Washington Post Continues Toasting Wine Coverage

Departure of Columnists Could Have Given Paper An Out To Cut Back

In the relentless and often necessary tsunami of cost-cutting at newspapers, editors have to make difficult and often painful decisions as their papers fight for survival.
Sometimes, they can take the easy way out. Fortunately, The Washington Post decided not to do that recently with its wine coverage.
Wine columnists Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg have to cut back on their weekly column because of "other commitments" and now will only appear monthly.
That could have been a cue for the Post to essentially scuttle its wine articles and throw in an article every now and then in the Food section. After all, somebody has to buy all those bottles.
Instead, the Post recruited Dave McIntyre, the wine writer for Washingtonian magazine, who will write three or four columns a month.
I'll drink to that.

Not To Say I Told You So Tribune, But.....

Nobody Has A Clue About How To Pay Down Debt, Including Bond Rating Agencies

Things are OK on Tribune's balance sheet -- for now.
That much is clear. But what Sam Zell and his minions have been unable to answer is what to do about next year. And the year after. After all, if revenue keeps dropping, how to you pay off the notes on the more than $12.8 billion in debt?
The troubling answer is all too apparent, but not enough people have made sufficiently portentous rumblings about what really is to come, at least no one who has really mattered. That has since changed, now that Fitch Ratings has warned of a real possibility of Tribune defaulting on its debt obligations.
Short-term, everything's hunky-dory relatively speaking. But Editor & Publisher reports Fitch is concerned about Tribune's ability to "generate meaningful and consistent revenue growth."
Given current trends that's hardly a news flash. I first wrote about Tribune's myopia back in April.
Quite simply, the amount of debt taken on outstrips the company's ability to generate sufficient revenues, especially on the print side.
Sure, some assets have been sold off ---- like Newsday for $650 million -- or will be shed -- the Cubs and Wrigley Field -- to ease some of the pain in the offing. But Zell hasn't offered any answers of what he'll do beyond mid-2009.
Surely he didn't buy Tribune just so he can sell it off piecemeal to satisfy his bankers. However, that's exactly what could result because of his stunning lack of hubris.
Even billionaires can find themselves in way over their heads. Zell is mustering everything he's got just to tread water. Unfortunately, that won't be enough when another tsunami of debt looms on the horizon.
Zell will be all right in the end. Most of the money used to buy Tribune wasn't his. The lucre from his savvier real estate dealings will still be his.
As for the newspapers that will be left in his wake, the outcome is bound to be much more tragic. Zell's swagger has now been replaced by silence. And that speaks volumes.

This is What Happens When Muggles Write Stories About Harry Potter

Even The Daily Prophet's Rita Skeeter Would Have Known Better Than A.P.

Sometimes you need to be right before you're cute.
In a story about how Entertainment Weekly put Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe on the cover for its fall movie preview without knowing its sister company Warner Bros. had postponed the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to next summer, the A.P. led with:

Maybe Harry Potter should have brought a note from his parents saying he would be missing school.

Hardy, har, har. Except that the eight jillion people who've read the Potter books know up, down and sideways that one of the pillars the franchise rests on is the fact that Harry's parents were murdered by He Who Must Not Be Named (Ralph Fiennes).
Therefore, no note.
Minor point. Not really, when you're dealing with the masses who inhabit Potterdom.
It's not hard to be true to the narrative and pithy at the same time.

Summertime and the Living Isn't Easy at Gannett, Tribune

Teetering Newspaper Companies Keep Slashing Away

If you work at a newspaper, chances are you found that this summer, like no other, there will be blood.
Involuntary separation. Reductions in force. Hell, one editor even bothered to call them layoffs. Whatever.
The pace seemed to pick up again this week, as the Chicago Tribune hacked away at another 80 positions. But Gerry Kern, who still has that new editor smell about him, insists everything is gonna be all right.

"[T]he editorial staff of the Chicago Tribune stands at 480, the largest news organization in Chicago by a wide margin and one of the largest and most accomplished in the United States."

Maybe so, but that says less about the Tribune and more about the decimated newsrooms elsewhere in the region.
"This staff will achieve extraordinary work in the future as it has in the past. In about six weeks, we will launch a fresh, new Chicago Tribune that is designed to satisfy reader needs as never before."
So, what you are doing now stinks? Don't think that's what he meant, even if that's what he implies. In any event, giving readers less than what they get now is hardly a way to satisfy their "needs." Good luck with that.
As for Gannett, it's cutting its workforce nationwide by 3 percent. Over at one of my former haunts, the Journal-News in New York's northern suburbs, 12 people, including longtime reporter Mitch Broder and deputy managing editor Tony Davenport got the boot.
Regrettably, they are 12 among many, 600 in fact. Another 400 positions will be eliminated by either being left vacant or through attrition. Given the state of things at Gannett, though, it may be the best thing that ever happened to them. Good luck to them too.

Harry Potter Pulls A Switcheroo on Entertainment Weekly

Putting A Movie On The Cover That Nobody Can See

Ah, the glamorous world of movies, this time biting the not-as-glamorous world of journalism squarely on the arse.

The folks over at Entertainment Weekly wanted to make a late-summer splash by splaying Daniel Radcliffe on the cover of its fall movie preview double issue, which hit the stands today.

That would have made eminent sense, given that "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" was due to crown the competition in November. That was until Warner Brothers announced yesterday it had decided "Half-Blood" could put more fannies in the seats come summer. Now it's slated for a July 17 release.

Which may be all well and good for the studio's bottom line, but it makes EW look a little silly, even if it had no warning.

As EW.com's Sean Smith cheekily notes: "EW and Warner Bros. share a parent company, but they clearly do not share, you know, important friggin’ information."

Feel your pain, brah. Back in my CBS days, Simon & Schuster would be pushing authors for interviews everywhere but at the radio network, where I toiled. When I casually mentioned to a S&S publicist that we were owned by the same company (Viacom), it sounded like that was news to her. You can't help the team if you don't even know you're on it.

No one expects Warner Brothers to alter its release calendar just because of an EW cover. But a weekly can do some twists and turns at the last minute before it goes to print. Some heads up on the Q.T. from the studio to EW was eminently achievable.

Instead, EW got a whole lot of Silenzio! from the Potter camp, which could make newsstand sales disapparate in a hurry.

Trying to Puncture NBC's Olympic Bubble

After Being Sucked Into the Gold-Medal Vortex, Network Overlooks the Fact that China is Still Very Much China

Not far from where much of the Olympic competition is unfolding in Beijing, but a world away from the fuzzy-wuzzy features Mary Carillo -- a normally capable journalist and astute commentator -- on such topics as pandas and acrobats, life for the Chinese proceeds much the same.

That also applies to the small-but-determined band of dissidents and protesters determined to make their mark, including those agitating for a free Tibet. Hardly a shock that the authorities would take a dim view of such activities during the 17 days in which they want to show their nation at its most glorious.

But in the process, it's not a good idea to rough up a British reporter, one John Ray, the Beijing correspondent for ITN News, who was among those covering a small Tibet protest that you can see here.

Ray was detained for 30 minutes, roughed up and had his equipment confiscated. What the police didn't do was grab his cameraman, so we actually get to see Ray telling us what's going on from the window of the police van.

So much for free media access during the games. ITN and the International Olympic Committee registered their concerns. Hopefully, the Chinese will do more than just yawn.

Et tu, NBC?

If You Can't Remember the Last Time You Bought a Magazine at the Newsstand, Turns Out You're Not Alone

ABC Fas-Fax Numbers Even More Grim Than Most Publishers Would Have Feared

For those of you keeping score at home -- which is where most magazines would prefer you get them by subscription -- single-copy sales for most titles in the first half of the year did some Dumpster diving.
No huge surprise here, given how crappy business has been in recent years. Tech, celebrity and auto mags took an especially big hit. For the latter category, that could be a double whammy, given how the Big Three are cutting back ad spending across the board.
In some cases, newsstand gains have been at least partially offset by increased subscriptions, as if some people who may have plunking down four or five bucks a week for their favorite title finally wised up and got a subscription.
Overall, however, they weren't nearly enough to stanch the bleeding in publishers' suites, which by all indications is continuing unabated.

