Don’t forget to take our poll: Will the Detroit Experiment Succeed?

Writing in Fortune, Richard Siklos has the most perceptive analysis of the Tribune Co. ownership picture we’ve seen. Siklos scores Sam Zell for his hubris and for characterizing his company as employee-owned when the only votes that counted were his and those of the former shareholders who approved the transfer of Tribune shares to a toothless employee stock option plan. What happens to those employee-owners now, Siklos asks? Barring an unlikely market turn, they’ll lost most or all of their investment, leaving them just with their 401(k) holdings. In all fairness, Sam Zell also stands to lose his investment, Siklos points out, although we doubt they’re stocking up on the macaroni & cheese at the Zell mansion. This brief, insight-packed piece ends by speculating that Tribune Co. will emerge from bankruptcy with about a $4 billion valuation. At that price, Zell may actually be tempted to put in some more money. Eeek!

2009 Forecasts Offer Little To Smile About

Researchers quit using euphemisms to describe the industry’s troubles some time ago. Now they vie to see who can come up with the strongest adjectives. “Terrible” is how Kubas Consultants describes the newspaper ad revenue outlook for 2009 after surveying 400 newspaper executives. The report offers a “very negative outlook” because a “disaster area” is looming in employment classifieds. Seemingly at a loss for more superlatives, the report summarizes: “the severity of expected declines is remarkable.” All this for a forecast of a 9.1% decline in revenues in 2009, which would actually be less than the 2008 wreckage to date. It’s the cumulative effect that invokes shock and awe, though. “If Kubas’ predictions for 2009 come to pass, by the end of next year, newspapers will have lost about 30% of their total revenues in four years,” says MediaPost. This story has no hope in it. If you’re hoping for a nice weekend, read something else.

Scribes Sum Up Industry Woes In Painful Detail

“Across the U.S., more than 30 papers are up for sale, but there are no buyers,” sums up a long piece from Britain’s Independent that’s kind of a Wikipedia entry for newspaper industry turmoil. Regular readers of this blog and others like it won’t find a lot of new information in Stephen Foley’s 1,900-word opus, but the piece is a nice digest of the events of 2008.

Particularly notable is its description of the travesty that was Sam Zell’s purchase of Tribune Co. just 19 months ago. Foley dug up some choice Zell boasts about how his deal didn’t require the stars to line up perfectly in order to succeed, while Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal acquisition did. Fast forward to today and look who’s laughing. The Journal‘s circ is holding steady and Murdoch is actually investing in the paper while Tribune Co. is in court receivership. “Sam Zell is a demonstration of the proposition that a group of people that knows nothing about the newspaper business going in, is unlikely to be successful,” says Poynter’s Rick Edmonds in the story’s best quote.

Solutions? Sadly, the piece turns up nothing new, other than the idea of putting some papers into a not-for-profit trust, as the St. Petersburg Times has done. The nonprofit ideas may have some merit, since profits won’t be an issue before long, anyway. Why not call a spade a spade?

Maybe it’s because the new year’s drawing close, but this is certainly the week for epic analyses of the state of the industry. The Toledo Free Press kicks in a rambling 1,700-word essay with lots of facts but little new perspective. And the headline, “Changing media landscape causing problems, new opportunities in Toledo and nationwide,” appears to have been written by a search engine.

The story has one great quote, though, from FOX Toledo’s President/General Manager Ray Maselli in response to a question about recent layoffs: “We are adjusting to the needs of our environment and re-engineering the way we do business. WUPW’s ongoing investments in operational efficiency as well as our commitment to serving viewers and advertisers with optimal products and services are effectively positioning us as a more diversified, multi-media news organization.” We think “investments in operational efficiency” is the best euphemism for “layoff” we’ve seen all year.

Plain Dealer Kicks Laid Off Employees When Down

The 2008 Conflict Avoidance Trophy goes to the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the surreal way in which it handled the layoffs of a dozen people. Management turned an already unpleasant task into a humiliating water torture for the entire staff and then kicked the sacked employees when they were down.

Cleveland Scene has the details. As we noted earlier, the Plain Dealer staff was told not to come in to work until after 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 2. Laid-off employees were notified by phone. So if someone didn’t call to say you were out of a job, you were expected to come in to the office. And smile, dammit! As if that wasn’t bad enough, management arranged for laid-off employees to clean out their desks on a Saturday morning and to enter the building from the back where they would attract the least attention. “For some, decades of service ended like a protected, shameful secret,” writer D.X. Ferris sums up.

Ferris showed up in the P D parking to try to interview the sacked employees but they told him to bug off. That’s not surprising under the circumstances: People with some of the most well-recognized names in Cleveland being hustled out the back door so no one would have to witness their shame. It doesn’t get much more humiliating than that.

Miscellany

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has laid off 39 employees at the newspaper and affiliated community publishing group as part of an ongoing plan to cut staff by 10% before the end of the year.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is offering a buyout package to all 200 of its Guild employees. Management said the offer is being made to avoid layoffs, which is management shorthand for saying there are probably going to be more layoffs.

We were interviewed by freelancer Michelle Rafter for her blog WordCount – Freelancing in the Digital Age (freelancers need all the support they can get these days). The focus was on community news, which is a mixed bag of an industry these days. While it seems that big publishers like Gannett and Journal Register can’t be bothered with community newspapers at the moment, some of the most innovative work is actually going on there.

