Management at the Boston Globe finally wore down union leadership last night and won tentative agreement on a revised contract that is substantially similar to the one the union rejected a little over two weeks ago.  The new contract slightly reduces the pay cut management had originally sought, although it includes additional benefit reductions.  More importantly, the Globe and its parent New York Times Co. emerged victorious on the biggest issue: the right to end lifetime job guarantees for 170 employees.

Union members still have to ratify the proposed contract in a vote set for July 20, but approval seems likely now that union leadership has endorsed the deal.  The end of the last bitter labor dispute between Globe management and employees also positions the paper for sale to one or more of several interested suitors, which include investor and Boston Celtics co-owner Stephen Pagliuca,; Partners HealthCare chairman Jack Connors and former Globe executive Stephen Taylor.

Schedule Cutbacks Have Unforeseen Effects

More than 100 daily newspapers in 32 states have cut at least one daily edition in an effort to reduce costs and avoid layoffs.  But if you think that changing frequency is a matter of just shuttling around the work schedule, read this excellent piece in Editor & Publisher on the ripple effects of becoming somewhat-less-than-daily. Joe Strupp talked to editors around the country and found that cutting as little as one day’s worth of print news can force significant changes in the way a newspaper approaches its mission. “We try to cover Saturday through Monday on Tuesday. But we don’t staff Sunday night so we can staff more the rest of the week. There is more breaking news that goes up on Monday,” says Dan Liggett of the Wilmington (Ohio) News Journal in a quote that typifies the kind of calendar soup that these editors must contend with.

Some papers have had to add pages on days following gaps in the production schedule because print diehards still want local news and won’t go online for it.  Big news stories tend to lose momentum when they occur just before a break in the production schedule.  This forces editors to alter subsequent coverage to keep reader interest from waning. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, which are the most prominent dailies to cut back on print, have moved more enterprise reporting stories into the Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions that land on subscribers’ doorsteps.

In communities with active high school sports schedules, the loss of a Saturday edition has prompted website editors to boost the priority of local sports in Saturday online coverage and to add Sunday pages to handle the demand. Other publishers have found that weekly columns and features that appeared on certain days have had to be moved to other days because readers didn’t want to give them up.

The good news is that “editors are becoming more convinced that print-devoted readers will stick around even when fewer editions are available and stories get published days after a news event,”  Strupp concludes.

R.I.P. Ann Arbor News

The Ann Arbor News, which announced plans in March to scale back from daily to twice weekly frequency, is apparently going a little further than that.  Writing on Poynter.org, Rick Edmonds reports that the 174-year-old daily is effectively shutting down.  The “unspecified number of layoffs” the paper announced in March is in fact the entire staff, Edmonds says. The headquarters building (right) will be sold and an entirely new online operation launched with a twice-weekly print edition that looks pretty lightweight. Staffers will have the opportunity to apply for jobs at a much lower pay scale than what most of them are currently earning.  Edmonds suggests that Ann Arbor’s young, hip college-age crowd is more attuned to online media and extrapolates the same scenario playing out in cities like San Francisco, Boston, Minneapolis, Seattle and San Jose, where a young, upwardly mobile populace creates a hostile environment for a daily newspaper.

Miscellany

Editor & Publisher continues to try to find insight in the increasingly meaningless “time-spent-on-sight” statistics for major newspapers.  We pointed out some of the weaknesses of this metric in our analysis of last month’s figures, including the paradoxical fact that big spikes in traffic can actually drive down time-spent figures.  Did the Washington Post really do anything to deserve a one-third drop in reader time commitment from May 2008 (16:04) to May 2009 (10:58)? If you look at the snapshot for those two months, things look pretty negative for the Post, but the April 2008 time-spent number was 12:55, which hints that the figure from May of last year was a fluke.  We wish Nielsen would stop flouting these monthly snapshots and concentrate instead on six month moving averages, which would filter out the short-term spikes that make year-to-year comparisons practically useless.

Fans of Jim Hopkins’ hugely popular Gannett Blog can breathe a sigh of relief.  The crusade to be the world’s most reliable source about what’s going on inside the company will continue at Gannettoid after the blog shuts down on July 19. Gannettoid is “a Web site that serves as a collection of stories, links and other Web sites about Gannett Company.” While it isn’t formally affiliated with Gannett Blog, Gannettoid is welcoming devotees to continue their conversations in the forum section.  No word on whether Hopkins will pop in for a visit now and then.