NBC Lets Karoly Vent about Chinese Gymnasts So No One Else Has To

Beyond That, Seldom is Heard a Discouraging Word About Host Country Gaming the Competition

Bob Costas seems more than reasonably entertained when Bela Karolyi is sitting alongside him in the studio to comment on the goings-on at the Olympics gymnastics competition.

And why not? Karolyi is never boring. His avuncular, broken-English routine would be condemned as a stereotype if it wasn't him doing it.

Karolyi (above right) and his wife Marta, the U.S. national team coordinator, have not been shy in accusing the Chinese, as other media reports have averred is a possiblity, of putting underage gymnasts on the floor. Those little pixies doing impossible twists on the vault and melting 18,000 hearts in the National Stadium with a virtuouso performance on the uneven bars are all at least 16?

Karolyi said no, when Costas asked him last night.

But Costas, constrained by the need to get back to live coverage, didn't follow up. And not once have I heard any of the three broadcasters covering gymnastics even allude to the controversy.

One could argue that's the right approach. Focus on the drama unfolding, especially in a tight competition between the U.S. and China. That was indeed the main story, but not the only one. To simply report on the merits of the routines meant Al Trautwig, Tim Daggett and Elfi Schlegel are doing their jobs in a self-imposed vacuum. The pictures tell the story of a Chinese team whose average height is 4-feet-9 and weighs 77 pounds.

If they really are 16 -- as the passports accepted by the IOC claim -- then what does that say about the Chinese gymnastics program and why the U.S. women as well as those from the European teams look diametrically different? How? Why? The NBC crew offers no answers.

Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports say the Karolyis should quit whining about the Chinese, especially since it was Bela who coached Nadia Comaneci to Olympic perfection in 1976 -- at the tender age of 14. Wetzel then takes a cheap shot at the Karolyis for implying they'd want nothing more than to return to the bad old days.

Good or bad, though, 14 was allowed in Montreal. It's not in Beijing. But here we watched pixie after pixie do enough right to win gold over the Americans.

And about those passports. It's hardly a stretch of the imagination to think the Chinese would do whatever it took to grab first on their home turf, including passports that cooked up some numbers. After all, they've done that before, as Juliet Macur reported in The New York Times:

Yang Yun won two bronze medals at the 2000 Sydney Games, in the uneven bars and as a member of the Chinese team. The United States team finished fourth.
Afterward, Yang said on state-run television that she was 14 when she competed at the Games. A Hunan Province sports administration report confirmed that.
“The medal was supposed to be ours, and we should be given it,” said Karolyi, the coach of the 2000 United States team, referring to the bronze medal in the team event.

This could all have been a bad case of the International Olympic Committee not wanting to stoke a controversy and get the Chinese in a lather on the eve of the games, which are meant to be a lucrative showcase for the IOC and Beijing alike.

But that doesn't mean NBC -- despite a rights payment of nearly $900 million -- needs to be complicit. However, the silence over the Chinese gymnasts, with the exception of Karolyi's continual fulminating on the topic -- is rather deafening at this point.

As the Washington Post's Paul Farhi notes, NBC is making a careful -- too careful -- distinction between news and sports. Which is a shame, when very often at the Olympics they are one and the same.

In Your Face, MSM! National Enquirer Gloats Big-Time When Edwards Fesses to Affair

Even ABC (Mostly) Gives Enquirer Props as Edwards Tells Almost All to Bob Woodruff

Now that word's out that John Edwards joined the long list of politicians who couldn't keep their pants zipped, nobody is more thrilled than the editors of the National Enquirer, which had been, um, pumping this story for months with barely a nod or mention by the MSM until recently.

Turns out the Enky wasn't the only one sniffing around. ABC's Brian Ross had been hot for Edwards too, and he was getting close enough that Edwards opted for damage control in the form of an interview with Bob Woodruff for this evening's Nightline.

Ross told Politico the Enquirer has the story "95 to 96 percent" right.

Hey, that's like an A-plus!

Here's the rub: Edwards says he's not the father of the daughter of trystee Rielle Hunter. How does he know? The baby was born Feb. 27, and he claims to have stopped shtupping Hunter before the baby could have been conceived.

Of course, the Enquirer is having none of that, especially after Edwards says the tab got right the story he saw Hunter at the Beverly Hilton last month.

As far as being the father of Hunter's love child, you might as well go all the way now, Johnny Boy.

Submit to a DNA test.

By the way what was it you said about The ENQUIRER's journalistic chops when the main stream media was silent until we gave them more than a smoking gun by dropping a bomb on August 6?

Oh yeah - "Tabloid Trash."

Classy, huh? Well, at least it's more classy than cheating on your cancer-stricken wife.

L.A. Times Treads the Line Between Being a Good Value or Just Desperate

Bargain-Basement Subscriptions and Quality Reporting May Not Move The Needle No Matter How Hard Tribune Tries

I usually only get to see the Los Angeles Times online from my perch in the New York suburbs. But a quick trip out west allowed me to see the much-diminished, but still-mighty paper up close and personal.
It's been well-documented about how the paper has trimmed sections, including two starting today. reduced coverage and otherwise turned itself into something less than it was.
But what remains is still more than most other papers could ever have hoped to dream for. The international report has dispatches from China, Yemen and Egypt, while the election gets five articles and a column. The sports section was all over the Dodgers and Manny, while the design and photography throughout the paper is nothing if not engaging.
Overall, the Times appears committed to a quality product, even if it eats away at a battered budget.
Case in point: today, the Times wrapped up a five-part series by Julie Cart and Bettina Boxall on the true cost of wildfires, with an above-the-fold spread on an Australian family that chose to fight a bushfire and save their land rather than flee for safety.
Conceivably, the story of wildfires could have been told without spending thousands of dollars to dispatch a reporter and photographer to the Australian outback. But it did provide a stark contrast to how the blazes are handled in California.
Which made it relevant. Which made the series complete. Kudos for investing the resources to recognize that.
It's a bigger question, though, of whether readers recognize that. Judging by the Times' recent circulation numbers, the answer is tragically no.
To this itinerant visitor, that's hard to comprehend, especially when looking at the newsstand price for the Sunday Times, which goes for a mere buck-fifty. For those of us who wordlessly shell out $4 for a New York Times the same day, that's a lot to swallow. And to think the daily Times will now cost that same $1.50, one-third of what the L.A. version goes for during the week.
If that wasn't enough of a bargain, then look no further than a deal the L.A. Times is offering, which expires today: get the paper from Thursday-Sunday for an entire year for $26. That's 50 cents a week. In other words, they'll probably spend more on newsprint for those papers than what you'd pay. Don't even bother with the costs of printing and delivery.
Yet, even though they're practically offering to give away the paper, they still can't get more readers.
In the end, no matter how compelling you make your product, it's not relevant if the audience you so desperately seek tells you thanks, but no thanks, we no longer require a newspaper to be part of our lives.

When Reviewing a $2,000 Bottle of Wine is Service Journalism

Why We Love the Wall Street Journal's Wine Column


A must-read for me every Friday in the Wall Street Journal is the wine column penned by the husband-and-wife team of Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher.
They're experts in a good way, telling us what we need to know without being in your face about it. They educate without teaching. And they've turned me on to some damned good wine that I otherwise wouldn't have known about.
Often, they'll spotlight vintages that not only taste great, but are a good value too. So, it was a bit hard to swallow on Friday, when they reviewed first-growth Bordeaux, like the iconic Chateau Latour, the 2005 vintage of which that goes for a mere $1,950.
That's a price that's hard to swallow, even for the Journal's well-heeled readership. Funny thing is, Gaiter and Brecher get out front and acknowledge just that.
"Is the 2005 Latour worth $1,950? As working stiffs, we can't imagine spending $1,950 on any bottle of wine."
Good for them. Nonetheless, they sip away on the Latour and some of its vaunted peers on Rupert Murdoch's dime instead of theirs. Talk about a dream job.
For the rest of us, if you can never hope to actually buy one of the wines, they allow us to become immersed in the fantasy of owning one.
However, while you'd think they'd be running to Roget's looking for new superlatives for these Bordeaux superstars, none of the wines they taste actually made them swoon, though the Latour came damn close.
One assessment may even create a PR nightmare for Chateaux Margaux, whose 2005 was rated "very good," by Brecher and Gaiter, but "just not very interesting."
And at $1,450 for a bottle, it can't afford to be boring.

