Media Watch

NH daily shuts down with no notice, a hundred lose jobs

The Eagle ran out of Time, State Will Investigate
Another New England daily closes

By Walter Brooks

     The Eagle Times closes
         No notice required

The publisher of The Eagle Times in Claremont says his family spent more than $1 million of its own money to keep the daily newspaper going before filing for bankruptcy.
The paper published its last edition yesterday, laying off 66 full-time and 29 part-time workers.
Publisher Harvey Hill said the paper had been for sale through a broker for a year but no one showed interest, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.
Because the paper has fewer than 100 employees, it's not required under federal law to give 60 days notice of the closing to them.
A meeting was scheduled at US Bankruptcy Court in Manchester on Aug. 7. Globe.

With the Boston Globe awaiting the Newspaper Guild vote later this month before its potential buyers will make a legally binding offer New England's biggest daily newspaper, another New England daily newspaper has folded.

According to the Manchester NH Union-Leader, New Hampshire officials say they will investigate whether a state law requiring employers to give workers and communities a 60-day notice before closing applies to The Eagle Times newspaper in Claremont NH which closed the doors on Friday.

Eagle Times publisher Harvey Hill sent an e-mail to staffers Thursday saying Friday's edition of the paper will be the newspaper's last. The company had declared bankruptcy on July 11, 

Hill told employees he had done his best to keep the daily paper going, but the economy and changes in the newspaper industry have made it impossible to survive. He said his family is unable to continue underwriting the losses of the company, which also includes three weekly publications.

Roy Duddy, interim director of the state Division of Economic Development, said the state will initiate its Rapid Response Team on Friday to assist workers and their families facing layoffs, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported.

Duddy says he believes about 120 people work for the company.

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NY Times ask bids for Boston Globe, Worcester Telegram to be in by next Tuesday

New buyer must assume $59 million pension plan liability

By Walter Brooks

According to stories in the industry trade publication and elsewhere, the New York Times has asked specific parties to bid for the purchase of both its New England daily newspapers, The Globe and The Telegram.

The bids must be in by a week from tomorrow, July 8.

The Times recently concluded bargaining with all the Globe's unions and has apparently succeeded in reducing that newspaper's overhead by $50 million. The successful completion of that, due with a vote to approve the agreement by the members of the Newspaper Guild next month, was thought by many to signal that the threat of a sale had passed.

Apparently the bargaining was for the purpose of making the newspaper more "salable."

Among the published references is this in The Times followed by the one from The Globe:

Times Co. May Include 2nd Paper in Globe Sale

The New York Times Company hopes to sell a newspaper in central Massachusetts along with The Boston Globe and wants the buyer of the papers to take on $59 million in pension liabilities. It intends to make a deal quite quickly, according to a letter sent to potential bidders, The New York Times's Richard Pérez-Peña reports.

The confidential letter from the company's investment bankers at Goldman Sachs, which was obtained by a Times reporter, says the company will focus on getting the highest price and "on the certainty and speed with which bidders can sign a definitive agreement and complete an acquisition."

It sets a July 8 deadline for initial, nonbinding bids, after which the company would choose which potential buyers would participate in a second round and would be allowed to submit binding offers... New York Times.
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Times Co. sets deadline of July 8 for Globe bids
Company wants a deal that includes Telegram & Gazette, pension liabilities

The New York Times Co., through its investment banker, has asked potential buyers of The Boston Globe to submit preliminary bids by July 8, according to people briefed on the sale process.

In a letter to parties that have expressed interest in buying New England's largest daily, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs & Co., which was hired by the Times Co. to manage a possible sale, said it is looking for preliminary indications of interest, including a potential price range for bids, the people said.

They described the preliminary bids as nonbinding, stressing that the step was still early in the sales process. Following the preliminary bids would come more intense due diligence by those who indicate serious potential interest, said these people, who did not want to be named because they aren't authorized to speak about the process.

The Times Co. wants to sell the Globe as part of a package that includes the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, another paper the Times Co. owns. The letter, according to the people, details that the buyer would need to assume the papers' $59 million in pension liabilities - $51 million for the Globe and $8 million for the T&G.