The new owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune are already selling off property acquired in the purchase of the newspaper last month. Two properties have gone on the market at a combined sale price of $9.1 million, which is nearly 40% higher than what Platinum Equity paid for them. The move would tend to confirm Ken Doctor’s theory that Platinum Equity acquired the U-T primarily for its real estate value and got the newspaper thrown in for free. (via Gary Scott)

Sun Newspapers will eliminate 115 full- and part-time positions in mid-August as part of a sweeping reorganization plan that will reduce the company’s portfolio of weekly newspapers by half and outsource accounting, payroll and home delivery to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Both organizations are owned by New Jersey-based Advance Publications.

The Columbia Journalism Review profiles Alan Mutter, whose Reflections of a Newsosaur blog has stirred up the industry and created a launch pad for Mutter’s ideas about reinventing news organizations. It’s a good companion to our Feb. 18 audio interview with Mutter that includes details about his new ViewPass venture, which seeks to give publishers a viable subscription model.

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth addressed graduates of the Medill School Of Journalism at Northwestern University over the weekend, urging them to continue to fight the good fight and declaring that “the need for great journalism is stronger than ever.” You can read the full text of her address here. Dan Gillmor tweeted that it was a “defensive commencement speech by WashPost publisher; she plainly has no strategy for future.”  However, Weymouth’s remarks indicate that she understands that the old model is collapsing and that publishers must adapt to a new world in which they are no longer “a toll booth over a bridge” to their readers.  Read the text and draw your own conclusions.

Last week we noted that MySpace is struggling against Facebook and other adult-oriented social networks, calling into question the effectiveness of Rupert Murdoch’s management strategy.  Now MySpace is laying off two-thirds of its international workforce, or 300 people, on top of the 400 laid off in the US last week.  Altogether, the company has cut its total workforce by nearly 40%.  Which only goes to show, we suppose, that media dislocation isn’t limited strictly to old media.

And Finally…

There is hope for veteran journalists.  Oyster Hotel Reviews is a fledgling online venture that employs 13 journalists to conduct extensive reviews of lodgings for business and leisure travelers.  The site, which is funded by Bain Capital Ventures, bucks the current trend toward wisdom-of-crowds reviews by employing professionals to visit hotels under cover and write about their experiences. “Oyster.com is a great opportunity for these journalists as they provide full benefits, competitive salary and a job that includes travel to various hotels around the world fully paid for—who wouldn’t want that as a job?” a publicist wrote us.  We’re wondering where to apply.

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

We’re back from filing an 80,000-word manuscript for a book about using billions of dollars worth of high-tech satellite equipment to find Tupperware in the woods. Really. And not much has changed in the last 10 days.

Murdoch Now Struggles Online

Rupert Murdoch was hailed as a visionary when he paid the then-bargain price of $580 million for MySpace in 2005, but now it appears that the newspaper mogul may not know that much about running an Internet community after all. MySpace just laid off 400 employees in the US and could cut another 100 internationally. That would amount to more than 15% of the company’s 3,000-employee workforce.

Crain’s New York quotes eMarketer forecasting a 15% drop in MySpace ad revenue this year, while Facebook is expected to gain 10%. MySpace is still bigger, but it’s headed in the wrong direction, with a 2% decline in visitors in April, compared to an 89% gain at Facebook. Murdoch has fired some executives and promised to rejuvenate MySpace, but the site has lost its utility to the older audience, which is flocking to Facebook. MySpace is still the preferred destination for rock bands and entertainment companies, but that doesn’t give it much cachet with the wealthier audience that Facebook is attracting.

Post Publisher Just an Ordinary Mom

Vogue has a feature on Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the Washington Post and granddaughter of the revered Katharine Graham. Nancy Hass portrays Weymouth as an unpretentious, down to earth mother of three who just happens to run one of the world’s most prominent media properties.  “She’s a mother first,” says her friend Molly Elkin, a labor lawyer.

The Post‘s new managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, calls Weymouth “an amazing listener” who isn’t afraid of criticism and who seems more at home with her people that the glitterati. She moved her office off the Post‘s executive floor and down into the advertising department, where she easily banters with her employees. Her home is a modest four-bedroom affair in Chevy Chase, where she greets visitors amid the barely controlled chaos of a living room full of toys.

Although she faces a huge task in reinvigorating a paper whose circulation has dropped 20% since its heyday, she says she has no grand plan. In fact, the piece makes out Weymouth to be a smart (Harvard magna cum laud and Stanford Law) achiever who makes it up as she goes along. Her attitude toward the Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, which both use Post content without paying: “Good for them. All’s fair, you know.”

