Philip Meyer

Philip Meyer, whose 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper: Saving Journalism in the Information Age, is often credited as being the first to predict the newspaper industry’s demise, writes in American Journalism Review of the dwindling options available to newspaper owners. In a superbly readable essay, Meyer frames the industry’s plight in historical contexts ranging from Gutenberg’s displacement of town criers to the opportunities modern agriculture created for packaged food makers. At the heart of the problem is one statistic we hadn’t seen before: “Classified ads moved from 18 percent of newspaper advertising revenue in 1950 to 40 percent in 2000.” Craig Newmark came along and poof! There are plenty of other Craig Newmarks out there waiting their turns, Meyer writes, ominously.

The good news is that there’s precedent for these problems. Meyer suggests that the saving grace for newspapers – and probably the only one they have left – is community influence. That’s where local news organizations enjoy a level of trust that online wannabes can’t approach. But by community, “I don’t mean stenographic coverage of public meetings, channeling press releases or listing unanalyzed collections of facts,” Meyer writes. It means contextual reporting that delivers useful and actionable advice. Medium is unimportant, as is frequency. Meyer infers that the seven-day-a-week mandate is a liability in a time of fluid and inexpensive information. Discerning readers will pay for information that speaks to their specific interests, he proposes, but newspapers have got to start by rejecting their all-things-to-all-people philosophy.

Tribune Co.: One Big Litigious Family

A group of current and former Tribune Co. employees has filed a class action suit against CEO Sam Zell, questioning the tactics Zell used to acquired Tribune Co. in a highly leveraged deal, his administration of the employee stock option plan, his decisions regarding layoffs and other operational issues. The plaintiffs include one current Tribune employee – Los Angeles Times auto critic Dan Neil – and five former employees, all journalists. They’re represented by noted class-action lawyers Joseph Cotchett and Philip Gregory.  In a statement, Zell called the suit “frivolous and unfounded.” In an e-mail to employees, he lamented the plaintiffs’ decision to air dirty laundry in public and concluded, “We are partners. We need to act like it.” Tell Zell characteristically minces no words in attacking the boss: “We have no power. We have no say. We have never been consulted in a single action that you or any of your cronies have taken in dismantling the Tribune Co. So stop f*****g call me your partner.” Guess who won’t be sharing a table at the company picnic.

Layoff Log

• The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has laid off between 17 and 20 people, depending on which account you read. The situation is particularly unpleasant in the Gateway City because the cuts come during talks with the Newspaper Guild about an extension to the current union contract. In fact, the Guild walked away from the bargaining table, charging that newspaper management and consistently pushed ahead the timeframe for the layoffs as a bargaining tactic. Among the victims is Patrick M. O’Connell, the newspaper’s primary crime reporter.
• The bloodletting may not be over at The McClatchy Co. CEO Gary Pruitt was quoted last week saying, “It may get worse before it gets better.” McClatchy is still reeling from the $2 billion in debt it took on to finance the 2006 acquisition of Knight-Ridder, a deal that still has questionable long-term value. “It’s hard to claim it’s a good deal when you see the stock performance,” Pruitt said. McClatchy has already cut its workforce by 20% and halved its shareholder dividend. McClatchy Watch has the details.
• Tulsa World posts a note to readers about consolidating Sunday sections that presages staff cuts. It notes that the staff has been working “to conserve news space and reduce the overall page count of the newspaper by writing shorter stories,” and that, “We are proud of the fact that we have the largest news staff of any media in our area.” Prior experience would indicate that a large staff and a shrinking news hole don’t coexist nicely. Check out the comments on the story, which mostly rip the paper for cutting back on space.

Miscellany

Valleywag observes that the combined wealth of Google’s co-founders now exceeds the value of the entire US newspaper industry. Larry Page and Sergey Brin are now worth $16 billion each, compared to the $20 billion valuation Wall Street assigns to newspapers and their subsidiaries, including test prep and broadcasting businesses. 

