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It was a coup for local newspaper owners when the news was announced early Saturday morning: John W. Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox, would purchase The Boston Globe, along with The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and other properties, from The New York Times Company for $70 million in cash in a deal that will close in a month or two. Despite the lateness of the hour, Mr. Henry, a Boston-area resident, did not contain his enthusiasm about the purchase.
In such sales of late, a paper’s real estate, as with The Globe’s building, has been seen as a major asset.
John W. Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, will buy The Boston Globe and other properties from The New York Times Company for $70 million.
“This is a thriving, dynamic region that needs a strong, sustainable Boston Globe playing an integral role in the community’s long-term future,†Mr. Henry said in a statement.
Mr. Henry benefited in the deal from the fact that the Times Company has agreed to hold onto the group’s pension obligation. While it remains unclear, including to some analysts, how much exactly that is, as of the end of 2012, the Times Company’s overall pension obligation was around $2 billion and was underfunded by $400 million. The company declined to comment on the pension obligations. The Times Company presently has 5,363 employees, of whom 1,849 are employed by the New England Media Group.
The sale continues a recent trend in the struggling newspaper industry: newspapers being returned to local owners, often at bargain-basement prices. When the possibility that the Tribune Company would sell its newspapers emerged this year, both The Los Angeles Times and The Baltimore Sun quickly attracted interested local buyers. Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, said the trend was driven by locals wanting to give back to their hometowns and also by the economic value of the buildings that house the newspapers.
“There’s a sort of pride of community,†Mr. Edmonds said. “If it doesn’t work out, the value of the paper is equivalent to the value of the real estate.â€
But turning around a newspaper in the current environment takes more than financial skill and renewed focus.
“People who have had success with turnaround in other businesses confront a different challenge in metro newspapers,†said Ken Doctor, an analyst at Outsell. “It is not just a newspaper that is distressed, it is the entire industry, and no one has had much success in making it work.â€
The reaction to the sale around Boston was cautiously optimistic. Gov. Deval L. Patrick of Massachusetts and Mayor Thomas M. Menino both welcomed the deal. In a statement issued by the Boston Newspaper Guild, which represents more than 500 reporters, photographers and editors, union officials called Mr. Henry “a local and deeply respected businessman.â€
For most of American history, newspapers were owned and operated locally, often by families, business or political interests that used barrels of ink to advance broader agendas. It was only when the industry began to generate reliable profits in the middle of the last century that newspapers were scooped up and folded into larger enterprises. Many regionally dominant metro papers landed in the hands of Knight-Ridder, McClatchy, Tribune Company and Media News.
Newspapers were typically passed around a fraternity of known buyers already in the business. But the local monopolies that made the newspapers attractive to acquirers have now disappeared, and the chains have gone through bankruptcy or are a shadow of their former selves.
The Globe, which was put on the market in February, attracted a number of local buyers like Mr. Henry and national buyers like Doug Manchester, a real estate developer who bought the San Diego Union Tribune in 2011. Despite the demand, Craig Huber, an independent research analyst with Huber Research Partners, said Mr. Henry’s winning bid did not mitigate the challenges he faces ahead.
When The Times bought The Globe in 1993, it paid $1.1 billion, and it bought the Worcester paper for $295 million in 1999. Mr. Huber estimated that the entire New England Media Group, which has grown to include other assets, was now worth $100 million. Despite the even lower price The Globe fetched, Mr. Huber called The Globe a “management headache†and raised concerns about its finances.
“The U.S. is littered with people trying to buy metro papers here in the last five to 10 years that turned out to be very unsuccessful,†he said.
He estimated that while The Times generated profit margins for the overall company of more than 15 percent, the New England Media Group generated profit margins of less than 5 percent. Mr. Huber said he was more troubled by its digital outlook: he calculated that The Globe’s 30,000 digital subscribers generated $8 million in subscription revenue.
Even local buyers facing the grimmest financials still extol the benefits of local ownership. Brian Tierney, a Philadelphia businessman, bought The Philadelphia Inquirer and its sister newspaper, The Daily News, in 2006 from the McClatchy Company for $515 million. After Mr. Tierney’s purchase, national advertising plummeted and circulation continued to tumble. Despite laying off 400 people to cut costs, the newspaper company ended up in bankruptcy in 2009.
After a protracted battle, the newspapers went up for auction and the company’s creditors bought the properties for $139 million. Their building was sold in 2011.
