"Media, including Globe, walk fine line in the age of ‘MeToo’" by Mark Arsenault Globe Staff December 08, 2017
In the two months since uncovering explosive accusations of sexual misconduct against filmmaker Harvey Weinstein, the media have maintained a starring role in the spiraling sexual harassment scandal that has brought down dozens of powerful men.
Calling into question the actual motivations and agenda behind the thing.
In many prominent cases, the industry has turned its piercing spotlight on men in its own ranks, including Mark Halperin of NBC News, Leon Wieseltier, formerly of the New Republic, and “CBS This Morning” host Charlie Rose, each accused of harassment. On Nov. 29, NBC sacked “Today” cohost Matt Lauer in the morning after a serious allegation of inappropriate sexual behavior, and by lunchtime, news broke that Minnesota Public Radio had cut ties with humorist Garrison Keillor.
Even as they ramp up investigations into sexual harassment, media leaders — at The Boston Globe and other newsrooms — are looking inward, reassessing the media’s history as a male-dominated industry, and examining the current climate of their own workplaces.
At the Globe, the reckoning began even before the Weinstein scandal broke in October. Earlier this year, after a mid-level manager within the Globe’s sales department was removed for allegedly making inappropriate comments to co-workers, the Globe hired a law firm to conduct a review.
OMFG, the Globe is patting itself on the back for being out front of it all -- while letting this out late on a Friday evening!!
The law firm interviewed current and former employees in the advertising department, and reviewed notes from exit interviews with employees who had left.
The department had a “culture problem,” said Linda Henry, the Globe’s managing director. “It had become a boys’ club.”
The Globe has since made a number of management changes across the business side of the organization.
Yup, they are doing good!
Henry said the newspaper is committed to creating a more proactive human resources department under new leadership, hiring and promoting more women in advertising, requiring more training for managers and employees throughout the company, and establishing a system for employees to submit harassment complaints anonymously.
The Globe’s review continued after the watershed Weinstein revelations. Henry has been meeting internally with women at the newspaper to discuss workplace culture, as part of the unfolding national discourse on sexual harassment, a movement often referred to by the hashtag #MeToo.
A national discourse being pushed by a bunch of self-serving, agenda-pushing liars.
In a number of informal interviews over the past two weeks for this story, women at the Globe had overall positive things to say about the current work culture in the news department where three of the top five jobs are held by women, and 22 of the 44 managers are women. Some have worked here for years and said they had never seen anything that would constitute harassment. Henry said different departments at the Globe seem to have their own cultures, and she was convinced the newsroom climate is “not one of sexual harassment or sexism.”
(Blog editor can only shake his head at that self-serving slop -- but it's a great place to work!)
Still, some women in the newsroom said they have current questions about equality of opportunity, have experienced annoying incidents of “mansplaining,” or have been talked over by men in meetings. Some have had unwanted attention in recent years from male co-workers, or have been the target of inappropriate comments and e-mails, according to conversations with female staff members.
Like what, and why did it take so long for the Globe reporter to get around to it?
In one particularly notable case dating back to March, a female employee in her 20s filed an internal complaint against a Globe journalist. She said he propositioned her to have sex with his wife, using vulgar sexual language, according to the employee who filed the complaint.
She provided a reporter for this story a letter from the Globe’s human resources lawyer confirming her complaint was filed and investigated. Her encounters with the male employee began with friendly banter over company e-mail, but he later asked for her personal e-mail address and cell number and then propositioned her by phone in November, 2016, she said.
Later, the male employee was pressured into resigning after additional accusations emerged from outside the company, according to two people familiar with the situation. Globe managers declined to discuss his departure, saying it is a confidential personnel matter.
The Globe chose not to identify the employee in this story because his alleged conduct did not involve physical contact, threats, or persistent harassment, and editors determined it is highly unlikely the newspaper would have identified the accused, or written about his conduct, if this situation had arisen at another private company.
Oh, if it had happened somewhere else they wouldn't have even reported it (then they would be part of the problem and an enabler, right?). How grand of them to expose themselves -- sort of.
In another case this year, the Globe stopped using a contract worker after senior managers at the paper learned of complaints about his past treatment of women during a previous stint at the Globe.
