Things always get a bit strange when a newspaper has to write about its parent company. They become even stranger when the news isn't good -- a frequent occurrence these days as more and more newspaper companies file for bankruptcy. And they become stranger still when the parent company in question is the storied New York Times Co. and the news is that it is threatening to shut down one of its major newspapers.
Such was the case this weekend as the Times Co. reportedly said it would close The Boston Globe if the paper's unions didn't agree to $20 million in concessions. The Globe plastered the news across five columns of its front page on Saturday via a 1,500-word story that appeared to be leaked to the paper by -- who else? -- its unions. But down in New York, readers of Times Co. flagship New York Times on Saturday had to content themselves with a perfunctory piece on this development based on a story the Globe ginned up for its Web site, Boston.com, on Friday night. Times readers could be forgiven for missing the paper's lifeless recap of the Globe's reporting; it ran on page 5 of the Saturday business section. Not exactly prime real estate.
The Times story wasn't only brief and buried; it was completely anodyne and carried an obligatory "no comment" from Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Other outlets weren't as restrained. The Washington Post in a brief story Saturday called the Globe death threat "a striking example of corporate hardball." Tell us how you really feel. The Associated Press, meanwhile, banged out more than 800 words on the news and argued that it meant "no paper is safe." The Globe, of course, revisited the story on Sunday, and by Monday, a piece on the Times Co.'s tactics could also be found in The Wall Street Journal.
The Times itself, however, remained mum -- an omission made all the more glaring by the fact that on Mondays, the paper famously devotes a chunk of its business section to coverage of the media industry. Today, that mostly consisted of a David Carr column on an HBO series on post-Katrina New Orleans, a piece on Disney's Pixar animation studio and briefs on developments at FoxNews.com and at NY1. Whatever. But the possible closing of a storied, 137-year-old newspaper by one of the most storied newspaper families didn't even warrant a mention. So much for all the news that's fit to print. - Yvette Kantrow
See Saturday story from The Boston Globe
See Saturday story from The New York Times
See story from Washington Post
See story from the Associated Press via Google News
Yvette Kantrow is executive editor of The Deal.
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