Faced with devastating cuts to their arts coverage, the Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram have teamed up to share reporting resources, according to a local blog called Art&Seek. The deal means that some local music and theatre will continue to get newspaper coverage that would have otherwise been lost, but some members of the arts community also fear that the loss of competing perspectives will put too much influence in the hands of too few critics.

An expected write-down at Lee Enterprises could force the troubled owner of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other newspapers into default on $306 million in debt, the St. Louis Business Journal reports.

Last month we told you about Helium, a citizen journalism site that’s seeking to partner with newspapers to provide what is essentially high-quality blog content. Now the Lawrence (Mass.) Eagle-Tribune has become Helium’s second customer. The paper will use Helium’s writer’s marketplace to find and contract with local stringers “who are compensated for contributing articles on a variety of topics ranging from wedding planning tips to great day trips with your kids, to seasonal gardening advice and concert reviews.” While this isn’t exactly hard-hitting journalism, it is going to cost the Eagle-Tribune a lot less than paying professional writers.

And Finally…

If the rapidly developing world of social media has you feeling dazed and confused, you’re not alone. There are so many new websites and so little time to drink them all in. Boston interactive agency Overdrive Interactive is trying to help with Social Media Map, a visual guide to the most essential social media resources that resembles a really dense version of the New York City subway system. You can download the clickable PDF here.

Esquire‘s 75th anniversary issue in October was a media sensation for its battery-powered cover and fat ad folio. But that’s about all the men’s magazine has to crow about this year. It’s lost 14.56 percent of its ad pages this year, according to Media Industry Newsletter, and that’s on par with performance at other monthlies. Quoting:

The Atlantic is down nearly 17 percent, and Vanity Fair is down almost 15 percent…In October, Condé Nast scaled back Men’s Vogue to two issues a year, leaving the three biggest men’s fashion magazines as GQ, Details (which lost 11.49 and 6.48 percent in ad pages, respectively) and Esquire.

Times are tough for broad consumer magazines. Newsweek may slash its circulation by as much as 60% in response to the high cost of production and postage, Folio magazine reports. The cuts may be as high as 1.6 million subscribers out of Newswek’s 2.6 million circulation base. Editors reportedly have Economist-envy and want to turn Newsweek into a magazine of thought leadership rather than a big old mass-market play. The Economist has a North American circulation of 714,000

Another factor in the cutbacks is that news magazines have been acquiring a much greater percentage of ‘non-renewable circ’ than they did before in order to satisfy advertiser demand. Non-renewable circ is mainly give-aways and promotions, making it expensive and less valuable that list-based paid subscriptions. Quoting:

“Such a drop in guaranteed circulation is not uncommon, particularly in the newsweekly category. Time cut its rate base by 750,000 copies in January 2007. Newsweek followed suit, dropping 500,000 copies from its circulation in November of that year.”

Fortunately, there’s Google. MediaPost says Google will create digital archives of the print editions of dozens of consumer magazines going back decades. The news comes not long after Google said it was making the entire photo archive of Life–about 10 million images–available online, including many that have never appeared in print. Google has been on a tear lately and its mission to digitize all the world’s printed content. In September, Google unveiled plans create historical archives of newspapers back to the very first print editions. Publishers are expected to make money by monetizing assets that had been all but out of reach to the public for many years.

2009 Seen Bringing New Wave of Consolidation, But Not the Happy Kind

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine quotes newspaper executives saying that 2009 will see a fresh round of consolidation, but this one won’t be driven by visions of growth. Instead, mergers and acquisitions will be overseen by “big bankers seeking to ensure that the money they’ve lent, or at least a decent portion of it, is repaid.”

The bad news is spreading to other areas of traditional media. “Robert Coen, a senior vice-president at ad firm Magna who’s known for his ad forecasts, just predicted that local TV ad revenues will be down 9% this year and an additional 7% next year,” Fine writes. “In case you were wondering, Coen expects newspaper ad revenue to post another double-digit decline in ’09.” Ugh.

Cutbacks in Cincinnati

City Beat Cincinnati devotes an unbelievably long story to news that the Cincinnati EInquirer, the area’s only remaining daily newspaper, laid off several employees Dec. 2 and 3. At least 30 jobs were cut. That’s in addition to the voluntary severance packages that 60 staffers took in September.

In addition, the EInquirer‘s newshole will be reduced by six pages on Sundays and a total of 30 pages across the other weekdays beginning in three weeks. Editor Tom Callinan says the layoffs were concentrated among middle managers, not worker bees. “It was a personal statement that it was painful to lay off middle managers I know very well. But we did not touch one hour of reporting, even good reporters that we just hired. Good stories are our last best hope.”

Here Comes The Guardian!

Perhaps heartened by the success of the Financial Times in its cross-pond expansion, The Guardian plans to make its presence known on American shores this year. Quoting:

Tim Brooks, the managing director of Guardian News & Media said underscored the company’s commitment to continued growth in North America. “This year has seen the beginnings of serious investment in our North American presence, through the expansion of our editorial resource in Washington and the acquisition of ContentNext Media in New York and LA.”

