New York Times Sells Boston Globe At 93% Loss 178
An anonymous reader writes "The New York Times announced this morning that it has sold the Boston Globe newspaper and related assets, including the Boston.com website and the Worcester Telegram & Gazette daily paper, to John Henry, the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox. The price was $70 million in cash, a small fraction of the $1.1 billion the Times paid to acquire the Globe in 1993, and does not include assumption of the Globe's pension liabilities, estimated at $110 million, which will remain with the Times. Since then the paper's weekday circulation has fallen from 507,000 to 246,000 (including digital), mirroring the declining fortunes of many other daily newspapers across the country. Henry, who also owns the Liverpool FC and various other sports- and media- related properties, made his fortune in the investment industry; however, his hedge fund company recently closed after several years of poor performance."
Why read newspapers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why read newspapers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because nobody else pays people to do serious investigative journalism on a municipal level.
Newspapers serve a vital public function - they employ journalists to expose malfeasance and corruption in city governments.
You should subscribe to your local paper - even if you don't read it. Think of it as a voluntary tax, your civic responsibility to pay someone to make sure your elected officials aren't screwing you as a taxpayer.
Re:Why read newspapers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Haha.
Yeah, that's nice, except very few papers do investigative journalism anymore. They all use stringer stories from one of the large media companies, which you can read on *insert dozen other newspapers*. There's a reason why it's dying, and it's because it's become a monoculture.
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Haha.
Yeah, that's nice, except very few papers do investigative journalism anymore. They all use stringer stories from one of the large media companies, which you can read on *insert dozen other newspapers*. There's a reason why it's dying, and it's because it's become a monoculture.
Don't be a prick. This doesn't mean that the local expert journalists aren't needed. The fact is right now that newspapers went corporate, fell under Wall St. control, and then went to the Wall St model of short term profits model. The newspapers cut staff and used those stringer stories to increase their profit margin. But eventually the customers realized it was bullshit and bailed. Now the product is soiled. By listening to Wall St. the newspaper companies caused their own demise and a major safeguard to
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Yeah that's nice, except I'm not being a prick. Rather I'm pointing out that your post has no basis in reality. Nor did I say that local journalists aren't needed(reading is an issue on /. these days apparently). To point out the reality of this all? Bloggers are today's local expert journalists. The general newspaper and TV media threw themselves on the spear of "easy news" all on their own, and people have been leaving in droves for a very good reason.
Wonder why that in the US that somewhere around 2
You can get it for stadiums (Score:2)
Re:Why read newspapers? (Score:5, Informative)
Indeed. You would think the daily rag in a state capital would be digging, but the Springfield State Journal-Register [sj-r.com] is close to worthless. From looking at it you would think that every crime, fire, and accident is reported but few actually are. They want you to pay for worthless "news" as well as being subjected to popups, popunders, animated ads and all the very worse, annoying advertising? They're insane. The local TV station, wics, does more investigative reporting. There's a police scandal [wics.com] right now that they uncovered; the daily paper sort of repeats their nightly news of it in the next day's paper.
Meanwhile, we have a weekly paper [illinoistimes.com] that even the paper edition is absolutely free, its advertising is non-intrusive, and it does do investigative reporting. It also has movie reviews, a "pub crawl" section highlighting live music, recipes, etc. The SJ-R no longer has an editorial cartoonist; he was let go in their last round of layoffs. The Illinois Times hired him after the SJ-R layed him off. There are also a couple of syndicated [thismodernworld.com] cartoons.
Traditional newspapers are dead. There's way too much good free news to pay for it, especially when the free is better than the paid.
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Same situation here in NC. We have a free local paper called the Independent Weekly. It's definitely liberal (perhaps leftist), but they do investigative journalism and are always happy to expose problems in local and state governments. They also have a lot of information about local events and music, including useful reviews by real people with real opinions. There are ads, of course, but it's actually better than the for-pay papers.
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It must be a very nice place you live in where the free is better than the paid - welcome to Earth where that's generally not the case.
