This is how I found out that the New York Times Company was issuing a cut $20 million in 30 days, or we’ll shut you down ultamatium to the Globe. I was courtside at the Celtics-Hawks game Friday night when I saw Bruce Allen’s Twitter feed linking to the Herald’s online story. Working backward, I went to Dan Kennedy’s Media Nation site and Adam Reilly’s Dont Quote Me blog on the Phoenix’s site.

To review: While writing for a website, I got the news in an arena with Wi-Fi access from a social-networking feed, and because I was curious about the story, I went to two other websites for (free) instantaneous analysis and information.

That’s how a lot of people consume news these days. To be sure, several of the scribes in what used to be known as press row heard about it the old-fashioned way: By hitting refresh on boston.com. But by the time my Saturday Globe hit my front step I had read almost everything there was to know.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with that scenario as it relates to the future of newspapers, not the least of which is that the Globe got scooped on its own story. (It’s worth noting that the Globies at the Garden also learned about their fate from reading boston.com).

There seems to be some discrepancy over who actually “broke” the story, be it Reilly or or WBUR, but at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. The news was out there as it was happening, and there was really no need, if one was curious, to plunk down 75 cents to read the Globe’s front-page story (or the Herald’s for that matter).

As for the actual story, there is much to sort through, and the blogs are the best place to begin. Jay Fitzgerald, the Herald business columnist, who writes the excellent Hub Blog, doesn’t buy the numbers that are being floated around. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Liberal hits upon what was my first reaction: that the Times is trying to soften the union to pave the way for a possible sale.

And from the Globe itself, it sounds like the union is willing to play ball, and really what choice do they have?

That this comes on the heels of the Globe’s latest round of layoffs is also troubling. Wasn’t having 50 people lose their jobs supposed to stave off an action like this? It seems likely that the Globe will survive this latest crisis in some form, but where does it end? And when/if it does end, how will we know? It won’t be from reading the newspaper.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 6th, 2009 at 9:48 am and is filed under Globe, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Posted by Paul Flannery on 4/6/09 in Globe, Media 2 Comments »