In a story I can only interpret as a big “screw you” to the New York Times Co., the Boston Globe covered news that the NYT Co. is giving a $20 million ultimatum to the Globe’s unions with a front-page story on how everyone in the Boston area could not possibly live without their paper.

The story, “Threat to Globe triggers flood of feelings” (yes I’ve run into horrible A1 headlines in the Globe before) comes off as narcissistic and self-important.

News that The New York Times Co. might shut down the biggest newspaper in New England if its unions don’t swiftly agree to $20 million in cuts sent a shockwave throughout Greater Boston, sparking an outcry from places as disparate as the Boston Symphony Orchestra and Johnny’s Luncheonette in Newton Centre, and voices as varied as US Senator John F. Kerry and Peter Wolf of the J. Geils Band. To some readers, such a loss seemed unimaginable, but others said the transformation from paper to the Internet is inevitable.

OK, that was rough but not too bad. But hey Globe reporters, what did citizens say to you when you asked them how important they think you are?

Losing the Globe is more than the shuttering of a company, readers said. It would be, they said, the loss of something essential to Massachusetts’ very sense of itself — and one of the few forces for public accountability in the region.

Heaven’s be!

They recalled articles exposing corruption and waste in government and other institutions, and stories giving voice to those who otherwise would have no power at all.

Surely some people disagreed? Yeah, but thankfully they’re idiots.

Critics of the Globe, especially in anonymous comments posted on the newspaper’s website, said the newspaper was falling victim not just to turbulent economic times but what they called its own “liberal bias,” though they did not provide specific examples. Some complained about ink stains; others about perfumed inserts in the newspaper. Still others raised deeper concerns about customer service.

After the jump the story becomes somewhat less exaggerated, with readers giving pretty much every argument for keeping the paper, from “I want a real paper,” to:

“Could you imagine our kids going through life not knowing what a paper is?” said…Suzanne [Locke], who teaches at a Cambridge private school.

I don’t quite understand her argument (without the Globe they wouldn’t know what a paper is?), but here’s the kicker:

Still, the Lockes admitted, they don’t get the paper every day. Mornings are consumed with getting the boys ready for school and rushing off to work, where Steven Locke reads Boston.com, the Globe website.

This one comes right at the end:

Peter Wolf, the front man for the J. Geils Band, said losing the Globe would destroy readers’ connection to the region.

Destroy connection to the region! Can we get a quote on that?

“I can’t say it starts my morning but it starts my afternoon and it’s an old friend,” [Wolf] said. “Unfortunately people don’t get the impact till after it’s done. And when it’s gone, it’s gone for good.”

Oh. Not quite the rending of the flesh I was expecting.

Now, I understand that it’s tough to hear your favorite hometown paper might be going under (especially if you work there). I know that if the Washington Post I’ve been reading for the past eight years were to be threatened, or if word that my childhood paper the Tampa Tribune was closing got out, I’d be disappointed.

But if either then ran a self-indulgent story like this on the front-page the next day, my eyes would roll out of my head. This could have passed as a column. It’s not the kind of thing to be bandying around as journalism when you’re about to go out of business.

I generally think the Globe is a great paper. I love The Big Picture, the Ideas section, and the Reporters’ Questions section of this page down on the right. I would really rather they not go out of business (though going online-only wouldn’t really affect me here in DC). However, they really need to check themselves next time they decide to run a story about how important they are.

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Misaligned Richter scales: While the Globe reports that news of a possible closure “sent a shockwave throughout Greater Boston, sparking an outcry,” the Boston Herald reports sources saying the “dire message sent a shockwave through a newspaper that has been battered by bad news and decimated by layoffs.”