Bottom line? It's a business

Funny. Few in journalism call it a business. We like to think we forfeited bigger paychecks to pursue something that is essential: speaking truth to power, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable.

And there is a lot of truth to that. Most people in newsrooms are idealistic. They think of their work more as a vocation than a job. But at the end of the day, we produce something - journalism and advertising opportunities - that people buy. Or don't.

I could go on about the importance of serious journalism to a democracy, and the importance of The Boston Globe to this region in particular, but that wouldn't mean a hill of beans to the bottom line. If it were only about journalism, we'd be all set. The Globe is still the region's dominant news organization, the biggest agenda-setter, whether it's pension and healthcare reform or holding sticky-fingered pols accountable. That will remain so even after the budget cuts, which are coming down the pike like a Papelbon fastball.

The Globe has never had more readers. The problem is, an increasing number are online, and that doesn't produce the kind of advertising money needed to pay for the journalism we've gotten used to over all these years.

And so hard decisions are being made. Some are wrong, if only in the way they are carried out. Many of us who have spent years reporting on how economic Darwinism has ravaged others are seeing and feeling the effects ourselves.

I wish I could get more worked up over the way our masters in Manhattan have handled all this. But that would mean I expected anything different. When The New York Times bought the Globe in 1993, it wasn't a marriage, it was a business deal. They don't love us. They own us. And lately they've been subsidizing us. So, like a loanshark who's got his own debts, they have put a gun to our head and said, "I want the money."

It would be easier to get worked up if there were shining examples of an enlightened newspaper company figuring all this out. The Times has made lots of mistakes. I wish they didn't build the Taj Mahal on Eighth Avenue. I wish they'd close the International Herald Tribune before they gut the Globe. And, at the very least, the bigshots at the Times should have climbed aboard the Acela and come up here to explain to us, and to you, their threat to close the Globe. When an essential element of your business is demanding transparency of others, it looks pretty shoddy when you expect none from yourself.

But hating The New York Times is like hating the Yankees: It might make you feel better, but it means nothing in the standings. Besides, to suggest that the bottom line would fundamentally change if we were owned by Gannett or McClatchy, or my former employer and dear friend Mr. Murdoch, is wishful thinking. The Times took money out of here in good times, but they also held off making draconian cuts longer than other companies.

So the working stiffs who put out this paper are being asked to give back lots of money and benefits and jobs, shrinking the paper so we can live to fight another day. Even if we agree to this, it's like paying the vig to that loanshark. The principal is still outstanding, and the gun is in easy reach, only a matter of time before it's pulled again.

But then this is a business. A noble one, but a business. We're kidding ourselves, and everybody else, if we think anything else.

Kevin Cullen is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at cullen@globe.com.