The Phoenix Network:
 
 
 
About  |  Advertise
Moonsigns  |  BandGuide  |  Blogs
 
 

Could this week's New Yorker determine the Globe's fate?


 

It's possible. Lawrence Wright's profile of Carlos Slim Helu tells us that star New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has unlimited travel expenses, and never really has to explain what he's going to write about before he hits the road. It also quotes Friedman on the future of the news business, saying that, eventually, “It’s going to be us and the BBC and the Wall Street Journal and not a lot more.” Friedman also speaks of the Times partnering with another right-thinking party--perhaps New York mayor and Bloomberg News founder Michael Bloomberg.

As Michael Roston notes, Friedman's comments are--how to put it--inelegant:

I hardly know where to begin, but this has to be one of the worst-timed statements in the history of public relations.
The flat-worlder just got dinged by his own paper’s public editor for an ethical violation - accepting a (later returned) $75,000 speaking fee from a group that was neither educational nor nonprofit in nature. While Friedman fessed up to his transgression, he doesn’t seem to care about its roader ties to his megastardom as a public intellectual who gets paid a ot of money to do and write whatever he wants while still masquerading as a ‘journalist.’

Really, while the lumpen proletariat of the Times’s staff await quarterly reports to be issued to see if they’ll still have jobs in 2010, Friedman is boasting that he can go wherever he want, write whatever occurs to him, and spend however much he wants to do those things without any attention to how his profligacy harms the paper’s ability to survive. And he’s insinuating hat his boss doesn’t really care.

Then, what’s his solution to the Times’s economic dilemmas? Not for him and other fameballs to spend less, or write things that make more people want to buy his paper/click on the Times’s website/purchase ad space in either edium. His solution is to wait for a Michael Bloomberg-like savior who will invest in the newspaper like it’s behind glass and hanging in the fricking Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Now, as you may have heard, the New York Times Co. also owns the Boston Globe; has threatened to close the paper outright; and is currently trying to wrest some major concessions from the paper's employees. Some unions have already given their approval, but the Boston Newspaper Guild, the paper's biggest union, doesn't vote until June 8.

How do you think the New Yorker's description of Friedman's star treatment is playing among the Globe rank and file? 

Bingo! DQM was just forwarded an email sent by Globe staffer Brian Mooney, who's been a particularly vocal critic of the Times Co., to his colleagues. The email includes the text of Roston's column, and offers this gloss:

Colleagues: The New York Times Co. wants you to slit your own throats and take money out of your pockets so Tom Friedman (and others in New York) can travel in style and at great expense -- and then brag about it.

The Times (not the Globe) lost $74.5 million last quarter and will lose a bundle in this quarter.

Stand up and tell the Times the contract they're trying to shove down your throats is an outrage.

Vote No on June 8.

Uh...whoops?

  • Jofus said:

    Just when I thought the Boston Globe was going to survive, along comes this.

    May 27, 2009 2:42 PM
  • Adam Pieniazek said:

    Whoa. Way to give the Globe union ammo Friedman. This lack of oversight and free reign giving to journalists like Friedman to just write whatever is what's really hurting newspapers.

    We want news, about our areas, that is in depth and investigative. Friedman delivers good social commentary, but truthfully I don't read much of it. I look to the Globe for stories about Boston that are investigative and they just haven't been delivering that of late.

    May 27, 2009 4:04 PM
  • lkjlakjflkj said:

    ljlksjlfjkld

    May 27, 2009 6:25 PM
  • 5.27.09-2 « I think I'll go to Boston said:

    Pingback from  5.27.09-2 « I think I'll go to Boston

    May 27, 2009 6:36 PM
  • Watt D Fark said:

    Tom Friedman has an ego the size of his flat world. And thanks to him and his true believers, we all get to race to the bottom and compete with slaves so our wages get driven down!

    Friedman loves to comment about the auto industry, but his comments betray his utter ignorance. I have to think that he's just as clueless in other areas.

    May 28, 2009 12:39 PM
  • Gus333 said:

    And how many people did the Boston Globe send to the Olympics? 20. Quite a tribute to unwarranted self-regard.

    May 29, 2009 1:20 AM
  • Tom Playfair » Maria Lopez said:

    Pingback from  Tom Playfair » Maria Lopez

    July 8, 2009 7:43 AM

Leave a Comment

Login | Not a member yet? Click here to Join

(required)  
(optional)
(required)  
ABOUT THIS BLOG
Adam Reilly's daily look at the news and how it's created.
SUBSCRIBE




Sunday, July 19, 2009  |  Sign In  |  Register
 
thePhoenix.com:
Phoenix Media/Communications Group:
TODAY'S FEATURED ADVERTISERS
Copyright © 2009 The Phoenix Media/Communications Group