Exposing harassment often requires painstaking and time-consuming investigations. The Globe started work on this story about media organizations the week before Thanksgiving. It is being published amid speculation on social media and talk radio about the Globe employee pressured to resign.
Are you sick of the excuses yet?
Why didn't they make this a Sunday Spotlight then?
Instead they are going to holler racism for a week!
In a note to the newsroom on Friday, Globe editor Brian McGrory acknowledged, “Yes, we’re well aware that by withholding the identity of the reporter involved, we’ll be accused of a double-standard by people and organizations that are not privy to all the facts. I can live with that far more easily than I can live with the thought of sacrificing our values to slake the thirst of this moment.”
Maybe if we were privy to the facts we could make up our own minds. Nice to know that the newspaper withholds things and considers such censorship a "value."
Related: Damning double standard on sexual misconduct at Globe
I wasn't going to say it, but....
Few local media companies seemed eager to discuss how they are handling the harassment issue internally.
While it is uncomfortable for the Globe, or any media organization, to look at its own behavior, it is critical to do so, said Jeffrey McCall, media critic and communications professor at DePauw University in Indiana.
“The media has been covering sexual misconduct in other institutions for years,” he said. To cover these stories without also looking inward “looks like a double standard.”
They have been covering sexual misconduct for years in other institutions? When?
Now for a trip down memory lane.
Historically, news was a difficult industry for women. The modern media workplace descended from what is now disparagingly called a “bro culture.” Women in journalism who are now around retirement age were pioneers, who entered the business when it was overwhelmingly male.
The Globe is one of the Bros, and then there was Helen Thomas.
Carol Young, who retired as deputy executive editor of the Providence Journal in 2010, started at the paper in 1965 among a large group of new hires. “Twenty-two men and me,” she said. At the time, the notion of a woman covering a newsbeat was so novel that training materials handed out to reporters urged them to “dress like a gentleman,” she said.
In the 1970s, women made up a small percentage of the Globe newsroom staff and opportunities were slim. For years, the newspaper would not assign more than one female reporter to its prestigious Washington, D.C., news bureau, a former editor said. The seat occupied by a woman was jokingly referred to as the Susan B. Anthony Chair.
As a Globe intern and then a part-time reporter in the late 1970s, Teresa Hanafin, then in her early 20s, thought she could learn much about journalism from an editor on the foreign desk, who seemed to take an interest in mentoring her. He was about 10 years older and understood the craft of writing.
“Unbeknownst to me, he was known in the newsroom as someone who preyed on young women,” said Hanafin, now editor of Globe newsletters, and one of the few people interviewed for this story who agreed to speak for the record.
The editor would occasionally invite her out for drinks, she said, ostensibly to talk about journalism and discuss her writing. After one of these nights, he asked for a ride home. When the car stopped outside his apartment, “He put his tongue in my mouth,” Hanafin recalled. “Then he said to me, ‘You want to come upstairs?’ ”
Angry and disappointed, she told him no. He left.
“At work he acted like nothing had happened,” she said. “And like a lot of women, I didn’t say anything.”
The editor, who left the Globe years ago and has since died, was referenced a number of times in conversations with current and former Globe employees, mostly women, who said they knew of his reputation for using his position at the paper to get close to young women, in ham-handed attempts to get them into bed.
OMFG!
Since he is dead, why are we not given the name?
He was not the only one, according to the former and current employees. Some male newsroom employees would eye the Globe’s annual group of co-ops — college journalism students eager for work experience and critical bylines to bolster their resumes — as a dating pool, they recalled.
In a famous much-discussed incident from around the year 2000, an editor downloaded a swimsuit photo of a newsroom co-op who had been Miss Idaho. He sent it around the office with a message, something along the lines of: “How ‘bout them taters?”
Men now make up about 63 percent of the Globe news and opinion staffs, according to the paper’s HR department. The stats are skewed somewhat by an overwhelmingly male sports department, which lost a number of women in recent years to buyouts and job offers from other media organizations. Top editors have made hiring more women in sports a point of emphasis, they said. The Globe recently hired a woman to cover football, Nora Princiotti, and filled a gap in the paper’s opinion coverage by adding a female voice to its ranks of sports columnists, among the highest-profile jobs at the paper. Sports columnist Tara Sullivan, who comes to the Globe from the Bergen Record in New Jersey, started work last Friday.
