'Boston Globe'/NYT Co. Saga Only Adds to City Rivalry

By: JAY LINDSAY For devoted Boston Globe readers, it's bad enough that the 137-year-old newspaper has a murky future. Even worse: The fate of the paper will be decided by a bunch of New Yorkers.

After all, locals see Boston as a nucleus of culture and education -- outsiders call it Beantown, but residents call it "The Hub," as in the hub of the universe. And they loathe conceding anything to the metropolis to the south.

But the parent New York Times Co. has promised to slash wages by 23 percent after the Globe's biggest union rejected deep cuts in pay and benefits. It is also reportedly looking to sell the paper, and it seems the company could follow through on a threat to close the Globe "at a whim," local historian Thomas O'Connor said.

"In many respects, it's embarrassing that New York is in the catbird's seat now," said O'Connor, author of several books on Boston history, including "Athens of America."

Usually, the rivalry between Boston and New York is played out on the baseball diamond between the Red Sox and Yankees, who meet at Fenway this week.

The Globe's problems, and the Times' apparent indifference to the fate of a treasured and vital local institution, have transferred some of the rivalry's rancor off field, even if it's "in our minds only," said Emily Rooney, executive editor of "Beat the Press," a media criticism show on Boston's PBS affiliate.

"New York outscales us on every metric, and I think it just fosters a sense of inadequacy or kind of inferiority, and this is clearly part of it, the fact that our newspaper doesn't matter and theirs does," Rooney said.

The struggling New York Times Co. says its dire actions are a matter of necessity at a paper that will lose $85 million this year. The Globe, citing two anonymous potential buyers, reported Wednesday that the Times has hired Goldman Sachs to manage a possible sale of the paper.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of Times Co., has said "I do love the Globe," but some locals haven't seen a lot of love in his management. Former Globe columnist Eileen McNamara, who accepted a buyout at the Globe in 2007, blasted the Times for treating "New England's largest newspaper like a cheap whore."

"It pimped her out for profit during the booming 1990s and then pillaged her when times got tough," she wrote in a column in the Boston Herald.

Globe workers who voted against the contract on Monday said the company hasn't played it straight during talks, demanding onerous cuts without attempting to negotiate more reasonable reductions or requiring managers to make similar sacrifices.

Callie Crossley, a commentator and media analyst from Harvard University, said perceptions that a New York company is bigfooting the Globe feed the same attitude that can make a Red Sox win over the Yankees about more than baseball. Or, in her words, "Take that, you snobbish New York people. We can beat you."

"I do think there is some of that attitude going on here. You know: 'You always think that we're nothing, so instead of competing honestly and instead of negotiating in good faith, you stomp on us,'" Crossley said.

Not everyone sees the Globe's travails under the tint of a New York-Boston beef. Former Boston Mayor Ray Flynn said he has no resentment about the Times' decisions, saying they're "just economics" in an awful financial climate for newspapers.

Stephen Shepard, dean of the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, says it's "ridiculous" to color the Globe-Times dealings with a rivalry between the cities that he says exists solely in sports.

"I've never heard anyone wish ill to The Boston Globe," he said. "The Red Sox, yes. The Boston Globe, no."

At Tuesday's Red Sox-Yankees game, few fans associated the baseball rivalry with the problems between the Globe and the Times Co., which also owns a 17.5 percent stake in the holding company of the Red Sox.

Even Angela Napolitano, a 29-year-old Yankee fans from Queens - who admitted "I hate everything that is Boston" - said the Times should keep the Globe as healthy as possible. "It's awful to see anybody maybe losing their jobs," she said.

But at a food court in downtown Boston, Joseph Parker, a 34-year-old courier, said the way the Times has handled the Globe has kindled some city-to-city resentment, because of "just the way that they're coming around and kind of pushing people around, like a bully."

Parker savors the Globe like a daily news buffet, reading the sports in morning, saving the metro news for lunch, and digging into national coverage in the evening. Trading sections with his father on weekends was part of growing up. "I love the Globe," he says flatly. But Boston's dedication to its biggest paper doesn't seem to matter much to the Times, he said.

"If they really cared," he said, "they wouldn't take such a hardball attitude toward it."