And the claim above is especially interesting since you don't go to any trouble to point out that the Illinois Times is better - just that it covers popular culture and gives tips on where to drink, had unobtrusive ads, and... oh, bef
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Ignore that AC, he's trolling. However, if the SJ-R wasn't such a shitty mess the paid would be superior, but free often is superior. Linux has more features, a better UI, is faster than Windows, and upgrades speed it up rather than slow it down. Those free tomatoes in your back yard are far tastier and nutritious than store bought. They don't grow well with city water you pay for but grow well with free rain. And I love the free nectarines that grow on the tree in my yard.
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Seriously. What information do they have that is at all useful? In the old days we had muckrakers telling us all the awful things our politicians were doing. These days since they're all owned by big corps they don't want to step on any toes. After all, you won't last long if you say bad things about the boss. It feels like all they have left is sports news I can get from the source, some 30 year old comics and classifieds full of H1-B bait :(.
The Guardian [theguardian.com] has recently expanded (online) to the USA and Australia. I haven't read the US edition until just now, and it looks more international than other US newspaper websites I've seen, but look roughly as international as the normal British edition.
It is independent, you can see the details of the organisation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Trust_Limited [wikipedia.org]
(I read it online, and buy a paper copy about every six months.)
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Now that is what is really killing off corporate propaganda channels. A requirement to be globally competitive in providing the news on-line because that news channel is now available globally. Part of that is of course developing the ability to gather news locally, nationally and internationally and to distribute it locally, nationally and internationally according to the preferences of you readership at the time.
Big part of this is the real cost of corporate propaganda versus the truth. Tells lies and
Re: Why read newspapers? (Score:3)
Most of th blogs I read simply link to an original news source like a newspaper and add a few comments
No original news, no blogs for the kiddies
Re:Why read newspapers? (Score:5, Insightful)
The NY Times does some pretty good journalism. Yes, in aggregate they have a liberal view of the world, and their stories are written with a narrative that reflects this. But most of the time they get their facts right, and they have things like an internal investigation team to "prosecute" their own reporters. Read another liberal-leaning (more like propaganda) site like the Huff Post and you will see how far down journalism can go. The scary part is that many people get their news from the Huffington Post and think they just read something educational. I don't mean to pick on the Huff Post - it is just one example. There are conservative propaganda sites, natural food propaganda sites, etc - but none as polished and well disguised as a news site IMHO.
Another thing that I've noticed is that the motivation for propaganda sites has changed. It used to be that you would see obvious propaganda, and you would know that some interest was behind it. A site sponsored by some trade association, or with some corporate, political, or religious backing, for instance. But now, these sites are just playing on our propensity to seek out self-affirming worldviews to sell ads. If you think that kale can cure cancer, some enterprising soul has set up a site with a cut-and-paste of every positive article about kale they can find. And of course, Fox News figured this out years ago on cable :)
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Which is pretty much how it's always been. For the bulk of th
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I agree completely. My point isn't about the biases in journalism - those are plain as day. My main point was the quality of the reporting varies tremendously. Huff Post and NY Times are more or less aligned ideologically, but the quality of reporting is staggering. Unless or until these internet sites do something to improve quality, there is a definite loss when the printed papers die away. Unfortunately, I don't see an economic incentive for web sites to clean up their acts, since any damn fool (or smart
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Er. Boiled frog. Not frog in a blender. A frog in a blender is going to notice...
I can't say as I noticed how newspapers worked because I only ever read one, and that only for a class in college. As soon as my subscription expired, I stopped reading a paper, and haven't read one in 18 years. At first, because I didn't care about what they were talking about, and later, because I don't care about the vast majority of what they're talking about. Fires, car wrecks, and murders are not news, but that's wh
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There's a difference between being ignorant, and (like yourself) being willfully ignorant.
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What willful ignorance? You just got through telling us that newspapers are worthless, and described in detail why. I described how I don't read newspapers. Now I'm willfully ignorant for ignoring a source of completely valueless information? That doesn't even make sense.
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Yes, forgive me for using the US context of liberal and conservative when discussing US newspapers and websites. Just to clarify, Fox News does not want to restore the Monarchy and the NY TImes does not want to erect statues in honor of Marx.
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They make mistakes, but for each time they are factually wrong, Huff Post is wrong hundreds or thousands of times.
Blogs news (Score:1)
because quality journalism isn't free.....
and no, blogs don't count as journalism.
