Shorting Another Paid Newspaper Website

Seriously....would you pay $3.99 weekly(!) for access - *premium* access - to the Boston Globe online?

I mean how many times do these newspapers have to fail with pay-walls before they get a clue?

The reality is that readers hate to even *log-in* when registration on these sites is free. So hardly anyone is going to PAY, yet again.

It seems like, given the ocean of free content online, that the only web content people will actually pay for is practical advice/instruction and of course, p0rn.

Note - the foundering Globe is still owned by the *geniuses* at the New York Times.

See also - Let's Guess The Price.

Racist Caption in Boston Globe?

The visual insinuation I infer is that consumers of organic, free-range fried poultry products are categorically responsible for *violence*.

And that's wrong, just plain wrong!

Let's Guess The Price

I believe last year, before some union concessions, the best bid for the embattled Boston Globe was 0$ - i.e. just an assumption of debt and liabilities. (Recall Newsweek sold for only $1.)

Valuing the Globe is really beyond my skill-set as I simply don't know how ironclad the union contracts are. Though I'm quite sure the paper with the old salaried-journalist model is in fact worthless.

Someone in a comment thread made a remark about the political persuasion of the buying group and that leads me to believe that this prospective buyer is a consortium of new Boston Morons. So I will skew my bet accordingly high.

I say they'll bid $40 million - even though I think it's probably worth more like $15 million, at best.

One note about the salaried-journalist model...

I would write for the Globe from home, in my briefs, if they paid me, say $100 per article for 100 articles over the course of a year. They could offer that ten grand to scores of eager and talented bloggers and aspiring journalists and produce much better content at a fraction of their current costs. They'd save handsomely on healthcare, office rent, technology, etc. I'd gain stature, exposure, even more ego, and I'd drive traffic to my website.

Of course the current management would NEVER do something as *liberal* or as intelligent as this.

And I sincerely doubt the next one will either.

See also:

Boston Globe - Full of Nothing!

Bob Ryan - Defining Joke

Help Me, Please

"Homeschooling" Censored at the Boston Globe

Boston Globe - A New Nadir.

Hard Evidence Smacks Globies In The Face!

Newspapers - There Goes *Internet Growth*

Scalping Front Row Seats for a Slo-Mo Train Wreck

Wow. So the embattled, shrinking Boston Globe is going to try, yet again, to create a *paid* website.

I'm going to short this failed-model tinkering.

In fact I think they may go completely broke PAYING people what the market demands to read their tripe...

What?

What exactly did you imagine a *pay site* from them might be?

You're joking, right?

Property Tax Death Spiral - Rotation Has Begun!

That was an article in today's Boston Globe.

Of course, nowhere in it do the authors mention *pensions* - the elephant in the over-mortgaged room. I emailed one of them about that oversight and he just said that it *was a separate issue for the future*.

Color me shocked!

The story says increasing property taxes are to *pay for new buildings* and *services*.

Okay.

Here's pretty much all one needs to glean from this poor excuse for journalism:

Since 2000, average property taxes on single-family homes in Massachusetts have increased about 64 percent.

Ouch!

People my age haven't felt that squeeze as we're relatively young and still in the ascendant part of our careers.

But for those who rely on a fixed income, the done-nothing stock market, or interest income....these rising property tax bills are killers AND, often, one-way tickets to cinder block homes in lower cost states.

"Homeschooling" - Still Censored At The Boston Globe

There's an article in today's Boston Globe about some pre-pubescent who attends, and excels, at UConn (or, as my father refers to it..."The University of UConn").

The thrust of the story is that despite his superior academic performance, the school wouldn't let him go on some sponsored trip to South Africa. Whatever.

All I wanted to point out was that the nowhere in the story is the word *homeschooled*. They mention the prodigy's age and what he's doing now, but don't dare source how he go there educationally.

I'm quite positive if this kid had gone on a shooting rampage....that the term *homeschooled* would have been utilized 10 times!

Thanks to Mrs. Private Caller for alerting me to this one.

See my earlier example - "Homeschooling" Censored At The Boston Globe.

Abusive Logic

The de-fanged muckrakers of Big Media, there're all out there these days decrying *pension abuse*.

They are finally drawing attention to the fact that corrupt politicians and their cronies have been looting the treasury for years.