The Times Co. bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993 and the T&G for $295 million in 2000. The T&G is the largest daily in Central Massachusetts... Boston Globe.

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Is the Worcester Telegram the next to go?

Boston Globe sale drives other newspaper news off the front page
Bought for $296 million nine years ago, may fetch $20 million today

Many Cape Codders still read their local daily, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, which is available on area newsstands. The 142 year-old daily dominates Central Massachusetts the way The Globe does in the east, and tens of thousands of "washashores" have retired here from the Telegram's circulation area.

Forgotten in the speculation about The Globe's fate is its sister publication which is also owned by the New York Times.

Most interesting, perhaps, is that one of the few persons who has said he might be interested in buying The Telegram & Gazette, albeit with an investment group, lives here on Cape Cod himself - Bruce Bennett, the daily's former publisher.

Mr. Bennett, 64, retired to Dennis in 2006, after 34 years at the daily, the final 14 as publisher. He began his career as a general news reporter. While at the newspaper's helm he guided the Telegram & Gazette to financial and editorial excellence. Under his leadership the T&G. as locals call the paper, was named newspaper of the year by the New England Newspaper Association several times. He also oversaw the opening of a new production plant in Millbury Massachusetts and the creation of the website Telegram.com.

Below are some excerpts from today's edition of the T&G which had this story about its future:

T&G for sale? Speculation abounds

FOR SALE: 142-year-old, once-thriving Central Massachusetts business. Future potential and revenue stream uncertain, but general agreement that product produced is valuable, even necessary. Business last sold for $296 million; current asking price TBD.

While there is no for sale sign in front of the Telegram & Gazette building at 20 Franklin St. in Worcester or its printing operation in Millbury, newspaper industry analysts say it is abundantly clear that the New York Times Co., the T&G's parent company, wants to divest itself of the region's largest daily newspaper.

Murray described the newspaper as "unique" among news sources available in Central Massachusetts. While he doesn't always agree with T&G editorial positions or ways some news events are covered, the lieutenant governor said, the newspaper is an "ingrained and vital part of our day-to-day lives in Worcester."

The Times Co. bought the T&G in 2000... While shedding itself of the Globe and its mounting red ink makes sense financially, the parent company's motivation for selling off the T&G is less clear. The newspaper that the Times paid nearly $300 million for in 2000 now carries an estimated price tag ranging from $10 million up to a figure in the $40 million to $50 million range, with the most common valuations in the vicinity of $20 million to $25 million...

That bid solicitation announcement has produced considerable speculation about possible buyers for the T&G and even public expressions of interest, albeit cautious ones, from a handful of potential suitors. Among the latter are Bruce S. Bennett, former T&G publisher who retired in 2006, and David G. "Duddie" Massad, principal owner and chairman of Commerce Bank & Trust.

Mr. Bennett, who now lives on Cape Cod and in Florida, said, "I'd have to take a close look at the books" before fully committing to the venture... Telegram.

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Publishing in red ink

GateHouse, owner of eight newspapers here, in mortal danger right now
Incredible debt load destroying profitable, local newspapers

By Walter Brooks

Perhaps the saddest news in the newspaper business today is that the media giants which took on insane debt loads in the decade before this recession to buy up hundreds of prospering, local weeklies will end up greatly injuring local news coverage as the giants go belly up.

Of all the media giants in America, none is in greater danger of doing that than GateHouse Media which owns eight good weeklies on Cape Cod and the Islands.

These weeklies are the only watch dogs over local town governments and committees.

The daily press doesn't cover them, nor does radio or capecodtoday.com. When GateHouse is forced by the banks to throw in the towel, what will happen to these great newspapers?

If they close too, who will make sure the municipal foxes don't start eating our chickens?

Big Money in Small Newspapers

A generation ago, before Fidelity Investments followed by Herald Media followed by GateHouse, smelled big money in small newspapers, the weeklies here were all owned by Cape Cod families who cared at least as much about covering their town as they did about getting rich. There were no shareholders to satisfy, only their own consciences and fellow citizens.