I am not going to argue the word journalism(or the word quality), but blogs not only are news they are more informative news. I stopped buying magazines, because their content unlike blogs...are old, second hand, opinion pieces.
Re:Blogs news (Score:5, Insightful)
Most blogs are opinions about news, not news in and of itself. A few insider blogs might drum out some news, but the vast majority of them do no such thing.
New York Times is poorly managed? I think so. (Score:3)
It seems to me that newspapers are losing money because of poor management, not only because of loss of advertising to the internet.
To me, the New York Times seems like it is managed by people who don't have much understanding of the technical or sociological issues.
Fiduciary Fail (Score:2)
If I'm a NYTs stockholder and I learned they turned down $300 million only to take $100 million and a shitty deal, I'd be thinking lawsuit.
They knew the value was declining both through the falling subscriptions and the fact that a billion dollar investment could only garner a $300 million offer back then. From there it could only get worse.
They should have sold to the highest bidder, politics be damned.
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That's actually a marketing trick of a kind of "false choice". I can't remember where I read this but they have done studies involving this and the example was given with newspapers. Basically the idea goes, if they offer 2-3 choices and 1 is very expensive, another very cheap but the third makes it seem like you are getting the expensive plan for less, you think it's a deal in your mind. No one is immune to this, so I'm not singling out you, we've all felt victim to this as it's the natural way our brai
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Edit: the guy was not from the Economist, but it was used as an example.
The Boston Globe was insanely left-wing.... (Score:3, Insightful)
When your entire news slant is to the extreme left you tend to alienate anyone who is on the right, anyone who is centrist or moderate, and anyone who is center-left. You end up with an audience that is composed of one single viewpoint politically. An extreme viewpoint at that. The NYTimes, another extreme left paper, had control over the Globe and ran it into the ground. Everyone saw this coming.
Of course you're looking at a 93% loss of value. You're only talking to less than 10% of the population. What was once a newspaper that examined all of society with a fair eye it now only caters to a small minority of zealots. There was no investigative journalism at all. No honesty or insight to anyone with a (D) next to their name. Just nonstop bias and pandering to a single narrow viewpoint. Of course you're dooming your paper to obscurity.
I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate. The panels and editorials are filled with a strong selection of liberals, conservatives, and moderates. And the ratings reflect that because Fox News national brings in the viewers. You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one. And the conservative commentators don't hide their bias. Whereas the Boston Globe would pretend that it was 'progressive' and refuse to at all accept the reality that it was practically a propaganda newspaper for liberal Democratic operatives. Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.
They can blame it on the internet. On the economy. On low advertising revenue. But a newspaper is supposed to objectively report the news. And stand as the Fourth Estate against political corruption. They are not supposed to maintain the political status quo and effectively serve as a PR firm for politicians. The Globe was failure all over.
Ultimately this is a win for John Henry. He'll spend $75 million on a busted arm for a pitcher that gives him no return for the Red Sox. But $70 million is almost worth it alone for some of the Boston Globe's web domains that it owns. Now John Henry (who is a major Democratic Party donator, in the millions) has a liberal PR institution to output his views. He has the ability to shut down all negative conversation about the Red Sox from current Globe employees. And he can use the Globe and Boston.com to heavily market Red Sox tickets and jerseys. This will pay for itself within a few years with the boost to Red Sox branding.
Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators. As if newspapers aren't PR machines for the politicians enough. Now they are literally being run by GOP and DNC donors.
Re:The Boston Globe was insanely left-wing.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Fox just gives the appearance of objectivity. The host picks the topics, not the liberal counter-point guy, and the topics tend to be those that make Democrats look bad such that the counter point person is always on the defensive.
Benghazi is an example: there's still no evidence of specific wrong-doing, yet they keep talking about it with speculation up the whazoo and word-play to make it sound like something sneaky is going on.
And the hosts often do a "rehearsal" with the guests such that they know the questions in advance and prepare answers, but the guests don't have the same privilege.
Fox has relatively high ratings because they cater to the older white rural families who are paranoid of minorities and exaggerated "government intrusion" with regard to guns and religion. I hate to say, but yes, old "rednecks" who don't know how to use the Internet. They are essentially milking the last vestiges of the TV age. Many of their ads are for elder-care stuff, as evidence. Rural is about the only place that such an audience exists, and rural leans right.
