The Boston Globe is dying this
weekend, one way or the other. It probably lingers on a while longer,
on life support, a Terri Schiavo of journalism, but this comedy is
ending the way it was destined to.
Labor is caving, management is winning. Pinch Sulzberger, it so
predictably turns out, is only a liberal with other people’s money. So
now the rich kids in New York do away with seniority and the “lifetime”
job guarantees for their fellow silver spoons in Boston.
Sorry, comrades. The Velvet Coffin is being shoved into the crematorium. Maybe you can get a job from Barack Obama.
Here is what happens next, and I know because it’s what went down at
this newspaper when the Herald almost folded back in 1982. The bean
counters are going to swagger into 135 Morrissey Blvd. and take a
chainsaw to that petrified forest of deadwood.
They’ll need to set up a makeshift morgue in the newsroom. Five
science reporters? Whatever they do, they’re not going to be doing it
anymore. The Globe “magazine” is skinnier than a CVS circular. See ya!
As for the future job prospects of the about-to-be-unemployed, I am
reminded of the old New York Titans’ final AFL game in 1962. The owner,
a few sheets to the wind, drifted into the locker room before kickoff
and delivered a pep talk to his players
“For most of you,” he said, “this is your last game. Most of you aren’t good enough to play anywhere else.”
I know, they can’t brag enough about their Pulitzer prizes, like
they’re on the level or something. Seriously, the limousine liberals
who pass the Politically Correct Pulitzers around among themselves
every spring ought to rename them the Olbermanns and run the awards
ceremony live on MSNBC. Truth in advertising.
I’m sure Pinch Sulzberger this weekend is fielding phone calls from
his Park Avenue squash partners, the Beautiful People who’ve been
pulling strings over the last decade or so to line up no-work sinecures
at the Globe for their shiftless offspring.
Belatedly, the Globe has been trying to present as its public face
the salt-of-the-earth types in the backshop, guys who live in towns
like Weymouth and went to work at the paper out of high school.
These are the same blue-collar Massachusetts natives that the
bow-tied bumkissers upstairs alternately disdain or despise as
mean-spirited bigots who can’t be trusted to vote the “right way.”
Outside the employees themselves and a few limp bloggers, nobody
cares about the Globe’s demise. Let the epitaph be: Smug Is Not a
Workable Business Plan. These pampered poodles assumed they had a
monopoly. Nobody ever has a monopoly, at least not for long.
I’ll miss the old Globe. It was a laff-riot - remember in 2006 when
its crack sports columnist previewed the Final Four matchup between
George Mason and LSU, except there was no such game. They were in
opposite brackets.
One last thing to all my dear friends on the Boulevard.
We’re not hiring.
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