Whither the Boston Globe?

The news is not good...the Times is leveraging the Globe's unions with threats of an imminent closure if concessions aren't made.
Meanwhile the rest of us have to wrap our minds around the notion that an outhouse rag like the Herald might be the last man standing in this market, however long that lasts.
Well, one of the things we have to assimilate quickly is that the whole US economy is rigging itself pell-mell for efficiency, hence the declining payrolls, the wholesale flight to the cheap environs of the internet, the nigh extinction of black box stores, the fall in consumer spending...if you don't have money you can't spend it, if you do, you are saving it.
Revenues are down, circulation is down, the readership is greying...and bigger US institutions than the Boston Globe will vanish like the velociraptor before this recession is over.
Frankly the newspaper business with it's dependence on huge printing presses and a house to house distribution system is an archaic faith based bet at best.
Do we need rigorously edited news?
Yes.
Will be delivered on paper every morning...maybe not.
I'm gonna miss that morning ritual, I'd like to think another publication could rise and take the Globe's place, something liberal in politics, independent in spirit and of a Jacksonian tone...something scaled to meet the resources at hand...but that might be sheer fantasy at best.
Of course some will say, what'll happen to the Chimes at Midnight without Joan Vennochi and Jeff Jacoby to kick around?
My answer is simple, Humble Elias has been swimming in rough waters for a few years now, and those guys will need to take fresh dog paddle lessons...quick.
Here is hoping all and sundry can come to terms.

Totally Joanie

Inadvertently, Joanie Vennochi betrayed herself today.
In the midst of a lugubrious "farewell Hillary" exercise (as IF Joan Vennochi ever gave two hoots in hell about Hillary Clinton) the Globe's resident sourpuss revealed she wrote Clinton's "political obituary" back before the Ohio primary.
Honestly, is THAT all Joan Vennochi does? Write and update political obits just waiting like an old magpie for the moment to swoop down and pour false sympathy over the departed?
Humble Elias cannot imagine what she has tucked away on her hard drive with the name "John Kerry" on it.
This is a mentality that has co-opted and internalized defeat to an astonishing degree, losing is forever, liberals always lose yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah.
Pa-thetic sez the old Misanthrope.
Losing is bad but there is only one sure way to lose and a million different paths to to all kinds of triumphs.
Hubert H. Humphrey wasn't elected in 1968...but given his ardor for the cause of justice....can anyone say he really lost?
Joanie doesn't get that, the only story she knows how to tell is one of liberal emasculation and humiliation.
I say we will start winning the day we stop letting the Joanie Vennochi's of the world keep score.

Meanwhile...

Joanie Vennochi comes in for some well-deserved criticism from the Globe's readership in the wake of Sunday's column about Elizabeth Edward's recent illness.