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This Just In: Media

Navel-gazing over the Taylors

By Dan Kennedy

How do you spell solipsism?

It's now been a little more than a week since the New York Times Company removed Ben Taylor as publisher of the Boston Globe and replaced him with Richard Gilman, one of its senior vice-presidents. During that time, not one, not two, not three, but four of the Globe's columnists have found it necessary to weigh in on the past and future of their newspaper and what it all means.

Individually, each column was well-intentioned, if not exactly a barnburner. Put them together, though, and you have to ask: don't they have anything better to write about than themselves?

First out of the gate was Metro/Region columnist Brian McGrory, whose July 13 buttering-up of the Taylors left him with egg on his face a few days later. McGrory wrote that "a $1000 investment in Globe stock in 1973 was worth $120,000 only 20 years later. There are pressroom workers who drive Cadillacs and Lincolns to their Cape Cod vacation houses every Friday afternoon because of their well-placed faith in the Brahmin Taylors." This past Monday, in a letter to the editor, McGrory was torched by Martin Callaghan, head of the pressmen's union, who pointed out that only eight of the Globe's 229 pressroom employees have Saturdays off -- and that, although some union members invested in Globe stock, their salaries trail those of reporters, columnists, and editors by a considerable margin.

Probably the most workmanlike -- in terms of actually providing some analysis and insight -- was John Ellis's July 15 op-ed piece, in which he expressed the belief that the hiring of Gilman had more to do with the Internet than anything else. "Five years ago this newspaper competed with the Boston Herald in the Boston media market," Ellis wrote. "Today the Boston Globe competes with every newspaper on the Internet, including the newspaper company that owns it, the New York Times." Noting that digital photography is croaking Kodak, Ellis wrote, "Gilman's task is to ensure that the Boston Globe does not go the way of Kodak."

The most convoluted -- and, in fact, the most entertaining -- was David Warsh's Sunday piece, in which he argued that the Globe is the fourth-best paper in the country, after the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. That might make for a good barroom argument, but Warsh, as is sometimes his wont, then flew off into the ozone by writing that the Globe is just one of several "fourth-best" papers, a group that includes the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. So is the Globe, in Warsh's estimation, fourth-best, seventh-best, or something in between? Who knows?

Finally, that sentimentalist Jack Thomas, the paper's ombudsman, offered up a few nostalgic tidbits about the Taylors this past Monday -- about Marty Nolan flying first-class while former publisher Davis Taylor rode tourist, about former publisher Bill Taylor making a dry nepotism joke. And Thomas described the mood in the newsroom -- inevitably -- as that of "an Irish wake."

Fortunately, every wake is followed by a burial. For the sake of your readers, guys, it's time to move on.