Where Did All The Money Go? Star-Ledger Employees Trying to Answer That Question

Newhouse Pulls Its Version of a Zell. Or is it a Singleton?

Most employees at the Star-Ledger in Newark, NJ, had made a Faustian deal of sorts with their Newhouse overlords. Don't unionize, and we won't lay you off. Ever.
Of course, ever meant so long as we own the paper.
But now we are in newspaperdom's version of the Dark Ages, at least the version where the accountants are ruling the day, and Newhouse wants to change the game.
Newhouse wants 20 percent of the staff of the Star-Ledger and Trenton Times out the door. If not, the Star-Ledger will be sold and the Times will be shut down.
The New York Times reported that Donald Newhouse, company prexy, claims both papers have been in the red for years, and may lose up to $40 million. If so, then the question is why would Newhouse put up with that state of affairs for so long?
It's hard to imagine the Star-Ledger bleeding that much cash. It has long been the 1600-pound gorilla of New Jersey journalism, stationing reporters in most of the state's 21 counties, packing its statehouse bureau with at least 12 reporters and editors and putting out a sports section that would be the envy of most.
Of course, the Star-Ledger was afflicted with the same ills that have befallen every other newspaper, and saw its circulation fall to 345,000. But that's still good for 15th-biggest in the country.
Cuts were made accordingly -- no Knicks beat writer, for instance -- but it's hard to imagine that the paper fell so far, so fast, when it routinely laps the competition.
As for the Times, the story is somewhat different, in that it actually still has competition, miraculous nowadays for a market its size. True, the competition is The Trentonian, a scrappy if undistinguished tabloid, but competition nonetheless.
That's never a good thing in an era of freefalling circulation and ad revenues. And while, even in this lousy economy, some fool, er, idealistic investor like New York Observer owner Jared Kushner, might have an interest in the Star-Ledger, it's doubtful the Times would find any takers in this climate.
It would be hard to imagine the Star-Ledger not being in the hands of the Newhouse family. Then again, nothing should be hard to imagine in the current climate. The Newhouse News Service, a once-formidable player in regional Washington coverage, is no more, and other dominoes in the family's empire could soon be lining up to fall.
All of a sudden that 1600-pound gorilla is looking like a 97-pound weakling.

Slicing and Dicing the New York Radio Airwaves

Stations Trying to Feast on Increasingly Smaller Slices of the Pie

Given the money that's at stake, it's no surprise that the New York radio market is cutthroat on a good day. Unfortunately, that has often meant programming that's safe, staid and just plain boring.
But that's radio biz nowadays. It's hard to innovate when stations are owned by publicly traded companies leveraged to the hilt and can't wait for a new format to take hold.
Listeners are voting with their ears. The spring Arbitron book is out, and it reveals the audience is roaming the dial more looking for something to listen to.
At the top of the heap in the ratings that measure listeners 12 years old and up is urban WRKS, which jumped from a 3.9 rating to a 4.9. Which is very telling, in that it means no station in New York can claim at least 5 percent of the audience -- a first.
In second place are two Clear Channel stations, WHTZ (Z100), at 4.8 and adult contemporary WLTW (Lite FM), which is usually number one, but some format tweaks apparently drove some (but not many) listeners to rivals in the city and suburbs, resulting in a 4.4 rating.
More telling, and of more interest to station management, is that the numbers mostly hold true to form in the 25-54 demographic coveted by advertisers. Interestingly, Z100 nabbed second in that category, even though its hits format skews younger, while Lite FM (the quintessential listen-while-you-work station) only managed sixth.
In the 12+ book, other urban and Latin stations dominate the top 10, which may finally put to rest the argument about whether New York can support the three rock stations it now has (probably not).
That doesn't bode well for WRXP, which hit the airwaves in February as a Triple-A station that was supposed to be a loosely formatted station that played a wide variety of rock. However, the station has too often failed to deliver on its musical mission. Hell, it took five months for the station to even have its airstaff fully in place.
WRXP has tried to be something for everyone, rather than programming to a core adult demographic disenfranchised by other rock stations that play only the classics or head-thumping alternative tunes. It's derivative of everything and nothing at the same time.
The ratings indicate listeners are perplexed or just not interested, as WRXP finished with a miniscule 1.0.
Granted, new stations can take time to build an audience. But 'RXP is starting from a very deep hole that, given the fragmented market it finds itself in, will likely find the climb to daylight to be very perilous indeed.

Product Placement on the News? Soon, That Won't Be News

What It Feels Like Before You Throw In The Towel and Let the Ad Department Run the News

This is the sound of a man whose soul is being sucked out of him.
"I stress the fact that it is being done on a program that is a combination of news entertainment and lifestyle programming.”
Those words emanated from the lips of one Adam Bradshaw, news director at KVVU, the Fox station in Las Vegas.
Bradshaw green-lit having two cups of McDonald's iced coffee in a prominent position on the news desk. To make matters even more interesting, the Las Vegas Sun reports that the cups don't actually contain real coffee.
The way Bradshaw rationalizes pimping out his morning show is that the cups only appear after 7 a.m., when the program shifts from harder news to frothier feature spots, you know, the kind that just want to make you run out to McDonald's and get, hmmm... hey, how about some iced coffee? And while you're at it, pick up a Sausage McMuffin too? This way, you'll be fortified enough to spend a full morning dropping nickels into the slot machines.
Bradshaw digs out a nifty euphemism by calling this a "nontraditional revenue source."
Duh.
By the way, Mark, the fact that stations in Chicago, Seattle and New York have also tried something like this doesn't make it OK.

One Hand Clapping at MediaNews

Empty Rhetoric Fills Memo Aimed at Calming Jittery Few Left in the Newsrooms

Maybe Lean Dean Singleton has feelings after all.
A memo put out on Romenesko seeks to soothe the ruffled feathers for MediaNews employees, who lately have been watching what's left of their company implode around them.
For those of you new to the dance, that includes the Los Angeles Daily News, the San Jose Mercury-News, and virtually every daily paper in the Bay Area except for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Singleton's preferred method of addressing revenue shortfalls at his California papers has been to eviscerate staff and attempt to break unions.
That hasn't been enough, as the below memo shows. Singleton wants his minions to know that he feels their pain. Sort of.
The memo is actually attributed to him and MediaNews prexy Jody Lodovic. But it's Singleton as CEO who's calling most of the shots even if Lodovic is pressed to act as the hatchet man, so we'll address him head on.
For your edification, a few portions of the memo, with my comments thrown in for good measure in bold:

Is MediaNews Group meeting financial commitments under the terms of its various debt agreements?
Yes, MediaNews is in compliance with the terms of its bank agreements and continues to take steps to reduce its total debt and expect to remain in compliance in the future. As has been the case in the past, MediaNews may from time to time seek amendments of its debt agreements as necessary to provide maximum flexibility. (Uh. oh. "Seek amendments" can be loosely translated to "Renegotiate or else we'll default, declare chapter 11 and you'll get squat." Which may wind up happening in any event).

Is MediaNews concerned about the level of its debt?Certainly, given the economic environment we are in, we would rather have less debt. But, this is not our first rodeo. (Ride, em, Cowboy Dean! Yee ha!).
In the last newspaper recession (in the early nineties), we operated with higher relative levels of debt. We came out well positioned and led the industry in growth for much of the next decade. With our collective efforts, we will lead the charge again! (Don't be so quick to sing hosannas to Singleton's business acumen. At the end of the last recession, the Interent was a virtual nonentity. The car, help wanted and real estate ads came back because they had no place to go. No more. Now they're gone again. For good).

Is MediaNews looking to buy more newspapers in the near term? (With what? Singleton's galleons he's hoarding at Gringotts?)
While MediaNews believes the future of newspapers is bright, MediaNews is not currently looking to acquire more newspapers. We believe our resources should be more internally focused on reinventing our current newspaper model to support future growth plans. (on what planet?)
That said, we believe that consolidation within the industry is inevitable and will help facilitate the change necessary for newspapers to thrive well into the future. (In other words, he just contradicted himself).
MediaNews expects to be a leader in that consolidation effort (We wouldn't expect anything less).

