Shoot the dinosaurs. Take the canoli.

It's no longer the gray lady disowning her golden child. It's the kid insisting that he be allowed to build a taller sandcastle, with no clue that the tides are due in any time now.

From what it looks like, the Globe has avoided being shut down again. The leadership of the papers got a nice list of concessions from its unions, with the paper currently talking over details with the final union, a 700-member stick-in-the-mud organization that continues to squabble with the paper's leadership. These union members are loath to give up perks such as lifetime guarantees or health care reductions, assuming, of course, that the paper they work for will be able to survive in the coming years without a drastic change in business style.

After the other unions working with the Globe gave up millions in concessions over the past few days, you'd hope this last group could scrounge up enough to give to the Globe, so the paper can please the New York Times. But right now it looks like the union (and mostly the managers, in fact) are fighting for a few marbles as a tidal wave approaches from offshore.

Boston Herald columnist Howie Carr wrote a rather nasty column about the future of the Globe, but while his remarks could have been nicer as the deadline loomed over the weekend, a lot of what he said was right. The news business is changing, and this is just the first step. The Globe is going to have to do some serious thinking about its focus and business practices if it wants to stay alive in the future.

This is not the New York Times' fault; it is merely offering to shoot the horse before it suffers too much.

Still, the Globe has a lot to offer and a lot of resources, which is why anger should be turned to the unions. Workers' rights are one thing; not having a place to work is another. And, for goodness' sake, the union leaders that are still making tons of money while their workers offer to get paid even less (they already have wage freezes) need to stop. They represent everything that is wrong with the Globe, whereas the people willing to sacrifice pay, benefits and cushy bonuses for the good of journalism represent all that is right (and sustainable).

It's a new age. Shoot the dinosaurs. Take the canoli.

Boston Herald news coverage
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