wall Street investment bank the Times Co. has hired to sell its 17.5 percent stake in the Boston Red Sox, the potential bidders say. In recent weeks,...

Boston Globe staffers' letter to Arthur Sulzberger Jr.; send on June 9 Dear Mr. Sulzberger, We have long admired your commitment to producing the world’s best journalism. We know, as a former reporter, that you appreciate the work we do and how we have continued to publish hard-hitting, thoughtful papers throughout these hard times. Despite all the rhetoric of the last few weeks, we believe you want to do the right thing – that, at bottom, you’re a mensch. We’re all too aware of the awful economic climate and the precipitous challenges to the newspaper industry. Most of us went...

Now that the largest union representing employees of the Boston Globe has rejected management's final contract offer, observers wonder if the parent New York Times Co. will make good on its threat to shut down the 137-year-old Globe. "It's clear the Times doesn't want to go that route," said Ed Atorino, newspaper analyst at Benchmark & Co. But if the Globe is on a pace to lose $85 million in 2009, as has been reported, it will be tempting, he said. "They would substantially cut their losses by shutting it down. Now, there may be major costs related to shutting...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- The largest union representing employees of the Boston Globe narrowly rejected management's final contract offer Monday, possibly setting the stage for the closure of the embattled newspaper. Parent New York Times Co. /quotes/comstock/13*!nyt/quotes/nls/nyt (NYT 6.34, -0.15, -2.31%) threatened earlier this year to shut down the Globe unless it could get $20 million in concessions from the paper's unions. Last month, the Boston Newspaper Guild and the Globe had reached a tentative deal that on a proposal that included a substantial pay cut, unpaid furloughs, and modifications to the lifetime job guarantee provisions that protect almost 200 employees....

The Boston Globe’s corporate masters in New York plan to make good on their threat to whack members of the newspaper’s biggest union with a 23 percent pay cut next week after the Boston Newspaper Guild rejected the company’s demands. By a close 277-265 vote, Guild members tonight refused to bow to contract concessions and dared management to impose the 23-percent pay cut or even shutter the struggling broadsheet.

The Boston Globe’s biggest union last night refused to bow to contract concessions demanded by its New York corporate masters in a high-risk slap that dares management to make good on threats to impose a 23-percent pay cut or even shutter the struggling broadsheet. It was a close vote but the Boston Newspaper Guild rejected the company’s contract proposal by a vote of 277-265. Guild members dared management to impose a draconian 23 percent pay cut rather than accepting the company’s 8.4 percent salary cut and drastically reduced benefits.

Months of labor acrimony at The Boston Globe will come to a head on Monday, when members of the newspaper’s largest union are to vote on deep cuts in wages, benefits and job security, amid growing signs that they could well reject the deal. The paper has said that if employees reject the package, it will cut their pay 23 percent. The union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, has vowed to challenge a unilateral reduction with federal regulators — though it may not be able to block one from taking effect — raising the prospect of continued conflict with The Globe’s...

The Boston Globe's largest union tonight narrowly rejected $10 million in wage and benefit cuts, and the paper's owner prepared to quickly impose a 23 percent pay cut on the union's members. Such a move by the New York Times Co., will almost certainly move the bitter contract dispute from the bargaining table to the National Labor Relations Board and federal courts. The Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents more than 600 editorial, advertising and business office workers, has said it would challenge such a move and seek a court order known as an injunction to block the Times Co. from...

The vote was 277 "no" to 265 "yes."

Five days before the Boston Newspaper Guild votes on a new contract that would cut members' pay and benefits at The Boston Globe, the head of the union posted a letter criticizing The New York Times Co. for "wretched" management decisions and "its unwillingness to share the pain of overcoming this crisis." "That's incredible," said Gary Chaison, a professor of labor relations at Clark University in Worcester, Mass. "He's painting acceptance of the agreement almost as a surrender. ... By not endorsing it and painting it in such a negative light, he's asking them to turn it down." Chaison said...

Finally, after all these years, Billy Bulger and I are on the same side of an issue. We are both rooting for the Globe to fold. Stipulated, your Honor, that the Corrupt Midget continues to grab that $200,000-a-year state pension. He’s still got his spalpeens at the public trough, including at least one double dipper. Makes ya wanna throw up on TV, as Dapper O’Neil used to say. Yes, Bulger is the generalissimo of the Forgotten but Not Gone Brigade. He’s made disparaging remarks about this paper, too. How can we miss him when he won’t go away? Still, the...

