News-Record.com

Is it truly possible that the Boston Globe would be shut down?

Management told union leaders Thursday that the Globe will lose $85 million in 2009, unless serious cutbacks are made, according to a Globe employee briefed on the discussions. Last year the paper lost an estimated $50 million, the employee said.

Wow. It's becoming more common that newspapers in big cities are losing money, but Boston without the Globe?

Good journalism is expensive. A couple days ago, editor Marty Baron said that it cost more than $1 million to report on the scandal of sexual abuse by priests. And I suspect that doesn't include the payroll and paper costs to publish that story.

Alan Mutter, one of the sharpest newspaper industry analysts, thinks that closing down the Globe isn't iminent. Hope he's right.

Some people have asked why we didn't post a story about the unpaid work days as soon as it was announced to employees.

It is a good question and a hard one for news people to reconcile. Essentially, the decision came down to this: sometimes a company's obligation is to its employees first. We are a 24-hour operation, and its not possible to inform everyone at the same time. So when there is no compelling reason to inform the public immediately we opted to let employees find out first, if possible.

As it turned out, we posted our story as soon as our sister paper in Roanoke posted its. That didn't help employees who may have heard the story from a friend who saw it on the Web, but since the news was already out, we decided not to wait.

Not a perfect solution for a group whose job is to spread the news.

One of the main reasons we have to do this is when traditional newspaper advertisers do this.

So many people think their subscription covers the cost of producing and delivering a newspaper. It scarcely covers the delivery cost, and it may not even do that these days with the cost of gas. Still, we're not expecting major content pain as a result of the voluntary buyout plan.

Market changes. Financial downturns. Niche fragmentation. They challenge us to be quicker, smarter and tougher, all of which we can be.

We're off the market.

Thinking that's a good thing, right now.

Voluntary buyouts offered in Charlotte and Raleigh that include the entire newsrooms at both places. The economy in both Raleigh and Charlotte is stronger than other places -- Greensboro -- so this move is telling.

I hate it for the damage the impending cuts could do to coverage of state government where both papers are strong. While we have the extraordinary Mark Binker, he's only one man. We supplement Mark's reports with wire feeds from Raleigh and Charlotte.

I have friends and former co-workers in both places -- I used to work in Raleigh. Wishing them all well in these tough times.

The first management principle I learned 20-some years ago was that you can do just about whatever you want with employees except change their desks and their parking spaces. It's been dead-on over the years, too.

The parking lot behind our building is for sale. We own it and use it for free employee parking. I park there. It makes sense that it would be sold separately from the company. It's not critical to our company's operation, and there is plenty of other parking available nearby.

Since the "for sale" sign went up on the property, newsroom wags have suggested other possibilities, including selling the air rights over our building for a billboard or, perhaps, a cell tower. Also, that we develop it ourselves, particularly as we need a good journalist/cop bar in town. Several have suggested we sell our computer system. One suggested we sell the presses, too, and commit ourselves to going fully digital.

When I told that to someone outside the newsroom, she said, "Wow. Gallows humor."

"Nah," I said. "Newsroom humor."

I sat down at lunch during Rotary yesterday, and a member sat across from me and says, "I saw a friend of yours this past weekend."

"Who was that?" I asked.

"A guy I went to Chapel Hill with," he said, drawing it out a few beats. "Walter Hussman."

Coincidentally, Hussman and his company have been a topic of discussion in our newsroom lately.

"Oh?" I asked. (I'm a pretty engaging conversationalist if I do say so myself.)

"Yes. He said he read on a Web site that his company was interested in your newspaper. And he asked me what I thought of it."

"I hope you spoke kindly," I said.

He said he had and then told me what a good guy Hussman is. They didn't see each other in Greensboro, by the way.

(And, separately, this guy has attested to his journalism chops.)

Again, I have no information that the interest of Wehco is anything more than the curiosity you may have when you pick up one of the informational fliers outside a house for sale. I just enjoy the idea that the world is such a small place.

