Musing on the Boston Globe and Times management

The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson uses the impending threat by executive at Boston Globe owner New York Times Co. to talk about newspaper economics, including touching on management blunders at the Times that are oh so familiar looking across the newspaper industry; big debt, spending too aggressively to acquire properties, etc. I just finished reading an email from a former Marquette student journalist from Chicago who watched his life-long dream job at the Tribune go down the tubes with that newspaper's incredible mismanagement. It's a sad world, but somehow I agree with Robinson's final hope: "I don't believe this is the death knell for newspapers, even the old-fashioned, ink-on-paper kind. I do believe that someday, somehow, the industry will find enough revenue in electronic distribution to pay for the kind of journalism our democracy needs." My biggest concern is that the industry get executives with brains instead of greed. I'm not sure those people -- the ones who made the industry great (and exceedingly profitable) in the past -- can get hired, much less promoted given today's corporate field.