Pulitzer Warily Embraces Online-Only Media

“Pulitzer Prizes Broadened to Include Online-Only Publications Primarily Devoted to Original News Reporting.” It’s the last part of that headline from Pulitzer press release that illustrates the conundrum the organization faces. The Pulitzer organization has been under increasing pressure to recognize the work of online-only media outlets, but doesn’t want to be swamped with entries from casual bloggers. So the organization this week, finally modified its criteria to include news organizations that don’t produce in print. The Board also decided to allow entries made up entirely of online content to be submitted in all 14 Pulitzer journalism categories.

Writing about the policy change, marketing guru Seth Godin comments:

“Tom Friedman can win a well-deserved prize for writing what is essentially a blog for the NY Times, but if he goes off on his own, he’s out. What a shame. As newspapers melt all around us, faster and faster, the people in the newspaper business persist in believing that the important element of a news-paper is the paper part.

“The opportunity…is to organize and network and identify and reward [responsible journalism] activity when it happens online. Not because the site is owned by a paper or because the founder has connections to the old media. No, because they’re doing work that matters. If I ran the Pulitzers, I’d hand out a dozen more every year to people working exclusively online.”

Miscellany

The Toledo Blade is laying off 23 people, most of them in the newsroom. The cuts are due to declining ad revenue and the newspaper’s ties to the auto industry. Assistant Managing Editor LuAnn Sharp said Wednesday that most of the layoffs will be in the newsroom. Five of the employees work part time. After the layoffs, The Blade will employ 425 companywide.

New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson says the company is ‘well-positioned to weather the challenges next year is expected to bring” and is not for sale. In preparing for a tough year, the Times Co. is mortgaging its headquarters and slashing its dividend. However, it appears that the company will at least remain viable, which can’t be said about some of its competitors.

Gannett’s chief financial officer said Wednesday that full-year 2008 revenue declined 8% and he expects headcount to continue to fall, ranging from mid- single-digit percent declines at USA Today to a mid-teen drop at Gannett’s U.K. operations. Fortunately, he also expects newsprint to decline by double-digit rates next year.

And Finally…

Sheldon Cohen sold the landmark Out of Town News kiosk in Harvard Square in 1994 after 39 years, but now he wants it back. He told Cambridge, Mass. city councilors Monday night that he has been overwhelmed by reaction to the news that the current owners decided not to renew their lease. “I’m thinking of coming back,” he said. “This is an opportunity to bring some life back to the square.” to be fair, no one has proposed tearing down the kiosk. The most likely outcome is that it ends up as a Starbucks. Despite Cohen’s misgivings, he may quickly find that there is a reason the current owners want out.  (Photo credit: Cambridge Chronicle)

As the newspaper industry winds down its worst year in history, some observers are finding hope amid the rubble.

Jonathan Zittrain points out that Twitter and Mahalo were powerful tools for documenting the crisis in Mumbai nearly two weeks ago. For many Americans, foreign news services and the BBC were all that was available to track the terrorist attacks. Few US newspapers even have stringers in Mumbai any more. Into that vacuum sprang citizen journalists with their cell phones and self-built news sites. Zittrain says he’s seen the future of news in these services. Check out the Mumbai hash on Twitter, the Mumbai Terrorist Attacks page on Mahalo and the Wikipedia entry on the Mumbai attacks.  Can you read these accounts and not believe that a new kind of journalism is being created before our eyes?

European editor Frédéric Filloux and former Apple honcho Jean-Louis Gassée meander a bit before getting to the point, but finally zero in on what’s going right in the news world. They point to The New York Times’ introduction of Times Extra as an example of how the link economy is transforming the news business. Times Extra integrates news from outside sources – including competitors – into the Times’ home page. This is a bitter pill for hyper-competitive editors to swallow, but a necessary one in the new model of news.

They also point to two other recent announcements – the success of The Politico’s new wire service and Huffington Post’s $25 million capital infusion – as evidence that there’s plenty of life in the news business, just not in the old news business. “The Internet economy is moving in the right direction,” Filous writes. These stories, “provide evidence of…progress. Similar news organizations are bound to find sustainable business models.”

If you run a newspaper, you might consider hiring Gordon Borrell for your next team-building event. Check out these quotes and paraphrases attributed to the founder of research firm Borrell Associates in Investor’s Business Daily (lightly edited):

• “We’re confident it’s near a bottom, and there will be a rebound.”
• Newspaper companies have plenty of growth ahead for their Internet businesses — albeit with hard work… Newspapers are planning for exponential growth from the Web — in some
• Local advertising, which newspapers are best positioned to capture, will grow 47% this year to $12.9 billion.

These optimistics comments come on top of recent news that advertising on newspaper websites declined 3% in the third quarter of 2008, indicating that the one business that should be growing is actually shrinking. They are also rather oddly juxtaposed with the chart at right. We hope Borrell is correct, but his comments shouldn’t be cause for complacency.

Miscellany

Disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich allegedly pressured the Chicago Tribune to fire Deputy Editorial Page Editor John McCormick and other unnamed editorial board members in exchange for getting state funding that would grease the wheels for Tribune Co. to sell the Chicago Cubs. We suspect this story might have something to do with it. We also marvel that the great state of Illinois could elect a marvel of leadership like our President elect and a scumbag like Rod Blagojevich to office at the same time.

The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch is laying off 18 employees while the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News will collectively cut 35 jobs, reports Editor & Publisher. No word on what percentage of their respective workforces the cuts represent. The Philadelphia layoffs will concentrate in the newsroom, however.