And Finally…

Our Google Alert filter caught John McIntyre in its webbing this week, and we quickly added him to our RSS reader. McIntyre is director of the copy desk at the Baltimore Sun and a former president of the American Copy Editors Society {note: “Editors” is not possessive). His meticulously edited blog features such gems as a recent entry on the mechanics of courtesy titles such as “Mr.” and “Professor” – did you know that incarcerated criminals aren’t entitled to be called “Mr.” but may regain the title once probation has expired? -and a clever paragraph on last week’s National Punctuation Day that consists of a single sentence in which McIntyre uses all 13 forms of punctuation. Newspaper editors know that nothing elicits more reader comment than issues of spelling, punctuation and usage; ergo, McIntyre has his fingers on the pulse of the readers.

Not to harp on The Politico, but we continue to be impressed by the stunning success of this for-profit venture whose value is built on delivering – gasp! – quality journalism. To those who mourn the newspaper industry’s implosion as foreshadowing the end of public service reporting, we point to this news boutique as an example of What Might Be. MediaBistro’s Fishbowl NY has a brief but interesting interview with Politico co-founder Jim VandeHei, who comments on the appeal of his unique business model. The focused mission is to “provide the fastest, smartest, most essential coverage of Congress, the White House, politics and those who try to influence all three.” And not to rely on classified advertising, which is one reason things are going so well.

A vandal disrupted distribution of the Boston Herald Wednesday morning, just two weeks before the paper plans to shut down its printing plant and outsource the operations to the west. Someone who apparently knew what he or she was doing cut several belts and wires on collating machines. Workers scrambled to compensate, but not all subscribers got their Heralds that day. The unions denounced the vandal’s actions. Members stand to get severance benefits – but only if the transition to the new printer goes smoothly.

Steve Outing comments on NYU journalism professor and Pressthink blogger Jay Rosen’s initiative to get his Twitter followers to submit accounts of reporters who document untruths by the McCain presidential campaign. You can see some of the results here. Outing things social networks are a great way for people who share common interests to quickly self-organize around a common goal, such as the one defined by Rosen. Unfortunately, the tools can also be misused. In an update, Outing notes that some troublemakers are now trying to subvert the effort.

Somebody help this guy, if you know him. He needs a hug.

Appropriately named columnist Joe Grimm has useful advice for a newspaper veteran who fears he’s about to lose his job. 

Layoff Log

News has been trickling out about planned cuts at the Raleigh News & Observer, but some numbers are finally available: 53 people, including 20 newsroom staffers. Among the notables leaving the N&O: TV columnist Danny Hooley, illustrator Grey Blackwell, consumer-affairs columnist Vicki Lee Parker and book editor Marcy Smith. Cartoonist Dwane Powell, who earlier said he would scale back to part-time but keep his job, has also decided to leave. Most of the cuts were achieved through buyouts, but some layoffs were necessary. The N&O already cut 40 positions earlier this year.

Pittsburgh’s largest newspaper, the Post-Gazette, told its staff to expect layoffs soon. Meetings between management and union leaders to discuss the specifics begin next week. The closure of a major department store (and advertiser) downtown hasn’t helped. Stay tuned.

The Kenosha (Wisc.) News plans to lay off three full-time and three part-time employees, all from editorial.

The Tacoma News Tribune will lay off one employee and buy out 17 others in continuing reductions that have reduced its workforce by 100 people this year.

And Finally… 

How appropriate. Now you can generate your own tombstone messages for free. Tombstone Generator creator J. J. Chandler has left plenty of space for you to wax eloquent about the dearly departed – or those whom you wish would depart. 

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.

John Yemma

The Christian Science Monitor marks its 100th anniversary this fall, and the publisher is celebrating by re-emphasizing its commitment to thoughtful journalism. The Monitor has long been a maverick of the American newspaper field. It’s based in Boston, but that’s almost irrelevant to its role as an international observer. In the tradition of The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, the Monitor sees itself as a newspaper of record for citizens of the global community, but without the financial bias. The Monitor provides sober analysis of world events for an educated audience. Its 100 writers and editors emphasize explanation over immediacy. This approach is sometimes at odds with a market that increasingly values form over substance, but it is a badly needed service in a world of decimated reporting staffs and shrinking bureaus.

The nonprofit Monitor enjoys a healthy subsidy from the Church of Christ, Scientist, but the goal is to make it financially self-sustaining by leveraging new-media tools and targeted advertising. In July, the Monitor recruited Boston Globe veteran John Yemma as its new editor. Yemma clearly understands the dynamics of the changing newspaper field. Although a veteran of print, he spent his last three years at the Globe overseeing the newspaper’s multimedia operations and campaigning to pull its ink-stained editors into the online world. A soft-spoken and thoughtful man, he sat down with Newspaper Death Watch to discuss the realities of the new reader-driven world and how he hopes the Monitor can serve as a model for other publishers.