But big deal. These complaints are too little and too late. AND the focus of their criticism is dangerously off-point.

Clowns at the Boston Globe and elsewhere, by only attacking the worst examples, they are tacitly conceding that the bulk of government pension obligations are in fact nothing to be concerned about. No, we only need curb the *abuses*.

But guess what, the abuses are not the fundamental problem, they are merely the sympton of a larger disease.

And by shedding light only on the big little crooks, it sets up any forthcoming reform to be hopelessly narrow. In other words it'll do nothing for the financial viability of states or municipalities. Politicians will pass some nothing bill and say, "Hey, we curbed the abuses....now leave us alone."

In short, *pension abuse* is not golden parachutes for big wigs, the ABUSE is on taxpayers for the entire system.

There's just no reason why all government employees shouldn't be on *defined contributions* like everyone else.

Another thing that annoys me about Big Media coverage of this subject is the expression *unfunded pension liabilities*. They can't just say these pensions are broke - they are merely unfunded. I guess then, by that logic, that my Moronic landlord isn't a deadbeat criminal....he just has $4 million in UNFUNDED mortgage obligations!

See also - Worcester, MA - Old, Dumb, and Broke.

Boston Globe - Full Of Nothing!

Check out today's Boston Globe...



Cake, chicken, soup, meatloaf, and hot chocolate have been decreed, by its readers, its most important content today!

I feel like we are just about due for another round of labor strife/budgetary cuts for the Globies...

The New York Times Co., parent of the Globe, recently reported *income*. Here I have the predictably interesting, AND cryptic, article where the company reports on itself!

But some of the relevant numbers were in fact in there:

The New England Media Group’s advertising revenue fell 20.3 percent in the quarter, to $62.6 million.

Price increases at the Globe last year boosted the New England group’s circulation revenue by 8.5 percent in the quarter, to nearly $44 million. The higher prices more than made up for a decline in the number of papers sold.

Now I don't know how they can cheer-lead about the tiny boost in circulation income.

Let's put some real numbers on that.

The circulation revenue went up by $3.26 million.

But advertising revenue fell by $15.65 million!

Ad spending is dropping anyway, but when you raise the newsstand price, you automatically shed readership (negative sloped demand curve); and fewer readers, automatically lowers the ad rates for those few remaining, Moronic sponsors.

*More than made up*....I think not!



Click here - for my master link on the embattled Boston Globe.

Bob Ryan...Defining Joke

Bob Ryan is that once-revered, 'old coot' Boston Globe sportswriter. The public only enjoyed reading him because, well, back in the day the information pipelines were monopolized; and he was the best of the worst. The internet and the explosion of non-traditional media has thankfully outed him for the poseur that he always was.

Today he's rambling about Tiger Woods - about how worse than lying to and cheating on his wife is the fact that Tiger has become the butt of *jokes*!

Here's the problem.

You're allowed to falter. You're allowed to screw up. You're allowed to deceive. You're even allowed to lose, once in a while.

But you cannot allow yourself to become a cartoon.

He then attempts to draw a parallel prediction to NBA standout Dennis Rodman - a man whose antics eclipsed his accomplishments.

Is Tiger really in this category?



Well, Bob Ryan writes:

Tiger has more than likely moved into that category. Being a garden variety philanderer who legitimately falls out of love with his legally-wedded wife and into love with another woman is something people can understand, perhaps even relate to. But when you compile a dossier like his, with porn stars and blond bombshells of little personal substance, and your private e-mails and cell phone messages are out there for all to read and hear, you have entered into another category.

That's where I think Tiger is already. He's a joke, a punch line, a cartoon. That's the last thing you want to be, and I'm not sure it's reversible.

Well Ryan, most ironically, has become sort of a cartoon character in his own right in Boston. Everywhere he goes surely people ask themselves, "Why the bleep did I ever care about HIS take on last night's game???"

Though personally, I never, EVER cared much for him.

You know, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, he wrote an article bemoaning that potentially the worst consequence of the disaster was that *many of his favorite restaurants might never re-open*!

And he also got in hot water dissing Jason Kidd's wife. Story here.

Some years ago, I used to harass him all the time over email - as did plenty of other blogger-types. But now, he's so pronouncedly irrelevant that most everybody ignores him.