MediaNews has always been focused on cutting costs. Is there a different strategy for the future?
The recent necessary downsizing at some of our newspapers was a difficult decision, from both a personal and professional perspective, and we will certainly miss our cohorts (used more or less correctly, but still weird). Each played an important role in the company, and there [sic] departure, through no fault of their own, leaves a whole that the rest of our employees will have to find a way to fill.....

Unfortunately, gone are the days where we can operate as a collection of standalone newspapers. We must leverage our collective resources and position ourselves to reinvest in our business going forward in order to provide the tools and resources to ensure success in the future. And, we are starting to do just that, with significant investments in the sales, marketing and research arenas (Notice how he says nothing about editorial. Given the layoffs and consolidation of news desks, especially in California, that wasn't by accident).

We recognize and appreciate your efforts and dedication during this challenging time. Remember together we can! (Yeah, I'm sure all of you MediaNews acolytes have that warm and fuzzy feeling right about now).

All of this may have come a little too late for some of Singleton's titles, like The Argus in Fremont, from where reporter Todd R. Brown lost his job last week. Which means his paper is down to two metro reporters. As he wrote on John Bowman's Spinditties blog: "God help the people of the community now -- how will the paper ever be able to cover the news with a nearly invisible staff?"

Great question. Too bad Singleton doesn't have an answer.

Tampa Tribune Editor Dares To Speak The Truth

Janet Coats Gets It, Even Though What She Has Is Pretty Grim

You can ponder the merits of a newspaper intern blogging about her summer job (probably not a good idea when you think about it though her employers seem cool with it), but thanks to Jessica DaSilva we get a window into the desultory world of the Tampa Tribune.
The Trib laid off 70 people last year, and this week announced plans to cut another 21. That's on top of 29 staffers who took buyouts. Cue the tumbleweeds.
DaSilva writes about a meeting Coats had with her charges, when she threw a wet blanket on whatever idealism her reporters had left.

“People need to stop looking at TBO.com as an add on to The Tampa Tribune,” she said. “The truth is that The Tampa Tribune is an add on to TBO.”
Wow. Someone said that? And that someone was the editor in chief? But wait… there’s more.
She continued from this point, saying she wasn’t sure, but that this had to be a step in the right direction. If we don’t move, she said, newspapers will continue their “death spiral - because that’s what this is.”

This is telling, in that this may be the first time an editor of a major metropolitan newspaper is effectively throwing in the towel and conceding that the print edition can no longer be relied on as a revenue source.
Indeed, Coats told her deflated minions that the Tribune hasn't "been bringing in profits for a long time."
But before anyone from the newsroom could crawl out onto a ledge, Coats, DaSilva wrote, reached out for a Kennedyesque moment.

News organizations offer society so much, and that is why she cannot take another job - because journalism is her calling, and she knows there is nothing else she could ever imagine herself doing.
“It’s worth fighting for,” Janet said.

Okay, then. We'll see how Coats feels in six months when Media General asks her to get rid of another 50 editors, photographers and reporters.

As for those who've responded rather nastily to DaSilva's post, let's cut her a little slack. Even if she comes off a little too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (don't dis features, Jessica, you'd be surprised how many people read them and not the A section), at least she's showing an interest in a newspaper career.
The industry will need people like her when the geezers now taking up space burn out, are forced out or drop dead when their heart is broken over what has happened to the business they once loved with a passion that has gone unrequited for too long.

Maybe Steve Doocy Could Use a Makeover

Attacking Media Enemies With a Photoshop Hatchet Job Just Another Day at the Office at Cretinuous Fox & Friends

Yellow teeth. Yellow journalism.

Fox & Friends was more than its usual odious self yesterday, when, as Media Matters exposed, it digitally altered the photos of two New York Times journalists as part of a comment about a June 28 pTimes piece about the precarious state of Fox News Channel's ratings.

Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade were all in a lather about the Jacques Steinberg article, which they say was ordered up by his editor Steven Reddicliffe, who once worked for News Corp. as editor of TV Guide and left acrimoniously.

Hence, Doocy says, a continual axe to grind against FNC.

"So, he essentially is his attack dog. His -- his poodle, if you will," whined Doocy, as they showed a photo of Steinberg's face on top of a poodle's body, with Reddicliffe's face superimposed on a man holding a leash.
But we first see larger versions of those photos, complete with yellow teeth, protruding ears and dark circles under the eyes. The actual photos have none of those.

OK, it's Fox & Friends, so maybe having fun with Photoshop and toying with the truth is both understandable and hardly surprising. But at least the idiocy that regularly emerges as discourse on that program should at least be based on some semblance of reality.

Too often, Fox has proven that's too much to ask.

The Clueless Remain That Way at Tribune

With Los Angeles Times Gutting One-Sixth of Newsroom, Sam Zell & Co. Show How Desperation Trumps Innovation

Don't be fooled.

Yesterday's announcement that The Los Angeles Times would cut 250 jobs, including 150 from the newsroom was even worse than the reductions expected after ad revenue plunged 15 percent in the first quarter.

While editor Russ Stanton readily conceded the cuts suck and that newsroom morale is next to nonexistent, he still chirped about still having one of the largest corps of journalists in the country.

Just like the Hartford Courant's brass tried put on a happy face earlier in the week, despite the shedding of about 60 newsroom jobs. The party line: the Courant would still have the largest newsroom in Connecticut. Which tells you a lot about journalism in the Nutmeg State.

This is not the end for those papers or any other Tribune property. This is not "right-sizing," to better reflect the new reality of circulation and advertising. This is a Band-Aid, plain and simple. And it's going to fall off real soon.

Instead of nip-and-tuck, we get slash-and-burn, and not because the economy is so horrid, or readers prefer to get their news fix on the Internet.

For Tribune, it's $12.8 billion in debt. The bankers are calling the shots. They don't give a squat about good journalism, they just want their dough. As The New York Times points out:

"[Tribune] reported operating cash flow in 2007 of just under $1 billion, barely more than the annual debt service payments it now faces, and revenues are dropping fast. In addition, the company faces $1.4 billion in payments over the next year.

The L.A. Times plans to cut 500 pages a week, a 12 percent reduction. That could be viewed as a start toward solvency. But there's a long road ahead, and Sam Zell is having trouble seeing over the steering wheel.

For those employees left, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Will "Hitler" Comments Dog Jemele Hill and Keep Her In Chateau Bow-Wow?

Sure She's Sorry, Just Don't Call Her Black Imus

Jemele Hill was suspended on June 17 for using her Page 2 column on ESPN.com to intone that “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”
ESPN moved relatively quickly to put her on the shelf. But she was gone all of six days. The column's back, and now she'll also be appearing on "First Take" on The Deuce on July 17-18, during the "First and Ten" segment with fellow motormouth Skip Bayless.
Hill used her June 23 column to more profusely apologize than she had before.

Real apologies don't mix with rationalizations, so I won't insult your intelligence by offering you any.

This isn't about my editors because even if the word "Hitler" never appeared in the posted column last Saturday, that doesn't change the fact that I wrote it and, at the time, found humor in making a moronic comparison between a man who was responsible for killing millions to Detroiters who root for the Boston Celtics.
This is about my living up to a standard I expect of everyone else -- respect, awareness, honesty and accountability.

Fair enough. But still. I've previously written that Hill should have been suspended and not fired, though only five days away is more than a bit mild in light of Don Imus being sacked for "Nappy-Headed Hos" and Kelly Tilghman's two-week suspension for her Tiger Woods lynching remark.

In reading her column, and an interview she did with AOL, there's still a part of me that believes Hill feels she's not in the same league as the others and therefore merits less of a sanction. This, even though she freely fesses up that what she did was wrong and hurtful to many.
As she told AOL when asked about Imus: "I know some people were putting me in that category and it's certainly their right to do so. I feel differently and I think pulling Imus into this is kind of a distraction."
A distraction? That's a cop-out, to put it extremely kindly. And it's one she's intent on sticking to, based on a testy reply to a frequent and caustic commenter on her blog.
"[T]here are very important reasons I refuse to get roped into explaining myself in light of Don Imus. Just know it's bigger than you."

