Newspaper layoffs are now being paired with salary cuts as publishers seek to avoid running up even larger body counts. McClatchy’s announcement early this week that it will cut 1,600 jobs is already claiming victims at the publisher’s largest papers.

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The Miami Herald will eliminate 175 jobs and cut the pay of salaried employees by 5% to 10%. The publisher will also require one-week unpaid furloughs beginning in April. The cuts include 33 full-time and eight part-time newsroom positions. Altogether, the move slashes 19% of the Herald‘s workforce. Other cost-cutting mesures include leasing some of the paper’s office space, cutting trim size and eliminating an international edition. McClatchy put the Herald up for sale in December, but there have been no reported takers so far.

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Another McClatchy paper, the Kansas City Star, will cut its workforce by 15%, or 150 employees, in line with corporate guidelines. Pay will also be reduced by between 5% and 10% and management bonuses will be eliminated. With the latest cuts, the Star will have hacked 325 jobs over the last nine months, or about a quarter of its workforce.

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Two weeks ago, the Denver Post lost its biggest competitor. Now it’s picked up the printing work for a nearby daily. The Fort Collins Coloradoan said it will outsource printing and delivery to the Denver Newspaper Agency starting May 12 and lay off 48 people. The agency was created to handle business operations for the Post and the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News. The Coloradoan said the speed of the agency’s new presses will enable it to move printing operations 50 miles away and still maintain current delivery schedules.

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The union representing employees at the Modesto Bee just voted to accept a pay reduction, but the paper will lay off 11 employees anyway. It could have been worse: Management was ready to cut 10 more jobs without union concessions. Wages for surviving employees will be cut by between 2% and 10% and employees may also be required to take one-week unpaid vacations later this year. The nearby San Luis Obispo Tribune will lay off three employees at the end of the month and cut four more positions as it outsources some financial functions to the Fresno Bee. The cuts will reduce the workforce to 163 people, down about 17% from a year ago.

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Members of the California Media Workers Guild, Local 39521 could vote as early as today on contract concessions intended to keep the San Francisco Chronicle afloat – at least for now. The provisional agreement reached late Monday involves terms that are usually antithetical to labor unions. Basically, management will get the authority to lay off employees without regard to seniority. Other concessions include reductions in vacation time and leave, expansion of the work week from 37.5 hours to 40 and expanded management ability to subcontract work. The Chronicle has put a gun to the union’s head, saying it would need significant concessions just to keep the paper operating. Even then, owner Hearst Corp. is on record saying that more than 30% of Guild-represented employees will be let go. The tentative contract provides for two weeks’ pay for each year of service for laid-off workers.

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The Twitter microblogger who goes by the handle @themediaisdying comes out of the shadows to write about opportunity in the industry. If you care about the future of media, you need to follow Paul Armstrong’s tweets. His opinion piece in BusinessWeek is quite the contrast to his online persona. “Nothing has gone ‘wrong,’ per se,” he writes. “It is simply a changed balance of power. Creator and consumer are no longer tied to the other.” Armstrong says mainstream media can carve out a profitable place in the new world by focusing on what readers want rather than what they can deliver.  “Media, get into our daily routines any way you can and make sure you stay there,” he writes. “Once there, cultivate additional income through advertising that adds to, rather than detracts from, the reason we came to you.” It all sounds good, but the devil is in the details. Even if media organizations can reinvent themselves as reader-driven entities, it’s unlikely most can do it amid the current environment of cutbacks and despair. But we surely appreciate the message of hope.

Delivering on promises it made last month, McClatchy Co. said it plans to cut 1600 jobs, or 15% of its workforce, and lower salaries across the board.  The cuts will be made through attrition, consolidation, outsourcing and layoffs.  Chief executive Gary Pruitt is taking a 15% pay cut and all executives are forgoing 2009 bonuses.

McClatchy had announced plans to cut up to $110 million in expenses last month, but didn’t provide details.  The company already cut 10% of its workforce late last year. The 15% figure is a goal and the job of deciding where to cut will be left up to individual newspapers within the company’s portfolio.