Fame is indeed a slender reed to lean on....and that goes for all of them.

See also - Bob Ryan - Senility On Full Display.

(Some blogger here says that Bob Ryan hasn't written a basketball article in two months!)

Help Me, Please

I know it's Thanksgiving week - and everyone is scrambling to do *something different* this year, but take a look at the most emailed stories from the Boston Globe today:



Holiday recipes....

Amazingly, time and again you see this list topped by FOOD recipes.

What does that tell you?

It tells me that the public really craves PRACTICAL INFORMATION.

I mean, how the bleep is a story in *Mid-East violence* or *global warming prognostications* going to possibly improve one's life? On the contrary, that nonsense might even ruin your day!

Out of the millions of websites and media outlets, I'll bet no more than a handful could be deemed seriously helpful or educational. If there's one latent goal for this blog - other than my own self-amusement - it's to be a destination where brains get can occasionally get tickled.

When the obit is finally written, it'll surely mention that people apparently only bought newspapers for the comics, the crossword, the coupons, the want ads, and their laxative quality. In other words, those aspects of the black and white agitprop....really did, for decades, improve people's days!

See also - Hard Evidence Smacks The Globies In The Face.

Marginalizing Little Ho's

The jillionaire owner of the Boston Red Sox just remarried. He went for a broad half his age.

The newspaper - which owns a stake in his team - described her as somewhat of an INNOCENT FLOWER:

Henry, who will turn 60 in September, met the 30-year-old Pizzuti last summer at Alibi, the bar at the Liberty Hotel. Though recently divorced from his first wife, the Sox owner was instantly smitten and pursued the raven-haired Pizzuti. In a recent Boston magazine story, Pizzuti said she initially rebuffed her millionaire suitor, but finally relented.

Yeah, she finally *relented* to the advances of this ugly 'old coot'.

Read: She finally did the math on fall-back alimony.

One simply cannot trust anything written in the Globe.

This delicate flower was by no means as advertised - as I've been informed by a college classmate of hers.

He knew her intimately a dozen years ago. The most convincing part of his characterization was the fact that Ms. Pizzuti had at that tender age (18-19?), well....., let's just say she had an unpaired part of her anatomy pierced!

So it was decreed by me and the ten other MEN hearing this testimony at the bar last night - that this girl was total slut her whole life. I'll bet that she probably only hesitated hooking up with Mr. Henry on account that such a high profile liaison would publicly out her...for what she was all along.

Make sure all of y'all who read the Boston Globe come here just as often....

....to read the corrections!

"Homeschooling" Censored At The Boston Globe

Over the last couple of days, after posting a comment on a vapid Boston Globe article titled - Pressure Cooker Kindergarten....I have received a substantial number of blog hits. Here's what I said:

Massachusetts is a pretty tough place to have a discussion about education. Just look, even though as I type this comment, this article is the *most e-mailed* story in the Globe....yet there are only a whopping THREE comments posted!

People here know nothing about education. First and foremost they believe that learning is something that happens in a specified place (school) for a specified time (12-16 years). But they couldn't possibly be more wrong. Ever wonder why the 'older set' here can't even figure out how to get both their cable box and their television power on concurrently?

Ans. - They are *lapsed-learners*.

Learning is ideally a lifelong, everyday, self-directed process. Grades and degrees have never been more worthless in history than they are today.

My son is 4.75 years old. Instead of spending roughly 2 hours per day getting him ready for and transporting him to preschool - as everyone else sheepishly does....I utilize that time to teach him myself. He's fully literate, using his own email account, googling everyday, and numerate beyond anyone's wildest expectations. After only a single year of my tutelage he's gone from tracing letters and numbers to the point where multiplication and division (long, with remainders) are cake; he's fluent in negative numbers, primes, a bit of geometry, triangular numbers, factorials, and even pre-algebra. Just before dinner tonight he randomly hollered at me that "29 and 31 were twin primes". Yet most of his age-mates around town who are *socialized* by pre-school can barely say hello to adults.

My son is hardly smarter than other kids his age. The difference is his days are spent with a complete-sentence-wielding, competent adult...and doing *work* each morning after breakfast for 1-2 hours. We do this every single day no matter the holiday or the season. It's efficient; it's green(!); it generates serious educational momentum; and the results speak for themselves. He'll be done 6th grade math this winter, and yet won't be legally eligible for kindergarten until six months later.