The one-hour interview is available as an audio file by clicking on the link below. The following time-stamped show notes direct you to important points in the conversation. Time stamps appear on the left with corresponding comments on the right.

[audio:http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/audio/Yemma.mp3]
Listen to the interview (1:00)

[audio:http://www.newspaperdeathwatch.com/audio/Yemma.mp3]

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.

Twitter and live blogging are beginning to raise interesting frictions between first amendment freedoms and people’s right to privacy. Rocky Mountain News reporter Berny Morson sparked outrage last week by Twittering the funeral of three-year-old Marten Kudlis, who died when a pickup truck slammed into an ice cream shop in Aurora, Colo. This week, there’s a lively debate on Mark Glaser’s Media Shift page over New York University journalism student Alana Taylor’s negative blog comments about one of her professors. After Taylor’s comments appeared, the professor instituted a ban on blogging about what went on in her classroom, although she later modified that to ban only live blogging.

Five years ago, these issues didn’t exist. Ordinary people couldn’t post to the Web very easily, so publishing was limited to an elite few. Today, anyone with a computer can be a publisher, which means that events and conversations that would have once been presumed private may now be considered on the record if one party chooses to make them public. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have both recently found this out the hard way.

In the case of tweeting a funeral, the issue is more one of bad taste than of privacy. The NYU incident is more complex because it involves a journalism professor trying to limit the speech of her own students. Is an NYU class considered restricted because the school is private? Or is a journalism class inherently open because it would be hypocritical to close it? What rules apply to other classes? How about conversations between two strangers on a street corner? Or bad behavior in public by a person who isn’t a public figure?  These interactions have been off-the-record in the past because it wasn’t worth anyone’s time and effort to report them. That’s not the case any more, and that opens up a whole can of worms that we’ll be unraveling for years.

Miscellany

New York Times Co. becomes the second media company in the past week to report that year-over-year sales declines in August weren’t as steep as in previous months. The company’s advertising revenue slipped 16% compared to August, 2007. That’s a bit better than the 18% declines reported in June and July. Online ad revenue was also up, reversing a recent trend. Analysts are cautioning against too much optimism, though. They say that one month doesn’t make a trend and the current chaos in the financial industry is likely to hit newspapers hard. That’s because so many newspapers are so highly leveraged. Outsell analyst Ken Doctor points out that the only hope for survival at some of these companies is to find new sources of cash. With financial institutions reining in their lending activities, that reality is going to hit highly leveraged companies like Tribune Co. hard, he notes.

Will the Newark Star-Ledger be the next major newspaper to go under? That’s what the publisher  is threatening.  George Arwady sent a terse memo to employees early this week saying that if the company can’t eliminate 200 positions and gain several union concessions, it will close on Jan. 5, 2009. Editor & Publisher has the memo. The editor of the Star-Ledger isn’t saying much, but the newspaper is reportedly far short of its goal of eliminating 100 newsroom positions.

Google considers itself a partner to publishers, but some who ponder this relationship are reminded of Woody Allen’s quote: “The lion shall lie down with the lamb, but the lamb won’t get much sleep.”  The New York Times has a story about one such partner, Dan Savage, who built a nice business converting Google AdWords to paid links on his directory site.  His business collapsed when Google suddenly decided to increase his prices fifteenfold.  The Times presses Google for an explanation of its policy change and comes up frustrated.

Alan Mutter sings the praises of bankruptcy protection as one cure for the ills afflicting distressed newspaper owners.  Bankruptcy has a poisonous connotation, but it’s actually an opportunity for businesses to renegotiate debt, discard union contracts and get the business back on its feet.  Sure, a company’s credit rating is destroyed in a bankruptcy action, but that’s happening already as newspaper owners fail to meet debt obligations.  Mutter focuses in particular on Philadelphia Media Holdings, which is teetering on the brink of insolvency, having already missed a key debt payment.  Mutter’s opinion isn’t universally shared. David Cay Johnston tells Romenesko that legal protection shouldn’t be a refuge for nepotism and lousy management. Both are the case with Philadelphia Holdings, he writes.

