BOSTON – The Boston Globe’s ongoing soap opera continued on Monday as a meeting between management and the newspaper’s largest union turned into a marathon negotiating session.
The Boston Newspaper Guild last week voted down a proposed contract with The Globe that included a 10-percent pay cut and other concessions. The Globe – which has been owned by The New York Times Co. since 1993 – responded by imposing a 23-percent pay cut on the Guild’s nearly 700 members that took effect last Sunday. The union has filed a protest with the National Labor Relations Board.
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The Times Co. says it needs to secure $10 million in savings from the Newspaper Guild in order to shore up The Globe’s shaky finances. The company has said The Globe was on track to lose $85 million this year, although Rick Edmonds, an analyst at the nonprofit Poynter Institute, has said the actual figure is likely closer to $20 million.
Guild leaders and Globe management spent more than 12 hours in negotiations on Monday but failed to come to an agreement, according to radio station WBUR. They are scheduled to resume talks later today.
All of The Globe’s other unions have approved contract concessions.
Meanwhile, reports have surfaced that a number of Boston businessmen are interested in buying The Globe. The most prominent names have been Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca; retired advertising executive Jack Connors, chairman of Partners HealthCare; and former Globe executive Stephen Taylor, whose family owned The Globe until it was sold to The Times Co.
The Times Co. has reportedly hired Goldman Sachs to seek bids for The Globe. But would-be buyers are awaiting a full report from The Times Co. on The Globe’s total liabilities, The Globe reported today.
Estimates of how much money The Times Co. could get for The Globe range from nothing to about $250 million, according to analysts polled by David Carr, The Times’ media columnist.
The Times Co. paid $1.1 billion for The Globe 16 years ago, but its value has plummeted since then as the newspaper’s bottom line has been damaged by falling advertising revenue and the migration of readers to the Internet.
In an unrelated development, Mass High Tech, a weekly newspaper that covers the regional technology industry, announced on Monday that it will switch to a biweekly publication schedule this fall as it shifts more of its efforts to its online edition. The paper also will share more resources with its sister publication, the Boston Business Journal.
