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Call it BostonThen
By adamg on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 12:26pm
Associated Press gets the scoop: BostonNow is kaput.
Some 52 full-time and 100 part-time employees now out of work. Hmm, I wonder what happens to all the blogs on their site?
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Comments
from BostonNOW's own website:
BostonNOW to shut down immediately
I'm going to copy the whole thing here, since that web site may not exist in a few hours:
The war is affecting Iceland, too
Last August I went to Iceland and a business owner told me that they have been suffering since America closed up their military base. The business owner, who operated a pet store, said his business has gone down more than 25% due to the Americans leaving. He said many businesses have also been suffering due to base closing.
America closed their base and sent the military personnel to Iraq.
While I'm sorry to hear Iceland is suffering
Why did we still need a military base there?
The Vikings
Defense against the Vikings, of course.
Haven't you seen all those "The North Will Rise Again!" bumper stickers?
Leif Eriksson Day
Before you know it, there will be no Columbus Day on the calendar if we let these Nasty Vikings go unchecked!
Good Riddance
Columbus isn't deserving anyway.
Vive la Amerigo Vespucci Day!
Madoc's Day
The Welsh were here first.
Eben Horsford was a man before his time!
Because Leif discovered the Muddy River.
That article is typical
That article is typical anti-Viking bigotry. Here's another one:
mnh.si.edu/vikings...legend/archeo.html
Scientology Strikes Again
One day after BostonNOW gave its front page to Anonymous and page three to Anonymous' battle against the sinister cult of Hubbard -- and as untold leftover copies sat like pipe bombs in vending boxes across the city -- more than 150 masked protesters converged on the Church of Scientlogy's local HQ with signs and music.
Now, a mere two days after that, nameless underwriters half a world away decide to pull the plug. BostonNOW is no more, a Scientology public relations officer has crossed another name off of his/her enemies list, and I ask you:
Coincidence?
Half a world away?
Has somebody moved Iceland?
In any case, to answer your question of whether it's a coincidence: Yes.
fun with earth....
hear, hear!
Iceland is quite close. Closer to Boston than LA, of course that isn't saying much: Bogota, Colombia is as well. The closest part of Alaska is actually only about 100 miles further from here than LA.
Remember Globes?
No, not the newspaper - the three dimensional map of the world. To tell the distance between two points, take a string, anchor it at each point, and pull it taut. Iceland is indeed quite close - it is even considered a stopover for Northern European destinations.
I stumped my kids when I was headed to a meeting in San Francisco. I asked them "how many hours to fly to California". They remembered last summer's trip and said so. Then I said "if it takes 8 hours to get from London to Boston and 6 to 7 hours to get from Boston to California, how many hours does it take to get from London to San Francisco?".
They were rather disbelieving that it is only about 1-2 more hours than it is to get to Boston. They eventually figured out why.
Get it now, read it later
Schadenfreude is fine and dandy, but I wouldn't wish this on anybody, not even that guy at Davis who made a concerted effort to come up and shove the goddamn paper in your face even after you'd gone and made a concerted effort to avoid him. Everybody's gotta work, and to lose your job because of economic conditions in Iceland, for god's sake, is pretty goddamn lame. It's a bigger slap in the face than a newspaper to the forehead could accomplish.
Hope someone decided to archive the online content before putting their physical belonings in the ol' paper box. (It's also rather nice to see management attempting some kind of job placement for those affected, unless this means by doing so they get out of paying unemployment or offering severance.)
Also, mad props to the Herald commenters, who are currently 2 for 2 in slagging the Metro in a story obstensibly about BostonNOW. You keep on keeping on, you ad hoc ad hominem geniuses.
The trees of the world sigh
The trees of the world sigh in relief. Sorry for the lost jobs--but I am so glad to see this rag go.
Unemployment
The company pays unemployment as they go and they won't have to pay in the future, so that's a moot point.
Yes, helping the employees might avoid severance, but they are under no obligation to pay (they aren't big enough to be covered by WARN Act).
I liked Boston NOW
and am sorry to see it go. I liked their attempt to blend bloggers' stuff with staff-written stuff.
Paper news is dying
The idea of putting news onto paper to deliver it is slow and inefficient, and gradually becoming obsolete.
I've been thinking of visiting Iceland later this year; it sounds as if it may be relatively cheap for Americans with its recent currency problems.
I was in Iceland last summer
I was in Iceland last summer and, even with currency problems, I don't think any American is going to find it cheap! $15 beers, $60 entrees at the most basic restaurants... It's a beautiful country, so you should still consider going, but be prepared for the sticker shock!
I'm sad to hear about BostonNow. I wonder when the employees were notified?
Notified
At a meeting this morning. And, of course, newspaper people being newspaper people, they quickly spread the news.
same bullshit myth, different channel
The idea of putting news onto paper to deliver it is slow and inefficient, and gradually becoming obsolete.
