New York Times Company Seeks Boston Globe Bids

 

BOSTON, MA (June 10, 2009) – The Boston Globe reports this morning that the newspaper's parent company, The New York Times Co., has hired an investment bank to manage the possible sale of the Globe.

The company plans to seek bids for Boston's major daily within the next few weeks, the Globe reports.

In the past two weeks, three of the 137-year-old Globe's four major unions ratified concessions with the Times Co., but the Guild (the paper's largest union representing nearly 700 workers) was 12 votes short of ratifying $10 million in concessions.

The Times Co. told unions in April that they needed $20 million in concessions to keep operating the paper. Yesterday the Times Co. said they can get the $10 million without the Guild's vote by imposing a 23 percent wage cut beginning next week. Guild members have responded by threatening legal action to block the pay cut, the Globe reports today.

A letter signed "Concerned Reporters at The Boston Globe" has been sent to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, asking him to personally get involved in the dispute between the Guild and the Times.

"We believe you don't want us to take a 23 percent pay cut," the letter to Sulzberger says. "Despite all the rhetoric of the last few weeks, we believe you want to do the right thing – that, at bottom, you’re a mensch. We’re all too aware of the awful economic climate and the precipitous challenges to the newspaper industry. Most of us went into this work because of our love for it, not for the money. We never expected high salaries; we just wanted reasonable pay, enough to make ends meet."

Goldman Sachs, the investment bank hired by the Times, has told sources that they will begin accepting bids for the Globe after June 8, regardless of which way the unions voted. The paper has lost $50 million in the last year and is on track to lose more money this year.

Industry analysts who have been watching the Times Co. maneuver against the Globe believe the union concession demands and pay cuts may have all along been part of a longer-term plan by the Times to make the Globe more attractive to potential buyers, and not merely a plan to make the newspaper more profitable as a Times property.

 

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