Miscellany

The Associated Press is struggling to change its business model in light of the collapsing fortunes of the newspaper industry. The cooperative is trying to negotiate more lucrative licensing deals from major Internet news sites while cutting prices to newspapers in an effort to prop them up. The AP will reduce fees by $45 million for newspapers and broadcasters next year, or about $10 million more than the rate cut it announced in April, CEO Tom Curley said earlier this week. But that won’t stop the decline in revenue, which is expected to continue through at least next year. Curley said the AP aims to reduce its 4,100-person workforce by 10% through attrition, but that layoffs may be necessary.

After 18 months on the market, the Portland (Me.) Press Herald finally has a new owner who has promised to reinvigorate the troubled paper and restore it to profitability by the end of the year. Bangor native Richard Connor officially took the helm this week and said readers will immediately notice a thicker paper and better integration with the website. But there will be pain, with layoffs of up to 100 employees likely.  Remaining employees will get a percentage of the operation and two seats on the board. A conciliatory Guild executive said the layoffs will prevent much bigger job losses that would have occurred if the Press Herald had gone under.

The Knight Foundation is funding nine new-media projects to the tune of $5.1 million. The biggest winner is DocumentCloud, a project conceived by journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica to create a set of open standards for sharing documents. Other projects receiving support include one to help citizens use cell phones to report and distribute news, an effort to develop a media toolkit for developing mobile applications and an online space where the people can report and track errors in the media.

Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium continues to be a bright spot for the industry. Yahoo reported that five new members just joined the ad-sharing cooperative: the Orange County Register, Colorado Springs Gazette, North Jersey’s Record and Herald News and the San Diego Union-Tribune. The group’s 814 newspaper members account for 51 percent of all Sunday circulation in the US.

Newspaper Guild members at the Albany Times Union have rejected a management proposal that would have eliminated seniority considerations in layoffs and permitted outsourcing of Guild jobs. The vote was 125 to 35. No word on whether the parties will return to the bargaining table, where they have been deadlocked for nine months.

Dan Gillmor has a short, pointed piece on MediaShift pleading for an end to caterwauling over the future of journalism and praising the “messy” process that is going on.  “I’ve grown more and more certain that we will not lack for a supply of quality news and information,” provided that risk-takers are permitted to experiment and that the supply of people who want to practice quality journalism doesn’t dry up, he writes. Like Clay Shirky, Gillmor believes experimentation will ultimately lead to many smaller news operations replacing a few big ones, and that that’s not a bad thing.

The Philadelphia Bulletin, a conservative weekday paper with a small but loyal following, shut down abruptly yesterday, idling 25 workers.

This is actually the second time a Bulletin in Philadelphia has closed. The first time was in 1982, but Thomas Rice bought up the name and relaunched the Bulletin as “Philadelphia’s Family Paper” in 2004.

By most accounts, the new  Bulletin struggled from the start. Staffers said paychecks were often late. Ads were scarce. Critics complained of questionable fact-checking and a tendency for the Bulletin to select wire service stories that cast liberals in a  poor light. 

The Bulletin retained its predecessor’s famous slogan, “In Philadelphia Nearly Everybody Reads the Bulletin,” but that stretched the truth. The paper claimed a circulation of 100,000, but the numbers weren’t audited and staffers said they didn’t know how many copies were actually paid for. Columnist Herb Denenberg says he’s never actually seen a copy.

The Bulletin‘s website doesn’t mention news of the closure and Rice was unavailable for comment. 

The Bulletin struggled in a hostile environment and a market that’s barely able to support two daily papers, let alone three. In that respect, the story is reminiscent of the New York Sun, a weekday paper serving Wall Street that shut down last October.

The Newspaper Association of America made no attempt to draw attention to its release of the first quarter financial results for America’s newspapers — and with good reason.  Sales skidded an unprecedented 29.4%, driven by disasterous results in classified advertising amid the weakest economy in 60 years.  Alan Mutter notes that if this trend continues, the US newspaper industry could close out 2009 with total sales of less than $30 billion — a 40% drop in just four years.

The wreckage is across the board — even online sales were off more than 13% — but the worst-hit sectors were cyclical ones: Employment classified advertising down 67.4%; Real estate classifieds off 45.6% and automotive classifieds down 43.4%.  All in all, classified ad sales were down 42.3% for the quarter. “In records published by the NAA that date to 1950, there is no precedent for the sort of decline suffered in the first three months of this year,” Mutter writes.

Slate’s Jack Shafer has a historical review of the factors that got the newspaper industry into this fix.  Publishers knew by the 1970s that they were toast, he says.  Demographic factors were to blame.  The flight of professionals out of the cities and into the suburbs challenge the economic model of the big dailies, and their halfhearted attempts to regain momentum mostly failed.  Some executives took consolation in the fact that their circulation was growing despite the reality that the gains badly lack lagged overall population growth.  The game was really over long before the story began to show up in the financial results.