The rest of the US is moving to Internet news and the traditional news outlets cannot compete with the more nimble Internet sources because they didn't have to be nimble for many decades and forgot how.
Re:The Boston Globe was insanely left-wing.... (Score:4, Informative)
Something sneaky is going on there. Whether it is a cover up to hide incompetence (which it was all over), a cover up for political purposes, or something even more insidious, something has happened with it.
Even the liberal CNN or the Clinton News Network as it was/is known because of how much it favored President Clinton in it's reporting, is reporting that there was dozens of CIA operatives in Libya when the attacks happened and that several of their reporters were flooded with operatives wanting to tell what happened then all the sudden they clammed up. CNN is reporting that people who were in the country the night Benghazi happened keep getting reassigned and shuffled around to new geographical locations, alias names are being issued to them making it harder for even representatives to find them, they had to re-sign nondisclosure agreements that they have already signed, and many of them are being given lie detector tests every month or two which other CIA operatives claim is very unusual to have them that frequently.
I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong issue to gripe about there as partisan.
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The CIA does secret stuff and wants to remain secret. Them acting secretive is not suspicious because it's their job to be secretive. Part of the "mess" of Benghazi is that the CIA had to end up being involved.
Still, that's not evidence of a presidential cover-up. Sure, CNN would love to get into the CIA's knickers, but that's usually just wishful thinking.
Certain members of Congress can look into some of these details and probably have. I suspect they asked, and eventually understood what was going on and
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No one says it has to be a presidential cover up. The only reason the president is involved is because he is out there calling it a phony investigation and refuses to detail the events he participated in the night of the attacks. Now it appears that he is participating in the cover up by either intentional acts through the CIA or by incompetence in administrati
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Who is "they"? Maybe the CIA checked into him and found him full of stuff. Everybody wants to be in the spotlight.
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Where were the safer areas? On a freaking airplane or a boat elsewhere is safer. France, Germany, the Gold ol USA, A navy ship, or anywhere that there wasn't low security and known elements of Al Qeada and the government warning them something was going to happen would be fine. But if they couldn't leave the country, then Libyan government facilities, a farm house in the midd
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First, none of the video protests resulted in a loss of life or military grade weapons and bombs being used. Second, we know that the US government and the Libyan government knew this was not about a protest from the start. You can act all ignorant of that fact all you want but it only shows that you are willing to ignore known facts to maintain some ideology. That is sad in and of itself but very sad when that involves the death of Americans who were serving our country.
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lol.. I guess it wouldn't be slashdot without the polititards wasting mod points on everything they don't agree with.
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What exactly do you think a cover up is? It's a misdirection to hide the truth. So if a cover up was successful, then wouldn't it mean there is no clear evidence of a coverup? More importantly, if there is no evidence of a cover up, and as you think- there is no cover up, then what harm is there into investigating what happened and making sure the steps were taken to ensure it doesn't happen a
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Who is getting the flow of arms in Syria? The best friends the USA ever had: Al-CIA-da.
The black flags, battlefield bbq, one faith only types.
"CIA moved missiles out of Libya to Syria's rebels"
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4413289,00.html [ynetnews.com]
"CIA 'clamping down on Benghazi operatives'"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10219347/CIA-clamping-down-on- [telegraph.co.uk]
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> Fox just gives the appearance of objectivity. The host picks the topics
This is an excellent observation. Now listen to NPR.
Bias creeps in when people determine the subjects to harp on all day long, even if, by some miracle, the harping is 100% objective.
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Fox just gives the appearance of objectivity. The host picks the topics, not the liberal counter-point guy, and the topics tend to be those that make Democrats look bad such that the counter point person is always on the defensive.
Oh come on...
FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all cover the exact same topics.
This idea that FOX cherry picks topics that make liberals look bad is ludicrous given that fact. The only difference between the big 3 cable news stations is the panel selections and thusly the opinions expressed.
You really dont seem to get that this is theater that we are looking at. The exact same topics covered by all three.
It's not about the topic. It's about the bias. (Score:2)
FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all cover the exact same topics.
