Read all about it - or not
Updated on 15 June 2009
Managers of the latest newspaper facing impending collapse, the Boston Globe, are meeting union leaders today to discuss a new concession package, after a huge 23 per cent pay cut went into effect yesterday, writes Felicity Spector.
They need to find a massive $10m in savings, but journalists voted to reject the pay and benefits cuts last week, and are demanding a less painful deal, insisting the current package is illegal.
But these are particularly tough times for the 137-year-old Globe: with a huge slump in circulation and advertising revenue - last year's operating losses were a staggering $50m and next year's are predicted to be even worse. Now the Globe's owners, the New York Times Corporation, is seeking new bidders to buy out its stake.
Although it's unlikely that investors will be queuing up to buy what New York gossip website Gawker called "an irretrievably dying paper" that's losing more every day.
The Times has enough problems of its own without that kind of loss-making drag on its coffers. In case you're wondering, those coffers lost $74m this quarter alone, along with 40 per cent of ad revenue to the online listings site Craigslist.
The problem, in these days of instant headlines wired straight to your BlackBerry or iPhone, is that the whole concept of an actual newspaper is looking dangerously outdated.
Or as the Daily Show's Jason Jones put it, in a painfully funny sketch - what's the point of "aged news"? Newspaper hacks should probably look away now: but here's the sketch in full - and it's really worth watching.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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"You guys are like a walking colonial Williamsburg!" he cries, before finding a copy of that day's edition, "You know who'd love this - my grandma!"
Jones challenges one editor to name anything in the paper that actually happened that day. Cue embarrassed silence. And the kicker: "What's black and white and red all over?" he quips. "Your balance sheets!" Ouch.
But fans of the Gray Lady will be pleased by a report by Politico, that at least the White House is still showing some respect for the paper, after its somewhat chilly relationship with the Bush administration.
There was some initial concern that the techno-obsessed Obama team would buddy up with the new media in preference to the old. But the NYT has now regained its traditional primacy, with special access to White House sources and a warm relationship with POTUS himself.
Partly, says Politico, there's a political and cultural affinity: Democrats simply care more about what the Times says. Its Magazine editor Gerald Mazorati says Obama not only actually reads it, he's already given special reporter Matt Bai more inside access to the White House itself than he had during the whole of the Bush administration.
Obama himself even called the paper back in March, to follow up on an interview he'd just given. But the Midas touch of the president notwithstanding, the country's elite newspapers are trying all kinds of measures to stave off collapse, less drastic than that 23 per cent pay cut at the Globe.
For the New York Times, there's a new font, Lyon Text, which allows them to print the same amount of words on a magazine that's 9 per cent smaller to save on paper costs. And last Friday's Los Angeles Times was covered by a full-page ad - for, Natch, a television drama series on HBO.
Innovative revenue-seeking, to some, to others, a travesty. But something needs to change, as print media profits and ratings continue to slide. There's not an industry on earth that can survive that kind of hit. Read it and weep.