Except for Bill Hough in Falmouth and Hank Hyora in Chatham, all the newspapers here are today owned by either GateHouse or Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp. The truly amazing thing is how well the journalists at these chain-owned papers have managed to cover the local news as their masters cut staff and demand higher profits.

The status of GateHouse today is catastrophic, and the third quarter of the business year starting July 1  is the worse one of all.

Here's what Steven Syre of The Boston Globe had to say about all this today:

The newspapers buried beneath the company's debts still make a cash profit on their own. They don't make a lot of money, and the cash they generate is shrinking fast. But they are still earners... GateHouse posted a loss of $32 million in its most recent quarter. But the business produced $5.7 million in cash earnings before interest, less than a third of the amount it reported in the same quarter last year.

There are two kinds of newspaper companies in business today, the ones that are struggling and the others that face mortal danger right now.

The factor that almost always separates one from the other is how a company viewed debt in recent years. Two of the newspaper industry's highest-profile financial disasters, Tribune Co. and the McClatchy Cos., both confront stupendous debt problems. The New York Times Co., which owns The Boston Globe, has its own debt problems.

But the smaller GateHouse Media Inc., measured pound for pound, rivals any of them when it comes to debt hangovers.

GateHouse was heavily dependent on credit from its earliest days as a small media company and grew much larger with the help of even more debt - obligations that threaten to overwhelm it today. The company is running up huge losses on paper, its stock has tanked, and no one is sure how it can pay back over $1 billion owed to investors.

"It does beg the question: What were they thinking?" says Tom Corbett, a Morningstar Investment Service analyst.

I'm not sure, either. GateHouse executives didn't call me back... Click The Globe to read the rest.

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Local weekly owner cuts salaries 7.5%,10.5% of workforce let go

GateHouse announces pay cuts at Mass. newspapers
Chain includes 8 Cape and Islands weeklies

by Dan Kennedy, Medianation.

GateHouse email to employees
A MESSAGE FROM RICK DANIELS, CEO/PRESIDENT GHMNE

As we all know too well, the road out of the horrendous economic and advertising slump has been extremely difficult, and yet we have a lot to be proud of on how we have responded. We are still bringing valuable and unique local news, information and advertising to our huge print and digital audiences. Together, we have taken many tough actions that have preserved - and often enhanced - our capabilities, while substantially decreasing GHMNE's structural costs.
   Regrettably, we need to share some tough news: Beginning June 1, we will implement a temporary reduction of our salaries and wages. The average GateHouse Massachusetts employee will see a reduction of about 7.75%. If this were to last through the remainder of 2009, the effect would be to reduce 2009 salaries by about 4% - given it is not starting until June. Rates will vary, and will be "progressive" - meaning that higher earnings will be reduced at higher rates. Your supervisor will share your amount with you. All publications and units in Massachusetts are affected by this step. We are sitting down - today - with representatives of our unionized colleagues to start negotiations on this issue. We expect participation from all - fully and soon.
   Why are we taking this step? Why now? It's really pretty simple: As much as we have done everything in our collective power to blunt the negative effects the economic crisis has had on advertising, virtually ALL major metropolitan markets have been hit by advertising declines that have soared to the mid-twenties to mid-thirties percent (compared to prior year months) since early January. These revenue declines have dramatically hit the cash flows of most publishers.
We are NOT - thankfully - in the kind of trouble that we never want to be in - producing lots of red ink, HOWEVER, if we don't act soon, and decisively, we could see advertising trends reduce our revenues to a point where we could no longer cover our cash expenses with any margin of safety. Common sense tells us that when companies start suffering from negative cash flow, there is NOTHING good that happens, and these days, with lenders and vendors on short strings themselves, the "bad stuff" happens quickly. We seriously considered a wage reduction earlier this year, but given the obvious difficulties a pay cut creates for each of our family's finances, we decided to make sure we were not going to see an advertising rebound that could allow us to avoid this painful step. We also considered the possible use of additional staff reductions to generate the almost $2.5 Million of savings this pay cut will generate for the remainder of 2009. Such cuts would have to be about 100 positions, and we did not believe we could continue to operate and deliver the high levels customers value were we to quickly cut this many positions.
   We are hardly alone in taking this step. In fact, a great many publishing companies have already taken steps to reduce their single biggest expense - compensation, using furloughs, pay cuts, or even both. While we might be a bit "late" vs. our peers, it's not too late for us given the many aggressive cost reductions we have already made. At this point, GateHouse Massachusetts is the only GateHouse region that is implementing pay reductions, because we, being in a major metro market, have seen substantially greater losses in advertising expenditures. Because no one can predict the economic future, we can't reasonably predict when revenues and cash flows will strengthen to the point where there is little concern about cash flows being stable and safe (i.e. positive) levels. Obviously, the sooner we can end this temporary reduction, the better - for all.
   Some might ask: Aren't newspapers dead anyway? Are we just prolonging the inevitable? As a consumer and advertising medium, newspapers that deliver truly unique news and information are still very much in demand, although some very important parts of the business model, including the need to be fluently digital, are changing. One of the largest advertising agencies in the country visited us recently with a very simple message: Large local newspaper companies, with some changes, will be the major beneficiaries of the newspaper industry restructuring. Our industry IS going through wrenching changes, but a great many of the changes that are bedeviling major Metro papers are poised to benefit us - as long as we remain economically sound in the near term. We will keep you informed about our challenges, AND our victories.
   The senior management team and I will be conducting employee information sessions at a great many of our locations in early to mid June, we look forward to updating you further at these meetings. Thank you - in advance - for your willingness to support personally difficult steps during these times that WILL allow us to grab the opportunities that arise out of adversity.
Richard Daniels
President and Chief Executive Officer
GateHouse Media New England
Publisher, The Patriot Ledger and the Enterprise