Is patting yourself on the back considered a sport?
Newsroom managers intend to survey employees anonymously to get a better sense of the work climate and to invite employees to flag any problems.
“Journalism is tough, important work, and every single person in this room deserves to be treated with great dignity and respect,” said McGrory, in a statement prepared for this story. “We believe we’re in a good place now, but the goal is always to get to a better place. These are issues we have to be ever vigilant about, in terms of hiring, promotions, pay, and overall culture.”
Yeah, what a great bunch of delusional, tone-deaf, out-of-touch elites who think they are doing good!
--more--"
So will Yvonne be writing a Sunday column about all this or.... ?
Meanwhile, a day before this was the lead front page feature in my Globe:
"12,000 women, stories of sexual harassment at women’s conference in Boston" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff December 08, 2017
The topic of sexual harassment was not officially on the agenda at the Massachusetts Conference for Women, but it was on the minds of many of the 12,000 attendees who flocked to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center on Thursday.
And how could it not be?
Even as they met at the largest women’s conference in the nation, Democratic Senator Al Franken was announcing he would resign following allegations of sexual misconduct. The day before, Time magazine had unveiled the “silence breakers” who spoke up about sexual harassment as its “person of the year,” and The New York Times published a damning report on the widespread coverup surrounding Harvey Weinstein’s sexual misdeeds. The special election for the Alabama Senate seat involving Republican candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of making sexual advances on teenage girls, is days away.
That would be the Black Cube, right?
Related: Time’s Person of the Year: ‘The Silence Breakers’ for speaking out against sexual harassment
Maybe they can get the Globe to break its silence.
“This is not a new story,” said Shelley Zalis, chief executive of the Los Angeles corporate consulting firm the Female Quotient, who led a session on networking. “The new story is that we’re using our voices and we feel comfortable now because we’re all rallying together.”
Conference organizers pointed out that while there weren’t specific sessions with “sexual harassment” in the title, the subject was addressed at dozens of workshops and panels, which had been planned months earlier. And the issue was certainly in the air.
“Feminism is fashionable again,” designer Diane Von Furstenberg said during her lunchtime talk.
I didn't know it was something you took off and put on like some sort of damn uniform, sorry.
Actress Meryl Streep and activist Gloria Steinem discussed the #MeToo moments that are surfacing across the country during a free-flowing discussion that touched on gender fluidity, President Trump, and women’s representation on corporate boards. When Steinem mentioned casting directors asking if an actress is “[expletive]-able,” Streep replied that, just the night before, a female executive in Los Angeles mentioned that she had been in a meeting this year in which that very word had come up.
Now, Streep said, we should be shutting down this kind of behavior by saying, “Uh uh, that’s not, you can’t, no, uh uh, no way, you can’t do that anymore.”
Streep stayed silent about Weinstein so she has been completely discredited.
As for Steinem, she has been outed as a controlled-opposition agitator and thus is to be dismissed (there is a special place in hell reserved for people like her).
The problem is ingrained in society, Streep said, pointing to Weinstein as “the most gargantuan example of a kind of disrespect that permeates every industry.” Steinem noted that it all started with men’s need to control women in order to control reproduction: “If we didn’t have wombs, we’d be fine, probably.”
Throughout the day, a number of women and panelists who were asked about the sexual harassment scandal wondered the same thing: “Now what?”
Awareness has increased exponentially in recent months, but simply removing alleged harassers from their jobs is not enough, they said.
Julie McGuinness, who works in finance at the Cambridge biotech company Biogen, is frustrated that claims of sexual harassment are not being investigated more thoroughly, and people never find out what actually happened. “The accusation comes up and they’re just fired,” she said.
Interesting.
See:
Sexual harassment allegations against Sam Isaly ripple through finance world
Legendary biotech financier Sam Isaly steps down following sexual harassment allegations
Study results show harassment rampant at startups, few have diversity plans
I'll end the links there.
Lisa Bacon, who works in marketing for the Waltham pharmaceutical firm Sobi, agreed. “There’s the women’s point of view, the men’s point of view, and the truth,” she said. “Somewhere the truth lies in the middle. And we don’t necessarily know what that is.”
