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New York Times: We Won't Have to Shutter The Boston Globe After All

This negotiation appears to be a bit of a farce . NYT said the Globe was on pace to losing $85 million so if they saved $20 million they could keep it open? If it was about economics, they would close it anyway, even after the concessions. It seems NYT just wanted to get what it could through threatening, but never planned to close it for losing money anyway. Why is a $65 million loss ok? Or any loss at all. The Sulzbergers will act uneconomically as long as they can afford to. That's their right, and one of the privileges of ownership, The non-controlling shareholders should recognize this and act accordingly.

The Latest Nail In Newspapers' Coffin: Outsourcing

The Wall Street Journal has long "outsourced" copy editing and layout of it's European and Asian editions to South Brunswick, New Jersey. There was a lot of hand wringing at first as to whether people in NJ would get right the details of local European or Asian stories, given their presumed lack of knowledge of the regions and key players. Has it worked out - you can never tell because you can't tell how the papers would have done without the change. But you can tell that that the costs cuts were achieved. It takes vision to put the unprovable gains of quality against provable cost cuts. That type of vision is now very rare in the newspaper industry.