If you’re likely to be caught up in the McClatchy layoffs – or anybody else’s, for that matter – now’s a good time to head over to Recovering Journalist Mark Potts’ website for his 10 Tips For Suddenly Unemployed Journalists.

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.

Continuing fallout from McClatchy’s 1,400-person layoff last week: PaidContent.org’s Joseph Weisenthal remarks on all the attention to CEO Gary Pruitt’s pay, noting that you have to offer a competitive salary to get a good executive these days. He’s right. Tempers also flared at the Raleigh News & Observer over an executive’s decision to stay at a $210-per-night hotel on a recent visit to the paper just before the layoffs. The Raleigh Chronicle has the dirt, including links to executive blog postings on the topic. The Chronicle also claims that, in blaming the Internet for the company’s fortunates, McClatchy execs failed to note the impact of a strong alternative publishing market on the N&O‘s business. Editor & Publisher‘s Mark Fitzgerald analyzes McClatchy’s $4 billion debt, which seemed worth taking on at the time but which, in retrospect, was horribly timed. Still, McClatchy may be better positioned than most publishers to survive the industry’s collapse, he concludes. Analysts say it’s one of the better managed companies in the business.

Meanwhile, McClatchy editors and columnists weighed in on what comes next. Dave Zeeck at the Tacoma News quotes Mark Twain reasoning that there’ll always be jobs for reporters. Sacramento Bee Editor Melanie Sill is defiant. She points out all the good work the paper is still doing and says the loss of seven editors will just force everyone to be a little more innovative. Meanwhile, Miami Herald ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos takes the novel approach of asking readers to tell him what choices they think the paper should make. And Bob Ray Sanders of the Fort Worth Star Telegram compares the whole thing to a funeral in a dour, backward-looking essay.

And in Non-McClatchy News…

Add Hearst Corp. to the list of publishers struggling with the shifting winds of the industry. The publisher of 15 dailies and more than 200 magazines lost its CEO of 15 years last week over an apparent policy dispute with the board. Hearst has managed to make some smart bets online over the last decade, buying it a degree of insulation from the industry’s troubles, but with its San Francisco Chronicle serving as the poster child for newspaper collapse, it perhaps can’t change strategy quickly enough. Poynter’s Rick Edmonds speculates about what’s been going on in the Hearst board room and remarks upon Hearst’s unusual management trust, which expires upon the death of the last family member who was living at the time of William Randolph’s death in 1951.

By the way, where’s Belo Corp. in all the recent layoff activity? Jeff Siegel notes that last week’s bloodbath at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram should be putting pressure on the Dallas Morning News to cut back, but owner Belo has been strangely silent. So the stock market is speaking, knocking Belo shares about 6% lower last week. If the Star-Telegram can cut a sixth of its editorial staff with impunity, can the Morning News afford not to notice?

Forecasts of the impending death of the Sun-Times Media Group are greatly exaggerated, at least according to company executives. The struggling company, which has been saddled by the misdeeds of former executives, has $120 million in the bank and is ready for the worst, top managers told shareholders last week. In fact, CEO Cyrus Freidheim actually believes newspapers will rebound when the economy does in a year or two. His optimism is striking in light of the company’s recent announcement that it is “exploring strategic alternatives,” which is a euphemism for finding a buyer.

Tribune Exec’s Memos Invite Staff Derision

When chief scientists from Google speak, the technology media hang on their every word. Contrast that to Tribune Co., whose executives increasingly look like the village idiots of the newspaper world. The company’s chief innovation officer, Lee Abrams, is fond of sending memos about how the industry can reinvent itself. They’re a rambling brain dump from someone whose lack of insight is almost painful to read. Now parodies are springing up, and P.J. Gladnick excerpts a few from the Poynter discussion forums. Read one of Abrams’ original works on LA Observed before looking at the knock-offs. This is some great satirical writing which is unfortunately being shared amongst only a few insiders. Steve Outing comments that Abrams probably disenfranchised his audience at the outset by admitting that he had “NO idea that reporters were around the globe reporting the news.” Outing titles his blog post bluntly: “Are we watching a Tribune train wreck in progress?”

