Demoulas Ad Fits Boston Globe to a (Arthur) T

July 20, 2014

The endless Demoulas Family/Market Basket rumpus will no doubt have its own A&E reality program (Grocery!) eventually, but for now it’s playing out mostly in the local dailies.

Saturday’s installment featured this Page One piece in the Boston Globe.

Workers stand up for ousted Demoulas

Thousands skip Market Basket to back ex-chief

TEWKSBURY — They left their jobs as butchers and baggers, cashiers and clerks, and came from Rochester, N.H., Fitchburg, Raynham, and Milford for a noisy show of worker solidarity against company bosses they distrust.rally5

In an unusual sign of unity and devotion, more than 2,000 supporters of ousted Demoulas Market Basket chief executive Arthur T. Demoulas gathered outside the chain’s headquarters Friday to demand his return to the top of the family supermarket empire.

They carried colorful signs and cheered speeches against corporate greed, all the while risking being fired for skipping work to attend the protest.

“We do this every day until he comes back,” Tom Trainor, a longtime Market Basket supervisor, said of the employee protests on behalf of Demoulas, who was fired in late June by a board controlled by his chief rival and cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas.

 

And there might be more axing to come judging by this full-page ad in yesterday’s Globe:

 

Screen Shot 2014-07-20 at 12.01.42 AM

 

Nut grafs:

 

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Doesn’t sound very hopeful for the rankish file, eh?

But, wait!

Here’s the Boston Herald’s take:

Market Basket workers escape ax

Rally

There had yet to be fallout last night for Market Basket employees who ditched work yesterday to rally for the reinstatement of the grocery chain’s fired CEO even as their own jobs were on the line.

An estimated 2,500 to 3,000 Market Basket employees and others showed up at the company’s Tewksbury headquarters yesterday to show support for former CEO Arthur T. Demoulas, fired last month by a board aligned with his rival cousin and shareholder, Arthur S. Demoulas.

 

The above appeared on page 13, which likely has nothing to do with the unfortunate (for the Herald) fact that the Market Basket ad did not run in the feisty local tabloid.

But hope springs eternal for the Sunday Boston Herald, yeah?

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Herald Gets Its Ads Kicked . . . Again

July 18, 2013

Do we detect a pattern emerging here?

For the third time in three weeks, Boston Herald readers have been snubbed by a full-page ad aimed at the local citizenry.

(First it was the Marriott at Tudor Wharf memorializing fallen Boston firefighter Stephen F. Minehan; then it was the Chicago Blackhawk saluting the Boston Bruins.)

Now it’s the Employees & Management of Demoulas/Market Basket, who ran this ad in Wednesday’s Boston Globe:

 

Picture 1

 

Notice the ad did not mention Arthur S. Demoulas, the “other” member of the Board of Directors and the motivating force behind the power play, as the Globe noted here:

Market Basket CEO faces revolt led by his cousin

 

arthurs

At a typical corporation, the chief executive is expected to be beholden to the board of directors. But Market Basket grocery titan Arthur T. Demoulas asserted otherwise one day when some board members challenged his authority to spend money as he saw fit.

 

“There’s only one boss in the company,” Demoulas told directors in August 2012, according to a transcript of the board meeting. “There’s not two. There’s not three. There’s not five. There’s only one boss.”

For more than two decades, Market Basket has been anything but typical.

Even for the most contentious boardrooms, Demoulas’s statement underscores the strong-willed personalities in his extended family, which built the Market Basket chain into a regional powerhouse despite spending much of their time fighting one another. The latest battle again pits Arthur T. Demoulas against his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, who is moving to oust the former after finally gaining control of the board this year.

 

Excellent dustup, and well worthy of a newspaper ad war (the hardreading staff is hoping for an Arthur T. rebuttal in Thursday’s Globe.)

But apparently not in the Herald, which the Employees & Management of Demoulas/Market Basket deemed unworthy as an advertising platform.

Perhaps they don’t value the readers of the feisty local tabloid.

Or maybe it’s because of backhanded coverage like this in Saturday’s Herald:

 

Picture 2

 

You tell us.

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