News Corp. will boost subscription revenue from The Wall Street Journal, its Web site and Dow Jones by more than $300 million annually over the next two to three years, according to Bloomberg. News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is quoted as saying the subscription services are “grossly undersold.” How he’s going to improve them that dramatically at a time of declining circulation is anyone’s guess.

Layoff Log

• The Kansas City Star will lay off about 30 employees on top of the 24 who accepted the newspaper’s early-buyout offer. It will also look into outsourcing its financial functions to Indian firm Infosys. The cuts are in addition to the 120 layoffs announced three months ago.
• The Miami Herald is also laying off more employees on top of cuts previously announced. Eighty full- and part-time employees will be asked to leave and 40 vacant positions will be eliminated. The Herald cut 250 positions just three months ago.

The Christian Science Monitor is turning 100 and looking ahead. The Monitor has been a rock of journalistic quality for many years, flying under the radar of other international media and staying largely free of the troubles that have buffeted the industry (read Alex Beam’s profile). It helps that the paper is heavily subsidized by the church.

The Monitor is kicking off a series of centenntial seminars with an event in Boston on Nov. 6 called The Future of Journalism. We’ll be Twittering it, and you can sign up to listen in via webcast. We’re also working on an interview with EIC John Yemma. What would you like to ask him? Submit your questions as comments.

About the only positive note in McClatchy Co.’s announcement that it will cut another 1,150 jobs is that the year-over-year decline in August revenues was a little better than in July. Other than that, what can you say? The stock, which closed at 60 as recently as early 2006, spiked briefly below $3 a share yesterday before recovering to close at $3.40. This is the third round of cost reductions this year by McClatchy, which operates 30 daily papers in the US. In June, it announced plans to cut its workforce by 1,400 people and on Sept. 1, it froze wages for a year. When the new cuts are completed, McClatchy will have reduced its workforce by about 16% this year. The company also cut its dividend for the first time in 20 years, saying that money would be better used to pay down its $2 billion debt.

There was a bit of good news. August revenue fell 15.7 percent from a year earlier to $142.8 million, and ad  sales were down 17.8 percent. This was a bit of an improvement over July, when revenue fell 16.4 percent. Online ad revenue was also up 7.4%, bucking an alarming recent trend toward declines in that critical area for many newspaper companies.

Troubles at a newspaper parent are felt most strongly at the local level. The Sacramento Bee expects to avoid being hit by this latest round of layoffs, but it is eliminating nine regional sections and scaling back newsstand sales. The Bee has already cut 219 employees, or nearly 10% of its workforce, this year.

Another company that’s struggling to survive, Cox Newspapers, said it will sell 29 newspapers, including the Austin American-Statesman. The Austin paper is one of the jewels in the Cox crown, showing consistent profitability and strong online growth. The paper has pared headcount judiciously and has expanded into contract printing and direct mail. Hearst Corp. and private equity firm Austin Ventures.

The piece in the American-Statesman has some interesting tidbits. According to media analyst John Morton, publicly traded newspapers made a pre-tax average of 22 cents for every dollar of sales in 2003. In comparison, Dell Computer  made about 5 cents on the dollar in its most recent quarter. Morton also said a rule of thumb for valuing a newspaper is $2,000 multiplied by the average daily circulation over a week. However, that ratio is probably much lower in the current economic climate. He added that five years ago, a newspaper typically sold at 12 or 13 times its pre-tax earnings, but that ratio is in the 5- to 7-times-earnings range today. 

The news was not as good at Gannett Co., which reported that ad revenues in  its publishing division were down  16.8% in August compared to last year. Repeating a familiar refrain, Gannett blamed the declines on a sharp drop in classified advertising revenue, which was down 28%. Real-estate advertising was off a mind-bending 40%, a figure that isn’t likely to improve amid the ongoing meltdown in the mortgage industry.

WSJ Evolves its Design

With online subscribership up 26% over the past two years and a growing base of visitors from social networks, The Wall Street Journal overhauled its website design this week. The most notable change is a departure from the print-like look of previous versions. The new site is horizontal, rather than vertical, and adopts the three-column structure used by USA Today and The Washington Post. One notable change is that all stories are now open to reader comments, a feature that was previously available only on blog entries. Each story now includes tabs for comments and multimedia elements, such as slide shows and video. There’s also a social network called Journal Community that mimics similar efforts by BusinessWeek and Fast Company.

