The Boston Phoenix’s Adam Reilly finds it

remarkable that the New York Times Co.’s contract proposal to the Boston Newspaper Guild, the paper’s biggest union, lost as narrowly as it did,…not because the proposal itself was draconian: given the economic condition of the country in general and the newspaper industry in particular, it really wasn’t.

What makes today’s result surprising, instead, is that—in retrospect—so many things happened (or didn’t happen) that gave the Globe’s members reason to vote “No.”

Among the “disincentives” Reilly lists: that “the Times Co. didn’t make more of an effort to win the hearts and minds of Guild members.”

The New York Times quotes Northeastern journalism professor Dan Kennedy saying something similar: “The vote ought to have been a yes, and management has done everything they can to turn it into a no.”