True but not actually the important point. The viewpoint about those topics matters.
You really dont seem to get that this is theater that we are looking at. The exact same topics covered by all three.
What you don't seem to get is that you can cover the same topics with different biases and that the biases matter. Fox News demonstrably has a conservative bias and they "interpret" facts (when they aren't just making shit up) accordingly. Just because they cover the same topic doesn't mean they are presenting the same position or that they have any intention of presenting an unbiased viewpoint. Of course it is theater b
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Fox News demonstrably has a conservative bias and they "interpret" facts (when they aren't just making shit up) accordingly.
You dont actually seem to be saying anything. If you had a valid argument you would be showing that CNN and MSNBC werent biased.
We both know that you cannot do that.
So what are you doing here? You are showing us your own bias. You don't seem to mind at all that CNN and MSNBC are biased because apparently its the right kind of bias in your book.
Thanks for being exactly what you accuse your "enemies" of.
Something to point out (Score:2)
I've heard a newspaper described as commie and fascist in the space of two minutes depending on who was doing the name calling. Your post reminds me of the utter losers doing the name calling and detracts from whatever worth you may have yourself so I just cannot take you seriously.
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Maybe it's time to airdrop dictionaries or something
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Umm ... no ... thank you for playing but you seem to have got lost on the way to somewhere else.
From your posts I'm getting the very strong feeling that I've known your culture for about twice as long as you've been alive. Besides, all you've got to go on is my current location so that's a big leap into an "epic fail" on your part. Just because I've never been
Re:The Boston Globe was insanely left-wing.... (Score:4, Insightful)
The New York Times also supports the bulk of American Foreign policy. I know you right wingers don't give a fuck about the millions of innocent people killed by the U.S. government over the years, and have never shed a tear over innocents killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Viet Nam, etc, so if anyone like the NYT voices the mildest criticism of the massive crimes committed by the U.S. government, they are extreme left wing in your view. In my view, they are center right for supporting the bulk of it.
Fox News not conservative? (Score:4, Informative)
I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate.
"Moderate"? Compared to what? There is almost endless evidence [newsmax.com] that Fox News intentionally presents a staunchly conservative viewpoint and they have an audience to match. It's not even a meaningful debate at this point.
You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one.
Just because they invite some token liberals on to some of the shows doesn't mean their coverage is remotely balanced. Fox News is basically a mouthpiece for the republican party. Name one talking head (ala Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow) on Fox News who is a clear liberal. Go ahead, I'll wait...
Fox News gets its ratings because there are enough liberals and moderates to attract a broad audience.
The audience of Fox News contains a minority of moderates and VERY few liberals. 94% of Fox News viewers [politicususa.com] self identify as republican or republican leaning. In what universe is that a "broad audience"?
Look at who is buying newspapers now. Extreme right and left wing political donators.
Really? [businessinsider.com] Warren Buffet is an "extreme" political donator?
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Just because they invite some token liberals on to some of the shows doesn't mean their coverage is remotely balanced. Fox News is basically a mouthpiece for the republican party. Name one talking head (ala Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow) on Fox News who is a clear liberal. Go ahead, I'll wait...
Alan Colmes.
Of course, he has a face that's perfect for radio, which is why he's mostly on their radio network and only occasionally shows up on TV these days.
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The audience of Fox News contains a minority of moderates and VERY few liberals. 94% of Fox News viewers [politicususa.com] self identify as republican or republican leaning. In what universe is that a "broad audience"?
Since Fox has the highest ratings of the news networks, it sounds like you are acknowledging that they are moderate by US standards.
Also, Warren Buffet is a leftist. Most of the wealthy elite are.
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I didn't say all. I said most. Look at most sports stars, Hollywood folk, proper owners, etc. Heck, just look at the number of millionaire democrat congressman and senators compared to Republicans.
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I know that bashing Fox News is a popular opinion. But of the mainstream papers, websites, and news TV stations, it's actually rather moderate.
"Moderate"? Compared to what? There is almost endless evidence [newsmax.com] that Fox News intentionally presents a staunchly conservative viewpoint and they have an audience to match. It's not even a meaningful debate at this point.
You're just as likely to find a liberal view on a panel segment as you are a conservative one.
