As deadline looms, will NY Times shut The Boston Globe?

[UpInArms]

Source: Reuters

BOSTON (Reuters) - Advertisements for The Boston Globe boast that a single news story can "take you away." But after Friday, the newspaper itself may be taken away and shut down after 137 years of publication.

The New York Times Co, which bought the Globe for $1.1 billion in 1993, threatened at the start of April to shut the money-losing, award-winning broadsheet unless the paper's 13 unions agree by Friday to $20 million in concessions.

As the deadline approaches, the future of one of America's most acclaimed regional newspapers looks unclear, illustrating deepening problems for an industry that has few answers for an accelerating, long-term shift of advertising to the Internet.

Names of potential buyers have surfaced only to disappear nearly as quickly, some worrying about finding a profitable financial model for a newspaper that won 20 Pulitzer Prizes and dominates news coverage in the six-state New England region but has faced steep drops in circulation.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5402UD20090501?sp=true

[tomm2thumbs]

1. where are the tea parties now? Freedom of the Press without the Press...tsk tsk tsk

I guess those 'Boston Teaparty' inspired revelers can mail us all the news written on tiny teabags since they obviously won't turn up to save a paper in this country

[UpInArms]

2. tea baggers are too stupid to read - they only watch Faux or listen

to limpballs and to rightwing hatebaggers like glen blechh

[Alcibiades]

3. This is silly

They are playing chicken. They might shut the paper down temporarily, but they would probably sell it before shuttering it: a completely defunct Globe would be a worthless asset, even more so than an unprofitable Globe.

[ccinamon]

4. So the unions need to give up $20 million,

how much is MANAGEMENT giving up? I just woke up and might of missed it in the article, but it never said how much management was giving up in this deal.

I would think if the workers have to give back, so does management...but since management makes more money, they need to give back more....especially since they are the ones that make the "business" decisions...make them pay for their lousy decisions...not the workers!

I don't live in Boston so I don't know why the globe is losing readers...I know here in DFW I tried for both the Dallas and Fort Worth news for several years....all they printed was rah-rah-rah George Bush and republicans and pooh-pooh-pooh anything from the democrats...they are SOOOO unbalanced and untruthful that I cancelled...why pay hundreds of dollars a year for lies and half-truths?

Maybe management should look at what they have printed over the past 8 years and see if most people are like me, they want the truth fairly reported.