Boston Globe Death Watch: Last, Best Bluff Saves the Globe?

Word on the street has it that the Boston Globe and the Boston Newspaper Guild ended their impasse early this morning with an undisclosed package of wage and benefit cuts, possibly staving off the possibly frivolous threat that the New York Times would shutter the paper.

The move comes after news of an absolutely ridiculous "last, best offer" proposed by the Globe that would have cut Guild wages by 23 percent. Because such offers can be made legally binding by the courts, many viewed the move as a sort of nuclear option, a risky gamble that could have terrible consequences for the Globe because it takes years to litigate such claims.

The Globe and the Guild were deadlocked over lifetime job guarantees for 190 guild members, a longstanding union privilege that strikes many as somewhat antiquated in an increasingly fluid (and tanking) global job market. But then again, so do massive bonuses for demonstrably incompetent managers, like the ones enjoyed at the New York Times.

So, the Globe has been saved, for now, but at what cost? The news comes floating on a dark promise of pending layoffs in a newsroom that is already decimated. The cover price of the paper has gone up a quarter, and its Web site remains virtually unnavigable. It prints amid an impression that it has little regard for hard, local news, and its readership might remain rightly skeptical about the paper's ability to recover from its battle with the New York Times.

In plain terms, is the Globe a walking corpse, a lumbering zombie intent on devouring its readers' fragile brains? Or is it more like a vampire with a soul, the undead that still has some good left in it?