Slow Saturday Special: Globe a Hit With John Henry
Sunday Globe Special: Breakfast in Bed
And they even brought me a copy of the Sunday Boston Globe.
"John Henry adding Globe to his Boston constellation; Red Sox owner had two advantages in his bid: a local profile and a cash offer" by Beth Healy | Globe Staff, August 04, 2013
Red Sox principal owner John W. Henry, who early Saturday signed a deal to buy The Boston Globe from the New York Times Co., prevailed over a half-dozen rival bidders for two main reasons: He was rooted in Boston and had plenty of cash.
Henry agreed to pay $70 million for the 141-year-old Globe, its websites, and affiliated properties, the Times Co. said. The deal followed weeks of negotiations that culminated in a marathon session Friday night, with Henry and his lawyers ensconced in his suite at Fenway Park, trading calls and messages with Times Co. officials as the Arizona Diamondbacks edged out the Red Sox.
While he has not yet unveiled his plans for the company, in response to questions from the Globe, Henry said Saturday night that he looked forward to helping the newspaper play its vital role in the city and region.
“Being a part of the leadership of the Globe provides an opportunity to play a significant role with others in this community’s present and future. . . .
“I became concerned a number of years ago about the continued viability of our newspapers in Boston. I sat with various publishers and, in studying the challenges newspapers face across the country, I became extremely interested in potential solutions. I’m not sure that anyone has successfully put forward a sustainable financial model for metros given the magnitude and consistency of revenue declines, but if I were going to bet on one it would be The Boston Globe.’’
Henry said he would provide more details in the coming days, including information about the team he is assembling for what he called “a community commitment and effort.” He is expected to visit the Globe on Monday, according to people briefed on his plans....
For Henry, 63, who enjoyed fast success with the Red Sox, winning two World Series within five years of buying the team in 2002, it’s an entirely new challenge to be entering the news business. A mild-mannered billionaire who made his fortune in managing funds and trading commodities, he has built a sprawling sports empire that includes the Red Sox and New England Sports Network, as well as the Liverpool soccer club and Roush Fenway Racing, a NASCAR team.
Maybe the paper will ease up on all the global-warming fart mist.
In buying the Globe and its websites, BostonGlobe.com and Boston.com, Henry's bid amounted to a small fraction of the $1.1 billion the Times Co. paid for the Globe — reflecting the devastating impact of the digital revolution on the traditional newspaper business model....
I would just like to say that the agenda-pushing lies also has a lot to do with it.
A Brookline resident, Henry is a relative newcomer to Boston, here for just a decade. But friends say he is now rooted here, and has established a stable of close associates, including wealthy investors who might be persuaded to join him in the Globe venture.
It's going to be the $ame old Globe.
Known for his numbers savvy in investments and sports, Henry and his colleagues spent the past several weeks digging into the details of the Globe’s facilities, finances, and businesses. He toured the Globe’s printing operation, dressed in blue jeans, looking on with interest as the newspapers were compiled and moved across the room on machines. He has taken a particular interest in the Globe’s Boston.com website and has quizzed executives about the terms and duration of union contracts.
More givebacks coming?
People involved in the process say Henry is formulating ideas on how to boost the Globe’s advertising revenues — the area of greatest challenge for newspapers across the country. He may seek a buyer for the Worcester T&G, and he, like other bidders, is considering the possibility of selling the Globe’s plant on Morrissey Boulevard, according to people familiar with his plans.
The Times Co. bought the Worcester T&G for $295 million in 1999. The newspaper’s publisher, Bruce Gaultney, declined to comment Saturday night.
Public officials and business people across Boston expressed optimism about the deal Saturday, even as the marriage of a newspaper to a sports team it covers spurred debate in journalism circles and among Globe readers about the importance of unfettered coverage.
All this concern over a sports section I never read. I wish the Globe was as worried about the garbage they parade in the sections I do read.