Wired  likes the new look, but notes that the Journal still hasn’t bitten the bullet on giving away content for free. It quotes an exec saying that the newspaper is gradually ratcheting open its paid content wall to new readers. It adds that subscriber-only articles have always been readable through a back door for free by searching on Google News. Firewalled articles are also accessible through a new BlackBerry application and links from social networks.

The New York Times notes that the redesigned site has more advertising units and sponsored sections. It’s more colorfull, features photography more prominently and has a moving newsreel with headlines and photos linking to related content.

We like it. In ditching its old design, the Journal has fallen into step with the look and feel of other news sites, which makes for easier navigation. The comments feature is a lso a nice touch. With all national newspapers now acceptin g user feedback, it’s wonder all newspapers don’t adopt this openness.

Layoff Log

• The Wichita Eagle laid off six employees and accepted voluntary buyouts from 16 others. That amounts to 6% of its employees. The paper offered voluntary buyouts to all full-time staff in August.
• Phoenix Newspapers, which publishes The Arizona Republic,  announced 37 involuntary layoffs spread across several departments. That’s on top of  56 people who recently left in a buyout deal.

At Poynter Online, Jon Greenberg writes of the remarkable impact of a letter written by longtime Wasilla, Alaska resident Anne Kilkenny about her former neighbor and current Republican vice presidential nominee, Sarah Palin.

The letter (you can find it here, along with several hundred comments) lays out in plain language Palin’s record as mayor of Wasilla and governor of Alaska. Kilkenny is quite open about her distaste for Palin (who was known as “Sarah Barracuda” in high school), but also takes pains to point out Palin’s intelligence, ambition and political savvy. Most important is that the letter is factually detailed. Kilkenny, who calls herself “just a housewife,” assembled details about Palin’s administration from years of attending city council meetings and reading local newspapers. She even disclaims facts of which she is unsure. It’s not the work of a professional reporter, but it’s just as good in its own way.

Greenberg sees big potential in citizen reporters like Anne Kilkenny and wonders why publishers don’t do more with them. “Non-journalists can be invaluable when they use their own eyes and ears to report what they see — but they rarely deliver on that promise. Why? In my experience, most citizens worry that they are not up to the task of producing objective journalism. Worse still, they believe that if they are going to throw their words into the public arena, they must be an advocate for something.” Greenberg goes on to recommend that news organizations Adapt their culture and processes to leverage citizen journalist contributions.

Some veteran journalists might turn up their noses at Kilkenny’s 2,500-word essay. It is subjective and judgmental in some cases, and the writer has probably edited facts to make a point. It is, however, also very enlightening because it comes from someone who has lived and worked with the candidate for years. The language is homespun simple. Kilkenny, who hasn’t had a day of journalism training, turns in a pretty good piece of journalism. That’s because she has a perspective that no journalist could duplicate, even with hundreds of interviews.

Strangely, the Kilkenny e-mail has received relatively little mainstream media attention. Some of the media has questioned her facts and biases. Those are legitimate questions, but not a good reason to ignore the value of what Kilkenny has to say. Perhaps the fact that the writer is “just a housewife” disqualifies her from being taken seriously in the eyes of journalism pros. Yet it seems to us that there’s an opportunity for news organizations to embrace these citizen activists and to apply professional journalistic techniques to vet their work and surround it with context. Anne Kilkenny doesn’t make journalism irrelevant; she actually makes it richer. Judging by the number of comments on the Mudlfats blog, this citizen has touched a nerve. Isn’t that the essence of what good journalism tries to accomplish?

If You Send Them Away, They Will Come

How counterintuitive is this? Scott Karp analyzes Nielsen’s top 30 news sites for May and June according to how often visitors visit and how long they stay. The breakaway winner is Drudge Report, a site that does almost nothing but link to other sites. Drudge had more than double the sessions-per-person of any other news site in May and nearly four times the performance of the highest-rated newspaper site. Drudge’s audience also spent an average of nearly an hour on the site in June. The newspaper site that came closest was The New York Times at 29 minutes.

