Category: Media

In a report by Editor and Publisher via the Associated Press, talks to keep the Boston Globe newspaper operating while extorting concessions from union employees are being extended.

Deadline on Talks for ‘Boston Globe’ Cuts Extended

Published: May 02, 2009 11:00 AM ET

BOSTON Negotiations between unions at The Boston Globe and its owner, The New York Times Co., will continue after the company agreed to extend its midnight deadline for the newspapers’ employees to make $20 million in concessions.

“Because there has been progress on reaching needed cost savings, The Boston Globe will extend the deadline for reaching complete agreements with its unions until midnight Sunday May 3,” Globe spokesman Robert Powers said in a statement.

Leaders of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe’s largest union, asked for an extension of Friday’s deadline after discovering what they called a $4.5 million accounting error. The Guild, which has been asked to come up with $10 million of the $20 million in concessions, said ownership mistakenly was counting the salaries and benefits of 80 people who have left their jobs at the Globe since the beginning of the year.

“We have given the New York Times Co. and Globe management proposals for deep cuts in our members’ pay and benefits that we believe will save The Boston Globe,” Daniel Totten, Guild president, said in a statement. “We are awaiting the company’s response.”

The concessions sought by the Times Co. could include pay cuts, a reduction in pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for some senior employees. Those guarantees state that the staffers cannot be let go without cause.

The Globe, like many newspapers, is struggling with declines in circulation and advertising. The Globe’s operations lost $50 million last year and are projected to lose $85 million this year.

The Times Co. announced in April that it would close the Globe unless the concessions were met.

Talks are expected to resume Saturday.

Tonight at 8:00 PDT, Heather (chacounne at Daily Kos) will participate with the Olympia Rachel Corrie Chapter 109 of Veterans For Peace in the radio show “On Wings of Peace”. This is a special monthy show produced by VFP in cooperation with “Free and Fair on the Air” with John Ford on KAOS. They will discuss torture.

KAOS is a community radio station affiliated with Evergreen State College.

You can find KAOS and Free and Fair on iTunes or stream directly from the radio station’s webpage through links on this page.

Please tune in!

Is it just me or has the swine flu pandemic panic been a very fortuitous occurrence for one Richard B. Cheney and his fellow war criminal scum. It was only last week that the horrors of the torture memos were the order of the day and a pitched battle was being fought by activists and patriots over the waffling Obama administration’s ongoing failure to enforce the law. But then the word went out that we were all going to die and the media mongrels quickly snapped up the bullshit biscuits and stood on their hind legs begging for more. The torture memos are now a part of history, cast down the memory hole. It’s time to just move along as the Pope of Hope says, nothing to see here. We have work to do on our national rejuvenation you see and any sort of restoration of the law would be seen as a partisan witch hunt and reek of vengeance. Besides, our very own Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, your illustrious and feckless Democratic leaders were privy to it all anyway.

Ever since October of 1996, Fox News has been regarded by serious media analysts as a somewhat less than objective mouthpiece for conservative propaganda. From the start they adopted a posture that appeared to be bent on shilling for Republicans by drenching their reports with partisan disinformation.

       (Stickers of the above image can be purchased at Crass Commerce)

The intent couldn’t have been more transparent. This was a network birthed by the planet’s most notorious practitioner of tabloid piffle, Rupert Murdoch, who adorned it with a spritz of soft-core porn, and masqueraded it across America’s TV screens as if it were actually news.

But the real intent was something else altogether…

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For crying out loud….some people just make me shake my head and be disgusted.  As many of you know, there is a potential health problem of major proportions going on in Mexico.  Now for logical folks, commonsense says stay cool and find a way to help the less fortunate.  But oh no, you got some on the Right who think “hot damn, I get to bring out the racist in me!”

Via Big Tent Democrat, we get this, from CNN (emphasis mine):

Attorney General Eric Holder said Wednesday that he would “follow the law” as he weighed potential prosecutions of Bush administration officials who authorized controversial harsh interrogation techniques.

Big Tent points out that President Obama has already contradicted this, by stating that CIA interrogators won’t be investigated. But I’d also like to remind CNN that even John McCain understands the difference between “harsh interrogation techniques” and torture. So, why doesn’t CNN?

Had to do it… Keith is interviewing  Eliz. de la Vega now.

anyone else watching?

Now that Tax Day has come and gone, we can take an objective look at what all the excitement over the so-called “grassroots” Tea Party movement has wrought.

For an alleged phenomenon that was sweeping a nation of angry revolutionaries, it has left us with no more than a resounding thud.

Nate Silver has produced what appears to be the only comprehensive estimate of national attendance, based on authoritative sources like law enforcement and local reporting. His figures conclude that about 262,000 people gathered in over 300 cities across the country to wave tea bags and denounce taxes. That is pretty close to the estimate by the conservative Pajamas Media (sources not disclosed), who place the figure slightly higher at 278,000. Considering the fact that twice as many people will attend a Major League Baseball game on a typical Saturday, every weekend, that doesn’t seem like much to brag about.

I just saw this post at a site that I frequent(*),:

Amazon De-ranks “Adult” Books

This is not a crisis, nor should we run screaming, but I think it is important enough that every reader, writer, publisher, editor and all champions of freedom of expression should take note. Amazon has changed its policy and has de-ranked books that it deems “adult” in nature. This includes anything they count as erotica and many non-adult LGBT books, as well. De-ranking means that they have been pulled from the sales ranks and are also not coming up in the search engine.

(and this particular euphemism always amuses me … dropping adult content rankings? That means only children are supposed to refer to Amazon ratings?)

So why do you make me swim in your cesspool?

OK, it’s about media.  And you thought TERRA,TERRA,TERRA was over as a meme?

Emergency….Emergency…Please to get from street.