Self-described troglodyte Ted Venetoulis is still interested in buying the Baltimore Sun. Or maybe the 72-year-old investor is just looking to get his name in the paper. See for yourself. The Baltimore Business Journal reports that Venetoulis and a group of anonymous investors are still looking at possible acquisition of the Sun from its troubled Tribune Co. parent, but a lot has to be worked out first, including assessing the future of the newspaper industry itself. Venetoulis admits that he hasn’t looked at the Sun’s financials, that he wouldn’t want to pay too much and that he’s going to watch Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy closely. It’s too early to tell. Which makes us wonder why the BBJ committed 500 words to this meaningless story.

The Christian Science Monitor sums up the troubles plaguing the industry. This story doesn’t break a lot of new ground, but we couldn’t resist mentioning it because we’re quoted there.

And Finally…

The Daily Show analyzes the decline of newspapers in its own inimitable style.

And from Rob Tornoe, cartoonist at The Politicker:

Miami Herald For Sale
McClatchy puts the south Florida institution on the auction block, perhaps as a way to raise money to pay off its Knight-Ridder debt. But who’s going to buy the paper? Other titles that have been taken off the market for lack of interest include the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, San Diego Union-Tribune and Austin American-Statesman.

New York Times To Leverage HQ For Ready Cash
Quoting:

The New York Times Co. is borrowing $225 million against a portion of its new headquarters in Manhattan. The company has to raise money to make a $400 million payment on one of its revolving lines of credit this coming May; the other $400 million line of credit, as yet untapped, may very well be canceled by financiers spooked by the credit crunch and economic downturn.”

Viacom, NBC, Others Cull 30,000 in Fight for Their Future – Advertising Age
Quoting:

The media industries have shed more than 30,000 jobs in 2008, according to an Ad Age analysis of Department of Labor employment statistics and news reports. That’s about 3.5% of the total media work force of 858,000. Since the bubble-inflated high-water mark in 2000, media has lost more than 200,000 jobs.

WPP’s media-buying unit Group M is predicting a 3.9% fall in U.S. ad spending in 2009, according to estimates to be released this week. That’s after no ad spending growth from 2007 to 2008.

Fitch Ratings is predicting the weakest year for advertising since 2001. BMO Capital Markets is predicting a 2% drop in U.S. advertising in 2009 but a deeper 5.4% slide in spending on measured media, with radio down 7.6%, broadcast TV down 8.7%, newspapers down 12.1% and magazines down 8.2%.

The good news for media companies is that consumers are spending more time in front of screens than ever before, said Group M Chief Investment Officer Rino Scanzoni. “We are looking at a generation of people that have grown up with multiple media that are now becoming major consumers. Viewing has increased; it’s just fragmented over more pieces.

Would You Pay Money to See Your Favorite Site Ad-Free?
Frank N. Magid Associates asked consumers if they would pay for Web content. The results were resouding. Quoting:

When we asked consumers if they would pay $39.99 a year, which comes out to less than $4 a month, for an ad-free version of one of their favorite sites, only 2.4% said definitely yes, they would be likely to do so…At the lower price of $29.99 a year, or less than $3 a month, only another 1.9% of consumers said they would be very likely to pay for an ad-free version.

Christie Hefner Exits Playboy
It seems the end of a 20-year rein as CEO should merit more than a one-paragraph news brief. Also, who’s going to replace her?

We’re anticipating that the R.I.P. column to the left could get quite a bit longer in 2009, and it’ll probably start with the Rocky Mountain News. The venerable Denver newspaper (at 149 years, it is said to be the longest-running business in Colorado) was put up for sale last week by E W Scripps. No one, however, thinks Scripps will find a buyer. If so, the Rocky will close around mid-January.

Buyers won’t surface because, as Wayne State University’s Ben Burns says in a colorful quote in the rival Denver Post, it would be like “buying an anchor that’s already been thrown overboard.”

Except it would be more like being chained to that anchor. The Rocky is on track to lose $11 million this year and no one is forecasting a revival of the advertising market until at least the third quarter of 2009. Any buyer would also assume a 50% share in the Denver Newspaper Agency, a joint venture set up in 2001 to operate both the Rocky and the Post in such a way that both papers can survive. The Agency is now losing money and its governance structure makes it difficult for any buyer to make changes without going through approvals and competitive disclosures.

The most likely buyer would be the Post, but quotes by Publisher Dean Singleton last week left little doubt about that possibility: “We wish Scripps well as it leaves the Denver newspaper market,” wrote Singleton in a letter to employees. Why would Singleton want to buy the Rocky, anyway? It’s cheaper and easier to let the paper fail and then pick up whatever assets and people the Post needs to fill in the gaps. There would also be less likelihood of an antitrust challenge under that scenario.

The Rocky employs 220 people in the newsroom, all of whom will lose their jobs if the paper fails. The paper has a rich journalistic tradition, including two Pulitzer Prizes as recently as 2006. People aren’t exactly dancing in the streets at the Post, however. As columnist William Porter notes, “I feel like I did upon hearing an old adversary was terminally ill: bad for him and bad for myself, because in butting heads we somehow made each other better.”

It seems oddy fitting, by the way, that one of the Rocky‘s recent Pulitzers was for a photo essay called “The Final Salute.” As of this morning, there are nearly 300 comments on the story on the Rocky website about the sale.