Henry has yet to address issues of news coverage, but Globe editor Brian McGrory said, “We have no plans whatsoever to change our Red Sox coverage specifically, or our sports coverage in general, nor will we be asked.’’
The shoe was on the other foot in recent years when the Times Co. owned 17.5 percent of the Red Sox, something the Globe disclosed in virtually every story or column mentioning the team.
It was the Times Co.’s success in its Red Sox investment that led, in part, to its deal to sell the newspaper and its affiliates to the Sox owner. The Globe’s parent tripled its $75 million investment in the Red Sox and, along the way, developed a strong relationship with Henry.
Yeah, the NYT LOOTED the GLOBE!
His was not the highest bid for the Globe, according to people involved in the process. But his offer was appealing to the Times Co. because it was cash, unencumbered by financing issues or a bevy of investment partners. One executive working for the Times Co. said the key was who was best able to get the financing together and close the deal relatively quickly....
Translation: the NYT wanted to DUMP the Globe AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!
But don't let that spoil the self-delusional narrative:
Though the Times Co. is selling the Globe for far less than what it paid for the paper when the business was highly profitable and the Globe fetched a record price, it likely at least broke even on the investment, according to several former Globe executives familiar with the finances. That’s because the Times Co. was able to withdraw a large stream of cash from the Globe during its high-earning years in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Oh, poor Globe employee. You made all those concessions after the NYT looted you!
Globe publisher Christopher Mayer thanked the Times Co. for its stewardship in a note to the staff Saturday and said he looked forward to working with Henry....
Then he dropped his trousers, bent over, and spread his cheeks for insertion by that big NYT dildo.
Of course, Mayer made out while employees were suffering.
In a statement, the Globe’s largest union, the Boston Newspaper Guild, representing more than 500 reporters, photographers, and other employees, congratulated Henry for his purchase of the Globe: “We welcome the opportunity to collaborate and innovate with him and his team. We look forward to a bright future as we strengthen and grow the reach and impact of the Globe in the communities it serves.”
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Meet your new boss:
"John Henry a keen student of risk, reward" by Casey Ross and Callum Borchers | Globe Staff, August 03, 2013
John W. Henry was a college dropout playing guitar in a rock band when his life took a sudden turn in the 1970s. The death of his father gave him control of the family’s soybean farm in Arkansas, a business that didn’t seem to suit him any better than being a rock ’n’ roller.
So he did something different. With a natural affinity for numbers, Henry used his growing knowledge of the soybean business to trade commodities, making a fortune that allowed him in time to become the principal owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Now, Henry, 63, is making another unconventional move: taking on ownership of The Boston Globe, New England’s largest and most influential newspaper.
In a brief statement early Saturday, Henry said it would be premature to comment on his plans for the Globe, but said he felt strongly about its place in Boston. “This is a thriving, dynamic region that needs a strong, sustainable Boston Globe playing an integral role in the community’s long-term future,” Henry said.
In his different pursuits, Henry has earned a reputation as a smart businessman willing to make bold, risky bets — and winning many of them.
“He’s not the kind of person who’s going to . . . come in and hack everything to pieces and sell off the parts,” said Boston businessman Joseph O’Donnell, who in 2001 led a rival effort to buy the Red Sox. “He’s determined to do things his way, and he’s won two world championships, so it’s hard to argue he hasn’t been successful.”
Even though he just did that with the ball team last year at the trading deadline.
After shutting his shrinking commodities firm last year, Henry focused his attention on Fenway Sports Group , which owns the Red Sox, a majority stake in the popular regional sports channel New England Sports Network, a successful NASCAR racing team, and a sports-marketing arm. In 2010, Henry made another big leap when his group paid $477 million for one of the most storied brands in soccer, England’s Liverpool FC.
Now the Globe and NESN will be even closer.
Though technically a media veteran through his ownership of NESN, Henry’s ownership of the Globe marks his first foray into the mainstream news business. He has entered an agreement to buy the Globe from the New York Times Co. for $70 million in cash....