Layoff Log

• The Eugene Register-Guard will cut its work force by 30 employees, or 12 percent of its 260-person full-time workforce. The paper will try to achieve the reductions through a combination of buyouts and unfilled vacancies, although the publisher wouldn’t rule out layoffs.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer isn’t laying off – yet. Although two news outlets have reported that dozens of jobs have been cut, Publisher Terrance Egger issued a denial, saying the reports are “100% not accurate.” However, the debate may be a matter of semantics. “Given the current economic conditions and trends, we cannot maintain the current expense base and stay viable,” Egger told Editor & Publisher. A local alternative reporter wrote on his blog last week that executives have told staff that they plan “to cut 35 pages a week from its news pages and 20 percent of its workforce.” The paper employs 304 newsroom staffers.

Miscellany

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts shows why the people who run newspapers now are not the ones who will reinvent the industry. In a column that is striking in its lack of insight into the troubles facing his own industry, Pitts announces that he’s changed his thinking and now believes that maybe online should come first, that newspaper websites should be the principal online destination for local residents and that people should pay for that service. This was conventional industry wisdom circa 2001. Then Pitts notes that he’s come to this view reluctantly and mainly because he’s afraid of losing his job. Unfortunately, folks like Leonard will lose their jobs anyway because they’re being dragged kicking and screaming into the future. Cynical attempts at defining a solution only make them look more clueless. And solutions like those he proposes are what got the industry in trouble in the first place.

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One of the week’s more convoluted exercises in deductive reasoning comes from the Mercury News‘ Dale Bryant. In an unusual inversion of the rules of supply and demand, she blames the surging price of newsprint on the lack of demand: “With less construction, there is less wood waste that would have found its way to pulp mills and eventually to newsprint. In response to rising costs, newspapers have cut back on the use of newsprint, trimming the size of papers as well as turning to the Internet. That has caused prices to go even higher,” she writes. The result is that the Merc is cutting back on some of its print sections, but that’s actually in the readers’ interests. “[T]he choices we’ve made are based on our belief that what’s most important to our readers is that we continue providing news about your local community,” Bryant concludes, bringing new meaning to the concept of “less is more.”

McClatchy Co., the country’s third-largest newspaper publisher, will axe 10% of its workforce as it struggles with a crushing debt load and advertising declines that are outpacing industry averages. The publisher of 30 newspapers, with a heavy concentration in the south, will cut 1,400 positions across its portfolio. The move comes after McClatchy reported a stunning 16.6% advertising decline in May and a 15.4% drop in the first five months of the year.

McClatchy is suffering more than most newspaper publishers because of the real estate crash in the southeast. And the southeast took the brunt of the blows. Hardest hit is the Miami Herald, which will lose 250 jobs, or 17% of its workforce. Revenue at McClatchy’s Florida operations fell 20.4% in the first quarter, with print-only revenue declining 23%. Online ad revenue in Florida increased just 7%. The Kansas City Star was another big loser. It will shed 120 positions, or 10% of its staff. That includes 22 newsroom employees out of a staff of 285. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram will also lose 10% of its staff, or 130 people.

North Carolina was also slammed. The Charlotte Observer is cutting 123 people, including 22 newsroom employees. The Raleigh News & Observer will axe 70 positions. The two papers will also merge their capital bureaus, sports staffs and research departments and produce more joint features. Here’s North Carolina coverage from the Observer, Charleston Post and Courier and Myrtle Beach Sun News.

Over 100 jobs will be cut in Washington state. The Tacoma News Tribune will lose 84 positions, or 13% of its staff. The Olympian will cut 17 positions, or 9% of its staff. The Bellingham Herald is cutting 13 employees, or 10% of its staff. The Tri-City Herald is losing nine people. The Anchorage Daily News is also losing 35 positions. The Seattle Times, which cut 200 jobs in April, isn’t affected. McClatchy will also outsource the printing of The Bellingham Herald and the (Boise) Idaho Statesman to Seattle-based Pioneer Newspapers.