Just because they invite some token liberals on to some of the shows doesn't mean their coverage is remotely balanced. Fox News is basically a mouthpiece for the republican party. Name one talking head (ala Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow) on Fox News who is a clear liberal. Go ahead, I'll wait...
Fox News can be a bit odd. Next time you're reading about an event open google news and look at the Fox News stories as well, they tend to be relatively mainstream with a mild conservative bias.
But mixed in with the news are their pundits and opinion pieces, and that's when they go off the deep end. They'll have some fact based coverage followed by analysis that is completely detached from reality.
The relatively rational news could be the reporters pushing back but I suspect it's a deliberate tactic. Give a
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Ah... I had never realized that the sum total of society was represented by that which is funded by the central government's forcible confiscation of private goods.
I am enlightened.
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The sad part is that you seem to believe that somehow this is a sea change... In reality, it's a return to "journalism's" roots. Newspapers have long been political organs, their "neutrality" over the last couple of decades nothing but a fig leaf to market themselves.
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But we are talking about the US, here. It is not center right by US standards (well, maybe by Boston standards.)
Imposter! (Score:2)
The Big Picture (Score:5, Informative)
what makes this special? (Score:1)
I have not RTFA because with slashdot summary as written, I'm wondering why this is "news for nerds". Is there something about the Boston Globe that is of inherent interest to science, technology, or other things that have been the usual fare here? I don't mind reading about stuff that belongs in the business/economy section of a news portal. But I didn't expect that Slashdot would be morphing into one.
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ongoing tech driven decline of paper newspaper empire is interesting to many geeks.
but of course, horseshoe smiths and buggy whip companies and lamplighters took a beating during 20th century too
my grandfather was a lamp lighter. work started in morning extinguishing lamps for a couple hours, then during day repair and cleaning, then at night lighting them up again. but don't worry, after city went to electric auto timer street lamps he found jobs made possible by advances in technology.
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In that case, a headline along something like "Technology continues to squeeze the survival of traditional news outlets" would have been a lot less misleading. Having now read the linked articles, however, that happens not to be the case. With headlines like "Red Sox owner in deal to purchase Globe" and prominent mentions of pension liabilities, I saw scant mentioning of technology's role in the constant march of progress. Your grandfather's story is cool and I'm glade this post provided an opportunity f
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Education. Quit a common topic actually. are you new here?
Worth less than its debt... (Score:2)
That means if the newspaper had been sold at that price including its liabilities, the buyer should have received $40 million. Woah.
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(I am a pension actuary)
As far as I can tell, they have one pension plan that covers all of their employees and based on its Form 5500 filing (publicly available online) the plan is pretty well funded actually. As of 1/1/2011 they have total Funding Target liabilities of 173,403,797 and assets at market value of 158,880,383. Most plans are in a much worse position because these liabilities (which are used to determine minimum contribution requirements) are now required to be valued using a market interest
One thing I would like to see on paper web sites.. (Score:5, Interesting)
One thing I would like to see on paper web sites which would make me more likely to subscribe to their physical counterparts is a "suppress syndicated content" checkbox that would let me see how much actual journalism they themselves are engaged in, before I invite their paper in to clutter up my living room. I'll warn you right now, though, if that gets rid of 95% of your content, you aren't going to darken my door.
I also already get enough coupons and advertising from the direct marketing association, so it'd be nice if they didn't put ads everywhere in the paper copy of the newspaper, since the postman already brings me all the coupons and local advertising I could ever want to recycle. One of the most annoying things the San Mateo Times does periodically is "give you" a "free" copy of their Wednesday or Sunday "supertacular advertising issue" so they can claim high circulation numbers, right before the end of the circulation reporting cycle. 600 pages of crap and 20 pages of content, and 80% of those are Reuters, UPI, or AP stories.
Finally, I think color is vastly overrated; save it for "fashion week" or other special purpose spreads that get delivered in special sections, and the Sunday comics. I don't get where everyone believes the way to sell physical papers is to look as much like "USA Today" as it's possible to look, without actually putting "USA Today" on the banner. Maybe they get a higher per unit marginal profit or something, like when you go to a restaurant, and they serve you 3X the food you should be eating so they can jack up the price, and the marginal profit per hour, to maximize their profit relative to their flooring costs...