But bigger than you, Jemele?

Reporters See Their Pay Vanish While Doing Their Jobs

IRS Raises Its Mileage Reimbursement Rate; Gannett Newspapers Among The Many That Nickel and Dime Reporters Squeezed at the Pump

Most newspaper reporters have had to suffer the indignities of their diminished medium, assuming they still have a job.
Many toil off the clock because they are afraid of retribution if they put in for the O.T. they're entitled to. Fewer bodies in the newsroom mean an increased story count for those who remain. Meanwhile, pay increases are miniscule if there are any at all.
Adding to that misery is gasoline north of four bucks a gallon. If you do your job right, you have to get out and cover your beat. That means getting into a car -- your own car. The IRS, at least conceptually, feels that pain. It recently bumped its mileage rate -- for those who itemize and don't get reimbursed -- to 58.5 cents a mile, a whopping eight-cent increase.
But it appears not only will most newspapers not match that for its employees, they haven't even come close to paying the old rates, at least based on comments left on the excellent Gannett Blog, which assiduously documents the underachieving, mediocrity and downright lunacy that is the hallmark of the USA's largest newspaper company.
Most of the anonymous correspondents in Gannettland say they're getting anywhere from 23 to 34 cents a mile. And some of them got increases only in the last few weeks. That's all the more shocking, given I was getting 21 cents a mile at Gannett's Rockland Journal-News --- in 1989.
At those prices in many parts of the country, reporters are effectively losing money every time they leave the office to do a story, when you factor in gas, not to mention wear and tear on the car.
Of course the company doesn't care.
They know you'll go out and do your job regardless of what you get back. What are you going to do, quit because you have to dip into your pocket to cover the tab for a visit to the pump? Where are you going to go? (their attitude, not mine, in case you're wondering).
So, if reporters don't have to absolutely, positively be there then they won't. Reporters will work the story by phone and possibly miss out on some juicy details that only somebody on the scene would spot.
Of course the company doesn't care.
All that matters is you filled some space between the ads. Doesn't matter what you wrote. It's the Gannett way.

The Bluths Will Visit The Multiplex: "Arrested Development" Movie Gets Green Light

Never-Nudes, Analrapists and Bob Loblaw Rejoice!

Arrested Development is easily the funniest show most of you never saw, which is a big reason why it's no longer on the air.

To call its cult following rabid would be a vast understatement, and was likely the reason "AD" even managed to last two-and-a-half season despite Fox programmers doing everything they could to ensure no one would watch (the last four episodes dumped to go up against the opening of the 2006 Winter Olympics? C'mon).

But now George Bluth himself, Jeffrey Tambor, has confirmed there will be a movie version of "AD." No date as to when, given that they don't have a script or shooting date yet. But hey, it does have a Facebook page!

Others from the show have mentioned a desire to do a movie, or that one has been talked about, but this is the closest confirmation yet that a movie is in the works, however preliminarily that may be the case.

Now, you could ask why anyone would make a movie based on a program that was down to about 4 million viewers when it met its untimely demise. A good answer can come by getting the series DVDs, or merely reading a synopsis of the episodes, like the classic "Afternoon Delight," on Wikipedia.

After you're done pissing your pants you should have a pretty good answer.

XM-Sirius Merger a Real Nail-Biter

Senate Democrats Weigh In With Objections, Concerns -- May Be More Than Just Election-Year Posturing

The Justice Department has given its blessing to the merger of XM and Sirius to create a satellite-radio hegemony.
The companies have done their cross-my-heart-hope-to-die routine to try and get the FCC to follow suit, in the face of opposition from the NAB and Consumers Union, among others. By all indications, the FCC vote, if and when it comes, will be close.
But now come more voices from inside the Beltway who could sway the outcome. Those would be Senate Democrats, in the form of John Kerry, Clare McCaskill and Ben Cardin. None are impressed by the XM-Sirius offer to set aside 12 channels for minority programmers and another 12 channels for noncommercial informational programming.
That comes out to about 8 percent of their total spectrum. The senators want the companies to cough up 50 channels, or about 20 percent to ensure competition. And while they're at it, they want XM-Sirius to make their receivers HD-radio compatible.
Not that very many of us are listening to HD radio, but apparently our elected officials -- many of whom presumably receive donations from broadcasters who are doing everything they can to get a piece of the digital radio pie -- want to change that.
All of this could mean a longer delay on an FCC vote, just what the companies don't want in an election year when a presumptively consumer-friendly Democrat could occupy the White House.

Black Wednesday in Tribune Land

Axe Swinging Hard at The Hartford Courant and The Baltimore Sun. Thanks a Lot, Sam Zell

All Tribune newspapers have already been trimming, slicing, dicing and disemboweling their staff count to help Sam Zell with his crushing debt, and confront the perfect storm of declining advertising and diminished circulation.
But the cuts announced today by The Hartford Courant and The Sun in Baltimore are truly scary, especially if they presage similar cuts at Tribune's larger properties.
The Courant is slashing its weekly news page count by about 25 percent, and cutting 60 people from an already-emaciated news staff.
Which makes the spin in the memo from editor Cliff Teutsch all the more empty:

Those who remain will still be by far the largest news staff in Connecticut, and comparable in size to many papers of our circulation volume across the country. We will continue to be - we must continue to be -- a journalistic force. Our readers deserve that. That has been true for 243 years, and never more so than now.

Teutsch is right, readers do deserve that. What he doesn't reveal is how the Courant will remain a "journalistic force" with a shrunken news hole and a staff to match.
I think we all know how this will eventually turn out.
In Baltimore, publisher Tim Ryan is toeing a similar party line:

We are, by far, Baltimore’s media leader, and through ongoing innovation to introduce new and exciting media for our marketplace, we will maintain our competitive position.

You so want to believe them because you want the Courant, the Sun and every other newspaper beset by ownership that wants to kill the newspaper in order to save it to succeed and do the kind of work their employees bust their butts to be proud of and serve readers well.
But in Zell, Tribune has an owner who is in way over his head and will demand more from his newspapers, which for readers will inevitably mean less.
And no self-serving memo is going to do a damn thing to change that.

Orange County Register Embarrassed By Its Outsourcing to India

Sending Some of Its Copy Editing Overseas Apparently Too Much for City Desk to Bear

Like many of its California cousins, The Orange County Register is rapidly becoming a shell of its former self.
Latest evidence on exhibit for your disapproval is word that it'll outsource some copy editing and design work to an Indian firm for a community newspaper owned by the Register as well as for the flagship paper.
It's said to be a month-long trial run. But you know management would desperately love for it to become a permanent gig, ostensibly so they can expand the program pronto.
And at a paper that's had three rounds of layoffs this year alone, calling the outsourcing an experiment is hardly cause for comfort.
Maybe the newsroom has been decimated. Maybe the sense of irony was too overwhelming. Either way, the Register posted an AP story on its Web site, rather than commission a staff-written piece.
That alone tells you a lot more than you need to know.