More Fodder for Pay-Wall Debate

In the continuing debate over whether newspapers should charge for content, Martin Langeveld contributes perspective from Albert Sun, a University of Pennsylvania math and economics student with an interest in journalism.

Speaking at a recent conference put on by the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute  at the Missouri School of Journalism, Sun suggested that newspapers shouldn’t be too monolithic in their approach to pricing.  Rather, they should take inspiration from the airline industry, which charges different prices for the same seats depending on traveler needs.

In the same manner, newspapers should look at their product as a collection of boutique services, each with different price tiers depending upon perceived value.  For example, a casual reader may pay nothing for a weather forecast, but a weather bug might part with $10 a month for detailed technical reports and historical records. Langeveld writes:

Establishing a single price point for online content…might work for a time but is not revenue-maximizing in the long run.  The right way entails the exploitation of a variety of niches all along the curve – and therein lies the problem, since the culture of newspapers is still mainly that of a monolithic, one-size-fits-all daily product, whether in print or online.

In another post, Langeveld flags a quote from Denver Post publisher and MediaNews Group CEO  Dean Singleton in an interview with the Colorado Statesman:

We will be moving away from giving away most of our content online. We will be redoing our online to appeal certainly to a younger audience than the print does, but we’ll have less and less newspaper-generated content and more and more information listings and user-generated content.

Devalued Journalists Fight Back

Two stories caught our eye this week about journalists attempting to skewer the current trend toward devaluing their profession.

Three Connecticut alternative publications – the Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly – outsourced all of the editorial content for last week’s issue to freelance journalists in India. But instead of burying the move, the papers actively promoted debate with a provocative headline: “Sorry, we’ve Been Outsourced. This Issue Made In India.” And to drive home the absurdity of the whole affair, the editors assigned Indian journalists to principally cover local news, entertainment and culture.

The move had elements of a publicity stunt playing off of American capitalism’s current love affair with all things Indian. However, editors made a sincere effort to see the project through, producing nine stories about local affairs written by reporters half a world away. They wrote about their experience:

If our owners want to replace us with Indians, all we can say is good luck! If they find locating, hiring and keeping after these writers half the challenge we did, they might think twice about replacing us. Far from giving us a week off, it took practically the entire editorial staff to assign, edit, manage and assemble this project.

The myth that Indian reporters work for peanuts was belied by one Indian veteran who asked for $1 a word, which is less than what the publishers pay in the US. The experiment also had its lighthearted moments such as when one overseas journalist shared a vindaloo recipe with the publicist for a mind-reading act.

Michelle Rafter writes about the questionable editorial oversight practices at content aggregators. These Web-based organizations, which principally republish material from contributors in exchange for a share of the revenue, have been labeled in some quarters as the future of journalism.  If so, then the experience of Los Angeles freelancer L. J. Williamson indicates that they have a long way to go.

Williamson wrote a series of articles for Examiner.com, a string of localized aggregation sites targeting major cities.  She noticed that her stories were passing through to the site with little or no editing.  Editors seemed far more interested in traffic-driving strategies.  So Williamson began concocting increasingly outrageous topics full of  “exaggerations and half-truths. I also wrote a series of preposterous articles on topics like why peanuts should be banned, why panic was a totally appropriate response to the swine flu outbreak, and why schoolchildren were likely to die if they were allowed to play dangerous games such as tag,” she wrote in an e-mail to Mediabistro.com’s Daily FishbowlLA. “And no one at Examiner noticed or cared what I said or did for quite some time.”

Williamson was finally outed by lawyers for one party that was victimized by her reports.  She was “fired” from a job that had never paid her and had to settle for the satisfaction of telling her story to the world.

Miscellany

The Wall Street Journal says a private equity firm, HM Capital, is close to a deal to acquire Blethen Maine Newspapers, which owns the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, and two smaller newspapers. The small chain has been on the block for more than a year, during which time it has become an albatross around the neck of the Seattle Times, which owns Blethen.

The Nieman Foundation has suspended its annual conference on narrative journalism, dealing another blow to the already dwindling support for long-form storytelling.

The long-form clearly isn’t dead at Denver-based 5280 magazine.  It has an Investigation Of The Circumstances Leading Up To The Closure Of The Rocky Mountain News that runs to nearly 10,000 words.  We haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but feel free to knock yourself out and send us a summary.