Politico Reports Strong Response to New Wire Service

Attempting to exploit newspapers’ frustration with the Associated Press, CNN has stepped into the breach with its own international news network. But the cable company may face some unexpected competition: The Politico. The Washington-based boutique news service, which specializes in Capitol Hill coverage, has signed up 67 newspapers for its news service over the last three months. They include the Arizona Republic, Des Moines Register, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Philadelphia Inquirer, as well as all 27 dailies owned by Advance Publications. Several of its new clients are in dire financial circumstances and have cut back upon or eliminated their Washington bureaus. That makes Politico’s value proposition compelling. As we’re written before, The Politico continues to be an example of how specialized journalism can fill the gap left by broad-based media titans in an era of micro markets.

Miscellany

• Newsday will slash 100 jobs, or about 5% of its workforce, in its third headcount reduction of the year. According to a report on Newsday.com, “In the newsroom, the photo operation would be restructured with 20 photographers told to reapply for new positions. Also impacted would be three sports columnists and a reporter-researcher in the Albany bureau.” Most open positions will also be eliminated. Newsday has cut 250 jobs this year, or about 9% of its staff.
• MediaPost’s Media Daily News runs the summary numbers and they’re ugly (right). Gannett has cut headcount from 41,000 in 2000 to about 29,000 today. Tribune Co. is down 30% to 18,000 people. The New York Times Co.’s workforce is about 26% smaller than it was in 2000. McClatchy has reduced its workforce by more than the number of employees it picked up with the acquisition of Knight-Ridder in 2006. In all, the big newspaper publishers have cut more than 25% of their staff in the last eight years, and there are few spots on the horizon that indicate that employment might come back. By the way, Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts layoff tracker puts total 2008 US newspaper layoffs and buyouts at 15,153 and counting.
• A dozen Baltimore Sun employees have left the company and three were laid off in the first announced job reductions since the paper’s 100-employee blood bath in August.

Hot on the heels of the newspaper industry’s record-breaking 18.1% quarterly revenue decline, analysts are weighing in with dire forecasts and advice.

“A newspaper that cannot sell enough advertising or cut enough expenses to sustain profitable operations is not likely to make it to the other side of 2009,” writes Alan Mutter in a depressing outlook on the industry’s immediate future. While the rest of Mutter’s post isn’t as provocative as that closing statement, it provides a detailed analysis of which markets are mostly likely to see mergers or closures (Minneapolis, San Francisco, Southern California, Southern Florida) as well as markets like Chicago and Boston, where two competitors are locked in battles of mutual destruction. The most likely scenario for 2009 is that publishers will have to choose from a palette of equally distasteful cost-cutting options, and that the measures they have to take will be more drastic than the 10%-20% workforce cuts of the past year. Mutter lists voluntary pay cuts, massive outsourcing, frequency reduction and asset sales as being on the table.

Fitch Ratings might agree. Its report says several major daily papers could shut down by 2010. Speaking in that odd third-person-singular that investment companies like to use, the agency sa

ys “Fitch expects newspaper industry revenue growth will be negative for the foreseeable future,” and that credit ratings are likely to decline further. Unlike the 2001 advertising crash, this one is affecting both national and regional advertisers, the credit rating agency says. “And unlike the easy credit and lower interest rates during the 2001 ad recession, this time advertisers and consumers face a credit freeze.” The outlook for 2009? Don’t ask. Fitch expects real US GDP to drop 1.2% while inflation hovers at 2.7%.

Steve Outing has some advice for newspaper executives struggling with the reinvention question. While his E&P column isn’t as edgy as usual, his prescriptions are practical. The most counter-intuitive in our opinion: stop chasing young people. Millennials aren’t going to read newspapers, so your redesigns intended to make your print edition more appealing are going to fail. Reach out to them through their mobile devices and services that aggregate their social networks with news (he isn’t more specific about this; Facebook is a pretty big obstacle to this goal). Focus your print editions on the readers who want to read print. Yeah, they’re older, but they’re still viable. You’re going to be

managing print down for the next 15-20 years, so get used to it. And while you’re at it, start pushing those older print readers online. Make your newspaper a gateway to enhanced services on the Web. And for God’s sake, stop wasting your time on fluffy lifestyle pieces. Print loyalists want serious journalism.

Outing has some investment advice, too: hire someone to maximize online visibility through social media channels, bring in a mobility specialist and give your staff time to come up with novel ideas for reinvention. The problem, of course, is who’s got the time or money for all this? Outing doesn’t address the budget issue but then again, he’s a pundit, not an accountant.

Profiling the Provocateur

The New York Observer has a long profile of local media guru Jeff Jarvis, who perhaps vexes the mainstream media industry more than any other contrarian. That’s because Jarvis, who now teaches journalism at NYU and agitates with his popular Buzz Machine blog, is one of them. He worked at the San Francisco Examiner, New York Daily News, People and TV Guide, among other outlets, and was founding editor of Entertainment Weekly. Jarvis may understand traditional media’s pain, but he doesn’t cut the industry much slack.

He is passionate about citizen journalism and the need for media institutions to remake themselves as hubs of news, commentary and conversation among a community of people with similar interests. He has little tolerance for the go-slow mentality that pervades American newsrooms. As Jarvis sees it, the quicker we blow up the old, the quicker we can get on with the new. And he makes his points in blunt, sometimes profane language.

