The Boston Globe

The New York Times Co. has threatened to shut The Boston Globe unless the newspaper's unions swiftly agree to $20 million in concessions, union leaders said yesterday.

Seeing how the above sentence is taken from Boston.com - the Globe's website - you would have to say that the threat is real. I must say that I'm stunned.

Stunned at how completely incompetent the upper management of the New York Times Co. continues to be. The Boston Globe was purchased in 1993 for $1.1 billion and now it may be shuttered unless it can shave $20 million off operating costs? Please.

I have no doubt that some of the cuts and concessions are necessary but the real problem here is not the economy, it is not the state of the newspaper industry - it is the senior management of New York Times Co. Specifically Pinch Sulzberger - the man who has almost single-handedly turned New York Times Co. stock into junk.

I have no doubt that the Boston Globe will fail as a business if its fate remains in the hands of such a klutz as Sulzberger. No doubt. It is time for local ownership to take back the Globe. Someone like Jack Welsh. That's the only way the Globe will survive. The concessions being called for today are just a band-aid on a self-inflicted gunshot wound.