By 2012, a group of local businessmen led by George E. Norcross III bought the newspaper for $55 million, a little more than a tenth of what the newspapers were worth six years before. Reached on the phone last Friday, Mr. Norcross said the operational challenges remained significant in the current environment, but the local nature of the investors was an asset.
“There is no doubt in my mind that local ownership matters in a big way,†he said. “Local engagement by owners can drive ad sales, we have better relationships with the unions and we are making $15 to $20 million in capital improvements.â€
Sometimes a newspaper does not have to turn a big profit to benefit a local owner. In San Diego, Mr. Manchester, a real estate developer, bought The San Diego Union Tribune in 2012, changed its name to The U-T San Diego and immediately began pushing his development agenda and candidates for public office who shared those values.
While many Bostonians welcomed a local owner back to The Globe, they also raised Mr. Henry’s potential for conflicts of interest. Dan Kennedy, a journalism professor at Northeastern University, said in a phone interview that The Globe still would be responsible for covering Mr. Henry’s Red Sox, city issues related to the Red Sox like pregame street closures around Fenway Park and the Jimmy Fund, a charity that the Red Sox have long been involved with. But he said he still felt that local ownership was more preferable.
“A local owner by definition is more invested in the community than any out-of-state corporate chain can be,†Mr. Kennedy said.
Mary Williams Walsh contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 5, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Boston Globe Is Another Metro Paper Gone Local.
LOS ANGELES â€" Come April 16, the stars will strut, paparazzi will pop, and fans will file into packed theaters, turning Lower Manhattan into a temporary film capital during the 13th annual Tribeca Film Festival. But they will not be having all that fun under the ubiquitous, blue-and-white corporate logo of American Express.
After 12 years as Tribeca’s presenting sponsor, American Express is stepping back, while AT&T steps in, as the primary supporter of a movie conclave that was originally meant to lift a battered downtown following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Jane Rosenthal, who founded the festival with her husband, Craig M. Hatkoff, and with Robert De Niro, her business partner, said the change reflected the evolving strategy of all involved.
“Everybody always shifts their priorities and business plans every 12 years or so,†said Ms. Rosenthal, who spoke by telephone last week.
In 2011, Ms. Rosenthal noted, AT&T became the sponsor of the Tribeca Film Institute’s youth screening program. This year, the company joined other sponsors in supporting the festival, which has become more digitally oriented with events like an annual hackathon, which prompts participants to solve storytelling problems and other challenges with tools like their smartphones.
Pointing to AT&T’s previous promotional efforts in New York â€" including free Wi-Fi coverage in many parks, and solar charging stations around the city â€" Cathy M. Coughlin, the company’s senior executive vice president and global marketing officer, said the festival was another way to connect with things “that are important to New Yorkers, not only the tourists and visitors.â€
The company, she said, expects to create a mobile app to track festival news and events. It will also host a day of free public screenings, something that has not been done in the past at Tribeca.
Caitlin Lowie, a spokeswoman for American Express, declined last week to discuss her company’s decision to reduce its role at the festival, of which it will now be one of about 60 sponsors at various levels. Other sponsors have included Bombay Sapphire, Hilton Hotels and Resorts, and PepsiCo.
In a statement sent by e-mail last week, Ms. Lowie said American Express would continue to provide its cardholders with early access to tickets, and expects to remain involved with Tribeca in some capacity for “years to come.â€
But AT&T, Ms. Rosenthal said, will assume the presenting sponsor’s role under a multiyear contract. She and AT&T executives declined to disclose terms.
The partnership with a communications company, she added, seemed natural when so many filmgoers â€" including the 117,000 or so who pass through the Tribeca festival to see about 100 feature films annually â€" use digital devices to make themselves a part of the show.
“Audiences have never had more control than they do now,†Ms. Rosenthal said.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 5, 2013, on page B6 of the New York edition with the headline: AT&T, Not American Express, Will Be Chief Sponsor of Tribeca Film Festival .
On Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “All In,†Chris Hayes had a very direct conversation about race with the Gawker writer Cord Jefferson. Prompted by a news report of a group of young people in Huntington Beach, Calif., who looted and vandalized property, the pair lamented the lack of community leadership and suggested that acting out in that manner was a learned behavior.
On MSNBC’s “All In†on Tuesday, the host Chris Hayes, left, had a satirical conversation about race with the Gawker writer Cord Jefferson.
It was a joke. Actually, there were two beats to the joke. The young people they were talking about were white. And the whole discussion was a put-on, a satire meant to show how lame the hoary race tropes of cable news have become.