They are not mainstream anymore. I am.
Besides the obvious difficulties of running a struggling company in a volatile industry, Henry faces a challenge unique to this purchase: ensuring the Globe continues to provide objective coverage of his baseball team.
Related:
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Yeah, never mind the rest of the news pages.
Like any sports owner, Henry has periodically chafed at the treatment of his team by local news media, and the Globe’s coverage of the Red Sox’s epic 2011 collapse particularly rankled him.
Related: Globe Investigates Collapse
He was upset that the Globe had opened a window into the personal life of former Sox manager Terry Francona when it reported that unnamed team sources were concerned the skipper’s failing marriage and use of painkillers had distracted him from his job during the season.
Then why did management leak it?
“It’s reprehensible that it was written about in the first place,” Henry said in a radio interview soon after the season’s end.
Jack Connors, a former advertising executive who also bid for the Globe, said he believes Henry will be sensitive to potential conflicts over sports coverage.
“I don’t think he’s going to dictate,” Connors said. “John is very analytical. He loves data and he loves modern technology, and I think you’ll see him want to make investments on the dot-com side.”
Boston Celtics co-owner Steve Pagliuca, an executive at Bain Capital and a friend of Henry’s, said Henry may be interested in a multimedia approach, involving NESN and Globe sports coverage. “There could be mutual benefits for the television property and the news operation to combine forces,’’ he said.
As for the newspaper’s mission outside of sports, Pagliuca said Henry will do the right thing for the Globe and its readers....
Henry typically keeps a low profile, seen more often in the personality pages than in news or political coverage because he and his wife are regulars at society and charitable events....
Although soft-spoken in public, Henry lives in high style, with a net worth of some $1.5 billion, according to Forbes magazine.
Didn't I once type what difference does it make which billionaire owns the Globe?
He owns a 164-foot yacht, the Iroquois, and in 2009 married Linda Pizzuti, a 30-year-old real estate developer. He and Pizzuti have a toddler, and Henry has a daughter from his first marriage.
In 2007, he bought the Brookline home of Frank McCourt, the former owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and unsuccessful Red Sox bidder, and promptly tore it down, building a 35,000-square-foot mansion.
The first quality friends and associates cite about Henry is his intelligence, that he is something of a business savant who seems to have an almost eerie ability to spot profitable opportunities.
“He’s prescient, he sees what other people don’t see,” said David D’Allessandro, the former chief executive of John Hancock Financial Services who was a Red Sox limited partner during Henry’s early tenure at the team.
“He’s both left and right brain, and extreme in both,” D’Allessandro said. “His mind works well both creatively and quantifiably. Most people have a narrow range.”
Others said Henry has a knack for finding talented executives to run his businesses, and letting them do their jobs. That said, Henry is firm in his convictions....
Born in Quincy, Ill., to soybean farmers and raised mostly in Arkansas, Henry and his family moved to California when he was in high school, where he caught the rock ’n’ roll fever of the 1960s. He enrolled at a junior college, then shuttled among the campuses of the University of California, but never graduated.
At the time, he was more interested in touring with a pair of rock bands....
Henry’s most notable collegiate accomplishment grew out of his aptitude for numbers. He and an instructor at UCLA published a paper about how to win at blackjack. He has said he was kicked out of Las Vegas casinos at age 22 for card counting.
Henry’s life took a more serious turn when his father died a few years later, leaving him in charge of the family soybean business. Rather than farming, Henry entered the highly speculative commodities business, which some in the industry say is closer to gambling than investing. But by 1981, Henry was winning more often than losing, using a method of statistical analysis he developed by studying decades of market prices....
The key underpinning to that trading philosophy was a belief that humans, by nature, are trend followers, reacting mechanically to events, much as the clapping of one person in Fenway Park will typically be followed by another and another until it becomes widespread applause....
So once again government and the elite that run this world think we are nothing but livestock. We are all brainless vessels that will just follow along, moo-moo.
