My close personal friend Dan Kennedy suggests that the Times Co.'s proposed 23 percent pay cut for Boston Newspaper Guild members will unify the union--kind of like management's late-breaking math error did last week.

I've got a different take. The pay-cut proposal strikes me as the Times Co.'s way of saying: You won't compromise on lifetime-job guarantees? Here's what your intransigence will get you.

--The Herald reports that the Globe is raising the price of its print edition, to $1.50 on weekdays/Saturdays (outside of eastern MA) and to $3.50 ($4 outside of Eastern MA) on Sundays. The people who made this decision have financial skills I can't claim. But how will this not exacerbate the migration of (formerly) paying print readers to the web?

Dan Kennedy offers five proposals for Morrissey Boulevard, including making Boston.com the primary news vehicle (rather than the newspaper) and finding a way to get a whole lot more out of Metro Boston.

I'm not sure about Dan's second suggestion, which involves a steep increase in print-edition prices--he mentions $2 for weekdays and $5 for Sunday--and an accompanying push to add value for print purchasers and subscribers.

...But Gayle and Laura, you're full of shit!

Quoth said Gals in their Herald column today:

Both Dan Kennedy of Media Nation and The Phoenix’s Adam Reilly got worked up this week over 24/7 Wall Street’s inclusion of the B.B. on a list of the 10 newspapers most likely to go belly up in the coming year. (The Globe rang in at No.

As Dan Kennedy has already noted, Time didn't predict the Globe's demise--and there's reason to question the dire assessment of the actual predictor, Wall Street 24/7's Douglas McIntyre.

Here are a couple more points worth noting about McIntyre's forecast. I emailed him yesterday to ask what methodology he'd used in compiling his list; whether the numbers assigned to various papers actually meant anything (i.

Truth is no defense against a charge of libel. Or at least, not much of one.

That, Dan Kennedy suggests, is the implication of this decision, issued last week by the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals. And Dan isn't the only one making the argument: here, for example, is Mass. Newspaper Publishers Association executive director Robert Ambrogi making a similar point.

Even though I'm on Chuck Turner's press-enemies list, I'd like to congratulate the city councilor for goading the Feds into a laughable effort to violate his First Amendment rights. Still more evidence, I think, that Turner's PR campaign is working surprisingly well.

As Universal Hub's Adam Gaffin notes, there's rich irony in the government's contention that Turner shouldn't be able to selectively cite evidence to defend himself.

If you're confused about whether Boston might lay off 200 police officers or not, I urge you to check out Dan Kennedy's deconstruction of the Globe and Herald's duelling treatments of the subject. As Dan notes, this is partly a political story and partly a media one--and despite the Herald's bluster (online headline:"Riled mayor Thomas M.

That's the most important point of this Globe business update. If Connors is telling the truth, then the Financial Times got it wrong.

The second most important point is Herald publisher Pat Purcell's statement that he, too, is uninterested in the Globe.

Please note that multiple versions of the FT story have appeared in the past few days.

According to one school of thought, GateHouse's decision to challenge Boston.com's "Your Town" approach in court merits utter contempt. As a commenter on Universal Hub said: "This is a clear case of a bunch of morons who skipped that "Internet 101" class in business school, and now they're pissed because people aren't going through their website the way THEY want them to."

About that Boston newspaper war I mentioned a couple days ago? Between GateHouse and the Globe?

Well, it just got a whole lot nastier.

As Dan Kennedy notes, there's a very important issue at play here:

Since Boston.com is selling advertising on its "Your Town" pages, the argument is that the New York Times Co., which owns Boston.

My buddy Dan Kennedy dimisses this NY Times Q-and-A with "Caroline Kennedy and her staff" (the paper's phrase) as "crapola," and argues that the Times shouldn't have run it.

His "crapola" assessment is dead on. But to my mind, that's exactly why the Times did the right thing in printing the interview.

CBS4's Jon Keller seems to think that--since the Secret Service can't confirm that anyone suggested killing Barack Obama during a Sarah Palin rally in Scranton--all claims of disturbing anti-Obama invective are baseless.

Over at Media Nation, however, Dan Kennedy notes that it's not that simple:

The first report that Palin's crowds were getting out of control appeared in the Washington Post in early October, when Dana Milbank covered a Florida event at which "Kill him!" was clearly heard.