John Henry, a two-paper city turns its lonely eyes to you

Will those who tote the tape recorders (not pictured) for The Boston Globe one day report to John Henry? Photo from this site.

The battle between The New York Times Company and The Boston Globe got uglier and moved towards a potentially catastrophic end game this week, when the Boston Newspaper Guild on Monday rejected the Times’ proposed wage cut of more than eight percent as well as reductions in health benefits and retirement packages. The Times—which threatened to close the Globe in April but said Tuesday it has no plans to shut the doors—responded by declaring an impasse in negotiations and announcing it would implement a 23 percent wage cut beginning Sunday. The union filed an appeal with the National Labor Relations Board Tuesday.

Late yesterday, news broke that the Times has retained Goldman Sachs to solicit bids for the Globe. The Globe’s sources are two potential bidders for the paper, which quite frankly are two more bidders than I would have anticipated. Even Rupert Murdoch, who has never minded taking a bath with a newspaper in order to build his empire, appears close to selling The Weekly Standard.

The concept of someone, anyone, stepping in to buy the Globe and save it from potential extinction sounds good, but sometimes the newspaper business feels like a modern-day fable—or maybe a modern-day Twilight Zone, I’m not really sure—in which those who are viewed as the saviors are actually more ruthless and bent on destroying the product than their predecessors. Ask anyone who works—or used to work—for Sam Zell and the Tribune Company, or those at Newsday on Long Island who work—or used to work—for a paper that now charges its readers 50 percent more to read a whole lot less.

If you think Times management is cold, imagine the ax in the hands of Jack Welch, who was placing a cutthroat emphasis on the bottom line back when today’s newspaper barons were pledging Phi Beta Trustfund. It’s a sad day when Welch, the former CEO of General Electric and "Voice of the Fan" on NESN (snort), makes a good point about how a newspaper’s management engaging in the type of behavior that it would typically criticize.

Along those lines, the Globe’s best hope for survival still might be Sox owner John Henry, who was reportedly interested in making a bid for the Globe—perhaps in conjunction with buying the Times’ stake in the Sox—less than two months ago. Talks apparently didn’t get beyond the exploratory stage, as evidenced by the following statement released by the Sox Apr. 30: “Neither John Henry, Tom Werner, nor any affiliates of the Boston Red Sox are involved in any sales discussions or negotiations with regard to the acquisition of the Boston Globe.”

But Henry has already displayed the deft PR touch that will be needed for whomever is willing to try to figure out a way to streamline operations (i.e. cutting staff) while keeping a dinosaur around long enough to figure out a way to make money on the online product. Henry and his ownership group already won over a fan base that wanted nothing to do with “outsiders” owning the Red Sox, and that occurred long before the Sox won two championships in four years.

Henry and Co. remain popular even though ticket prices have consistently climbed upward, Sox games are no longer on free TV and management has figured out a way to profit from just about every element of the fan experience.

That said, Henry and his management aren’t tone-deaf either—as evidenced by the decision this year not to raise ticket prices—which automatically makes them better than 98 percent of media companies. And unlike most of the people running those media companies, Henry at least sounded sincere when he acknowledged the traditional importance of newspapers during his brief flirtation with the Globe in April.

Of course, it’ll take a lot more than savvy and sincerity to save the Globe, and Henry didn’t become a billionaire (or turn the Red Sox into the closest thing baseball has to a dynasty this decade) by allowing emotion to dictate his decision-making. It would be difficult to blame him if he passes on the Globe, figuring that newspapers are money pits beyond repair.

If that’s the case, let’s just hope that whomever buys the Globe doesn’t leave us wondering if the paper would have been better off if it were allowed to perish, leaving us with bittersweet memories of what it once was instead of bemoaning what it no longer is.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.

O Henry, are you going to save the Globe?

Illustration courtesy of this site.

This is almost certainly not a news flash to you: The New York Times Company—which owns The Boston Globe—has a nearly 18 percent stake in the Red Sox, which makes it the second-largest shareholder in the franchise.

This relationship is one of the most polarizing issues among those who work in and follow the Boston sports media. Is the Globe’s investment in the Sox just good business? Or does it come at a heavy price for the Globe? Does the partnership between the Sox and the paper influence the Globe’s coverage and is the paper encouraged, either directly or indirectly, to go easy on the hometown team?

To read what writers and analysts alike have to say about the Globe-Sox relationship, check out Chapter Six of Fighting Words, coming soon to a bookshelf near you. And that’s the first-ever plug for the book here. Awesome. Was it good for you?

Anyway, if you think the current relationship is fraught with potential conflicts of journalistic interest, can you imagine the debate that would ensue if John Henry bought the Globe from the Times?

The Times and the Globe are in the midst of a potentially bloody standoff, with the Times threatening to close the Globe—which it says is hemorrhaging money—within the next few weeks if the Globe’s union doesn’t make concessions. The Boston Herald reported Monday that Henry floated the idea of buying the Times’ piece of the Sox from the company as well as the Globe, but that the negotiations didn’t get far.

Sports teams owning media companies, and vice versa, is nothing new. And Henry wouldn’t even be the first owner of a sports team to buy an endangered newspaper in this terrible market. Last year, Long Island cable giant Cablevision—which owns the New York Rangers and New York Knicks—bought Newsday from the Tribune Company and newspaper killer Sam Zell.

While Henry wrote eloquently of the importance of the newspaper for the baseball fan and New Englanders in general (he wrote an email to the Herald that read “Baseball fans rely heavily on newspapers. No one wants to see a newspaper with a great, long-term history go away. Losing the Globe, the Herald or any New England paper is a big loss for the Red Sox.”), the Cablevision-Newsday transaction was one bereft of romantic verbiage.

Buying Newsday was the last piece in Cablevision’s plot to monopolize Long Island media. Why, wireless service presented by Cablevision makes this it possible to post this blog. And the soundtrack for this blog was late-night television transmitted via a Cablevision box. In the morning, my wife will tune into Cablevision-owned News 12 to see the traffic report before she heads to work. I for one welcome our Cablevision overlords!

Nor did Cablevision have any interest in even paying lip service to journalistic integrity—the Knicks under Cablevision are recognized as the least media-friendly team in sports—or using Newsday as anything other than a vehicle to blow sunshine about the Knicks and Rangers up the derrieres of its readers. Surprisingly, the editors outlasted the Dolan family in that battle.

Coincidentally, it was Cablevision’s multiple media interests—as well as the fact that Larry Dolan, the brother of Cablevision head honcho Charles Dolan, already owns the Indians—that convinced John Harrington to award the Red Sox to Henry’s group in 2001 even though Cablevision made a higher bid.

It would be interesting, on multiple fronts, if Henry bought the Globe. It’d be ironic, and maybe in the real definition of the word and not in the Alanis Morrissette way, if a guy who made his fortune on the futures market ended up investing in a relative relic. Yet the fact he made his fortune in futures leads me to believe he’ll probably stay away from a newspaper industry whose future appears bleak beyond description.

Anyone who used to work in newspapers—or still looks forward to digging into the Sunday paper—has to appreciate Henry’s words Monday, even if the impact of the actual newspaper declines by the day and the true value in buying the Globe lies in Boston.com and not in the print product. The advertising that keeps the newspaper afloat is going and it’s never coming back, but there’s still plenty of value in newsgathering and a website that is updated around the clock.

Of course, how do you reinvent the wheel and make money in selling the product that the Globe and thousands of other newspapers have been giving away free for well over a decade? If Henry buys the Globe and comes up with that answer, he’ll be the man who saved journalism as well as Fenway Park.

Email Jerry at jbeach73@gmail.com.