You guys can jawbone ad nauseam about the *optimal* ways to teach kids nonsense in K-12 hoosegows - but meaningful improvements will remain elusive. Y'all need to study the history of age-segregated, government education instead of blindly accepting the institutional status quo. Y'all need to start comparing your results to those of homeschoolers and other *alternative* methods of education - instead of just looking at facsimile schools *one town over*.

There have been many societies throughout history which achieved near 100% literacy. Meanwhile Boston has what, 20% of its students categorized as *special ed* by rent-seeking specialists?

For those few of you out there with open minds...to learn about the untold history of factory schooling:

http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/search?q=gatto

And for more on how I educate my brood:

http://marginalizingmorons.blogspot.com/search/label/homeschooling

There were a few responses by other commenters:





And someone actually called me *pretentious....a neo-pagan...quasi-libertarian* before the grand finale assertion that my kids *were ugly*.

So at least a few people called me an outright *liar* and those comments I really do cherish. Throughout my life, people have always had a hard time determining whether or not what I said is *serious* or not. Even my wife is once in a while totally bewildered. Curiously, the only one on the planet whom I can never fool is my 4.75 year old son - PrinceC-Nut!

Just now I went to the comment section of that article again only to discover that some Boston Globe satrap deleted my initial comment!

Why?!?!?!

What could have been so offensive about mentioning homeschooling and how I educate my son?

Those illiberal clowns there spend a whole lot of time deleting comments these days. Here is how they used to do it:



But now they expunge all trace of the comment - lest anyone realize how many comments they actually delete! Probably a good half of the comments I see, or have been seeing until now, have been trenchant ripostes to their *journalism*. There's no way the Globies are going to stand for that. It took a lot of hard work to whittle their readership down to a bankruptcy-inducing nothing....they'll be darned to let some pajama-clad, basement-dwelling blogger-types come in, adulterate their agitprop, and possibly widen the scope of their audience!

Note that despite my comment being deleted, I was still able to reproduce it here on this post.

You see, these clowns are predictable; I generally save, right away, all substantial comments that I make on account of Moron predictability - especially in hostile territory!

See also:

Boston Globe - A New Nadir.

Hard Evidence Smacks Globies In The Face!

Newspapers - There Goes *Internet Growth*

Recession Special - Affordable, Luxury Poop

That's the front web page of the embattled, bankrupt Boston Globe right now.

Red Sox, Red Sox, and Celtics (and an AP story on a helicopter crash that readers can and have seen on no less than one million other media outlets!).

Would you pay for that tripe given the existence of ESPN.com and countless other *free* sources of information?

And yet, in a feat of mind-boggling stupidity, just last week it was announced that the teetering Boston Globe was going to start charging viewers of its website.

To say those people simply DON'T GET IT would be ginormous understatement!

It's one thing to not grasp the basic laws of economics....but it's quite another to try and invert them.

I believe this misjudgment is even worse than today's Big Government policy - where their elegant solution to debt is....more debt.

I've written a bunch on the financial woes of the Boston Globe recently. Click here for the most recent batch.

Also, this announcement by the Globe reminded me of that Moron Ara Hovnanian.

We're Not Listening....

Some über-Moron wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe today:

Got A Comment? Keep It To Yourself

I’M AN information junkie. I use my work as a media consultant as an excuse, but anyone observing me would think I’m constantly feeding some horrible addiction as I fiddle with my iPhone, surf the Web, whipsaw the TV remote between various news networks, and skate up and down the news-radio dial searching for the latest 411. The variety of available technology and material perfectly feeds my mania: Internet, satellite radio and TV, digital phone, instant messaging, newspapers, magazines, e-books, Twitter, Facebook, CNN, boston.com, Slate, and on and on.

But as satiated as I am with the enormous and varied flow of available information, I’ve concluded there’s one outlet that should be abandoned: those comment forums at the end of articles on newspaper websites.

This is insane. We know that newspapers made a mistake and devalued their product by giving it away for free on the Internet. Some rebuilding could begin by removing these reader forums and restoring journalism’s dignity.