Time for Newspapers to Prepare for the Inevitable

With Publishers Out of Good Ideas, Maybe It's Time to Kiss The Saturday Paper Goodbye

We all know the newspaper business is bad, but The New York Times today gives us the macro view of just how bad.
Dismal as in ad revenues off about 12 percent this year from 2007's lousy numbers, which themselves were justifiable causes for depression in publishers' suites. And the numbers for May may be off as much as 15 percent.
Meanwhile, it will get harder to make the argument that newspapers are still making money, only less than they used to. The San Francisco Chronicle has long wished it could say that. But the Times reports it's losing about $1 million a week, even though the paper is being put out by a near-skeletal staff that's already made big sacrifices in pay and benefits.
So, where do we go from here? Bankruptcy and defaults are certainly a possibility at some companies. But will they instead go for the nuclear option, and jettison some papers instead?
It's hard to fathom San Francisco being without a major daily paper. But Hearst is not a charity and didn't become a media behemoth bleeding red ink the way Rupert Murdoch does for sport at The New York Post.
Nonetheless, the ripples from the impact of shutting the Chronicle could turn into a media tsunami.
No major publisher wants to be the first to blink and throw in the towel for their print edition. But if Hearst, MediaNews, Tribune or some other company in trouble went that route, others would be less hesitant to follow, regardless of the precedent.
However, I don't think Big Newspaper is ready for that fallout just yet. What you'll likely see first, though, is the end of the daily paper. Saturday print editions could -- and in some markets, should -- become a thing of the past. They're the thinnest and least-read editions of the week. It's one way to trim without turning out the lights in the newsroom.
When I started at The Record in Hackensack, N.J. in 1989, the paper did not publish on Saturdays. That soon changed, however, though the end result was a perfunctory product with shorter, superficial articles to account for a lesser interest in Saturday reading. The Record felt six-day publishing was an anachronism that needed to be eradicated. But if readers were clamoring for a The Record on Saturday, what they got might have prompted them to reconsider.
That was 18 years ago. Now, with readership and profits in sharp decline, maybe it's tiome to revisit that six-day model, not only in New Jersey but the other 49 states as well.
Newspapers with a strong web presence can keep the bulk of their report out there on Saturdays without having to kill any trees or spend a fortune gassing up delivery trucks on a day that offers little R.O.I.
As for those papers that fatten up the Saturday delivery with circulars, those can be moved up to Friday or even back to Sundays, now that those editions -- the supposed cash cows -- have become more gaunt.
It's not that I want newspapers publishing one less day. But it could be the first painful, but necessary step toward ensuring that some newspapers continue to publish at all.

"Tomorrow" Sounds Better Than "It's a Hard Knock Life" To McClatchy Editors, Publishers

Newspaper Bigwigs Drink Their Kool-Aid From Glasses That Are Always Half-Full

The sun will come out tomorrow.....

The daily forecast inside most newspapers nowadays is doom and gloom. Yet, some executives are pulling out the stops to whistle a happy tune.
Among them are editors and publishers at McClatchy newspapers, who are either severely delusional or they know something we don't know.
Based on some recent public pronouncements and industry trends, I'll bank on the former.
What else to make of the comments of John Drescher, executive editor of The News and Observer in Raleigh, where 70 people are losing their jobs by the end of the month, including 16 in the newsroom.
In a memo to staff, he wrote in part: "We will be saying goodbye to some colleagues, then embarking upon more change than we've ever seen before. If we pull together, which I know we will, we can continue to gain readership and serve this community and state with the kind of public service journalism we have done for more than 100 years."
Gain readership? Isn't the loss of readers, not to mention advertisers, a big reason why the N&O is cutting circulation, merging its sports department and state government reporting with The Charlotte Observer, and teaming up with that paper to produce several feature sections?
Sounds like the N&O will have fewer reporters doing more than ever, resulting in wide coverage gaps and making the product even less compelling that it is now. And yet somehow Drescher expects the number of readers to grow.
Elsewhere in McClatchy land, The Miami Herald is slashing its headcount by 17 percent because publisher David Landsberg told employees "we're operating in a time of great change and challenge for our operations.''
But even as he concedes that revenue, such as ads for jobs, cars and homes migrates permanently to the Web, he sees signs of a turnaround, because viewership of the Herald's Web site, Miami.com is up 35 percent, as is circulation of the Spanish-language El Nuevo Herald.
All well and good, except page views don't translate -- yet -- into corresponding increases in ad revenue. And most of those vanished classifieds have found a home on other sites -- namely those not owned by McClatchy.
Landsberg must know that. Similarly, any McClatchy employee would know that the 10 percent company-wide staff reduction likely won't be the only round of downsizing this year. It's all about the debt, as Editor & Publisher sagely notes, and McClatchy, has gobs of it.
That's not changing anytime soon. Which means more staff reductions, bureau closings, and trimming of newsholes loom, if only because newspaper executives have come up with few ideas to stave off red ink other than to reduce staff and chip away at the features that make their newspapers must reading.
As for Drescher and Landsberg, they're fooling no one except, possibly, themselves.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll love 'ya tomorrow...

Yes, Lee Abrams Has Lots of Ideas. Good Ideas? Not So Fast

Tribune's Chief Innovation Officer Offers A Blueprint For Resuscitating Newspapers That's Fused With Vision -- And Ignorance

It'd be terribly easy to say that as a newspaper executive, Lee Abrams is a brilliant radio programmer.
That may indeed be the case. But at least give him credit, as Tribune's chief innovation officer, to stick a fork in conventional wisdom and offer up an outsider's perspective.

Now that Sam Zell gave him a challenge to help re-invent newspapers the same way Abrams transformed the FM dial, he's unleashed some observations about what newspapers could and should do better.
Some are intriguing. Others prompt head-scratching. Still more are just plain dumb.

Let's take at 10 of the 15 points from Abrams to see if he is on to something, or merely on something. Some of what Abrams wrote is edited here for space, but can be read in whole via the above link.

1. COMPARTMENTALIZING: Want baseball scores? It's all there on the baseball pages of the Sports section. Market report? It's all there on the stock market page. But why aren't other important categories compartmentalized?? [T]hink 10pm News on TV. It's organized. It's consistent. Newspapers are not--or at least not to the point they NEED to be in 2008. If grocery stores were organized like newspapers, you'd wear out your shoes looking for vegetables, as carrots would be in aisle 6, tomatoes in aisle 8, etc...

All well and good, but a lot easier said than done when newspapers keep trimming their news hole, which will have to happen if Zell succeeds in achieving his goal of a 50-50 editorial-ad mix in his newspaper. Soon Tribune properties will be compartmentalizing a whole lot of nothing.

2. ASSUMPTIONS: Possibly the biggest problem. Assuming. I met a reporter who spent 4 years in Baghdad. Dodging bullets...staying in Hotels protected by the Marines. Yet, I'll bet NO-one outside of the building knew this person was risking their life in Iraq to get YOU the news. If it were CNN, you'd see rockets and RPG's in the background as the reporter ducks shrapnel. In the paper, it's usually a small byline.

If Abrams wants reporters to have a higher profile, power to him, but I'm sure Tribune editors are chortling over this one. And while the CNN Iraq crew and others on the ground there are no doubt courageous and to be admired for their work, when's the last time you saw one of them ducking shrapnel or much of anything else?

3. THE NPR FEEL? Newspapers strike me as being a little TOO NPR. I like NPR, and their shows like Morning Edition do well. But NPR can also be a bit elitist ... It's all about being INTELLIGENT...not intellectual. We are in the mainstream business. The 2008 Mainstream business. SMART...but not elite....and we DO get a little NPR at times. (And I DO like NPR...)

Abrams would have done better here if he actually gave an example or two. My guess is he's referring to The Los Angeles Times, and its dogged insistence on maintaining a full international report, not to mention enterprise pieces that might actually require readers to turn a page to finish reading. Real elitist stuff, that.

4. BRAGGING RIGHTS: Ever watch ESPN? They OWN sports. Tiger Woods has a hangnail and they will have the exclusive report. Newspapers need to live in that world a little more.... The thing is---The content is there...but it's SO weakly packaged that the other guys are running right over the papers...we look tired next to 21st Century media...

Frankly, I have no idea what he's talking about. Does he? Sounds like, though, he's preaching more sizzle. But that's all for naught if there's no budget or staff to cook the steak.

5. LIBERATE THE DESIGNERS. I heard one paper had sections "off limits" to designers. Huh???!!! That makes NO sense... Eye power!! THE ENGAGEMENT IS NOT THE HEADLINE AS MUCH AS THE LOOK. The right headline AND an amazing look and you WILL get engagement into the content.

If the above statement rises above hearsay, then Abrams is right on target. I find it hard to believe, however. Any executive editor at Tribune who would sign off on that should be shown the door pronto.

6. THROWAWAYS: In 1958 maybe people had time to discover what's inside....today they don't. Or how about "For More...go to www.thenewspaper.com" More what??? ... In one re-design I saw an article followed by three web comments with a pointer to the website. That was great. Gave you a TASTE. A generic "For More..." is a waste of ink.

Here, Abrams correctly points out that despite all the improvements newspapers have made to their Web sites in recent years, many are still very much a work in progress.

