From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

Brooke Gladstone is away this week. I'm Bob Garfield.

Two months ago, the New York Times Company, owners of the Boston Globe, gave the Globe unions an ultimatum,

submit to $20 million in payroll cuts or face shutting down.

Since then, some Globe employees have agreed to concessions, but this week the Newspaper Guild,

representing the paper's editorial employees, voted no, whereupon the Times Company, led by its

chairman Arthur Salzberger Jr., unilaterally imposed a 23% wage cut and started the process of shopping the

globe to prospective new owners.

What's playing out in Boston is a familiar drama, one that in the coming months and years

will get familiarer, the sad spectacle of the slow death by bleeding of a venerable institution.

The Globe's crisis is, on one hand, remarkable.

The paper has been a New England institution and an indispensable element of the democratic process for 137 years.

On the other hand, it is but the latest victim of industry-wide pandemic. Adam Riley has

been covering the death throws for the Boston Phoenix, and he joins me. Adam, welcome.

Hey, thanks for having me on. We're speaking on Thursday. What's the latest?

Well, the latest is the Boston Newspaper Guild rejected the Times Company's contract proposal earlier this week.

The Times Company has said that they are going to declare an impasse and unilaterally impose a 23% pay cut starting next week.

The Guild responded, or some members of the Guild responded by pleading with Arthur

Salzberger Jr. to act like the mensch they know he is and keep the payout from happening,

and Salzberger basically told them to get lost that there was nothing he could do.

We're told that a real estate company here in Boston may be looking at buying the paper,

and also I think I neglected

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