McClatchy said the number of layoffs is being matched to local business conditions and that a few papers won’t suffer any cutbacks at all.

These are the first across-the-board layoffs at McClatchy, which has cut head count by 13% over the last two years using a combination of buyouts and attrition. The publisher said the cuts would save about $70 million a year. McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt, who received an $800,000 performance bonus last year while the company stock dropped 70%, said he hoped further cuts wouldn’t be necessary, but he wouldn’t commit to anything. “I’m hopeful that it doesn’t get worse, but I can’t say for sure,” he said.

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Alan Mutter says that despite the scope of the McClatchy cuts, they aren’t nearly enough. He forecasts a $295 drop in McClatchy revenues in 2008, meaning that the layoffs will make up less than a quarter of the difference. With a debt load exceeding $4 billion from its 2006 purchase of Knight Ridder, the company badly needs to improve cash flow.

The Seattle Times minority owner cites an 81 percent ‘loss in value’ – Crosscut Seattle

“McClatchy disclosed on Thursday, Nov. 8, that it wrote off $1.52 billion of the worth of 31 newspapers and other holdings. Buried deep in a quarterly filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission was further news that the writedown included a drop of $69.1 million in valuation of McClatchy’s stake in the Seattle Times Co…What McClatchy stated was worth $102.2 million then is thought to be worth a mere $19.0 million now. And as McClatchy noted in this latest SEC filing, it now sees the loss in value of the Seattle Times Co. as ‘other than temporary.'”

‘NYT’ Introduces Comments on Web Stories — But Worries About It – Editor & Publisher, Nov. 4, 2007

“Quietly, without promoting the move, The New York Times began this week publishing on its Web site readers’ comments at the end of certain articles. This is a move The Washington Post and USA Today, and many other newspapers, began long ago.”

[The decision to add moderation to comments adds costs to the revenue-strapped Times, but the Old Gray Lady isn’t yet ready to let go. Says Times‘ Public Editor Clark Hoyt, ““How does the august Times, which has long stood for dignified authority, come to terms with the fractious, democratic culture of the Internet, where readers expect to participate but sometimes do so in coarse, bullying and misinformed ways? The answer so far is cautiously, carefully and with uneven success.” – Ed.]

First FAS-FAX Numbers: Many Top Papers Take Big Hits – Editor & Publisher, Nov. 5, 2007

“Of the top 25 papers in daily circulation (see chart, separate story), only four showed gains…According to an analysis of ABC figures, for 538 daily U.S. newspapers, circulation declined 2.5% to 40,689,617. For 609 papers that filed on Sunday, overall circulation dropped 3.5% to 46,771,486…For the past several years, publishers, particularly those at major metros, have been whittling back on circulation considered to be less useful by advertisers. Those papers fall into the category of other paid, which includes hotel, Newspapers in Education, employee, and third party copies.

“Of course, the trend points to fewer people reading the paper too as single-copy sales, considered a barometer of the industry, is decreasing at larger rates than the overall top line number — somewhere in the ballpark of 5%.”

[Santa Barbara News-Press appears to be especially hard hit. – Ed.]

In commenting on a 9.2% drop in ad revenue in August – including a stunning 25% plunge in the profitable real estate classified business – McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said, “We are working hard to mitigate the impact of revenue declines by exerting strong cost discipline…We are making progress on reducing debt in the third quarter and will continue to focus on de-levering our balance sheet.”

I tried to find a definition for “de-lever” but all I could come up with is this entry on Wikipedia. It apparently has something to do with liver, but my Dutch isn’t too good.

In any case, I doubt Pruitt was looking to offal to solve the company’s problems. My guess is that he plans to de-lever some pink slips soon

According to MediaPost, “McClatchy saw total classified ad revenue drop 12%, with automotive down 10%, real estate down 18.6% and job recruitment down 12.7%.” The company blamed the declines on market weakness, but Craigslist says business is just fine.

