Today's Globe twist: proof of Times Co. bad faith?

Published May 01 2009, 10:26 AM by Adam Reilly

According to the Globe, the Herald, and several of my sources, the accounting error that's thrown a last-minute wrinkle into negotiations between the Times Co. and the Globe's unions was clearly management's* fault.

If so, what should we make of this? I see two possibilities: A. the number-crunchers handling the negotiations for the Times Co. are incompetent, or at least made a very bad mistake in this particular case; or B. the Times Co. didn't really make an error, but chose to pretend it did at the last minute.

If the error really is management's--and if, nonetheless, the Times Co. sticks with its pre-existing deadline for union concessions (i.e., today)--I'll be inclined to go with B. So, I predict, will Globe employees in general, and union leadership in particular. And this, in turn, will make it harder for any sort of agreement to be hammered out--thereby increasing the likelihood of the Globe's closure. Kind of makes you wonder if that wasn't the plan all along, doesn't it?

One big caveat: if the Times Co. says the mistake was the unions', not management's, everything changes. I've emailed Times Co. spokeswoman Catherine Mathis to see if the company has another version of what happened; if so, I'll post it here.

*NOTE: I initially wrote "New York" here--but this geographic approach fails to note the possible culpability of members of Globe management (who, obviously, are on the side of the Times Co. here).

Filed Under: Boston Herald, Boston Globe, NYT Co., newspaper woes, globe crisis

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