Meanwhile, in the investment world, Henry’s commodities firm never recovered from the beating it took during the financial crisis. With most of his attention consumed by his sports business, Henry complained it had become too hard to make money in the investment trade....
Should have bought a bank, John Henry.
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"Deal raises concerns on editorial freedom" by Mark Arsenault | Globe Staff, August 04, 2013
The acquisition of The Boston Globe by Red Sox owner John Henry raises immediate questions about the newspaper’s role in one of New England’s enduring dramas: the annual fate of the Sox, a subject that draws fans to the stands, readers to the news pages and drives tremendous traffic to the Globe’s websites.
How sad they aren't going for the news.
The concern of some is that Henry could tilt news coverage or muzzle columnists to reflect best on his ball club, undermining the paper’s independence and credibility.
They already self-muzzle here in AmeriKa, so don't worry.
There are, however, powerful reasons for Henry to protect the independence of the sports pages, observers say, even as his crossownership could present opportunities for the newspaper to capitalize on the popularity of the team’s worldwide sports brand, and its cable network, NESN.
“The NESN relationship could be a great promotional bullhorn for the Globe and its coverage and that will help,” said Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst and author of the book “Newsonomics: Twelve New Trends That Will Shape the News You Get.” “There are probably other things they can do in terms of e-commerce with NESN.
“But all of these are double-edged swords,” Doctor said. “It gives the Globe more promotional power at a cheaper cost but continually raises the possibility of conflict or the appearance of conflict.”
Henry, 63, agreed to a deal Saturday to buy the Globe from the New York Times Co. for $70 million. He has not yet personally addressed how he will handle his newspaper’s treatment of his baseball team.
The paper has routinely run critical stories on the team; a notable recent example was the investigation into the Red Sox’ infamous collapse at the end of the 2011 season, which found that several pitchers enjoyed beer and fried chicken in the clubhouse while their teammates were on the field.
Globe editor Brian McGrory has pledged sports coverage will not change under the new ownership. And media observers said the best antidote to concerns about conflict of interest is honest and scrupulous reporting and commentary, over a long period of time.
“A lot of readers care more about the Red Sox than politics or almost anything else,” said Tobe Berkovitz, a media consultant and professor of advertising at Boston University. “That puts the issue on the front burner. If the Globe continues to be outspoken, especially the columnists on the Red Sox, it will go away as a story.”
Related: Conceding to the Boston Globe
Sports coverage that seems skewed in favor of the team would probably drive readers to alternative news sources in print and on the Web, he said.
They are going anyway. Btw, my sporto friends never go the Globe.
“He has to see that if he gets too heavy-handed he’s going to be hurting his own property,” Berkovitz said.
The Globe and the Red Sox have been entwined before: The New York Times Co. owned a minority stake in the Red Sox from 2002 to 2012. The paper often disclosed that relationship in news stories....
Media companies and sports teams have a recent history of crossownership. The Tribune Co., publisher of the Tribune newspaper in Chicago, bought the Chicago Cubs in 1981 and held the team for three decades. Media magnate Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Entertainment Group once owned the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“In truth, the world didn’t end” when those companies covered their own teams, said Doctor. He added that the extraordinarily successful Red Sox have little to fear from honest scrutiny or provocative columnists.
And failed government does.
“They sell out almost all the games, they have the TV contract, which is very lucrative,” he said. “There’s not much damage to be done, and the more coverage the better.”
He recommended the newspaper handle the relationship with Henry “as affirmatively as possible,” perhaps with a standing block of text in the sports section that discloses the ownership situation and declares that editorial decisions remain independent.
“Then the staffers — from the sports editor on down — have to show the courage to do the reporting as if there was not common ownership,” he said. “Usually, very good newsrooms are very good at that. They challenge. A paper with the standards and history of the Globe, I’m not so concerned with that.”
Joshua Benton, director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University, said Henry as the Globe’s new owner faces far bigger issues than how the paper covers his baseball team, such as falling ad revenue, the transition from print to digital, and questions about how big the news staff should be.