Arkansas Business is reporting that Wehco Media of Little Rock, which owns the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette has asked for information about the News & Record and our sister papers, The Virginian-Pilot and The Roanoke Times.

Key quote attributed to Paul Smith, president and GM of the Democrat-Gazette: Wehco has not made a bid on the properties and is among many possible bidders, Smith said.

Before anyone gets all excited, those of us here don't know about any potential bidders. We do expect that a lot of media companies would ask for information.

Walter Hussman is CEO of Wehco. From his Wikipedia entry:

Hussman sums up his philosophy about newspapers by referring to a statement from his father.

"A newspaper has a number of constituencies. Among those are readers, advertisers, employees, creditors, and stockholders. If a newspaper and its publisher always keep those constituencies in that order: readers first, advertisers second, employees third, creditors fourth, and shareholders last, then the newspaper will do well journalistically and financially, and the interests of all constituencies will be well served."

Monday update: From another story -- "We operate a lot alike," Smith said. "They produce really good newspapers. They're good newspapers in good markets, and I'm sure there’s many, many companies interested in them."

John Morton, a Maryland-based newspaper analyst who has done consulting work for Walter Hussman, WEHCO's chief executive officer, said the papers could represent an interesting opportunity for WEHCO "and of course now is a good time to buy because the prices are down."

"Landmark has generally run decent newspapers, so you don't have to fix a lot of things when you go in there, which is not true of some other companies I could name," Morton said.

In case anyone is wondering, we aren't planning to do this.

Uh-oh: The best laid plans...: NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's lucrative outsourcing industry struggled Thursday to overcome Internet slowdowns and outages after cuts in two undersea cables sliced the country's bandwidth in half.

My newspaper column

In 1964, Frank Batten Sr. owned two newspapers in Norfolk, Va., and was focused on buying the Greensboro Daily News, The Greensboro Record and WFMY from the Jeffress family.

Batten, who went on to build a billion-dollar media company -- Landmark Communications, which now includes dozens of newspapers, two television stations and the Weather Channel -- said it wasn't exactly a standard transaction.

As he recounts in his 2002 book, "The Weather Channel: the Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon," the deal hinged more on personal values than market values.

"We reached a verbal understanding with the owners, and both parties signed their names to a one-page agreement. About a week later, another qualified buyer offered to pay several million dollars more than our agreed-upon price.

"Even though our one-page agreement would never have survived in court, the owners honored it, and we acquired the papers and station at the original price. I like to think that Landmark would have behaved in exactly the same way had our roles been reversed."

Online News Squared takes notice of the possible sale of Landmark Communications and made me smile.

Relevant to maybe something or probably nothing, I don't know: I understand from the publisher that TV and radio stations were calling for comment on the possible sale of the paper. I know he was pretty occupied all day reassuring employees that it was not apocalypse now. I don't know if or how many news inquiries he ended up handling.

Meanwhile, no one asked me any intelligent questions on the blog post below, at least as of this writing. So, does that mean the news media didn't know about this blog, that they didn't care to ask me, that they didn't need information but needed a talking head, or something else entirely?

It isn't particularly important, but it is curious to me. As more and more people are online, isn't that where the news media goes, to where the people -- including us -- are?

(I know Neill McNeill of Fox knows about blogs. He comments here.)

We have employee meetings throughout the day pertaining to the possible sale of Landmark. Dick Barron is working on the ongoing story. Check for updates.

The immediate bottom line, though, for the community and our folks is this: Our strategy isn't changing. We're still pursuing growth. We're still expanding into online. We're still hiring. We're still investing $$ for good works in the community. We're still pursuing excellent journalism.

More as this develops. If you have questions, ask 'em here.

From a story on our Web site:An announcement is scheduled Thursday that the Batten family which owns Landmark Communications Inc. has hired national investment advisers to sell the Norfolk-based company, including the News & Record.

Another from the Times.

Don't know what this means for us, yet. More tomorrow.

Thursday a.m. update: I see our link is broken. Go here to the Pilot's story until it's fixed.