The Boston Globe isn't the only newspaper in Massachusetts fighting for its economic survival. Earlier today, GateHouse Media New England, which publishes more than 100 community newspapers in Eastern Massachusetts, announced a "temporary" pay cut.

According to an account by Jon Chesto in the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, a GateHouse paper, salaries will be reduced by an average of 7.75 percent, with the lowest-paid employees receiving a 7 percent cut and the highest-paid getting whacked by as much as 15 percent.

The goal is to save $2.5 million this year. The pay cuts would be reversed if and when the recession-battered advertising market recovers.

100 workers lose jobs

In addition, we learn from Chesto's story that GateHouse has reduced its full-time workforce in Massachusetts by about 10.5 percent since the beginning of the year, and currently employs about 1,100.

(NOTE: GateHouse's Cape Cod weeklies only lost two positions which comes to 3.6% of its 55 employees.)

In a company-wide e-mail, a copy of which I obtained shortly after it was sent out and it reprinted on theright, GateHouse Media New England president and chief executive Rick Daniels explains what's behind the pay reductions:

Why are we taking this step? Why now? It's really pretty simple: As much as we have done everything in our collective power to blunt the negative effects the economic crisis has had on advertising, virtually ALL major metropolitan markets have been hit by advertising declines that have soared to the mid-twenties to mid-thirties percent (compared to prior year months) since early January. These revenue declines have dramatically hit the cash flows of most publishers.

The pay cuts will take effect next week except at three unionized papers, where GateHouse executives will seek to negotiate reductions: the Ledger, the Enterprise of Brockton and the Herald News of Fall River.

In a telephone interview after the cuts were announced, Daniels told me that - barring an unexpected further deterioration in the economy - he doesn't expect any further dramatic cuts.

"Anything else we would do would be more in the manner of pruning and trimming," he said. He would not, however, rule out cutting back on the publication frequency of some papers or even closing a few, noting that there are regions that are served by multiple GateHouse papers. The company has closed a handful of papers over the past year.

And though Daniels declined to predict when GateHouse would be able to reverse the pay cuts, he said he hopes to be able to evaluate at the end of 2009 when he would be able to "mitigate or eliminate" them.

"It's an imposition and a hardship for any long-term employee to say, 'Here's a cut in your pay,'" Daniels said.

