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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....