What’s the lesson? Outbound links are a good strategy. Sites that aggregate and contextualize content from around the Internet gain search engine visibility, link love from others and attention from readers who value their efficiency. This isn’t say to say original reporting isn’t important. News executives often snub Drudge and others like it as parasites on their original work. But at an estimated 500 million monthly page views and 1.75 million daily viewers, this parasite appears to have gained a following. Could your news organization learn from this success without sacrificing your mandate?

The Future of the Times

Reader Arthur Piccolo has been perturbed by The New York Times’ recent decision to combine sections, as well as other cost-cutting initiatives at the paper of record. He offers his perspective on what the Times will look like in 2015. Here’s a summary. You can download the PDF here.

• All print articles will be shortened versions of on-line content, with each ending with an Internet address and other online pointers.
• Staff will be dispersed to their homes and field; headquarters staff will be condensed to a small core of editors and production people.
• The organization will have relationships with lots of domain experts who will contribute insight regularly on pressing topics. There will be a large stringer network.
• Virtually every story on-line will contain rich audio and/or video elements.
• “Community correspondents” will feed regional and local information to the website. Subscribers will have the ability to localize their version of the Times.
• The Times will produce branded on-line versions underwritten by large corporations and even countries.
• The print edition will be kept alive for branding but not for profits.
• The Times will seek to become a broadcast business to rival the top TV and radio networks.

Most of these predictions are pretty safe. This is the direction visionary newspapers are already taking. We’re not so sure about the branded editions sponsored by corporations, though.

Layoff Log

• The Akron Beacon Journal has given the Newspaper Guild notice of its intention to lay off 11 people, including five reporters, three copy editors, a photographer, an artist and a clerk.
• The Northern Michigan Review will cut 11 jobs at newspapers in Petoskey, Gaylord and Charlevoix, as well its PhoneGuide. “Our future forecast remains optimistic,” the president and publisher said.
• The Daytona Beach News-Journal announced a second round of layoffs, cutting 41 jobs on top of 99 eliminated three months ago. The paper’s parent company, which employs more than 600 people, is for sale, but there have been no takers. “The company’s financial performance has taken a dramatic turn for the worse over the past few months,” said Jim Hopson, News-Journal chief executive manager.
• The Los Angeles Timeslaid off 50 people in its IT organization but didn’t bother to tell anyone outside the company about it. At least that’s what pressman Edward Padgett says. A redesign of the paper is coming, and Padgett says there is speculation that the California section will be consolidated into the main news section and Business will be merged into Sports. That could result in the elimination of the second shift production on some days, which would probably mean more layoffs.

Investors were all aflutter at the news late last week that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim had purchased a 6% interest in The New York Times Co. Slim, whom Forbes estimates to be the world’s second richest man behind Warren Buffett, has made his fortune principally by buying low and selling high. It helps that he owns one of the world’s largest privatized monopolies, Telefonos de Mexico, which he acquired in 1990.

Shares of NYT jumped nearly 15% on Thursday on the news, helped by Slim’s statement to reporters that his interest in the publisher was “purely financial.” Are newspaper stocks finally going to be perceived as the bargain investors believe them to be? Probably not, argues The Wall Street Journal‘s Martin Peers. Writing in Thursday’s “Heard on the Street” column, Peers notes past failures by investors who tried to wrest control of the Times company from the controlling Ochs/Sulzberger family. He also brings up Slim’s $2 billion bet on failed retailer CompUSA as an example of the billionaire’s fallibility. Finally, he points to the lofty price/earnings ration of the NYT Co. – more than 20 right now – as reason to “see Thursday’s pop in Times stock as a selling opportunity.”

Tech Publisher Bucked Trend, Cashed in With Print

In the publishing market for technology enthusiasts, print has almost evaporated. That’s what makes O’Reilly Media’s Make magazine so remarkable. Make was launched well after the destruction of the technology print media had already begun. The publishers thought there was value that print brought to their target audience of tinkerers that couldn’t be reproduced on a Web page. Not that the Internet isn’t important. In fact, most of Make‘s circulation development has been done on line. The publication also hosts a series of popular fairs where readers show off their inventions. But in a market that has largely turned up its nose at print, Make is a notable – and profitable – exception.

In this podcast, publisher and editor Dale Dougherty tells of the counter-intuitive wisdom that led to the creation of the Make brand. The speech is only 17 minutes long, but it will remind you of the value that print still brings to the publishing equation when applied sensibly.

