Boston Globe, We Hardly Knew Ye

Photo from Flickr User Tonythemisfit

Speaking of bankruptcies and hardball negotiating tactics, the New York Times is carrying out a bruising battle against the Boston Globe's unions, and has now filed notice that it is shutting the newspaper down.  The globe is hemorrhaging cash, which the New York Times isn't exactly flush with right now--it's mortgaged its headquarters, borrowed $250 million at credit-card interest rates, demanded pay cuts and layoffs from its own union, and presumably lit about a billion candles at the nearest church for a rapid recovery in ad revenues.

I find it hard to believe that this is anything but a negotiating tactic.  The PR blowback from shuttering the globe would be huge . . . and presumably the Times hopes to sell some papers in Boston.  But then I look at their financial statements, and I wonder.  They don't look like they're generating the kind of revenue that's going to make it easy to handle 35 million a year in new interest payments.  It's possible, if unlikely, that they're seriously thinking about cutting of a limb to save the heart.