GateHouse publishes some of the best-known papers in Massachusetts, including dailies such as the MetroWest Daily News of Framingham as well as the Ledger, the Enterprise and the Herald News. Its larger weeklies include the Cambridge Chronicle, the Somerville Journal and the Newton Tab; smaller papers extend well into the exurbs and on Cape Cod.

The New England unit is part of a national chain of about 400 newspapers based in Fairport, N.Y. Like many newspaper companies, GateHouse is struggling with debt that it took on during more prosperous times. Last fall, its stock price fell to such a low level that it was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange.

In late 2008 I wrote a story for CommonWealth Magazine that examines GateHouse and the future of community journalism in some detail. Beat The Press.

GateHouse newspapers on Cape Cod

The chain is easily the largest in the United States with the lion's share of weeklies here on Cape Cod and the Islands. All except three were once owned by a local Cape Cod publisher.

The weeklies here were mostly spared from the recent lay-offs with only one journalist let go and one advertising sale position not replaced, a 3.6% reduction as compared with the compay-wide cut of 10.5%

Here's the list as of May, 2008:

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Geffen is "seriously interested" in buying the Times - NYT

Is Geffen a source close to Geffen?

Despite falling short in two recent attempts to become a major player in The New York Times Company, David Geffen continues to be seriously interested in buying a sizable piece of the company or taking it over completely, according to people who are very familiar with his thinking, though he is wary of doing anything to antagonize the controlling Sulzberger family... NY Times.

Yesterday the New York Post ran a pretty emphatic item reporting that entertainment mogul David Geffen is not interested in buying the New York Times or a share thereof. The Post's Peter Lauria called the Geffen bubble a "myth," citing "three sources with direct knowledge of the situation."

Today the Times itself comes back with a story claiming that Geffen is "seriously interested" in buying the Times, either in whole or in part. Reporters Richard Pérez-Peña and Michael Cieply one-up the Post, attributing their reporting to "people who are very familiar with his [Geffen's] thinking."

Far from being a throwaway, it's likely that the word "very" was the subject of extensive negotiations between the Times and, uh, one of its sources. Very interesting, I'd say. MediaNation.

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NY Times as non-profit; Online upstarts deliver news without the paper

David Geffen and NY Times

Newsweek's Johnnie L. Roberts reports that David Geffen would turn the New York Times into a non-profit institution if he should succeed in buying the paper. But someone - Roberts, Geffen, the unnamed Geffen "confidante" who's quoted or perhaps all three - doesn't really understand the model.
   The example that's cited is the St. Petersburg Times, which is owned by the non-profit Poynter Institute. But the Times itself is a for-profit organization. If that's what Geffen's really got in mind, then that might be the ideal ownership situation - unlike a true non-profit, the St. Pete Times is free to endorse political candidates, for instance.
   But though the hybrid model eliminates the pressure of quarterly reports and shareholder discontent, a paper such as the St. Pete Times (the New Hampshire Union Leader has a similar ownership arrangement) still needs to break even. In the current economic climate, that's a challenge...
       FT: Geffen eyes New York Times
The Financial Times reports that entertainment mogul David Geffen has set his sights on buying the New York Times. So - would Geffen keep the Boston Globe or spin it off? (Via David Carr)... Medianation.

Online upstarts deliver news without the paper
Super local sites run with tiny staffs, budgets

The front page of a Chicago daily recently headlined these stories: A charter school facing closure, record turnouts for university elections, a poll showing that Chicagoans crave more openness in their government.

It was a pretty robust report, but it wasn't in the Chicago Tribune or Sun-Times, the major papers in town. In fact, it wasn't on paper at all, but in the Chi-Town Daily News, a small but growing online upstart that is trying to succeed with a relentlessly local focus.

"We don't cover state politics or national politics," said Geoff Dougherty, a former Tribune reporter who founded Chi-Town in 2005. "We don't have an auto writer or fashion writer. We cover local public affairs."

