“I’m a former Metro employee, and working there was the worst work experience I’ve ever had,” Rahim wrote, in just the latest email concerning the racist culture at the embattled Metro International newspaper group. “Caucasian employees are assisted in every way possible by management in their efforts to make it in the already tough world of advertising sales. African-Americans are asked to pretty much fend for themselves…. but if you manage to succeed on your own, they quickly build barriers to keep you from shining too brightly around the office.”

Shining brightly at Metro is difficult for African-Americans, Rahim explained. “That luxury is reserved for ‘Whites Only’. Remember that sign, folks? No, it’s not ‘physically posted’ in the Metro office, but you can certainly feel its presence. I say a boycott is the best idea yet. There’s no pain for corporations like the pain of ‘Don’t read the rag.’ Without you, they can’t sell the ad-space that’s making them millions. ”

Despite the seemingly endless series of allegations, revelations, and resignations, the New York Times Company, the New York Times newspaper and the Times Company-subsidiary, the Boston Globe — there’s been ample coverage in the Globe this week, and the first (at last!) mention of Metro in the Times — still don’t get the Metro story.

Following my recent post (News Not Fit To Print?) questioning the ongoing “silence of the Times,” and just one day after Times Public Editor Dan Okrent said the story had “ripened” and was indeed worthy of coverage — “specifically because it involved the Times,” Okrent says — an item about the Times Company’s proposed multi-million dollar partnership with Metro International finally did appear in the supposed “paper of record.”

But the article (hidden deep in the back pages of the Business section, under the headline “Justice Dept. Examining Gannett Deal“) failed even to mention the controversy that erupted when I first reported evidence of the crude racist corporate culture at Metro — evidence that is now threatening to kill the deal. Instead, the piece rehashed earlier reporting by the Wall Street Journal about a possible anti-trust investigation of the proposed deal that would have the Times purchase 49% of the free daily Boston Metro.

Meanwhile the Times-owned Boston Globe — whose own columnist Alex Beam was first told about the racism at Metro but decided not to report it — has apparently begun a full-court press on the story, with Ombudsman Christine Chinlund writing one day and a three-page spread on the controversy leading the Business section the next.

Unfortunately the Globe coverage, while not as tightly circumscribed as that of the Times, still leaves much to be desired. Chinlund’s piece, “Leverage and the Metro deal” rightly termed the story thus far a “rather unusual episode of journalism” — but for all the wrong reasons. (She failed to mention, for example, the unusual decision of a columnist at her own paper not to write the story for reasons of “ethics” and “taste”)

To her credit, Chinlund did manage at least to mention — unlike the Times — “the racist smears ” and “complaints of racism and sexism at Metro” at the heart of the story first reported in this blog and on MediaChannel.org.

And she did manage to ask the appropriate question: “Should the Times Co. abandon the Metro deal?” After all, as Chinlund points out, “if the deal goes ahead, it’s the Globe — which will offer some stories to the Metro — that will be most publicly linked with it. Plus, the charge here is racial insensitivity, which can’t be ignored.”

But after noting, in a perfunctory manner, that “The slurs were of course disgusting and are rightly condemned,” Chinlund then falsely claimed “It’s less easy to say they were the result of a racist company culture that the Times Co. should have known about. If there were cultural problems at Metro, it was not necessarily obvious.”

Maybe Chinlund hasn’t been following the story as closely as she should. After all, as I’ve been reporting for weeks, many workers for the Metro chain like Rahim think the racism pervading the entire operation is obvious enough. That’s why they write emails — like this one that came in pleading for anonymity:

“Please help! I am a black employee at Metro and really appreciate your efforts to end the systematic racism at this company, Metro… I am too afraid for my job to come forward! There is a rotting core of racism here at the company and, until that is released, blacks and other minorities at Metro will continue to be treated like dogs!”

Instead, Chinlund chose to quote executives in Toronto (where the Toronto Star partners with that city’s Metro paper) as saying, “I’ve not in my dealings seen any sign of racism.”

Chinlund’s conclusion? “So maybe the slurs were an aberration — but maybe not. The Globe and the Times Co., as part of “due diligence,” need to find out before they buy in to the operation. If they find something systemically rotten, the deal should be canceled.”

Guess what? I’m here to tell you there’s something rotten in Sweden, Chris. And the deal should be canceled.

(If you’d like to tell her yourself, phone 617-929-3020 or, to leave a message, 929-3022. Her e-mail address is ombud@globe.com.)

Finally, unlike that of the Times, the Globe’s business section has been spilling a lot of ink on the Metro story, as witnessed by the latest article, “A hard look at Metro: Racist joke turns spotlight on a company seen by some as crass and insensitive.”

This piece, reported and written by Christopher Rowland and Charles M. Sennott, included some interesting comments made by principals in the Metro story — most of whom aren’t speaking to me (for some odd reason!).

It revealed, for example, that the “Times Co. has delayed closing its $16.5 million deal with Metro Boston as it grapples with the public relations fallout and conducts a deeper review of the Metro organization. The deal, which was made public Jan. 3, originally was expected to be closed before the end of the month. Yesterday, Times Co. chief executive Janet Robinson told analysts during a conference call to discuss fourth-quarter earnings that Times Co.’s current review of the pending deal should be completed ‘in a very short period of time.’”

And it quoted Globe publisher Richard Gilman, who initially approached Times Company executives about pursuing the Metro deal, as saying that “Times Co. and Globe executives want to be sure they know the full extent of any possible problems with their would-be business partners.

Times Co. and Globe officials who prepared the deal with Metro Boston knew about the employee complaints to the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and knew of their disposition, Gilman said, but were unaware before the deal was announced of racist comments by Metro bigwigs.

‘’Would we have liked to have known about it? The answer is yes,” Gilman said.

And the piece included some devastating remarks by executives such as Metro International head Pelle Tornberg (who said ‘’Metro is doing for newspapers what McDonald’s did for fast food”) and newly-resigned former Metro Director Hans-Holger Albrecht, who explained that he began a company confab by saying “Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen and Niggers” as a way of illustrating “why Germans are considered bad public speakers.”

An excellent example, Hans!

The Globe Business article concluded accurately that “a time bomb” has finally exploded for Metro. Body parts and shards of shrapnel continue to be found.