It's May 4th. The deadline for the Boston Globe's unions to make drastic cuts has been extended and passed. The paper has warned it will file notice that it will shut down. They're serious this time. The guillotine has been sharped. Today could be the day the death order is signed for the Boston Globe.
If it happens, the message board stampede will declare the collapse of another liberal media outlet beneath it's own ponderosity. The former print and part-time-print punditry will line up in front of high-def television cameras to bemoan the scourge of Internet and technology's ad-dollar-siphoning gluttony. A photographer will snap photos of longtime journalists wiping tears from their cheeks, their hair askew, the way print reporter's hair tends to rebel. And deadline's will come, pints of beer will pour, and at about 7:07 Jacoby Ellsbury will knock his bat against his spikes and dig into the batter's box as the Red Sox make their first visit to the new Yankee Stadium.
There would be something appropriate if it comes to pass that the Red Sox are preparing for the Yankees when The Globe's fate comes down. After all, it was the New York Times Co. who bought the Boston Globe in 1993 for $1.1 billion, and it is the floundering New York Times Co. that is now threatening to shutter Globe.
There are few entities that embody New England's loathing of New York more than the Yankees. The Yankees, are the epitome of flash and cash, brazen bravado. This past winter, when slugger Mark Teixeira hit the free agent market, many Red Sox fans longed to see the slick fielding switch hitter in a Boston uniform. In the end, Teixeira selected the Yankees. After all, he said, he always wanted to be a Yankee. Every baseball player dreams of suiting up in pinstripes.
Baseball isn't the only arena where New York arrogance rubs New Englanders the wrong way. When Macy's bought Jordan Marsh, the marketing wizards couldn't wait to change the name of the store, and they've been battering shoppers with advertisements that promise the "magic of Macy's" ever since. And every summer, the accent of Cape Cod shifts. Fried clams become fried claaeems.
Now, New York is coming for the daily newspaper.
Let me be clear, New York is not out to get Boston. That would be a parochial paranoia beyond reason. I'm offering, rather, a peak into the psyche of many New Englanders, who, like all people, are incredibly proud, and are incredibly possessive of what they consider to be theirs. One of those things is the Boston Globe. For 137-years the Globe has been published and for 137-years it has had a tenuous relationship with its readers. To many Irish Bostonians the Globe has always been the Brahman paper, and as such, has always favored British Colonialism over Irish Independence. To many Boston Catholics the paper, which drove the exposure of decades of child abuse in the Church, is anti-Catholic. To many Boston African-Americans, the Globe has a long history ignoring their communities. And to many Boston sports fans the Globe has long preferred the woe of a story about losing, to the bliss of a story about winning, and would rather attack athletes than cover the game.
So, why should should the Boston Globe, a New York-run, anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-black, anti-Nomar paper be saved?
Because it is New England's. Because it is the paper of record. The Boston Globe offers the first draft of history in New England, and for almost a century-and-a-half it has been documenting New England, and the passions of New Englanders. Because when it's focus is right, it can uncover rampant abuse in the Church. Because when reporters have resources that a big paper can offer, and the job security that a union can offer, they can alert the nation that their President has signed is allowing torture. Because the Boston Globe, for generations, has defined what a newspaper should be, from literary sports pages to a gritty metro section, to political reporters who work sources to get stories, to environmental writers who find out what things like fish, birds and beaches mean to people.
I know because I grew up in a Boston Globe household in central Massachusetts. I first looked at it for the weather forecast, hoping to find probable snow days. Then I discovered the sports pages. The Globe taught me how to read a box score, Peter Gammons taught me about farm systems, Bob Ryan informed me that the Celtic's reign in the 1980s was over, and that Len Bias was dead. In high school I discovered Derrick Z. Jackson and decided that I wanted to be a metro columnist. I went to undergraduate school in New York, and then graduate school at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. When I graduated in 1998, my goal was to make it to the Boston Globe in five years.
I've since settled in Chicago. But that dream of writing for the Globe is still there. At least for today.
But if it goes, the chance to better the Globe will go too. If it goes, the model will remain lost, never to be restored. If it goes we'll have to find someone else to be anti-Irish, anti-Catholic, anti-Black and anti-Manny. If it goes, my dream goes, too. If it goes, it's gone. All of it.