This has made Jarvis a hot potato for a tribe of senior editorialists who are trying to balance their respect for the man with their distaste for his revolutionary ideas. The piece quotes several of these top editors, including New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, who clearly finds some of Jarvis’ ideas persuasive but is uncomfortable with his extremism. Gawker’s Nick Denton sums it up: “Of all the Internet supremacists, he is the one who has betrayed his origins in print. Of all the people who grew up in newspapers and magazines, he is the one who has most clearly abandoned them.”

Jeff Jarvis is required reading at the Death Watch and we commend him to you.

Poignant Tales From the Front Lines

Pam Podger and her husband moved from Virginia to Montana because they loved the natural beauty and the lifestyle. They took at job at the Missoulian. Nine months later, they were both laid off on the same day. More than 50 years of journalism experience was thus thrust out on the street, with two kids to care for. Podger writes in American Journalism Review of her anxiety, her fears about the future of journalism and her determination to stick it out in her new home.

Cost-cutting is robbing the public of an American institution – the editorial cartoonist. “In the past three years, around three dozen artists have been laid off, forced to take buyouts or to retire, according to the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists,” says an Associated Press piece. The story spotlights Eric Devericks, whose work is pictured above. Devericks has known nothing but success since his work was recognized with a national award while he was still in college. But rewards don’t amount to a hill of beans in an industry that’s cutting bone, so the Seattle Times laid him off effective next Friday. Next month, Devericks, his wife and three kids are “heading to southern California, where two buddies have offered Devericks a job as a business development specialist for their new industrial design company,” says the AP account. The curtain is quickly coming down on a generation of journalists who proved that the brush, as well the pen, can be mightier than the sword.

Magazine Ad Pages Drop, Holiday Season Looks Grim

These numbers are just gruesome. Quoting:

On Oct. 28, the Conference Board announced that its consumer confidence index had plummeted to an all-time low of about 38 out of 100, a drop of over one-third from its level of 61.4 in September. The expectations index–which evaluates consumer sentiment about the future–went even lower, dropping from 61.5 to 35.5. Lynn Franco, director of the Conference Board’s research center, said the decline in the confidence index was “the lowest reading on record” since the index began tracking consumer attitudes in 1985.

Macy’s said it will eliminate all magazine advertising in the first half of 2009, although its holiday marketing budget is still largely intact. Subsequently, The New York Times reported that Neiman’s specialty retail segment–including Neiman Marcus Stores and Bergdorf Goodman–saw sales tumble 27.6% in October, while Nordstrom is down 15.7%, and Target fell 4.8%.

Traditional Media Hit Harder Than In Past Recessions

It used to be that three mainstream media channels – newspapers, radio and magazines – reliably predicted the economy’s decline into a recession and its recovery. That all changed about three years ago. Newspapers and magazines fell while the economy was rising and show no sign of anticipating a recovery. The results, writes Erik Sass:

“While softening ad revenue anticipated the two previous economic downturns by about a year, in the most recent case, the slowdown for magazines, newspapers and radio began about three years before. In addition, the declines have already proven to be steeper in this pre-recession period than at the height of the previous ones. This suggests that all three traditional media, suffering from both secular and macroeconomic trends, are poised to suffer unprecedented losses in the economic downturn that is now unfolding.

Cleveland Plain Dealer increases job cuts to 50

CanWest cuts 560 jobs, five per cent of workforce

Cost pressures and plunging share prices prompted Canadian publisher and broadcaster CanWest Global Communications Corp. (TSX:CGS) to cut 560 jobs – about five per cent of its workforce – Wednesday as the company faces a rougher economy and more competition.

The company, which employs about 10,500 people in Canada, said the cuts would save $61 million a year.

The company, once worth billions, now has a stock market value of about $85 million.

The Winnipeg company said about 210 jobs will be cut at through a restructuring of news operations at CanWest Broadcasting’s E! stations.
CanWest Publishing, which operates the former Southam chain and other papers, will see about 350 positions disappear through a restructuring of the community newspaper group.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy

The New York Post‘s Phil Mushnick beats up on a favorite print-media whipping post: TV news:

The freshest genuine news that local TV newscasts now provide are weather forecasts, unless you count updates and previews of “American Idol,” “Survivor” and “Dancing With The Stars.”

Quoting a friend from TV land: “Today? There are reporters I work with who just want to be on TV. They’d be game-show hosts. It doesn’t matter to them. The only original stories we report these days is what [bleep] to watch on the network, that night. It’s depressing.”

It’s frightening stuff. The decline of newspapers is far more than a story about newspapers. It’s a huge TV story, an encouraging trend for the corrupt and a development that should scare the daylights out of everyone else.

Schiller Leaves ‘Times‘ To Lead NPR

NPR is already crowing about the appointment of Vivian Schiller, formerly general manager of NYTimes.com, as its new CEO. Schiller guided the Times through some difficult periods, including its migration from a part-paid to an all-free business model. She also oversaw two redesigns that were considered groundbreaking. At NPR, she’s expected to accelerate a multimedia makeover that will expand the organization’s footprint broadly into video.