By the way, don’t bother posting any comments directed to me when this article appears on the Web. I won’t see them. Instead, go start your own website or blog or buy a legitimate newspaper, or write a letter to the editor, or an op-ed (and sign your own name to it). If you really have something interesting to say, I’ll find you.

One just has to love this guy's stones.

***My opinion is important....yours is dirt!***

Is it any wonder that this idiot is a PAID Big Media consultant?

And with guys like him advising them over the years, is it any wonder why newspapers, magazines, and network television are all spiraling down the economic toilet?



Obviously, the comments on that Globe article, the ones that haven't been summarily censored anyway, are quite feisty and worth a look.

Newspapers - There Goes *Internet Growth*

As newspaper circulation - and ad revenues - have spiraled down the toilet....

One couldn't read a single earnings release from from these jurassic enterprises without seeing a screaming mention of their *internet growth* - no matter the level of overall significance.

But even that seems to be coming to an end.

Boston.com, the Boston Globe's website only saw 4,000,000 unique visitors in June - the second lowest number for the spiraling company in the past 28 months.

Pathetically, they blamed it on the Celtics' *early exit* from the playoffs. Never mind that the Celtics have sucked for a good 16 years before 2007!

Dan Kennedy, at MediaNation somewhat defended this Boston Globe BS on his site.

Folks in the business are well aware of how closely print circulation of the Globe and the Herald has been tied to the fortunes of the local sports teams for many, many years.

OK, Dan.

Then how the bleep do you explain the Globe and the Herald essentially rolling over dead in the past few years?

If their circulation is *tied* to the *fortunes* of the Red Sox, the Patriots, and the Celtics....they why have the past 8 years - with 2 World Series Championships, 4 Super Bowl appearances, and one NBA Title....why have the papers been toilet-spiraling in this period of near-ridiculous athletic supremacy?

Moron!

Hard Evidence Smacks Globies In The Face!

The *most emailed* story from the Boston Globe yesterday was an Op-Ed column by some dude I've never heard of, Jeff Jacoby:

No climate debate? Yes, there is

It's a standard debunking of the eco-propaganda pawned off as *science*; and peddled in furtherance of Bigger Government.

Read it later, I want to discuss it from a wider angle.

Since I prefer my swallowed food to *stay down*, I don't read the Globe much - never did. But I can't remember ever noticing such anti-agitprop in it before. This egregious blasphemy had to be a *guest column*, right?

But could this development indicate a new, more liberal(!) policy at the Globe?

Not only was the article the *most emailed*, by the time I came across it, it had generated a whopping 500+ reader comments.

As stupid as Globies are, how long can they go on ignoring the fact that offering up a *diversity* of opinion is their only chance at business survival?

There has to be at least one person high up at the Globe who can put two and two together. The has to be one person who understands that stories that generate *feedback*, *emails*, and *hits* are like....THE MOST IMPORTANT BLEEPIN' THING in the new hyper-competitive world of digital media.

How messed up would that be if by simply becoming a tad *fairer*,....if that was all it took to save the Boston Globe from oblivion?

After all, the market for agitpop has been overly saturated for quite some time now.

Down With The Ship!

Boston Globe unions did not ratify the wage concessions demanded by parent New York Times. This failure, supposedly, will result in an immediate 23% pay cut across the board:

"People understand that things are going horrendously, the paper is losing money and there have to be concessions, but people don’t feel that the company tried very hard to make the concessions more palatable or equitable," said Scott Allen, a Globe reporter. "I’m voting no. Even people who you would think can’t afford to put their mortgages at risk are voting no."

Now, who amongst y'all ever thought Globies rational or cognizant of their own self-interest?

My hand certainly ain't up.

And man, which banks were Moronic enough to write mortgages for newspaper employees?

I sure hope they were justly charged *subprime* rates!

See also - Comeuppance Imminent?.

How Does One Even Comment On This Lunacy?

Perceptions of racism -- from being treated with suspicion in a store to unfairness in employment or housing -- can heighten stress levels and affect health, research has shown. A new study from Boston University links these smoldering signs of racism to weight gain in black women, suggesting a possible explanation for the their higher obesity rates compared to white women.

Yvette Cozier, an epidemiologist at the Slone Epidemiology Center at BU, led a survey of more than 43,000 women enrolled in the long-running Black Women's Health Study. Writing in the June issue of Annals of Epidemiology, she and her co-authors describe participants' reports on their weight, body mass index, and perceptions of racism.