And you aren't going to find it in the Globe, either.
Corporate response is also lacking, said Zalis, of the Female Quotient, who said in an interview that she had yet to see a company come out with a comprehensive plan to prevent sexual harassment. More than just removing offenders and conducting obligatory sexual harassment prevention trainings, she said, it’s about creating a culture of respect, collaboration, empathy, and transparency.
“The workplace was created over 100 years ago by men for men, when women weren’t in the workplace, so we now have to rewrite the rules,” she said, noting that one of her bosses once told her that the reason she brought in business was because clients thought she was “hot.”
Another panelist, leadership expert Erica Dhawan, sees this as a defining moment for millennial women.
This is about controlling sexual behavior of that generation.
“We are seeing a revitalization of the feminist movement in a different way than ever before,” she said in an interview, citing the #MeToo uprising of women sharing their stories of sexual harassment or assault. “What we need to make sure is that we don’t think that likes on Facebook is the same as driving social change.”
Getting men involved is key, she said, as is making sure they don’t go in the opposite direction and stop interacting with women at work. “I wish that in the future, 50 percent of the audience here was men,” she said of the conference.
Leave me alone.
In fact, this whole thing has had me rethink co-education and gender segregation. May be the only way to stop sexual harassment.
Organizers didn’t track the share of men and women at the conference but acknowledged few men attended.
Michelle Beiter and Kate Perruzzi, tech editors at the Norwood semiconductor company Analog Devices, were disappointed by a workshop they attended called “Navigating Office Politics . . . and Difficult People” because the speaker failed to mention either sexual harassment or gender bias. The women were also disappointed that none of the other sessions officially addressed the issues either.
“It seems like fluff,” Perruzzi said of the conference topics. “None of it seems pertinent to the climate now.”
Just like the Globe.
A spokeswoman said that conference organizers are committed to contributing to the national conversation and that the event’s speakers “addressed the vital importance of this movement and offered actions to combat the problem.”
Krista Celia was at the conference to drop off her daughter, Alex, an 18-year-old senior at Somerset Berkley Regional High School. Alex just started a chapter of the Girl Up feminist club at her high school, Celia said, and now the local middle school is starting a chapter, too.
Try starting an anti-abortion club and see what happens.
“It’s a little spark that’s growing,” she said.
Now quick, kill it while it slumbers in the womb!
--more--"
Meryl Streep (left) jokingly bowed down to Gloria Steinem as they arrived to speak at the Massachusetts Conference for Women (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff).
Meryl Streep kisses the hand of Gloria Steinem at The Massachusetts Conference for Women Thursday (Jessica Rinaldi/Globe Staff).
Aside from the cult of personality, she is kissing her hand like she is the Pope or some Mafia Don!
"In town, Meryl Streep and Gloria Steinem talk ‘The Post,’ sexism in Hollywood" by Kaitlyn Locke Globe Correspondent December 07, 2017
Actress Meryl Streep and activist Gloria Steinem looked delighted to be sharing the stage Thursday, discussing Hollywood’s complicated culture — and treatment of women — at the Massachusetts Conference for Women.
Just Hollywood?
So why has Woody Allen been let off the hook?
Streep, a perennial Oscar nominee, discussed her latest starring role, portraying late Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham in director Steven Spielberg’s “The Post.” The film’s focus is the Pentagon Papers, which the Post published after The New York Times was blocked from doing so by the Supreme Court.
Spielberg is going to try and rehabilitate the Washington ComPost?
Must be a comedy!
“A lot of that (the decision to publish) had to do with the choice Katharine Graham had made, as a woman who didn’t think she belonged in her job,” said Streep, who confessed to an occasional crisis of confidence herself, as when she was about to walk onstage Thursday to speak to 10,000 women at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
The day’s other speakers included fashion icon Diane von Furstenberg, WCVB-TV’s Maria Stephanos and Karen Holmes Ward, actress Viola Davis, chief content officer of Shondaland.com Jennifer Romolini, founder and commissioner of the National Women’s Hockey League Dani Rylan, and chef and restaurateur Barbara Lynch.
