Lifetime jobs at the New York Times?

By William Tate

A Boston Herald report on the sorry state of affairs at the NY Times-owned Boston Globe, which apparently is even worse straits than is the Graying Lady, contained two rather starling revelations.

While the Times and other liberal media outlets have railed against rewarding failure at such firms as AIG "rewarding failure" by paying bonuses to executives, the Times company has been doing just that at the Globe. "One union official pointed out to the Globe brass that company managers received bonuses earlier this year. 'That set them back,' a union source said."

Even the Times' own Thomas Friedman recently noted about the auto industry:

"Bailing out the losers is not how we got rich as a country, and it is not how we?ll get out of this crisis."

The Herald report also noted that:

"newspaper analysts say the guild is likely to give in to management demands, which include proposals for pay cuts, the end of pension contributions and the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for longtime staffers."

Bonuses at a paper that lost $50 million last year? Lifetime job guarantees? And some people wonder why the newspaper business is dying.

William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author