As a comedy bit, it was very well done. Both men were straight-faced and earnest. Mr. Hayes, tapping his inner Bill O’Reilly, did a fine job of bloviating his way through an introduction heavy with outrage: “The story of the white criminal culture is not a story the mainstream media will tell you. But once you scratch the surface, these stories are everywhere you look.â€
Mr. Jefferson, whose post on Gawker prompted the TV bit, was the designated finger-wagging scold â€" a black man taking measure of white pathology â€" said “they are learning this kind of behavior in lacrosse camps, they are learning this during spring break, they are learning this kind of behavior at Ivy League fraternities where drug use and binge drinking are normalized behavior.â€
Cable news and humor are generally matter and antimatter, with self-selected audiences listening intently while self-serious anchors lion-tame guests fighting for the last sound bite. Nuance doesn’t do well on cable, and complexity goes there to die. As a result, something as fraught as race often ends up being covered in cartoonish ways during signal events like the death of Trayvon Martin.
All of the familiar trademarks of cable silliness were there in the faux news segment. Mr. Hayes and Mr. Jefferson prattled on while a video news loop showed, over and over, a handful of individuals trashing outhouses and a bike store after a surfing contest, all the while drawing lessons from thin air and moralizing over fake sociological claptrap. It was, in other words, a very standard bit of cable news.
As such, it was both striking and very much of a piece with the universe it was parodying. Is “Fox and Friends†real? Does Chris Matthews really feel all shout-y and frantic about every little wobble in the political debate? Can Mr. O’Reilly really be as deeply offended by almost everything he sees, or Rachel Maddow as surprised as she acts about things that aren’t that surprising? At some point, we all know that Anderson Cooper’s bottomless pit of empathy and umbrage is running on empty.
Speaking by telephone on Thursday, Mr. Hayes said that the risks of inserting satire into a format built on sobriety were worth it.
“It’s definitely entering dangerous territory because the social contract assumes that when I express opinions, those are genuinely my opinions,†he said. “You don’t mess with that lightly, but we thought it would be illuminating to play with those conventions.â€
The segment on “All In†began with a written warning â€" “the following is a satirization of recent news analysis†â€" and ended with a return to preachiness, with Mr. Hayes wagging a finger, this time he meant it, and suggesting that viewers needed to see that coverage of black America was just as silly.
But it was still a bit of a moment. Instead of waiting for Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert to clip and annotate cable vapidity, MSNBC was temporarily acting as a kind of self-cleaning oven, parodying the excesses of cable from a very near distance.
“I think it was sort of brilliant,†said Jeffrey P. Jones, the director of the Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia, and the author of “Entertaining Politics.†“What they did has been done before in all kinds of ways, but the context, of putting the satire right into a cable news show, makes it very powerful.â€
Pop culture is perishable. Certain things that seem like givens â€" that there will always be people at desks on television telling us what we should think about what happened that day â€" can eventually run out of gas.
E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;
twitter.com/carr2n
A version of this article appeared in print on August 5, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Parodying Cable News With a Talk About Race .
On Nov. 12, 2010, Tina Brown gathered the staff of her Web site The Daily Beast in the third-floor conference room at its Chelsea offices with its commanding views of the Hudson. Brimming with the fervor she has brought to all her endeavors, she delivered some surprising news: the Web site would merge with Newsweek, a once-proud but struggling magazine brand.
Tina Brown still defends the concept behind merging The Daily Beast and Newsweek.
Barry Diller, left, the journalist Harold Evans, the designer Diane von Furstenberg and Tina Brown, right, arriving at a Manhattan reception in 2005. Mr. Diller and Ms. Brown teamed up to start The Daily Beast in 2008.
Ms. Brown, according to staff members who were present, spoke excitedly about the potential synergies for advertisers across platforms and promised to produce a new form of magazine journalism, where digital would drive print instead of the other way around. But after a few softball questions from the staff, Peter Lauria, the company’s media reporter, braved a more skeptical one:
Given that the two publications lost more than $30 million in the previous two years, he asked, why was it a good idea to put them together? And if The Beast was on schedule to break even in 18 months, how much longer would it take now that Newsweek was part of the mix?
Ms. Brown says she has no recollection of that particular meeting, but half a dozen employees who say they were present said the atmosphere immediately turned awkward. The famous editor gave no ground. The target, she said, remained 18 months.