No. The bit about bloggers killing newspapers and other "mainstream media" ("MSM", in idiot-rati speak) is complete bullshit. It's just self-aggrandizing blogger spew.
Craigslist has cut hard into newspaper classifieds, online dating sites cut into personals, and now even death notices are under "attack". Newspapers were relying on those for a big chunk of their revenue stream.
Newspapers are also suffering because they're being bought up by giant conglomerates which are more interested in profit margins than publishing the news; most cut the cost of production, instead of raising the value of the product.
As a result, you see a lot of celebrity and "technology"(ie electronic gadget) stories, which are essentially free to produce and don't require any heavy lifting in the journalism department. Same phenomenon that results in blond bimbos by the side of the road every time it snows. "It's snowing" doesn't require any real work.
Bloggers aren't killing news-on-paper, but the Internet is
It's not bloggers who are killing off the printed newspaper. It's the Internet in general.
Traditional newspapers still do a better job than any other media of covering hard news -- but nearly every newspaper is now giving their product away for free on the Internet. Not only that, but news often appears on the newspaper web site the day before it's printed in the paper. That greatly decreases people's willingness to pay for the news.
Moving beyond hard news, many of a daily newspaper's other functions have been largely replaced by Internet sites that aren't connected to a traditional newspaper's website:
- Stock quotes are available online, so no more printed stock tables
- Sports scores and game coverage are online, more up-to-date than printed papers where west-coast games often end too late for east-coast deadlines
- TV listings are available online and from cable companies
- Many comic strips are now online (and many newer ones are only online)
- Classified ads of all kinds have increasingly migrated out to the web: help-wanted, apartment rental, real estate, for-sale, yard sale, lost and found, personals, etc.
- The movie clock and movie ads still run, but for how much longer? Online you can find not just movie times, but also trailers and reviews from many sources.
That daily newspaper delivery starts to look less and less essential for daily life. Only problem is, that's where the newspaper gets its revenue -- from paid circulation and the advertisers who want to reach those paid readers. Take that away, and what's going to pay for news reporting?
'Even in death, BostonNow gets it wrong'
Joe Keohane won't be asked to attend the eulogy, finding, as he does, numerous issues with the veracity of items in the paper's self-serving death notice.
The Herald, and Iceland
Two quickies:
1. That story Adam linked to on the Herald website was an AP story. Credit where credit's due, AG! The Herald didn't get the scoop.
2. To the point about military bases in Iceland: Interestingly, Iceland was nothing but an impoverished farming land until the Brits invaded in WWII, and started building infrastructure and people who can actually spend money. I've been there, and it's fascinating to look around: There's almost no architecture that predates 1950, and much of it looks like it was built in the 70s. (The Vikings only built with wood, so that's all long gone.) Given the country's financial history, then, it'd be pretty disasterous for it to lose those military bases.
Changed, thanks.
Changed, thanks.
The last issue
Steve Bagley posts the photo. How long before the boxes disappear?
Same sticker is on Metro's Davis Square box
As for when the boxes disappear: maybe not for years, unless the various cities' inspection departments take note. I still occasionally run across boxes for the long-dead Editorial Humor.
What really sucks...
I just lost 3/4 of my daily sudoku and 1/2 of my crossword puzzles.
Their puzzles were also far more cerebral than the Metro's.
Crap. My commute just got really really boring again.
Make your own puzzles
With this handy online Sudoku generator - outputs up to four puzzles in PDF.
Thanks but
Thanks, but I usually only do the sudoku because I finished the crosswords. I also have a sudoku generator in my pda-phone. I sort of hate sudoku because it's more of a "matter of time" win than actually knowing anything. Logic and deduction will lead to an answer for sudoku unlike crosswords which actually expand your vocab and sometimes play word games with the clues.
the boston now had better
the boston now had better info about concerts too
I thought the paper was terrible
I loved the idea of having another daily.
I hated the paper. I thought it was useless.
The cover was always a joke.
I liked the Sudoku, though - three each day!
Not exactly sad to see them go
Not getting paid for freelance articles and having an editor yell at you can do that.
Good!
It was almost as useless as the pushy people trying to shove it at me each day. The metro is bad enough! I never read either more than maybe once a week; why waste the paper.
The Big Picture
As much as people will or will not miss the paper, the most important thing to remember is that a huge group of people lost their jobs. I didn’t work for the paper itself, but I did work for the distribution company that was responsible for getting those papers to whoever wanted them each and every day. I worked Sunday night (4/13), and on Monday afternoon, I got a phone call telling me that I’m no longer employed. As I said, I didn't work for the paper, so I can't speak for them, but my coworkers and I received no warning, no severance, and not even a full week’s pay for the final paycheck.
I could care less if people liked or didn’t like the paper, but seriously... When people can just have their jobs yanked out from under them without any warning at all, I think we should be worrying about other things than whether or not they had typos or screwed up a story or two.
Good luck to all who lost their livelihood in this ridiculous situation.