Streep encouraged the audience to see “The Post,” saying: “It doesn’t bear any resemblance to ‘Mama Mia.’ ”
Steinem praised Streep for her ability to portray any human being while remaining “authentically yourself.”
“When I act, I don’t think that I can’t be somebody else,” Streep said. “Because I know how much in common I have with so many people. I don’t believe in the dividers. I think you can meet somebody and level your heart and soul if you want to, and absorb it.”
Asked if she chooses roles that reflect her own values, Streep responded that as a 68-year-old woman, there aren’t so many options for her to choose from.
“But there are more and more, and they’re more and more interesting,” Streep said.
Streep and Steinem did not shy away from the avalanche of accusations of sexual harassment and assault cascading across Hollywood and the media.
Notice how it hasn't hit Wall Street offices or the U.S. military?
In fact, the sexual harassment problem in the military has all but disappeared from the debate after being raised years ago. Would spoil their image, I guess.
“The thing about Harvey Weinstein is that he is sort of the most gargantuan example of a kind of disrespect that permeates every industry, every enterprise,” said Streep, who made several movies with Weinstein. “I’m not sure why — I have a lot of theories.”
OH!
She has "theories," does she?
She revealed that she and a group of Hollywood actresses have come together to make things better in Hollywood.
More self-aggrandizing self-adulation.
“I’m very hopeful that the world is changing,” Streep said. “Right now, I’m getting together with a bunch of actresses that you all know very well, and we’re all sort of going to make a set of non-negotiable demands.”
--more--"
Also see: Halperin’s accusers take on toxic culture in TV newsrooms
Does it really matter which gender lies to you?
#NotMe
"In the company of men, #MeToo is a tough topic" by Shirley Leung Globe Columnist November 23, 2017
Where are the men?
Most are lying low as leaders from entertainment, media, and politics are taken down by allegations — and some confessions — of sexual harassment or worse. But some male executives, like Andrew Dreyfus of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, are doing some soul-searching.
This is an incredible reflection from a CEO of a company where women make up half of the senior leadership — including the chief financial officer, chief operating officer, and general counsel — and serve as chair and vice chair of the board.
“On a personal level, I believe we have tolerated for too long the objectification of women. Men have to step forward affirmatively and challenge other men who cross the line and even approach the line,” he said. “We can’t be silent. We’ve learned from other big movements silence is the enemy. It was silence that led to the Holocaust; it was silence that led to civil rights abuses.”
OMFG, he's comparing this to the Holocaust™!
Can you at least stop with the over-the-top hyperbole as you shovel shit, Globe?
Missing from the seemingly daily allegations of sexual harassment against prominent men have been, well, the voices of other men.
So I reached out to some of our male leaders.....
She only reached out to the good ones.
--more--"
So will she be writing a Sunday column about the Globe newsroom, or.... ?
"Calls to rape crisis centers are surging amid outpouring of sexual assault allegations" by Michael Alison Chandler Washington Post November 23, 2017
Calls to rape crisis centers are surging around the country amid an unprecedented public outpouring of survivors’ stories about sexual misconduct.
Managers of crisis hotlines say the barrage of news implicating men in some of the most powerful positions in Hollywood, politics, and the media is compelling women from all walks of life to speak out about their own traumatic experiences with sexual assault, many for the first time.
Unfortunately, the me$$enger is a $elf-$erving, agenda-pushing pos.
Advocates for sexual violence prevention see the national conversation as a hopeful moment that could bring lasting change. It is also a challenging one in the short term, with a spike in demand that is straining the resources of about 1,300 rape crisis centers around the country that provide free, anonymous, around-the-clock counseling and other support services. Many centers are scrambling for funding, new staff members, and volunteers to meet the demand.
Scott Berkowitz, president or the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), a national hotline, said it’s typical to see an uptick in calls when there is a big news story or a scandal, but the past year has brought two significant and sustained increases in demand for counseling and support.
The first came after The Washington Post published video of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump bragging about groping women to the former host of ‘‘Access Hollywood.’’ The second came in October with the report of decades of sexual harassment allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and then a #MeToo campaign went viral with many people sharing their own stories of sexual harassment or violence....
I'm told the women are ‘‘being triggered.’’
--more--"
I'm told it is cathartic.
