Last year, CareerCast.com's ranking of the 200 best and worst jobs in America put "newspaper reporter" at number 140, with high stress levels and low income dragging it down relative to other fields.

That's grim enough--but CareerCast.com's updated 2010 ranking is even more depressing. "Newspaper reporter" has now plummeted to number 184, one worse than "sailor" ("Performs any number of tasks involved in the operation of ships, boats, barges, or dredges") and one better than "stevedore" ("Loads and unloads cargo from vessels, routes cargo to proper locations").

I'm told that the Boston Globe's Morrissey Boulevard headquarters is currently adorned with signs calling all employees to a 10:30 AM meeting in the William O. Taylor room. It's not clear right now what the purpose of the meeting is--but given the state of the newspaper industry and the New York Times Co.'s push last year to eliminate lifetime-job guarantees at the Globe, one has to wonder if a program of buyouts and/or layoffs is about to be announced.

The Globe story of the moment is the (possibly) impending sale of the paper--but mounting resistance to a new, high-cost health plan among the members of the paper's biggest union is a noteworthy subplot.

Earlier this afternoon, a letter went out from more than 100 employees to publisher Steve Ainsley. They're asking management to restore a "significant portion" of $1.

 

 

As you may know, there's a movement afoot inside the Boston Newspaper Guild, the Globe's largest union, to hold a recall election. The impetus? Dissatisfaction with the way the Guild's leaders--including Guild head Dan Totten--handled the recent concede-or-close threat from the New York Times Company.

According to the Guild's bylaws, the recall-election process is actually pretty straightforward:

A recall election may be initiated in two ways: (a) The Governing Board, by a two-thirds vote of its entire membership, may initiate a recall election process in the case of some or all union officers or delegates; or (b) the membership may initiate a recall election process with 20 percent of the membership signing a petition to the Governing Board for that purpose.

1. The Governing Board must so inform the membership of this decision and reasons for this decision within 10 days.

2. The Governing Board must call a general membership meeting for the purpose of discussing this decision.

3. The general membership will then have the power to call a special election under the election procedures in Article III. 

Earlier today, though, I was forwarded an email--originally sent by Totten--which argues, basically, that it's not that simple....

My first thought, when I heard about the tentative agreement struck by management and the Boston Newspaper Guild last night, was that Guild head Dan Totten must be patting himself on the back right now. After all, Totten's non-endorsement of the contract proposal rejected by the Guild last month was predicated on the assumption that he could get a better offer from the Times Co

Beat the Press blogger Ralph Ranalli notes an interesting contradiction regarding the ongoing Times Co.-Boston Newspaper Guild negotiations:

My question is this: Since the imposition of the 23 percent wage cut was based on the Times claim of a bargaining "impasse," how Times officials be participating in marathon bargaining sessions yet asserting an impasse at the same time? Someone help me with this.

The fancy insert in today's paper has the official numbers: effective June 1, you'll pay $12.25 for seven days of Globe home delivery and $8 for Thursday-Sunday. No change for Sunday only.

I've been a seven-day subscriber. Not sure I'll keep up at that price.

Also, the note in the insert from publisher Steve Ainsley says the Globe "broke [the] news" of the financial pressures facing The Globe in early April.

--First, I've got a new Phoenix piece looking at the Times Co.'s plans for the Globe and why the Guild caved on lifetime-job guarantees earlier this week.

--Former Globe contributor Michael Jonas, who's now at Commonwealth magazine, has made a pretty strong case that the Globe is taking too much credit for its "scoops" on MA pension abuse.

Readers of this blog know I've been alternately critical of and sympathetic to Dan Totten--the head of the Boston Newspaper Guild, the sole remaining holdout in negotiations with Globe management and the NYT Co.

Given my own inconsistency, I'm not quite ready to say that today's Herald story proves that Totten is a leech who's been using his post to enrich himself.

Earlier today, I argued that the combination of the Times Co.'s late-breaking math adjustment--coupled with the Times Co.'s apparent refusal to extend its negotiating deadline for the paper's unions--suggested bad faith on the part of the company.

According to a Globe staffer, that's now the prevailing interpretation among the paper's journalists, who until now have been relatively amenable to the Times Co.

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.