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They can't make a profit delivering the paper to you without advertising, so what you're really saying is "I don't want a physical paper". Which is cool, neither do I. But it doesn't take three paragraphs to say it.
Crack open the books (Score:2)
They can't make a profit delivering the paper to you without advertising, so what you're really saying is "I don't want a physical paper". Which is cool, neither do I. But it doesn't take three paragraphs to say it.
I would maintain that this is the USPS argument, where they claim bulk mail subsidizes things, but were they to raise the unit price for bulk mail one cent, their operating profit would be about as big as their current operating loss. You may recognize the Internet 1.0 "operate at a loss, and make up for it in volume!" business plan here.
But fine, let's accept your claim for the sake of argument ... crack open the books on a couple of failed newspapers.
Let's see the balance sheets ourselves with regard to
New York Times mismanaged the Globe (Score:5, Insightful)
After saying how much they respected and admired the Globe, the New York Times made it clear that they regarded Boston as the sticks and just wanted to milk the cash cow.
I was a subscriber for decades and might still be if they had basically not driven me away.
They gradually cut out all my favorite columnists and started to use wire services for national stories they would once have covered themselves.
Royal Ford, their auto writer, always talked about things like how the tested car did during a snowy ski trip to New Hampshire. So one day I open the paper to find that he's been replaced by a syndicated column written by someone in California.
The last straw was billing. They screwed up the billing. We were on quarterly billing, and when the New York Times took over, we continued to receive quarterly bills--but EVERY bill we got was accompanied with a 90-day late notice and threats to send it to collection.
We got that straightened out--went to automatic monthly payments by credit card--and THEN someone at the Globe decided it would be cool to wrap all of their newspaper bundles in computer printouts of customer credit card information.
My wife says to me, "Well, I hate the work of mailing a check every month, but should we do that?" And I say "Honey, didn't you read the rest of the story? They wrapped the Globe in credit card printouts, but they were wrapping the Worcester Telegram in customer checking account information printouts!
What can you say to a company that does a thing like that? Except "goodbye."
Full Circle / Sold to top liberal bidder? (Score:3)
Just over 100 years ago, the Taylor family owned both the Globe and the Red Sox. [wikipedia.org]
There is some concern that as a public company, the NYT Co. didn't sell to the highest bidder [bostonherald.com] but one can speculate that is due to the conservative views held by the owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune [wikipedia.org]. John Henry is not only a donor to liberal causes, but also has had a business relationship with the NYT Co. via their former minority ownership of the Red Sox.
most people I know dont read newspapers (Score:2)
Boston Globe vs. Boston Herald (Score:2)
I see a lot of people talking about local investigative journalism--or at least reporting.
To be fair many of you may not know the local Boston market, there are two papers: Boston Globe, and Boston Herald. Globe is the corporate-faced paper (up 'til now) owned by national media conglomerates. Herald is considered more local these days. Generally the Herald is the paper you read when you want to hear about all the dirty BS the local government is dishing, although they can be too conservative and preachy
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I'm curious how much more of a loss it would be if you calculated inflation. $70 million would purchase a lot more in 1993 then it would today.
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Re:Discount, not loss (Score:5, Informative)
It gets worse... they sold it for -40 million (price minus leftover pensions), but they rejected an offer to buy it a couple of years ago for 300 million (410 million including pensions in that deal) . Apparently they're great at losing money on an investment rapidly....
Re:There goes all the retirement plans! (Score:4, Insightful)
If you trust something a company promises to do for you decades in the future, you're a fool.
Pensions have been a collosal ponzi scheme, and are about to collapse.
Re:There goes all the retirement plans! (Score:5, Insightful)
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They haven't exactly been getting away with anything, though. They've been paying federal insurance on pensions, and companies with unfunded pension liabilities have to list them on their balance sheet (which is why 1/4 of companies simply fund their pensions to avoid the bad balance sheet). If we had been demanding the same for our federal employees, we wouldn't have quite the same house of cards. In other words, the companies have been getting away with a lot less than the public sector, so glass houses a
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Making stupid decisions doesnt make you a victim, even if you are a member of an entire class represented by a poor decision making entity.
