The union official who responded to this critique sounded irked, too. After giving the reporter a crash course in Negotiating 101 — you start strong and aggressive, and save the concessions for later — he complained that some members, particularly those who've publicly questioned the union, are coming close to betraying the union as a whole. In effect: we're doing our best for you, and you're kicking the crap out of us. (The surveys, it was later explained, would be taken into account by Guild leadership, though it wasn't exactly clear how.)
Whether this acrimony was worse than you'd expect from a union under duress — particularly one comprising workers with radically different job descriptions — is an open question. Maybe the April 23 meeting provided a catharsis that will bring the Guild's members together. By the meeting's end, this antagonism had given way to professions of mutual interest and respect. (The following day, I got an anonymous call from a woman who identified herself as a Globe journalist, and said the Guild's critics were beginning to "get it.")
Even if that's true, though, the Globe's journalists have to be kicking themselves right now. The union's executive committee is currently dominated by non-journalists — men and women who, given the jobs they do every day, naturally find it difficult to envision (let alone embrace) a post-print future. And this situation exists, in large part, due to the newsroom's long-standing disinterest in union matters. If the Globe manages to survive, expect that to change.
Rallying in vain?
Given the stakes involved, it would be nice to report that the Guild's "Save the Globe" rally — held at Faneuil Hall on April 24, the day after Baron spoke and the Guild's detractors and defenders duked it out — was a smashing success. But that would be going too far.
First the good news: there were moments, this past Friday, when the indignation of the Globe's supporters was truly righteous — moments where you actually felt that, if the bigwigs of the Times Co. took just a minute and listened, they'd see the error of their ways, hang their heads in shame, and commit to doing whatever was necessary to keep the Globe alive.
Unfortunately, most of these moments came in veteran reporter Brian Mooney's speech. "I'm worried about keeping my job, but that's not the point," said Mooney. "What's important is the survival of the Globe itself. . . . We go wider and deeper in our coverage than anyone. The Globe starts the conversation and referees the debate, 365 days a year, and now 24 hours a day."
If there was overstatement here, there was also a considerable amount of truth. And Mooney deserves extra kudos for his devastating dissection of the perks that Times Co. chairman Sulzberger and CEO Robinson have enjoyed (one-time bonuses awarded in the very bad year of 2008, Sulzberger's $11,000 spin that same year in the Times Co.'s private jet) — a sustained takedown that led, at one point, to a nifty little call-and-response with the audience: "Shame on the New York Times Company!" "Shame on them!"
Also noteworthy: Boston Globe Magazine writer Charlie Pierce's irate take on the way the paper's crisis has been covered by the Herald, which has combined strong reporting with gleeful malice. (That day's Herald offered 10 suggestions for saving the Globe. Here's number seven: "Persuade Legislature to mandate all fish must be wrapped in Metro section.") "I've never been more embarrassed by the time I spent at the Herald [as a sportswriter] than I have been in the last two weeks," Pierce later told me. ("I guess tough coverage is only okay if the Globe happens to be the paper dishing it out," replies a long-time Herald employee, calling the Globe's coverage of the Herald's 1982 near-demise "a relentless barrage the entire town interpreted as a calculated attempt to put us in our grave.")
But back to the rally. Did the organizers really have to enervate the crowd, pre-rally, with slightly funereal marching-band tunes? Or distribute placards to the hundreds in attendance that tried, confusingly, to cast the Globe's survival as a First Amendment issue (SAVE THE GLOBE/PRESERVE FREE SPEECH)? Or to cede control of the podium and the proceedings to speakers like Jeannie Shimkus, a charming 39-year Globe veteran, who explained that she's just not that into the Web ("We want to get the whole story, not the tidbits from the Internet!"), or William McGuinness, editor of the UMass-Amherst Daily Collegian, whose main point seemed to be that if the Globe closes, he'll have one less place to try to get a job?
To be fair, it's not easy to imagine a pro-Globe rally that would really get the adrenaline pumping. And it's equally difficult to imagine any such event actually making a whit of difference to the Times Co. brass in New York. Sulzberger, Robinson, & Co. aren't threatening to close the Globe because they think it doesn't matter to Bostonians. They're threatening to close it because they need to keep their company solvent, and because the Globe is making that job considerably harder.
Still, the net effect of Friday's rally was somewhat depressing. There are all sorts of reasons people want the Globe to live, apparently; some are good, but some aren't. And even the paper's staunchest partisans already seem to be bracing for defeat. Let's hope they're wrong.
To read the "Don't Quote Me" blog, go to thePhoenix.com/medialog. Adam Reilly can be reached atareilly@thephoenix.com.