More than two and a half years later, Ms. Brown has missed the mark. Synergies have long since slipped away. After the magazine hemorrhaged tens of millions of dollars, Barry Diller, the billionaire media mogul whose company owns both publications, publicly called the purchase of Newsweek “a mistake†and the original plan to save it “stupid.†On Saturday, the company announced that it had sold Newsweek for an undisclosed amount to the digital news company International Business Times.
It was always a quixotic project to blend a buzzy, growing Web site with the most outdated of print relics, a newsweekly. But interviews with more than two dozen former and current employees â€" some provided by Ms. Brown and some reached independently â€" suggested that she and Mr. Diller underestimated what it would take to reverse the dive of a print magazine (the two have acknowledged as much) and that there was never a credible plan to integrate the products into a better whole (an opinion they utterly contest). These people also suggest that Ms. Brown’s intensely demanding and chaotic management style, which had thrived when contained within established companies, proved a combustible combination with Newsweek’s gutted and weakened editorial and sales divisions.
Dan Lyons, Newsweek’s former technology editor, summed up the sentiment in a Facebook post when the magazine was first put up for sale: “It didn’t need to be as ugly and sad and dishonest as what’s happened under Barry and Tina.â€
Ms. Brown, for her part, said that it took at least a year to assemble a team she wanted, and undoubtedly she bruised some egos along the way.
“We did a cover on the beached white male and perhaps that’s another reason for the old guard to be angry at me,†she joked during a recent interview at The Beast’s offices. But she said she had no regrets.
“It was really exhilarating,†she said. “We did great journalism.â€
Ms. Brown knows great journalism, having built her reputation with her wholesale makeover of Vanity Fair and her stewardship at The New Yorker. At both magazines, she increased circulation, introduced dozens of young writers, many of whom went on to become stars, and won shelves of awards.
But, despite her reputation, she said publicly that she was happy to be away from print. “I would hate to be in the magazine world,†she told the EconWomen conference in 2008. “It’s a really tough world to have to compete in.†That was the year that Ms. Brown started working for Mr. Diller as The Daily Beast was introduced.
What pulled her back, she says, was the billionaire investor Sidney Harman â€" his enthusiasm, charm and generous financial resources to match â€" and the chance to return to long-form journalism. Although Ms. Brown does not utter the word “Talk,†her last print magazine, which ended in heartbreaking failure, she acknowledges that she missed the “rhythms†of long-form journalism and that she felt she could not do all the work she craved on the Web.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 5, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: The Last Temptation of Tina Brown .
CBS A CBS ad in Times Square. On Friday, a dispute between the network and Time Warner Cable blacked out CBS stations, affecting millions of viewers.
The two sides in the fee dispute between CBS and Time Warner Cable stayed in their respective corners Sunday, and may not engage in further direct confrontation for some time.
As a result, CBS’s stations, and cable networks owned by CBS, remained blacked out in many areas, including large parts of New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
The continuing impasse resulted in two popular shows on the pay cable channel Showtime, “Dexter†and “Ray Donovan,†being unavailable to fans in those areas on Sunday night. And it means that the most popular drama of the summer, CBS’s “Under the Dome,†is likely to be blocked to millions of viewers on Monday night.
CBS released a statement on Sunday saying no negotiations were taking place and it stressed its willingness to continue talking. A Time Warner Cable spokeswoman, Maureen Huff, said in an e-mail message: “We’re ready and willing to talk at any point. We want to resolve this, and are absolutely negotiating in good faith.â€
The cable company said in a statement that it regretted “the inconvenience to our customers (and their viewers) and look forward to resolving the situation as soon as possible.â€
But several media analysts suggested the standoff might be protracted, with predictions ranging from about 10 days to as long as six weeks. The later date is associated with the start of the N.F.L. season, a package of programming that everyone involved agrees cannot be denied to subscribers.
Indeed, timing seems to be the dominant factor driving the dispute. CBS has continued to insist that it would make its programs available to the cable company throughout the negotiations and that the cable company acted now to remove them from its service because Time Warner Cable would lose leverage as the football season got closer â€" a point the cable executives do not dispute. They acknowledge they need to push the issue now.
Time Warner Cable has also acted at a time when similar showdowns are increasingly common across the country. The impasse in almost all the disputes centers on what are known as retransmission fees â€" compensation for putting broadcast stations on cable systems. In this case CBS, according to several analysts following the situation, has asked for an increase from about $1 per subscriber to about $2.
The cable company initially labeled the demand exorbitant, and said the costs would have to be passed on to customers. (Cable prices have increased recently to an average of $60 to $70 a month, though analysts point out that the per-channel price has actually dropped because so many new channels have been added.)