Cincy Navigator

Mark Glaser has an extended interview with Jennifer Carroll, Gannett’s vice president for digital content. She gives a progress report on Gannett’s Information Center initiative, a 2006 campaign to remake its 85 daily newspaper newsrooms into 24-hour digital publishing platforms. Carroll says that the programming and video skills the company has taught its journalist has led to some truly innovative coverage, like the Des Moines Register’s video/database/map mashup coverage of the Parkersburg tornadoes. Another innovation is CinciNavigator, a mass mashup created by the Cincinnati Enquirer that embeds information about local events ranging from arrests to nightclub listings on a map.

Carroll says database reporting can create a groundswell of interest that leads to improved print sales. The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle found that by publishing a database on police overtime the Thursday before a Sunday print date, it created anticipation that drove the highest Sunday single-copy sales of the year.

Carroll says Gannett is hiring and expanding its commitment to digital journalism, even against the backdrop of a terrible business climate.  A few people comment on the interview skeptically, suggesting that newspapers will never be a destination for multimedia content.

Future for Journalism Bright, Just Not So Much for Newspapers

John Kirch writes about a recent panel on the future of journalism at the University of Maryland-College Park. He offers the optimistic view that that future is bright.  The comments by panelists reflect our own opinion that the best time to get into journalism is when everyone else is getting out.  The future of big branded news institutions is dim, panelists said, but journalists will still be able to survive and thrive by promoting their own brands instead of the brains of their employers.

Paraphrasing the panelists, Birch writes, “Reporters will not only have to know how to interview sources and write stories for different media platforms,…they will have to know basic business principles so that they can create individual brand names for themselves that can be used to build followings and create job opportunities.”

Knowledge of business principles goes against the grain of conventional journalism teaching, of course.  However, that doesn’t mean journalist have to sell their souls, only that they need to be able to promote themselves because they are the product.  The risk is that journalists fall back to providing only content that delivers a large audience, such as celebrity gossip. We hope to see nonprofit and public interest organizations emerge that promote content that the public needs to know about.  The difference is that the content mix will be pulled by the readers more than pushed by editors.  What that will look like is anybody’s guess.

Miscellany

Jeff Jarvis is as provocative as ever in this withering attack on a recent AJR piece by Washington Post reporter  Paul Farhi. Farhi makes the case that journalists aren’t responsible for the plunging fortunes of newspapers; a variety of competitive and demographic trends are the real culprit. Balderdash, says Jarvis. “Victimhood is an irresponsible abdication of responsibility, a surrender.” We suspect that Jarvis was trying to stir up controversy and boost attendance to his forthcoming conference more than he was trying to savage a colleague. In that respect, he was successful. There are more than 150 comments on the piece, many of them thought-provoking, and Jarvis returns to engage with his audience frequently during the debate.

While free daily newspapers have struggled in US, they’re evidently hitting a chord with the commuter set in the UK.  Brand Republic reports that free dailies given away to commuters are gaining a foothold with the younger readers, who have largely forsaken paid daily newspapers. “City AM‘s daily reach has increased from 23% in 2007 to 32% this year, while the FT’s has dipped from 22% to 20%,” writes Mike Fletcher. Metro’s circulation now tops 3 milllion across the UK and has brand extensions that offer eight different platforms for advertisers. Perhaps more importantly, the freebies have solid demographics among the up-and-coming audience of young adults. London Lite, which is published by the same company that also produces the Daily Mail and Evening Standard, counts almost 80% of its readers in the 18- to 34-year-old demographic group.

The Providence Journal will lay off 25 part-time in six full-time employees, all from its news operation.  The move leaves a news staff of 200 people and a total staff of 705 at the ProJo, down from 763 in early September.

If online competition is hitting the broadcast industry as hard as the print business, why haven’t there been more layoffs in TV newsrooms?  Here’s one explanation.

The collapse of so Wall Street firms will hit the media business hard, with newspapers taking a disproportionate share of the body blows, according to a Bernstein Research report.  The report says finance and insurance/real estate advertising makes up 21% of newspapers’ ad revenue, about double that of broadcast media and slightly more than that of online media. “History suggests that another industry will eventually fill the growth void left by the insurance/real estate and finance sectors, but the operative word is clearly ‘eventually,” wrote the report’s author, analyst Michael Nathanson.

Technorati has come out with its annual State of the Blogosphere report and some numbers are truly eye-popping. The site found blogs in 81 languages and daily posts are closing in on one million. Nearly 185 million people have started a blog (although most don’t tend them regularly). Newspapers have the bug: 95% of the top 100 US newspapers have reporter blogs. Four in five bloggers post brand or product reviews and 90% of bloggers say they post about the brands they love or hate. Most bloggers who accept advertising make a profit. Technorati did a big survey and got comments from various media influencers. We haven’t had a chance to read it all yet, but if you’re interested in publishing, you should check it out.

Meanwhile, The Politico, which is one of the more promising Web-only journalism ventures, is expanding. It will add employees, grow circulation of its Washington-area newspaper and and print more often. The staff will be expanded to at least 105 from its current 85. Circulation of its Capitol Hill newspaper will be increased 20% to 32,000 and a Monday issue will be added. All this will happen after the election, which is The Politico’s busiest season, but officials said there’s going to be plenty of news to keep people busy. Also, they expect to reach profitability next year, far ahead of schedule.

And perhaps there’s gold in them thar websites. BIA Financial Network and Borrell Associates have a new study that estimates that newspaper websites are the most lucrative local media around, with valuations of the largest properties reaching $450 million. That makes local alternatives like TV and radio small potatoes in comparison. “Given their growth potential, the value multiples of media Web sites may be 2 to 4 times that of the core business,” the BIA president is quoted as saying. The study also praises the strong cash flow at media websites. The problem is that growth is slowing. BTW, the $450 million number is only for the largest properties, so don’t get too excited. We estimate the market value of Newspaper Death Watch is about $1.23.