7. CONSISTENCY: At most papers, the folks show me their greatest hits. Great pages they've done. Then--I'll look at the date and it was 2004 ... We need to do that every page...every day. Why?a) That's the ONLY way it'll get noticed.b) You HAVE TO...to survive...and grow. Difficult? Yes...I know. But a reality of competing in 2008....

Surely, Tribune is paying Abrams for more than just truisms.

8. LIVING IN THE NEWSPAPER WORLD: Being satisfied with a good traditional looking newspaper isn't going to do it. Gotta break free ... Don't look to other papers. (except foreign ones) YOU are in the position to re-invent. If you look at other papers...you'll continue to live in the past.

Sounds good on paper, but if the impending redesigns at the Orlando Sentinel and South Florida Sun-Sentinel are any indication, re-invention isn't always a good thing when what emerges is an incoherent mess.

9. GETTING NOTICED: An ongoing theme. Papers DO things that'll get noticed, but package it so it's a mystery. I already said this, but it warrants a repeat. The look...the intelligence...the 2x4...day in and day out. Tweaking will kill you. Aggressively and NOTICABLY [sic] changing the look and feel can and most likely WILL grow you.

It can't hurt, but will it help? Abrams seems to believe you can get people to read a newspaper who have never have done so. Such a task is next to impossible. You need to grab readers when they're young. If their parents didn't read a paper, chances are neither will they. Online doesn't count, given that Web revenues remain a small fraction of what newspapers gross and likely won't grow at rates newspapers want and need for some time, if ever.

10. MANANA: Urgency! It's a media war out there that is NOT being won...but CAN. Recipe for failure: Focus Group...evaluate the focusgroup...have a committee meeting to evaluate...more focus groups.

Abrams is right that companies use focus groups as excuses for not making the tough choices. Newspaper publishers have no time for that.

Abrams may not be on target with all of his thinking, but at least he's thinking. Whether Zell will let that translate into meaningful action is a very different matter.

Jemele Hill "Relieved" Over Hitler Comment

Just as Bad as Imus, But At Least She Still Has a Job

The Big Lead is among those with word that ESPN came to its senses and realized that columnist Jemele Hill needed a time out so she can shake a bad case of the stupids.
"We’ve spoken with Jemele, and she understands that she exercised poor judgment," intones a statement from Bristol HQ. "She’s been relieved of her responsibilities for a period of time to reflect on the impact of her words."
Hill wrote in a column Saturday night that “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”
Oy, vey.
Fear not, for those of you in a forgiving mood. Hill still has a blog and she uses it to give the appearance of being contrite.
In case you missed her apology, and I did, it reads in part:

"I pride myself on an understanding of, and appreciation for, diversity-- and there is no excuse for the appalling lack of sensitivity in my comments. It in no way reflects the person I am. I apologize to all my readers and I thank them for holding me accountable. This has been an important life lesson for me and illustrates that, like many people, I still have a lot of growing and learning to do."

Duh.

OK, we get it, she's sorry. Left unanswered is how she could have possibly fathomed that referencing Hitler in any context would have been acceptable in any sports story. Maybe she'll get around to that someday. As she promises on the blog: "I have more to say on this issue. That will come later."
Can't wait.
As she promises on the blog: "I have more to say on this issue. That will come later."

If any of this gets you thinking about Don "Nappy-Headed Ho" Imus, you may have Hill to thank. She used her column last year to jump on the bandwagon to get the I-Man off the air.

"Imus has become a Hall of Fame broadcaster using race-baiting, offensive tactics. He is routinely offensive to people of color and women, and if he needs to lose his job to understand that there is no place for that, so be it.
As a society, there are times when we need to stand together against indecency and cruelty."

As to how what Hill wrote differs from what Imus said, the only distinction is Hill gets to keep her job, at least for now.

Slices of Life Are What Newspapers Do Best, But Can They Resonate The Same Way Online?

It's a Problem Newspapers Like The Chicago Tribune Face as More Readers Turn Away From Print

Beyond the obvious difficulties inherent when not enough readers are plunking down 50 cents for a newspaper and instead read it online, comes one issue that has still not been fully considered: can readers truly appreciate the content if it's merely displayed on a computer screen, instead of being discovered by readers turning a printed page?
I'm not sure there's a ready answer yet. My concern is that if editors don't address that question soon, some quality articles could be pushed aside or simply not pursued.
Case in point are two articles from today's Chicago Tribune.
The first is a feature from the Midwest flood coverage, about an Iowa farmer who made the difficult choice of leaving 800 hogs behind as flood waters engulfed his farm.
David Greising's dispatch is written in a way that it resonates with anyone looking for a fresh take on a still-unfolding story. You don't have to be a farmer, or even smelled a farm to know the decisions Ron Lanz had to make about his pigs weren't made lightly. You can both relate to his plight and feel his loss.
The second article is a column from Mary Schmich (above) that focuses on Robert Aquileo, an attendant at a Chicago gas station where the price for full-serve gas is now five bucks a gallon.

"The fact that customers still come means he has a job for all seasons, unlike, say, gardeners, who don't have winter work. But he used to make $30 or $40 a day in tips. Now he's lucky to make $10. Even people who will spend $5 on gas won't spend $6.
"I'm thinking of finding another job," he said.

Schmich's column was a great idea, plain and simple. Just a little shoe leather turned up a compelling slice of life, one you may not have thought of but are glad you read about.
The point? Articles and columns like these are more easily found and digested when someone actually sits down and reads the paper, be it on the El or over morning coffee. They don't lend themselves as well to online readers with short attention spans who invariably don't have the time to read a news feature, regardless of how compelling that might be.
All the blogs, video, podcasts and other bells and whistles on a Web site won't change that.
So, as more readers migrate to the Web, I fear that editors -- and, by extension, their publishers -- will deem such content superfluous to a newspaper's revised mission or too expensive to justify.
And as newspapers like the Trib find their coffers ever more parched, don't think for minute they will have online-only content that would be remotely comparable.
Which is a shame. For now, the print version still stirs the drink of what appears on the Web. But maybe not for much longer. The key then will be ensuring that what's left is worth reading.

Behind The Mets' Willie Randolph Debacle Lies an Organization That Despises the Media

Big-Time PR Boner by Mets Shows Front Office Dripping With Contempt, Devoid of Ideas

The sports stations and newspaper Web sites in New York have been dripping with bile all day over the classless, cowardly way the Mets fired manager Willie Randolph and two coaches.
While many agree it was the right decision, it was one made at the completely wrong time. But the Mets front office is good at breeding cynicism and outright scorn, a dumb move given the team's desultory performance since last September's epic late-season collapse.
First, the team does a mass email to reporters at 3:11 a.m. ET, just late enough to ensure it wouldn't make its way into the morning papers. Somehow, management forgot about that pesky Internet to get the story out.
Not that reporters weren't wary about something happening, even though the Mets had won three out of four games after last night's 9-6 win over the Angels in Anaheim.
WFAN Mets beat reporter Ed Coleman told Mike and the Mad Dog how Steve Popper of The Record asked Assistant General Manager Tony Bernazard at 11l30 p.m. Pacific time whether anyone would be fired that night. Bernazard replied in the negative.
About 40 minutes later, Randolph was gone. Later, Popper confronted Bernazard in the hotel lobby about his earlier statement, Coleman said.
Bernazard blithely replied: "Nobody got fired last night. They were fired today."
No doubt Bernazard, known to dislike Randolph, got a chuckle out of that. No doubt Popper was not amused.
But that's emblematic of the team's arrogance and lack of accountability to its players, its fans and the beat writers who day after day have trudged into a locker room that SNY's Kevin Burkhardt said recently was not a happy place to be.
By knowingly blundering Randolph's dismissal and not caring about the fallout, the Mets leadership -- GM Omar Minaya and owners Fred and Jeff Wilpon included -- will now find sharpened daggers confronting them in every sports section from here on out.
It's bad enough they did what they did when they did it. But when they messed with the media in the process, they entered a special kind of hell where even the thickest of skins are pierced. If Minaya thinks the heat is on now, just wait.
Somewhere, George Steinbrenner is having a good laugh.