With an annual budget of about $500,000, a full-time reporting staff of six, a team of freelancers, and 100 volunteer citizen journalists, the site operates as a nonprofit and draws 65,000 unique visitors a month (by comparison capecodtoday recieved 620,722 unique vistors last month). In comparison, Tribune's website draws 5.7 million so-called uniques a month, according to Nielsen Online.

Small, feisty, hyperlocal, nonprofit - is this a glimpse of the future of city journalism online?... Globe.

 capecodtoday.com webstat for past year

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Newspapers walk the walk while TV doesn't talk the talk

TV news show lost 28% of its audience since 2000: Newspapers lost 17%
But newspapers routinely reported their losses while TV did not

If you are aware that the newspaper business is in peril, it is because the newspaper indistry has been telling you about the problem abetted by its rival television news business.

And if you are not aware that the network TV shows are in far worse sharp, it's because there has been very little reported of that by either TV news or newspapers.

A University of Pennsylvania study released last week revealed the gory facts and as usual, it was the New York Times which reported it in the excerbs below in today's edition:

Few TV Reports on Audience Flight
Newspapers sell fewer copies than they used to, and network television news draws fewer viewers. But as that trend unfolded, newspapers and television gave starkly different accounts, a University of Pennsylvania study released last week shows.

Papers found a lot to report about declining news audiences, while national television news shows had little to say. And though the problems of print and broadcast have been similar in scope, both media dwelled primarily on what was happening to newspapers... In the newspapers, they found 900 articles about the drop in newspaper circulation and 95 about the shrinking audience for the broadcast networks' newscasts. The TV news shows had 38 reports on falling newspaper readership and only 6 about the falling audience for national news broadcasts.

(The broadcast networks' evening news shows have lost audience more rapidly than printed newspapers, to about 23 million people each night now from 32 million in 2000. At the same time, the audience for prime-time cable news has roughly tripled, to about four million. Newspaper sales have dropped to about 47 million a day from 56 million in 2000. NY Times.

Here's the release from Penn:

Looking at print, broadcast and cable news stories over a nine-year span, researchers at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania found there were 900 stories on declining readership that appeared in newspapers, but only 22 stories on declining news viewing that appeared on television.

The team was examining the frequency with which major daily newspapers and national television news networks have covered the decline in their readers and viewers. The results showed that while newspapers do cover the drop in their own readership and the drops in viewership of TV news, national television news outlets have largely ignored the story.

The research team comprised Michael X. Delli Carpini, Ph.D., Professor of Communication and Walter H. Annenberg Dean of the Annenberg School for Communication; and doctoral students Elizabeth Roodhouse, Angela M. Lee, and Olesya Venger.
In their report, "Coverage of the Decline in Newspaper Readership and Television National News: A Preliminary Analysis," they noted that while more analysis is needed, "it is not too great a leap to say that for all intents and purposes national television news has ignored its drop in viewership. Indeed, we found that newspapers were more likely to cover the decline in television news viewing than was television news itself, and that national television news was slightly more likely to cover the decline in newspaper readership than its own audiences."

In the study, the Annenberg team looked at 2,060 news stories about the decline in readership/viewership. These stories appeared in print or aired on broadcast television between January 1, 2000 and March 12, 2009 in the top 25 circulation daily newspapers, including The Philadelphia Inquirer (as reported by Editor & Publisher magazine), plus two wire services (Associated Press and Reuters). Since they were looking at The Philadelphia Inquirer, they added the Philadelphia Daily News to the analysis. The team also selected the national news broadcast of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, the Fox News Network, CNN and CNBC. They developed search queries that identified relevant articles and news segments in order to select only stories specifically about the decline in readership/viewership. Their sources included LexisNexis, Newsbank, and Factiva.

Here's a link to the full report. The cartoon appeared in the New Yorker on 5/11/09.

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Incredible, non-credible proposal as Globe, Union reach Draconian accord

"What, no sacrifice of first borns? The New York Times' decision to propose a 23 percent wage cut as its 'last, best offer' suggests the Overlords of 8th Avenue are looking for nothing but abject capitulation in its talks with the Boston Newspaper Guild." Massachusetts Liberal.

