BY DAN
KENNEDY
Notes and observations on
the press, politics, culture, technology, and more. To sign up for
e-mail delivery, click
here. To send
an e-mail to Dan Kennedy, click
here.
For bio, published work, and links to other blogs, visit
www.dankennedy.net.
For information on Dan Kennedy's book, Little People: Learning to
See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes (Rodale, October 2003),
click
here.
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Could the sale of the
Globe have been prevented? That sobbing sound you hear is
from William and Benjamin Taylor, the last two publishers from the
Boston Globe's former ruling family, who this week must be
asking themselves, "Why didn't we think of that?"
Freedom Communications, parent
company of the Orange
County Register, has
found a way to keep the paper within the Hoiles family and
simultaneously pay off what the New York Times
describes
as "dissident family members."
Freedom owns 28 daily newspapers
and eight TV stations, which these days qualifies as small potatoes.
So this is a huge victory for independent media.
Among the rejected suitors are
Gannett and MediaNews, whose chief executive, Dean Singleton, is
pissed, according to both the Times and this
report in the Wall
Street Journal.
I have no idea whether the Taylors
could have pulled off a deal like this rather than selling the
Globe to the New York Times Company for $1.1 billion in 1993.
The times and circumstances were different, and perhaps there was no
way of preventing the sell-off.
But even though the Times Company
has been a reasonably good steward of the Globe (from a
reader's perspective; certainly many employees feel differently), the
psychological impact continues to loom large.
Boston today is largely a franchise
town, as Globe columnists such as Joan Vennochi
bitterly
lament from time to time.
Nothing has contributed to that status more than the transfer of New
England's dominant media organization to out-of-town
ownership.
We interrupt this home run to
bring you another commercial. I missed Manny Ramirez's home run
yesterday -- some of us have to work, you know -- but it looks like
Fox's commercials-up-to-the-last-possible-second policy claimed a
victim: the viewers.
The Boston Herald has
the
story.
Please come to Amherst. I'll
be reading from my
book, Little People:
Learning to See the World Through My Daughter's Eyes, tomorrow
from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the UMass Amherst Campus Center, Room
904-08.
If you're going to be in the
neighborhood, come on down.
posted at 9:00 AM |
comment or permalink
MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