According to MediaPost, “McClatchy saw total classified ad revenue drop 12%, with automotive down 10%, real estate down 18.6% and job recruitment down 12.7%.” The company blamed the declines on market weakness, but Craigslist says business is just fine.

Maybe it’s the summer slowdown kicking in, but the news has been mostly bad this month.

David Carr writes about a little-discussed liability that’s nearly as damaging to the newspaper industry as its mountain of debt: Pension obligations. Gannett pension fund is under-capitalized by $942 million, McClatchy’s by $383 million and The New York Times Co.’s by $522 million. Carr says the hedge funds that bought up newspapers at bargain prices over the last few years are running for the exits, but they can’t find anyone to take the properties off their hands. Pensions are one reason why. The only investor who’s shown confidence in the industry lately is Warren Buffett, but Carr notes that even he stuck Media General with the retirees when he bought a bunch of its titles.

Pension funds became an albatross around the necks of the steel and auto industries back in the 1980s. Faced with retiree obligations that were, in some cases, significantly larger than annual revenues, companies like U.S. Steel had not choice but to shaft the recipients. A lot of newspapers set up generous pension funds when times were good in the 70s and 80s, and now those workers are retiring. It’s a frightening replay of history, particularly if you’re nearing retirement age.

Carr’s piece is kind of a mid-year health check on the state of the industry, and there’s very little cheer about. He opens with accounts of some recent printed blunders that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. The situation in the print world is so bad that when the New Orleans Times-Picayune offered jobs to some of its editorial staff on the new three-day-a-week print edition, many said no, thanks. They included a Pulitzer Prize winner and one of the editors who anchored the paper’s Hurricane Katrina coverage.

The Thin Line Between Journalism and Typing

Carr reserves some of his most acerbic comments for Journatic, an editorial outsourcing firm part-owned by Tribune Co. that is suddenly getting a lot of scrutiny for practices that would make a professional journalist’s stomach turn.

Read Ryan Smith’s insider account on The Guardian for a look at how far the newspaper industry has fallen. Journatic lives under the radar (its sparse website is actually designed not to attract search engines), providing copy to client publishers that is mostly produced by a loose network of freelancers who work for pocket change. Many of its writers are in the Philippines, which means they speak decent English and work for less and a dollar an hour.

Most of them can’t write very well, though, and Smith recounts stories of barely rewritten press releases that crossed his editor’s desk ready to go into some of America’s finest newspapers. Press releases are Journatic’s bread and butter, along with obituaries from Legacy.com and real estate transaction listings. These are rewritten by its far-flung editorial staff and turned in to U.S. copy editors who make $10/hour. The practice that’s drawn the most criticism is Journatic’s practice of putting fake bylines on articles. The company says it adopted the tactic to protect employees, but that doesn’t sit well with its clients, who are now abandoning ship in the wake of negative media coverage. Hundreds of bogus bylines have already shown up in the Houston Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and San Francisco Chronicle, writes Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman.

Oops.

Journatic produces original content, too. It farms out local stories to U.S. freelancers who report by phone from 1,000 miles away while pretending to be at a desk in the newsroom across town. Reporters need to work quickly. Smith says he was offered $24 for an 800-1,000-word story, $12 for 500 words and $10 for a Q&A. Most of the work went unedited into major newspapers as if reported by a staff journalist.

I’ve copyedited or written news stories for a handful of major US newspapers over the past 18 months – the Houston Chronicle in Texas, San Francisco Chronicle in California and Newsday in Long Island, New York and others – yet it’s doubtful that any of the editors or senior executives for those news organizations could pick me out of a police line-up. In fact, it’s unlikely they could tell you a single personal detail about me or the other journalists behind the bylines of countless stories that appear in their print editions or on their websites, as provided by my employer.