More recently the two sides have suggested that the fee issue is either close to being resolved or that the differences are not insurmountable. But there is deep disagreement over concessions Time Warner Cable wants from CBS related to programming â€" mostly its catalog of older shows, which CBS sells to digital distributors like Netflix and Amazon. Time Warner Cable wants access to those programs on terms it says are fair and reasonable; CBS says that the company is essentially seeking something free, and that these deals have nothing to do with the retransmission negotiation anyway.
Broadcast networks like CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox gained the right in 1992 to demand compensation for allowing their stations’ signals to be carried on cable systems. At first deals were made for cable channels owned by the network, but more recently the broadcasters began demanding cash, seeking to pay for increased program costs by gaining the same dual revenue stream, along with advertising, that cable networks enjoyed. The fees have been steadily increasing. SNL Kagan, a research company, estimated that revenue from retransmission fees will increase to $4.3 billion in 2015, from about $2.4 billion last year.
CBS executives have cited the popularity of their network’s shows to justify a fee price closer to what successful cable networks get from cable operators. ESPN, for example, gets the top price of any network, $5.54 monthly per subscriber, according to SNL Kagan.
A version of this article appeared in print on August 5, 2013, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: A Wait for CBS and Time Warner Cable to Make Up.
“There are several ways that you can still see your favorite shows, including using an antenna to get CBS free over the air.â€
An antenna? Where does that go, on top of the cathode-ray tube?
That’s one of the tips Time Warner Cable put up on screen after it stopped showing CBS around the country on Friday. There was also some invective about what CBS is demanding that led the cable company to impose a blackout.
As a subscriber in New York, I felt like the child who walks into the house to hear Mom explain that Dad is gone and can be visited on Wednesdays and alternate weekends. Children don’t care why, or who was wronged; they just don’t want divorce to change anything, and they especially don’t want to commute across town to see their father.
Plenty of people don’t love “Under the Dome†and rarely watch CBS (“The Big Bang Theory†reruns can be found on other channels), and relatively few prefer “CBS This Morning†to “Today†or “Good Morning America.â€
But people don’t like to be told they can’t watch CBS because Time Warner Cable doesn’t want them to.
The shock is gradual. Just as a child can be assured that the parents will smooth over their differences in time for Christmas â€" Grandma is coming â€" it’s hard to imagine that CBS and Time Warner won’t find a temporary compromise in time for the next episode of “Under the Dome†or the P.G.A. golf championship next weekend.
But nevertheless this changes things, maybe forever.
So I followed Time Warner’s other piece of advice and signed up for Aereo: $8 a month plus tax, and the first month is free.
And that’s when I realized that like spouses in the middle of an ugly separation, both sides are completely insane.
Aereo allows viewers to watch broadcast network shows at any time, live, with an option to record for later viewing. It’s one thing to know that an alternative to cable exists. It’s another actually to try it. I was instantly able to watch CBS on Saturday, and instantly concluded I wasn’t missing much (golf). I don’t like watching live television on a laptop. It turns out that Aereo can be watched on a television set via Apple TV and similar systems.
Naturally, I couldn’t figure out how to make that work over the weekend, and will need to hire a specialist (someone who reads instructions), but I am quite confident that I will soon be able to watch CBS via Aereo on Apple TV, on my 40-inch living room television. For all I know, the technician will be able to access Apple TV in the kitchen as well. So: no need for Time Warner.
The only thing more suicidal than Time Warner inviting subscribers to try out its less expensive competition is for CBS to hold out for higher fees from Time Warner. The cable company and the network should be in league against their common enemy. CBS and other networks have gone to court to block companies like Aereo from showing their programs. Cable companies are required to pay a retransmission fee to the networks in order to present network programming. Aereo, on the other hand, argues that television is free via the airwaves, and pays nothing.
Aereo only offers broadcast channels. Showtime, which is owned by the CBS Corporation, is also being held hostage under the blackout. (The Showtime Web site gave a phone number for complaints against Time Warner beneath the faces of the stars of “Homeland,†“Dexter†and “Ray Donovan†looking like missing children on a milk carton.) But Netflix and other Web-streaming companies are well on the way to supplanting premium cable.
Mutually assured destruction is a deterrent that only works when there are two superpowers with the same nuclear capability. The battle between broadcast networks and cable providers is more like a toxic custody battle: If it is bad enough, neither parent wins, and children grow up too fast and go their own way.
Soon, everyone may be calling Aereo Mommy, and Netflix Daddy.