It does in fact make you a victim if you were encouraged into those poor decisions by fraud.
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The Detroit pensions (though not the health care), were supposedly funded. But one of the ways they did that was by borrowing money from bondholders. So they were taking on debt to pay current liabilities... a very nasty habit that will always land you in trouble. If you owned stock in a company doing that, you'd be selling. Now the pensioners and the bond holders will have to fight it out in court. The situation is not being helped by the conflicting assessments of pension health from the two different acc
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The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
As I understand, Detroit was using something around 8% (or 9%), which would show that the Defined Benefit Pension Plans they offered way back would be 80% funded. When, according to an external accountant, you'd use a more realistic 5%, the funding would be less than 50%.
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The reason for the the two different valuations is based on what discount you use to value the future obligations and potential gains.
Yes, that is one explanation. There are also claims of outright fraud. All of this will be an interesting fight. In any case, they didn't do any funding at all of the health care benefit, so those retirees will almost certainly be moving to Medicare. I am of the opinion that the bondholders should eat it, since the bond was clearly and transparently intended to fund the retirement plan. Anyone who bought those bonds should have known that and priced them accordingly. Naturally, this will probably be a lot o
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he Detroit pensions (though not the health care), were supposedly funded. But one of the ways they did that was by borrowing money from bondholders.
Yes, but the extent to which this is true cannot be understated. The last round of borrowing to make up delinquent pension contributions was a whopping $1.4 billion, a significant percentage of the entire pension liability.
When you examine the history of it, you see that earlier (in 1991) the unions had to go to court to force Detroit to deposit any money at all into the pension funds.
It is simply not rational to claim that the public unions of Detroit are victims here. The shit was already hitting the
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But as you point out, the bondholders were also aware of this. I don't know what the precedent is - I suspect it will depend on whether the pension accounts are seen as Detroit money or money owned by the retirees/employees. If it is Detroit money, it will almost certainly get returned to the bondholders, but IANAL.
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The victims are the Detroit tax payers that were not of age to vote when those pension deals were struck. The city council and the unions were both complicit in depriving these tax payers of their right of representation, basically attempting to turn them into slaves for retired people.
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I am in complete agreement. Saddling future generations with debt for non-infrastructure is morally corrupt. The REALLY nasty part is that most people agree with this, and so we have demanded that pensions in the private sector are either fully funded, or show up as liabilities on a company's balance sheet. We do no such thing in the public sector, and where we do, we almost always exempt health coverage. People simply do not understand the issue, and politicians keep it that way when they cloud the issue w
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Not just companies. Look at Detroit. It has dozens of unions and during its heyday the city unions were demanding and getting the same benefits as the auto workers. Now they have a tax base that's less than half of what it was. Simple economics.
Re:There goes all the retirement plans! (Score:5, Informative)
There needs to be an immediate lawsuit to take all money from the primary sale and put it to the debt, and the primary debt is the workers/pensions.
Nope. The primary debt is lenders with collateral. There's a queue of creditors who have claim on the debt of a failed business which enters bankruptcy. Pensioners are towards the front, but there are parties ahead of them.
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Depends a bit on the value of the collateral, if the collateral only covers a small part of the debt then the secured lenders can still be off far worse than the senior ones.
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Why would it be any other way in the unethical US legal system?
Why would it be different elsewhere? The "ordinary folks" of the pension fund aren't the only ordinary folks who have a claim on the assets of a failed business. Other pension funds might have lent money to the business. Why should the pension fund of the business be honored more in that situation?
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Huh? The Times owns the pension obligations and is less likely to go bankrupt than the new business ... it would have been far more shifty if the Globe had been sold to some shell company including the pension obligations.
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He doesn't care. He just had to throw that name into the picture because he had no legitimate response that wasn't leftist hatred for Fox News.
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Doesn't matter. The NEW method for running taken over papers is; pile in more local stories, purchase the most lurid news service stories, make half or more of the print ads, ride till the profits disappear, then sell off the assets and bury it 6 ft. under.
Silly rabbit, everyone gets their news off the internet now anyway.
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I've been weighing the thought of an open source news service. It may not be the most technically abled, but, I think the accuracy increases and the agendas decrease.