A number of big dailies have quit using Journatic in the wake of recent unflattering coverage, but you can bet this model is far from dead. “Journatic’s approach — and the change it represents — is not going away,” writes Craig Silverman on Poynter.org. That’s because the economics of the news industry are in such dire straits. Whatever work can go offshore will go offshore as newspapers struggle to keep their print properties viable. With revenues spiraling down at 8% to 10% per year, quality will only get worse.

But it’s not just print. As the Times’ Carr points out, no one has yet cracked the code of making online local news profitable. In fact, Journatic’s stronghold is local media, which simply can’t afford to hire full-time reporters any more. So they lay off staff and farm out coverage of the local football team to a stringer. In Manila. (Hat tip to David Strom)

Tablet Salvation

The good news is that tablets will save the day, right? Possibly, but don’t count your winnings just yet. A new study by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the University of Missouri finds that lots of people use their tablets to keep up with the news. In fact, news-reading is the fourth most popular activity by tablet users, behind communication, entertainment and Web search.  Users’ preferred source of information is news organization websites by a nearly 8:1 margin over social media. Interestingly, 53% of the 1,015 survey respondents said news-on-tablet was a better reading experience than ink-on-dead-trees, compared to just 18% who favor printed media.

The Public Relations Society of America suggests that tablets could revitalize the evening paper, since so much iPadding takes place after 5. But they’ll have to convince Rupert Murdoch of that. The media mogul has reportedly put The Daily on watch. The iPad-only zine is losing $30 million a year, The Politico reports, and its viability will be reassessed after the Nov. 6 election. This despite the fact that The Daily broke the story of Pink Slime, the ground beef additive that triggered a hysterical reaction in the U.S. earlier this year before the USDA stepped in and said that not only is the ingredient safe, but we’ve been eating it for a decade without knowing.

BTW, the most interesting item in the Politico story may be the comment by Martha Jo Peters, whose Facebook profile simply says, “Intend to live alone the rest of my life.” Evidently Murdoch is at least partly responsible. Sad.

Twitter’s News Ambitions

Mathew Ingram thinks Twitter wants to be a media company, and that means its role in the media ecosystem will get more complex. Twitter faces the same challenges that Google has been struggling with for several years: Its basic value is as a filter and organizer that quickly sends people elsewhere on the Web, but it’s hard to make money when your visitors are always leaving so quickly. In essence, the  publishing model that is failing so badly in the traditional media is the model that the biggest new-media startups are seeking.

Twitter appears to see its future as being some kind of newswire. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, CEO Dick Costelo said, “Twitter is heading in a direction where its 140-character messages are not so much the main attraction but rather the caption to other forms of content.” Remember that quote, because it’s really important. It means that in the future Twitter wants to host more content instead of sending people away. But where’s the content going to come from? A lot of it will be from media companies, which have come to value Twitter as a traffic-driver but who may now have to re-evaluate that relationship. Like Google, Twitter is both their best friend and their worst enemy.

If you’ve noticed there are a lot more dead third-party Twitter sites lately, there’s a reason: Twitter is locking down its famously open set of application interfaces and trying to control more of the user experience. Ingram notes that Twitter has had great success with its mobile ads and promoted tweets, and it would like users to stay a little longer on its site. The acquisition of Tweetdeck, as well as several recent improvements to the Twitter.com user experience, are part of that campaign to capture more of the visitor’s time.

Miscellany

Another daily newspaper has joined the ranks of newspapers that are not-so-daily. The Anniston (Ala.) Star will cut its Monday edition beginning in the fourth quarter. Poynter’s Julie Moos has more than you probably want to know here.

Has your local newspaper trimmed frequency from seven days to something else? We’ve had a few inquiries recently from people looking for a list of such journals, but we’ve  never seen one. If you have, please provide a link in the comments, or simply tell us if your local paper has been affected. This will start a list of some kind.

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A little good news: The New York Times is more than making up for declining advertising with growth in paid subscriptions. Ad revenue was down 8.1% in the most recent quarter, but circulation revenue was up 9.7%, thanks largely to the success of a new paywall program. Forbes reports that the International Herald Tribune and Boston Globe are also seeing promising results from their early paid digital subscription initiatives.