How 'Bout That Boston Globe?

Last week my head of marketing told me that her husband was passing through the Detroit airport as GM announced its filing for bankruptcy, and he told her it was reminiscent of 9/11 and the Challenger disaster: people glued to televisions, quiet sobbing, general feelings of shock and disbelief, etc. But how? To those of us less emotionally-invested in this long-flailing behemoth, its death came as about as much of a surprise as, say, the arrival of Thanksgiving in late November.

The same can be said with increasing intensity about the newspaper business, a fact which seems to have eluded roughly 277 of the Guild members who voted against the cost-cutting concessions proposed by the Times company. We live in what are fortean times across much of the board (save for government, which toddles on like an obese vacationer at an Orlando buffet), and few corners of business are more apocalyptic than newspapers. They will not soon improve.

Those who sit at their desks off of Morrissey Boulevard and cannot imagine the Times company making the decision to close or otherwise divest themselves of the Globe should consider LSD, or other imagination-enhancing substances. Should they decide to sell it off, in this market the top bids will likely come from search-engine optimization firms and spam-blog advertising companies eager to leach off the traffic of a century of content.

My advice, to those who still wish to make a career in this business, is to go get a job with a publication owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you ask him what the fundamental purpose of the News corporation is, I would bet a Benjamin that he'd say "to make money." That is the sort of general you want to follow into battle.