Boston Globe, newspaper guild reach accord, huge pay cut

Double-barreled threats of a draconian pay cut and unilateral layoffs forced the Boston Globe's largest union to buckle to management demands in a pre-dawn pact that could save the paper for now.
The New York Times [NYT] Co., itself facing a severe financial crisis, had warned the Boston Newspaper Guild in no uncertain terms that it would order a sweeping 23 percent wage cut for all 700-plus Guild members if an agreement was not reached.
There was no word on the major sticking point during marathon negotiations over the last four days - the lifetime job guarantees held by about 190 members of the Guild, which represents editorial and advertising workers. Lifting or modifying those guarantees would leave those staffers vulnerable to layoffs... Herald.

An incredible, non-credible proposal

The New York Times Co. is trying to force a 23 percent pay cut on the Newspaper Guild, which prompts the Outraged Liberal to ask: "What, no sacrifice of first borns?"

That really is one hell of a proposed pay cut. It's hard to know what to make of such a move except to assume that management wants some sort of dramatic end game - a walkout by the Guild, bankruptcy, whatever.

Earlier today the Boston Herald's Jessica Heslam - back from hardship duty - reported that Guild officers have gotten some mighty nice raises the past few years. But though Heslam's enterprise might have sowed some dissension within the ranks at 135 Morrissey Boulevard, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and company seem intent on keeping Globe staffers united and pissed off.

You may have seen this already, but the Washington Post's newly minted Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, Eugene Robinson, has a smart take on the Globe's woes today. And on and on it goes.

One final thought: Management's latest offer could be thought of more as an opening gambit than a "last, best offer." The 30-day deadline has passed, and the company has now said it will not close the paper until after a federally mandated 60-day warning period has passed - and it hasn't even filed the necessary paperwork for that to happen.

What happens when the Guild say "No"?

What will management do when the Guild says no? Announce that it will close the Globe in two months? Sorry - now that we know the company wasn't serious about closing the paper on Friday, and then on Sunday, that's no longer credible.

Unless you're North Korea, you only get to make threats once. Media Nation.
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NY Times take.Globe take.

Globe management makes "last, best offer"

Negotiations continued Tuesday night at the Boston Globe, and Globe management proposed a 23% pay cut to Boston Newspaper Guild members in order to gain $10 million in concessions from the union to keep the newspaper alive. The New York Times Company threatened to close the Globe if its unions did not make cost saving concessions by May 1, and negotiations continued this weekend past that deadline, ending with a tentative agreement on Sunday night, though management rejected the union's last proposal.

Globe management is calling the pay cuts a "last, best offer." According to the story in the Globe, this move could allow management to declare an impasse and unilaterally impose the cuts, as "labor laws allow companies, under certain legal conditions, to impose the conditions of their last, best offers if an impasse is reached in negotiation."

The Globe also says that declaring an impasse could result in a drawn out court battles and strikes. Boston College law professor Thomas Kohler says, "Going to impasse is a high stakes game because the actual determination of impasse doesn't occur until after the fact. It's very chancy"... Editors Weblog.

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Herald circulation drops 17%, Globe 14%

Globe, Herald report circulation declines
GateHouse Media newspaper circulation down, too

The Globe's daily circulation plunged 13.7 percent to 302,638 copies and Sunday readership dropped 11.3 percent to 466,665, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures. The Herald's daily circulation fell at an even greater rate, down 17.4 percent to 150,688 copies, but Sunday readership fell at slower rate, down 9.6 percent to 95,392.

Ledger off 6.2%, Enterprise off 5.5%

Smaller local newspapers owned by GateHouse Media Inc, like the Brockton Enterprise and Quincy Patriot Ledger, suffered smaller declines for the most recent period, the circulation report noted. But both the Enterprise and the Patriot Ledger still reported drops, with the Enterprise down 5.5 percent daily and the Patriot Ledger down 6.2 percent... Globe.

See previous story:
New York Times intends to enforce May 1 deadline on Globe, Newspaper's union reaches out to Pols, Times advertising down 27%  here.

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