Possible cuts on the way, along with sale of the building?
“When we look back in 5 or 10 years on how John Henry has been as owner of the Globe, I suspect that coverage of the Sox will be a small part of it,” Benton said.
It is no part for me. Only an issue when it shows up on the front pages.
And the hand-wringing over sports coverage “in some ways is really only a sidebar,” said Berkovitz. “The big story is: Can this guy turn around essentially a problem property? Is there anyone who can turn around a newspaper in this day and age?
And yet it is getting so much print!
“I guess we’re going to find out how smart this guy is.”
Or how $tupid he was.
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So what do you think?
"Globe readers, Red Sox fans weigh in on Henry as owner" by David Abel and Javier Panzar | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent, August 03, 2013
The prospect of Boston Red Sox principal owner John W. Henry buying The Boston Globe has sparked a mix of optimism and concern from civic leaders to fans of both the team and the paper, institutions that have helped define Boston for more than a century....
“The Boston Globe is an American institution and a vital source of information here in Massachusetts and across New England,” Governor Deval Patrick said in a statement....
How sad.
Others were less sanguine about the Globe being owned by a major local institution that it spends a lot of ink, web postings, pixels, and tweets covering.
At Fenway Park on Friday night, as rumors circulated about Henry’s purchase of the Globe, former Boston Mayor Raymond L. Flynn said, “I want the Globe to be able to be critical of great institutions in the city — like the Red Sox — when they’re wrong,” Flynn said. “I want a paper that will protect the sports consumers’ interests, which calls it like it sees it — like an umpire.”
You know, really important stuff!
From the State House to city streets, newspapers readers and Red Sox fans, along with business people and those who never follow sports, offered opinions on the impending sale.
Craig Scaperotta, 68, of Cambridge, was sitting outside 1369 Coffee House Saturday morning reading the Globe with his morning coffee. He has read the paper every morning for 37 years, he said, and is happy a local owner has taken the reins.
“I wouldn’t want the Koch Brothers,” he said, referring to the billionaire supporters of conservative causes who have expressed interest in media investments.
See: Sunday Globe Special: Koch Brothers Might Buy Boston Globe
Never even made a bid.
Scaperotta isn’t concerned about a potential conflict of interest, he said. Consolidation of media ownership worries him more.
As long as you see it for the Zionist/CIA intelligence agency propaganda operation it is, it is easy to read.
Matt Riamondi, a 22-year-old business consultant from Beacon Hill, said having a businessman as an owner would benefit the paper.
“The newspaper industry is in a period of change,” he said Saturday in the Public Garden. “To have someone in that line of business, who understands how money moves and who understands products, that could be useful to the Globe.”
Newspapers are dying.
Renee Sekerak, a 46-year-old freelance proofreader who was with her son at the Frog Pond, said she isn’t worried about a conflict of interest with Henry owning a newspaper that chronicles his team....
Not all shared that opinion, but like many others in the city, Harvey A. Silverglate, a prominent civil liberties lawyer and author in Boston, said he had been anxiously awaiting word about who would buy the Globe since the Times Co. said it would sell the paper and its websites in February. The move came more than three years after it failed to sell the Globe amid the recession and the newspaper’s mounting losses.
Given the alternative bidders, Silverglate said he was “very relieved.”
“I suspect that John Henry is the type of fellow who will take seriously the mission of one of the country’s major, and few remaining, viable daily newspapers,” he said.
Ain't that the truth.
“He has taken that kind of interest in the baseball team to which he’s devoted much time, resources, and attention, and I think we can expect he’ll take a similar approach to the Globe. I think he understands that even though the Globe will have to continue to change to meet modern conditions, its essential mission must remain undamaged.”
And that mission? Spewing agenda-pushing propaganda and war-promoting lies. We've documented it here.
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Related: Globe on the Rebound
I guess it helps when you count things twice.