Rx for Newspaper Websites

Mark Potts has a set of idea for fixing newspaper websites that are well worth reading. Potts recently wrapped up an engagement with Philly.com in which he says staff attempted to break the mold with some success. What is the mold of newspaper websites? Too much information crammed into too little space and surrounded by blinking banners ads. This is a legacy of the print mentality, Potts writes. Why do newspapers still organize everything by news/features/sports/metro/arts when they don’t have to be tied to such rigid structure on the Web? And what’s with all the banner ads, which are the least effective form of online advertising? Why not do more with targeted text ads and search? Again, the legacy mentality favors display ads, he says.

Potts recommends that publishers take more risks and look at the example of the online pure-plays for inspiration. Web publishers think nothing about launching mobile services, for instance, and if the gamble doesn’t pay off, they just shrug. Newspaper publishers, on the other hand, research any new initiative to death and then finally launch something that’s uninspired and late. Classified ads are dead, Potts says. Deal with it. And newspaper sites still aren’t local enough. Aggregate and outsource content to readers. Lively debate ensues in the comments section.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Novato, Calif.’s hometown newspaper since 1922 is no more. The Advance shut down last week, citing the usual factors: tough economy, stiff online competition, spiraling costs. The paper hadn’t made a profit in nine years. An unbylined announcement ticks off a list of investments and innovations the Advance undertook in an effort to stay afloat – adding staff, sectionalizing and boosting circulation among others – but the efforts were fruitless. The paper’s demise apparently wasn’t for lack of quality. It won the California Newspaper Publishers Association’s highest award four consecutive years through 2006.

Meanwhile, the state with the toughest economy in the nation saw the launch of a new title. The successful Florida Weekly will come to Naples on Oct. 2. The lifestyle-oriented tabloid covers news, arts and entertainment, dining, regional business, and real estate. The original Florida Weekly of Ft. Myers has a readership of 50,000, according to Editor & Publisher. Naples Florida Weekly will be distributed through more than 500 newsstands and by mail.

Miscellany

Tragedy in San Francisco: the long-suffering Chronicle yesterday published obituaries for several of its Sunday comics. Among the deceased are Mister Boffo, the Fusco Brothers, Brevity, Tokyopop and Sherman’s Lagoon. Dilbert is also moving. The decision was guided by more than 13,000 responses to a poll conducted this summer. “We know that readers feel strongly about comics,” an unnamed Chron editor writes. Indeed they do.

The Bowling Green Daily News is an afternoon daily that has adopted a “print first” strategy. Its audience isn’t terribly Internet-savvy and the afternoon publishing schedule limits its timeliness. What’s more, the paper is still growing revenue. The managing editor sees no reason to favor a website because print pays the bills. Moreover, the capital investment required to launch a competing website and put a staff in place is prohibitive, he says. He is on drugs.

The Sacramento Bee is cutting staff by 7% on top of an earlier round of cuts in June. This time, a buyout offer enticed 87 people to leave the company, including 23 newsroom employees. The editorial department had been largely spared from the June round of cuts, but the reduction took a bigger toll, with the features department along losing 11 people. Bee executives said they didn’t know if more cutbacks would be needed.

Gannett Blog reports on an innovative idea by the Pensacola News Journal: it’s distributing newsstand copies with a distinctive front page. The idea is to attract the generally younger group of readers that buys newspapers on impulse. Single-copy sales are about 18% of the Pensacola paper’s circulation, according to Gannett Blog. Commenters generally approve of the idea.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram plans to sell its 88-year-old headquarters building at the northwest corner of Seventh and Taylor streets. Its 184,000 sq. ft. are simply more than the shrinking newspapers needs, the publisher says.

The Rushville (Inc.) Republican joins the ranks of newspapers that are cutting out Monday editions. The move will save enough money to enable the paper to avoid layoffs, at least for now.

And Finally…

While strolling through Pet Rock 2008, the annual festival in east-central Massachusetts that brings hundreds of dog owners together in a celebration of their pooches, we were struck by the old cliche that dog owners and their pets frequently look alike. We started snapping examples where we thought this  was true. While the cliche is by no means universally valid, there are some striking similarities in some cases. Just for fun, here are a few examples. Do you have any of your own? Send us a link to the online photos or post them in the comments section and we’ll add them to our Flickr slideshow.