At the beginning of the eight-year study, the women were asked if they sometimes felt they were treated poorly in a restaurant or store, whether they thought people considered them dishonest or less intelligent, and if they had felt unfairness on the job, in housing, or from police. The women, 21 to 69 years old at the study's outset, were placed in four groups based on how frequently they said they experienced these signs of racism. Their weight was recorded every two years from 1997 through 2005. Their waist circumference was measured at the beginning and end.

At the end of the trial, all the women had gained weight. But the women who said they felt higher levels of racism gained more weight and had bigger waist-size increases compared to the women who felt the least racism. That held true after accounting for factors such as education, geographic region, and beginning body mass index.

"Racism is real and it has real effects," Cozier said in an interview. "It can result in real changes in the body."

Here's the link to the Boston Globe(Who else?!) article.

This is sooooo Boston 2009!....everything from the 43,000 person *study* - no doubt funded by taxpayers, to the quack science, to the eager dissemination by the apparatchik Boston Globe.

It should give pause to anyone about to spend 200k on Boston University tuition anyway.

And great, because of crap like this, every future historian will mock the time and place of my worthless life - as they rightfully should.

Why Buy The Boston Globe?

When you can self-induce vomiting, with a finger, FOR FREE???!!!

Read today's *most emailed* ridiculous article:



The gist is that we're all supposed to feel bad for a kid on full boat to Harvard....because other students there may be wealthier.

This Miguel Garcia was perturbed by his classmates who allegedly were dropped off by chauffeurs, own tuxedos, and can afford to outsource their laundry!

[Pause here to dry watery eyes.]

The Globe also bemoans a kid who *chose to spend the week earning $11 an hour scrubbing toilets in Harvard dorms.*

I leave y'all with the money quote from a dean of admissions and financial aid:

"The stakes are high here," Fitzsimmons said in an interview. "If we aren't educating the full range of the population, we won't be educating effective future leaders of the country."

That's just what we need.... *future leaders* mired in low self-esteem and boiling with envy . Miguel Garcia gets handed a $200,000+ education and expresses his gratitude by demanding a driver and turn-down service. This fool, along with the Moronic Boston Globe, have no idea that the parents of those strutting rich kids are the ones actually paying his fare.

The Boston Globe may be down but it's not out. It'll continue inverting the truth until its last breath.

And, not for nothing....but I went to a school (UPenn) that had to be at least if not wealthier than Harvard. Even though I was from a typical 2-government-worker family in Worcester, MA, a town whose average household gross today is around $40,000 per year....In 3.5 years of school, I never once felt subordinate to my classmates from the Main Line and Westchester County.

In fact I worked for nearly 40 hours per week - albeit at $5-6 per hour, not the $11 for Harvard's (unionized?) toilet scrubber - and had plenty of money in my pocket to do with what I wanted.

And truth be told, I looked down upon, and felt pity for many of my über-wealthy classmates. They lagged me in the classroom; were socially maladroit, unathletic, lazy, and at least a few of them I knew were serial, incorrigible masturbaters.

The way I saw it, despite all their *privilege* thus far, the fact that I was in the same place as them at the moment made me the winner and them the losers!

Comeuppance Imminent?

The Boston Globe’s largest union is pleading with the New York Times [NYT] to extend today’s midnight deadline to come up with $20 million in cuts to keep the paper open, even as Publisher P. Stephen Ainsley told staff yesterday "there is much work yet to be done.".

The Boston Newspaper Guild last night asked for the stay of execution because it says management mistakenly counted $4 million of previous salary cuts among a menu of savings options from which the union could choose, the Globe reported.

The Guild, which learned of the gaffe Wednesday, wants more time to negotiate new concessions to satisfy the New York overlords and keep the embattled broadsheet operating, according to the Globe

How knee-slapping ironic would it be if the Boston Globe met its demise on May Day? In case you didn't know, today is a Commi holiday known as International Workers' Day.

My fingers are crossed....but I'm sure the inevitable will be dragged out, somehow.

However, I am a patient man and there's a reason there's no such thing as *fast torture*.

The best thing for the Globies would be to be shown the door today. So, ironies aside, I can't root for that. Let them subsist on *hope*, the drug du jour.