"For low-wage workers, many obstacles to reporting sexual harassment" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff November 27, 2017
The flood of sexual misconduct allegations in recent weeks has come largely from women in white-collar professions, but the problem is thought to be much more prevalent, and hidden, among low-wage workers. These women can’t afford to lose their jobs. Often they don’t speak English and don’t know the procedure for reporting abuse.
It's the richer's paper, and is that why they want all the illegals?
Undocumented immigrants fear that if they confront their harassers, they will report the workers to immigration authorities. Under the Trump administration, advocates say, these workers have become even more fearful of speaking up.
And when they do, even more obstacles await.
Lawyers are often reluctant to take their cases because they can’t put down any money upfront. If damages for lost wages are awarded, they tend to be low, meaning less of a payday for the attorneys. Even Greater Boston Legal Services, a nonprofit long dedicated to helping low-income workers, has largely stopped taking sexual harassment cases because they are so resource-intensive.
Sexual harassment nearly always involves an imbalance of power between perpetrators and their victims, and it’s especially stark when it comes to low-wage workers, said Sarah Fleisch Fink, director of workplace policy and senior counsel at the National Partnership for Women & Families. A lack of money, education, and language skills, or being a person of color, “can compound the risk of reporting harassment,” Fleisch Fink said. “It plays into feelings of vulnerability and lack of power to assert yourself.”
In some industries, reports of sexual harassment are shockingly widespread. Studies have found that 80 percent of Mexican female farm workers in California and more than half of Chicago’s female hotel workers surveyed said they had been sexually harassed. Among fast food workers, 40 percent of women say they have faced harassment, according to a 2016 nationwide survey, and 42 percent of them said they felt forced to accept it because they needed the work.
They then cite the example of Jena Benson who worked at a Dunkin’ Donuts (the official coffee of the Bo$ton Red Sox).
Cambridge attorney Tyler Fox has represented dozens of working-class women who have been propositioned, groped, and sexually assaulted on the job. A current client, like many others an undocumented house cleaner, said she was repeatedly raped by the cleaning company owner, who threatened to deport her if she reported him. But Fox has had difficulty getting law enforcement to pursue the case.
“This is serial rape,” Fox said. “This should be treated like a major crime investigation. When news came out about Harvey Weinstein’s serial abuse of actresses, the New York City DA’s office was investigating within days.”
And they declined to bring charges at first once Weinstein bought them off.
The more vulnerable the woman, the more egregious the sexual misconduct tends to be, according to advocates and lawyers who assist low-wage women. The problem is compounded by the fact many low-income workers are employed by temp agencies and risk being barred from permanent employment at the place where they’re working if they turn down a supervisor’s advances.....
That's not the Bo$ton Globe's beat.
--more--"
This is an ‘Arab spring for women’ according to Tina Brown.
Btw, did you know the term "Arab Spring" was coined by neo-con Charles Krauthammer, and who benefited from it anyway?
Yesterday, Susan Collins was hero, but today she is a villain.
Steven Tyler opens home for abused girls
Like a wolf in the fold?
Scathing audit finds Department of Children and Families failed to report crimes against children
The auditors said more than 70 children had died in its care in 2014 and 2015.
Let me say that again, the auditors said more than 70 children had died in its care in 2014 and 2015.
If I was one of those conspiracy theorists I would say there is more than meets the eye regarding the DCF, something that looks Satanic.
Meanwhile, a defiant country doctor fights for her license and a disappearing style of medicine -- and John Henry wants you to pay to read his non-union publication!
You'd be better off $eeing a priest -- or not.
I wish there was another paper to read in Bo$ton:
"Boston Herald being sold to Gatehouse, files for Chapter 11" by Beth Healy and Jon Chesto Globe Staff December 08, 2017
The Boston Herald is being sold to GateHouse Media for $4.5 million in cash, as publisher Patrick J. Purcell is giving up his long, expensive struggle to keep Boston’s second-largest daily newspaper independent.
As part of the deal, the Herald also filed for federal bankruptcy protection Friday, which would allow the company to renegotiate its debts. Purcell said GateHouse did not agree to pick up the pension liabilities of the Herald’s many unions.