Miscellany

In the department of publishers that still don’t get it, we’d like to include The American Scholar, which publishes a provocative list of “12 Questions about the future of journalism” by Bill Kovach without offering visitors a way to respond. Um, guys, that’s part of the problem.

In chaos, there is opportunity, or at least that’s what Michelle Rafter says. She points to new launches at Slate, The Wall Street Journal, Silicon Valley Insider and Forbes as evidence that there’s opportunity in business journalism right now. Just make sure you get cash up front.

Death is good business, it seems. Tributes.com, which runs obituaries and related memorial messages, is teaming up with The Wall Street Journal to create a print counterpart to the website. For $80, you can buy a listing on Tributes.com where you can post photos and memories of a departed loved one. Now, for an additional $250, you can run your message in a dying medium, too. Tributes is a startup that was spun out of Eons, a social network for the over-50 crowd. Both are the brainchildren of Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor.

In the 80s, New York City brought us the Village People. Now it brings us TimesPeople. That’s The New York Times‘ new social network. “TimesPeople provides NYTimes.com readers with a way to share their thoughts and recommendations about The Times‘s content with other readers, making their public activities on the site more open,” says a company press release. Apparently you can only share your thoughts about Times content, not anybody else’s, which we suppose makes sense. You can also see the most recommended articles. The Times is a latecomer to the social networking world, trailing The Wall Street Journal by a whole eight days.

Scott Karp analyzes Matt Drudge’s influence and concludes “It’s the Links, Stupid.” The action in online publishing is in filtering and linking, not corralling your audience, he says. Drudge is successful because he tells cable TV and radio reporters what’s important and that shapes their daily broadcasts. Newspapers, in contrast, tend to tell people only what’s important in their pages on any one day, and that’s far less interesting to readers than a guide to that vast Worldwide Web. “In the web media era, when all news content is accessible by anyone, anywhere in the world, and no news brands no longer have a monopoly over news distribution, the power of influence lies in the ability to FILTER the vast sea of news,” he writes.

Layoff Log

• The Anchorage Daily News is reducing its staff by about 10%, laying off 13 employees and holding another dozen positions vacant.
• The Raleigh News & Observer has started making cuts after only 16 newsroom employees accepted a buyout offer. Its editorial cartoonist, a 33-year veteran, and ombudsmen will be cut back to part-time but their jobs won’t be eliminated.
• The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is going to buy out or lay off workers unless it gets concessions from its unions. Between 10 and 20 Teamsters will lose their jobs, according to a union spokesman, but that’s just the beginning. The paper’s Ohio parent has been losing money for years and is threatening to sell its Pittsburgh property.
• As if the Seattle Times Co. didn’t need more headaches, now the truck drivers are threatening to strike. About 70 truckers could walk off the job on Oct. 21 in protest over the company’s bid to outsource its trucking to Penske Logistics.
• Threats by the publisher of the Newark Star-Ledger to close the paper if cost-cutting goals can’t be met have apparently put a bee in the Jockey shorts of the local union. The union representing 400 mailers at the paper agreed by a 10-1 margin to a three-year wage freeze and buyouts of a quarter of its members. The Star-Ledger is still looking to buy out another 200 of its 750 full-time nonunion employees.

Venture capitalist Esther Dyson

MediaPost assembles a panel of a dozen experts to discuss the future of media. They include top editors, marketers, regulators and technologists. While there’s no single conclusion to this long and varied discussion, the group agrees that marketers’ focus is shifting away from content and toward audience. Publishers who attract the right audience – in whatever medium – will win.

Technology enables those audiences to be smaller and more focused than in the past. There is nearly unlimited opportunity to define and attract these new groups online. As a result, the group agrees that it’s a great time to be a publishing entrepremeur. They point to sites like Dopplr and yappr as examples of new Web 2.0 ventures that creatively combine member contributions in ways that amplify the value of the group. This community publishing model has explosive potential, they believe.

Much of the discussion centers on the future of newspapers. While there’s no consensus on where the business is going. everyone agrees that the economics of mass distribution are becoming irrelevant. “A newspaper is going to kind of bifurcate into, on the one hand, a magazine with pictures, perhaps, and then something online where the news is actually up to date, and where you get news that’s tailored for you,” Dyson says. “I want to know what’s happening in my own neighborhood. I want to know which of my friends broke up and that belongs online, because the economics of mass distribution doesn’t make sense.”

Miscellany

Poynter interviews Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz of the Cleveland Plain Dealer about the secrets of her craft. There’s good stuff in there about how to connect with communities, which is a skill Schultz has evidently mastered. Check out the organization of this piece, too. It’s an audio interview chopped up into small segments, each of which has its own text description. Very user-friendly.

We noted recently the surprise announcement by the publisher of The Sun of New York City that the paper would go out of business shortly without an infusion of cash. The New York Times has a nice account of how The Sun came to be, although at times the piece reads like an obituary.

The Duluth News-Tribune is laying off eight people and eliminating two sections, but it’s also make some strategic moves to prepare for a brighter future.  Executive Editor Robert Karwath explains.