I'm not going to complain about the latest price increases announced by the Boston Globe, since I'm on the record as believing that newspapers can and should charge a lot more for their print editions. But does it have to be so confusing? (snip) Over at the Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly, ponders moving to online-only, and asks whether his readers will pay the higher price. My answer: I couldn't rely solely on Boston.com, the Globe's free Web site, because its ad servers are miserably slow. It's fine for reading a few stories, but not the whole paper. (snip) In such...

A newspaper’s authority derives ultimately from its prosperity.  So it was more bad news last week that among the 25 largest US newspapers, only The Wall Street Journal managed to eke out a small gain in circulation during the six months of the financial crisis. The general gloom, however, may be somewhat overstated. A hot-potato game has characterized the industry over the last twenty years, the astute and the distressed unloading on the innocent and reckless. As a result, many important newspapers – in Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Boston – are in the hands of owners ill-equipped to manage them....

What state budget crisis? Here is a very partial list of some of the hacks who, in the midst of the alleged fiscal “meltdown,” have filed bills to move themselves into more lucrative state-pension classifications: Parking-meter supervisors, senior parking-meter supervisors, clerk/magistrates (who make $110,220 a year), assistant clerk magistrates, recorders, registrars, bridge operators, radio maintenance techs, supervising tree surgeons, tree climbers, municipal fire chemists . . . you get the idea. The average public employee already makes 46 percent more in salary and benefits than the typical private-sector worker. But it’s not enough. They want more . . . More...

Implosion on Morrissey Boulevard It’s every moonbat for himself now at the Globe. May the best trust fund win. Jan. 1 will be D-Day - D as in deadwood. Assuming the effete Globe union OKs the new pact - and what choice do they have? -New Year’s is when the suits can start whacking useless overfed zombies like Dan Totten, the guys with the “lifetime” guarantees. The bow-tied bumkissers are throwing a hissy fit. Why, these givebacks are “draconian” (a true Globe word). The Times wants everyone to work . . . 40 hours a week! The publisher, who was...

Sen. John Forbes Kerry has spent the week futilely trying to prop up two of his oldest, dearest friends - the Boston Globe and a convicted kiddie-porn pervert named Wade Sanders. You know about the Globe. Despite Kerry’s Senate hearings into the implosion of arrogant left-wing newspapers, El Globo continues to circle the drain. You’ve heard less about Wade Sanders, or nothing at all if you rely on the Globe. He’s a liberal and a pervert and a criminal, and he’s been a close pal of John Kerry’s for 43 years. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Anyway, Liveshot’s...

Kerry on journalism: 'Brave new world' By: Michael Calderone May 6, 2009 06:33 PM EST Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) began Wednesday's commerce subcommittee hearing on "the Future of Journalism" by welcoming media executives, Senate colleagues and audience members to a "brave new world." The hearing opened just 12 hours after staffers at Kerry's home-town paper, the Boston Globe, agreed to an 8.3 percent pay cut for staffers just to keep the doors open. Newspapers, Kerry said, "look like an endangered species." "Most of us in this room probably begin our day with a newspaper-maybe two or three," Kerry said in...

The Boston Globe and its largest employees union reached a tentative agreement early Wednesday morning on concessions that will keep the 137-year-old newspaper publishing, the union president said. The breakthrough came at about 4 a.m., said Dan Totten, president of the Newspaper Guild. He did not release details pending a meeting with Guild members scheduled for Thursday. "Out of respect for our members, the Guild and the New York Times Co. have agreed not to release details until Guild leaders have a chance to meet with our members," Totten said. Globe spokesman Robert Powers said in a statement that details...

'I SURE HOPE you'll be out of a job soon," e-mails a friend, alluding to The Boston Globe's current excruciations. He really is a friend - he has shown me and my family much warmth and kindness over the years - and should I find myself without a job, I'm sure he would want to help in any way he could. But such is his antipathy to the Globe that he regards my potential unemployment as a price well worth paying for what he calls the "greater good" of the newspaper's demise. My friend is a conservative, and he is...