Now Here's A Newspaper Promotion That Could Actually Work

Talk About Public Service

From Monday's Dallas Morning News comes this headline:

Bedford couple wins free fertility treatment from Southlake church

Something like this could be a great marketing tool for newspapers, not to mention a way to cultivate (literally) new subscribers.

ESPN Actually Fesses Up to a "Breakdown" in its Editorial Judgment in Jemele Hill "Hitler" Column

Why Blame Just the Writers When They Write Dumb Things?

ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill is either the beneficiary of a double standard. Or, she's just a dodo with clueless editors of like mind. Maybe both.
Jessica Heslam in The Boston Herald reports how Hill originally wrote in a column Saturday night that “Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan.”
Suffice to say, the column was taken down a few hours later and now reads somewhat differently, even if she is no less reticent about her hatred of the Boston Celtics, one win away from an NBA title.
Hill isn't talking, but an abashed ESPN said she and the Web site were sorry and that "we are thoroughly reviewing the entire situation.”
And in a surprising moment of candor ESPN flack Paul Melvin told the Herald there was a "breakdown in the system of editorial checks and balances. “We’re normally quite proud of the editorial judgment exercised here, but this was clearly an exception to that.”
Kudos for at least stating the obvious, which thin-skinned media organizations, devoid of any hubris, often refuse to do.
What's left unsaid is what to do about Hill. You could argue this is not a black version of Imus' "nappy-headed ho" routine. True, she didn't come right out and insult an ethnic group, but inserting any mention of Hitler in a sports story that's not about the 1936 Olympics shows gross insensitivity at the very least -- and a level of ignorance that's startling for a high-profile columnist on the leading sports Web site.
Imus was hung out to dry because CBS chief Les Moonves lost his spine and caved into the Al Sharptons and Jemele Hills (she called for Imus' ouster in a 2007 column) of this world and over-reacted by firing Imus -- for doing what he's paid to do -- instead of merely suspending him for a remark, that even for him, was out of character.
So far, ESPN's given Hill the mildest of wrist slaps. Is it because she's a woman, a black woman no less? There's no excuse for something this, so a mere apology cannot suffice.
But let's work from the assumption that she's genuinely sorry. My vote is to let Hill keep her column, but only after a healthy suspension so she can properly reflect on the hurt she inflicted. And put her editor on the shelf too.
While they're gone, make them read a few history books during their exile. They might come back as better journalists as a result. They might also return as better human beings.

Gary Pruitt: At Least He's Honest

Of Course, That Doesn't Make The Situation at McClatchy Any Better

We've been taking dumps on MediaNews and Tribune for all the bad news they've ladled up as of late.
Now, it's McClatchy's turn to slash and burn, with a 10 percent reduction company-wide, although some properties will be squealing like a pig that much harder, namely The Miami Herald, whose staff will be slashed 17 percent. That's 250 positions that will be going away.
Why is the Herald -- that former Knight-Ridder flagship -- getting a bigger pimp slap from corporate?
"The Miami Herald's performance has been worse than most, if not all, of the newspapers, and . . . there were some opportunities for greater efficiencies,'' intoned McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt.
Greater efficiencies? You might get a good argument about that in the shrunken Herald newsroom. But when your real estate market implodes and other ads, like help wanted and auto migrate permanently to the Web -- and generally not to MiamiHerald.com -- it's time to get out the scythe.
The scary part? If you think it's bad now, just wait. Pruitt told The Sacramento Bee "I'm hopeful that we'll see some improvement as the year goes on; to date, we have not seen that."
And Pruitt and any realist at McClatchy knows that they won't.

Lou Reed Doesn't Want To Take A Walk on the Wild Side of Satellite Radio

Apparently, It Really Is All About The Music

When you're a 66-year-old rock icon/influencer/elder statesman/cool guy, I guess you can be a surly crank in public and not have to apologize for it later.
Lou Reed is that guy, judging by a short -- probably shorter than anticipated -- interview he gave to New York magazine about his new show "New York Shuffle" he co-hosts on Sirius satellite radio.
It's obvious in the interview Reed's all about the music. After all, the show is kind of like a freeform college radio show for grown-ups, where Ornette Coleman and The Animal Collective might be heard on the same program.
However, interviewer Andrew M. Goldstein didn't realize how obvious it was when he asked:

Sirius's impending merger with XM is anticipated to boost earnings. Do you own any stock in the company?

What are you, a fucking asshole? I'm here telling you the truth about music and you want to know if I have stock in the fucking radio? You fucking piece of shit. What did I do to deserve that?

The interview ended soon after.

Think it's time for Lou to switch to decaf.

Now That The Smoke and Mirrors Have Been Hauled Away, We Can Finally See Sam Zell Sweat

Having $12.8 Billion in Debt Will Suck The Bravado Right Out of You

Like many in the media business, I've been pondering last week's pronouncements from Tribune big cheese Sam Zell and his Right-Hand Man/COO Randy Michaels about how the newspaper model was broken and, by cracky, they were going to fix it pronto.
The talking points: less news, fewer reporters, smaller papers, better Web sites. And they'll be a lot more maps and graphics so customers won't have to bother with such things as actually reading articles.
Nobody disagrees that Tribune has to do something to pay down its voluminous debt. Selling the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field (and kudos if they can seal the deal while the Cubbies still have the best record in baseball) will be one Band-Aid to a long-term problem for the company.
Before you rush off to vilify Michaels and Zell, they deliver up some hard truths that journalists have no choice but to swallow hard and accept. However, too many of their conclusions and what they're proposing smacks more of desperation than true vision.
The biggie in my book is Michaels' view of productivity as measured by counting bylines. "We can eliminate a fair amount of people, while eliminating not much copy," Michaels told the Chicago Tribune.
Spoken like the radio guy he is, not someone who's ever worked in a newsroom, which he hasn't.
Of course, any newsroom has its share of dead weight, but with the abundance of recent layoffs and buyouts, there can't be that much left. Michaels begs to differ. The end result will be even fewer bodies covering the news. But that's OK, the newshole will be smaller too.
Zell's going to impose a 50-50 ad/editorial ratio, excepting classifieds and preprints. Given the dropoff in ad spending, that'll inevitably mean less room for copy. And, ostensibly, even less of a reason to buy the paper.
Zell all but develops hives when he thinks about what a paper like The Los Angeles Times spends on national and foreign coverage. Suffice to say, he'd like to spend a lot less and get a better ROI on the millions the paper doles out to the A.P. and Reuters.
Bad move. Then again, so was wagering billions of other people's money that you could resurrect a media company just as the core of its business model was cratering.

And You Thought The Newspaper Business Was Doing Lousy

Quick, Somebody Throw Magazine Publishers A Pity Party

The trials and tribulations that have beset the newspaper business -- highlighted by the perfect storm of simultaneous, precipitous declines in circulation and advertising -- have been well-documented here and many other sources.
Less visible, but no less dramatic, have been the maladies that have overtaken Magazine World, which is often a perilous place to reside even in an up economy.
The ax has been swinging far and wide, especially in trade and B2B pubs. Folio has done yeoman's work keeping track of all of them, including today's announcement of 42 people canned from Penton Media and the 41 no longer collecting paychecks at Reed Business Information, with 10 more out the door at UBM Group, which may now be part of a possible merger (full disclosure: I currently work for another UBM company).
They're among many B2B magazine groups that have either gotten rid of staff or of titles altogether to avoid wading into the Magazine Death Pool.
There is another way to avoid obsolesence or irrelevance, or so U.S. News and World Report hopes. It's going biweekly, conceding as if it really needed to be conceded, that nobody needs them for another take on national and world events.
The magazine was already down to 36 issues, off from 46 issues last year. So what's another 10 editions between friends?
Nowadays, U.S. News has staked its reputation on its lists, best colleges, law schools, hospitals, etc. to gain any traction with the outside world. And those rankings might actually put it in an enviable perch above its newsweekly brethren, which can't claim any such pedigree.
Indeed, both Time and Newsweek have taken some big-time tumbles in circulation this year -- on average about 25 percent -- and now they're in the process of figuring out how to be must-reads rather than merely take up space in waiting rooms.
Good luck with that.