Purcell addressed the Herald newsroom Friday afternoon in what reporters said was an emotional speech. He said he had tried as long as possible to keep the Herald afloat and did not want to see it go out of business, according to employee accounts posted on social media. GateHouse has said it will keep 175 of the Herald’s roughly 240 employees, Purcell said.
“I wanted to keep Boston a two-newspaper town as long as I could,’’ Purcell said in an interview. “Apparently this is as long as I could.”
As if it really mattered.
In addition to facing concern about their pensions, Herald employees will also have to interview with GateHouse in January in an attempt to keep their jobs, staffers were told.
The sale threatens to shake up the media landscape in Boston at a time of tremendous change convulsing the industry. Under Purcell and its previous owner, Rupert Murdoch, the Herald has been a feisty tabloid known for crime, political, and sports coverage.
The new$paper industry in its death throes.
It is unclear if it will retain that distinct personality under GateHouse, which is known for cutting costs and centralizing operations across its vast media empire. The company owns more newspapers than any other publisher in the United States, including 130 dailies, such as the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, the Enterprise in Brockton, and the Cape Cod Times, as well as more than 640 community papers.
And it is ANTI-UNION!
The Cape Cod Times, huh?
Founded in 1846, the Herald has struggled of late with the pressures confronting media companies across the industry, with revenue from print advertising and subscriptions declining while publishers are tethered to expensive printing operations.
Purcell bought the Herald from Murdoch in 1994, and has made many moves over the years to cut costs, including selling the Herald’s sprawling plant on Harrison Avenue, outsourcing printing to The Boston Globe, and moving to a smaller space in the Seaport District in 2013.
One wonders if the Bo$ton Globe Pressroom had something to do with its demise, 'eh?
Print circulation has been shrinking at the tabloid. The bid is conditioned upon the rejection of the Herald’s collective bargaining agreements and the modifying of pension and health care obligations, according to documents filed in bankruptcy court in Delaware.
Tabloid, huh?
If that isn't the greatest case of the pot hollering kettle, I don't know what is!
After all the tawdry Globe reporting regarding the sexual proclivities of ruling elite perverts, they have the nerve and gall to hurl insults.
GateHouse Media chief executive Kirk Davis declined to say what will happen to the Herald’s employee pensions. He would not commit to how many employees will be retained, but Davis spoke highly of the Herald and its newsroom, and sees several ways GateHouse can benefit from owning the Herald.
“We see a real exciting market story,” Davis said. “This could allow us to really up our game. We just have to be patient to see how things work out.. . . There’s a tremendous opportunity to give an even larger voice to the Herald’s talent.”
While cutting staff!
Davis credited Purcell for his tenacity, and noted that there are few big cities left with two daily newspapers.
“He’s always made the newspaper fight above its weight,” Davis said.
GateHouse is based outside Rochester, N.Y., although Davis works out of a Needham office. Its parent company is New Media Investment Group Inc., backed by Fortress Investment Group.
Private equity running the papers, huh?
That explains their focus and coverage!
In its bankruptcy filing in Delaware, the Herald reported 30 large creditors, 12 of which are employee retirement plans and unions. If those pension obligations are not assumed by a buyer, the federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. would cover the pensions up to a certain amount.
OMG, TAXPAYERS are going to have to foot the bill!
The Globe also is a creditor, owed $600,000 by the Herald, according to the bankruptcy filing.
Rick Edmonds, an analyst at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit that offers journalism training, said it is particularly difficult to be the No. 2 newspaper in today’s business climate. GateHouse, with its economies of scale, should be able to manage costs more efficiently than Purcell could do on his own, Edmonds said.
The news of the deal, which broke late on Friday afternoon, had community leaders wondering about the fate of news coverage in Boston.
(See top of this post for explanation)
Rick Daniels, a former executive at both GateHouse and the Globe, considers the sale a “passing of an age.”
Same here. I think I'm done buying, reading, and reporting Globe slop.
“Certainly, as an independently owned newspaper, the Herald provided an amazing counterpoint to what the Globe did for many years,” said Daniels, who once was president of GateHouse’s New England operations for several years under Davis. “It was a great service to the market, and it was a great luxury for the market to have two strong newspapers editorially.”
--more--"
Globe airing the Herald's dirty laundry, huh?
Have they no shame?