It appears that the New York Times Co. has found it difficult to stick to sound business principles in its negotiations with unions representing Boston Globe employees, as today it caved and withdrew its threat to close down the paper in 60 days if negotiations fail. Just yesterday the death of Boston's liberal fish-wrap seemed imminent. With just hours before a midnight deadline that could determine the future of the Boston Globe, the paper's owner, the New York Times Co, has yet to reach deals with any of the Globe's four major unions over $20 million dollars in total concessions...

WBZ-TV 4 newscast now saying the paper will continue to publish for now. The Times Co. says they won't issue a WARN notice. The biggest union has walked away from talks.

Boston Globe owners and the newspaper's union leaders talked through the night in an effort to reach an agreement on $20 million worth of concessions that would keep the financially-struggling paper afloat, but representatives of the paper's largest union, the Newspaper Guild, walked out without any deal on the table. The Boston Globe's owner says it will have to shut the paper down if it can't get $20 million in concessions from the paper's unions. There was a midnight deadline for the paper to have an agreement or its owner, the New York Times Co., said it would shut down...

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....

Boston Globe unions’ resolve to protect lifetime job guarantees began to crumble this morning as the mailers union agreed to modify the perk under threat of a shutdown of the paper. “We want to keep the newspaper open and we believe the New York Times [NYT] threat, that if we didn’t come to some sort of agreement, that we would close,” said Mary White, president of Teamsters Local 1 which represents the mailers. The breakthrough development came at about 3:30 a.m. during marathon talks and left just two major unions - the Boston Newspaper Guild and the pressmen - clinging...

German linguists might have to add a couple syllables to “schadenfreude” to capture the sentiments of those observing the NY Times/Boston Globe death match. People aren’t just revelling in the papers’ misfortune anymore. They can now simultaneously delight in the Times’ hypocrisy. On today’s Morning Joe, Mike Barnicle blasted the NY Times as the “most hypocritical media company in the world” for what he sees as the Gray Lady’s bullying of the employees at its subsidiary, the Boston Globe. View video here.

Boston Newspaper Guild president Dan Totten left Sacred Heart School at 6:45 a.m. today - nearly seven hours after the midnight deadline - and said the union was taking a “break” from negotiations.

With a midnight deadline approaching, Boston Globe management issued an ultimatum to its four major unions: agree to major financial and contract concessions, including the abolition of lifetime job guarantees for some workers, or its owner, the New York Times Co., would file a plant closing notice with the state. The notice, required under federal law, would allow the Times Co. to carry out its threat to shutter the 137-year-old newspaper in 60 days. ‘‘We have provided our unions with a copy of a notice that we are prepared to file tomorrow if we are unable to reach an agreement...

he management of The Boston Globe threatened late Sunday to begin the process of shutting down the newspaper in a dispute with its unions over $20 million in cuts. Related Quotes Symbol Price Change NYT 5.40 +0.02 The Globe's owner, The New York Times Co., said it had given the Globe's biggest union a copy of a notice it was prepared to file Monday if it was unable to agree on the concessions by midnight Sunday, a deadline that passed without word from the union or the Times Co. The 60-day shutdown notice is required under federal law. The newspaper's...

Boston Globe negotiators gave union leaders copies of a 60-day shutdown warning notice they said they would file Monday if talks were not successful with one hour left to go before the midnight deadline. The notice, required by the federal Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, gives workers 60 days warning before the closure of a business. “Filing the WARN notice is a difficult step that we would like to avoid but, unfortunately, given the state of the negotiations, it is one we must be prepared to take if negotiations are not successful,” the Globe said in a statement. Negotiators...

The Boston Globe is warning its unions that is it prepared to file a notice with the state tomorrow that would shut down the Globe down in 60 days unless the two sides reach an agreement by midnight. Management says it is prepared to file a WARN notice although it called it a “difficult step.”

The Boston Globe is dying this weekend, one way or the other. It probably lingers on a while longer, on life support, a Terri Schiavo of journalism, but this comedy is ending the way it was destined to. Labor is caving, management is winning. Pinch Sulzberger, it so predictably turns out, is only a liberal with other people’s money. So now the rich kids in New York do away with seniority and the “lifetime” job guarantees for their fellow silver spoons in Boston. Sorry, comrades. The Velvet Coffin is being shoved into the crematorium. Maybe you can get a job...

Howie weekly thread starting with his Sunday Herald column