Writing on True/Slant, Ethan Porter says Matt Drudge’s popularity is waning. A Drudge Report story last week about a potentially incendiary quote from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went nowhere, he says.  Could Drudge’s conservative politics be losing favor in a recession wracked world? Dare we be so hopeful?

McClatchy Watch catches the Miami Herald in the act of promoting circulation with an offer of a free subscription to a magazine that hasn’t been published in two years.

There’s plenty of buzz in the blogosphere about an under-the-radar meeting that took place last week between top newspaper executives to discuss issues of common concern, including the possibility of charging for online access to news.  Speculation centers upon whether the participants, which included McClatchy’s Gary Pruitt, Dallas Morning News Publisher Jim Moroney, Lee Enterprises’ Mary Junck and E.W. Scripps Mark Contreras, allowed the discussion to stray into the terms under which their organizations could erect pay walls in front of content.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) says price was never discussed during the meeting, and that’s good, since federal antitrust laws are pretty specific about such things.  There’s no law against competitors discussing common issues, but setting prices is a no-no.

Conventional wisdom says that newspaper price-fixing would be dead on arrival, but some people argue that the Supreme Court’s 2007 decision in Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly set a precedent under which an aggregator representing multiple properties could get away with charging fees for access. Slate’s Jack Shafer weighs the possibilities and concludes that collusion would be an exceedingly risky move under an administration that has promised to be tough on businesses.

Pat Thornton sees the devil in the details. People aren’t going to pay for to read the police blotter and it’s going to be even tougher to sell them on having to buy services that used to be free, he says. “You can’t charge for something that has been free for years without drastically improving it,” argues Thornton. Given that news organizations have been cutting resources left and right, it’s pretty difficult to argue that the product is getting any better.

There actually is precedent for Web publishers charging for services that were once free.  In the heady days of the dot-com bubble, nearly everything was gratis on the web.  After market realities forced businesses to create sustainable models, photo- and video-sharing sites that were once free began to charge membership fees.  Some businesses and specialty publishers also began linking Web access to paid print subscriptions, a model that persists to this day at publications like Advertising Age.

Perception of Value

Thornton has got it right that perceived value is the crux of the issue.  Consumers understand that technology isn’t free and accept that publishers must charge for niceties like unlimited storage.  They also appreciate that unique, unduplicated services are worth a subscription fee if the information is vital to their job or avocation.

We personally like the model of Geocaching.com, the website that serves the addictions of millions of avid gamers who search for treasures stashed in outdoor locations around the world.  A basic subscription to the site is free, but services that significantly enhance the pleasure of playing the game demand a $30 annual subscription.

Geocaching.com enjoys the advantage of being a near-monopoly in its market.  There’s nothing wrong with that, though.  The publisher has succeeded in providing a comprehensive database of information that its constituents can’t get anywhere else.

We continue to believe it’s highly unlikely that publishers will succeed in establishing an industry-wide paid content model.  Anyone who fails to join the consortium could potentially disrupt the whole deal, and too many alternative sources of free information already exist.  CNN, for example, will never join such a group.  Instead, it will benefit from the vast traffic that will stream to its website when the pay walls go up.

Individual publishers may succeed in charging for content, but they’ll do it with content that serves a vital interest or need in their communities.  There are plenty of possibilities, but they will be exploited by innovative people at the local level, not mandated from the top by a few executives who are motivated more by self-preservation than serving the interests of their audience.

It appears that some leading news titles are finally throwing in the towel on the circulation wars.  The New York Times just announced that it will hike its single copy price to $2 on June 1, a 33% increase. Outside of the New York area, the Sunday Times will now cost a whopping seven dollars for home delivery. Several other papers have also increased prices recently, including the Washington Post, Tampa Tribune and Dallas Morning News.  These papers have effectively doubled their newsstand prices in the last two years.  Newsweek just rolled out a new design and cut its circulation by half while increasing cover prices.

What’s going on?  We suspect the publishers are finally beginning a sunsetting strategy for their print editions.  By driving up circulation prices, they are effectively winnowing out their low-value customers.  Price increases will probably come fast and furious in the future. Each will cause circulation to fall until a new floor is reached. Expect circulation declines to quicken as more newspapers adopt the strategy.  Declines have been running in the 6% to 8% range per year for the last two years, but will probably increase if more papers follow the lead of the Times and Journal.

In effect, these newspapers are giving up on print. They are harvesting their most loyal readers and shifting their investments to new platforms.  With the average age of a daily newspaper reader now standing at over 55 years, publishers can expect to derive print circulation revenue for about another decade. Of course, it may not be economically viable to stick with a daily schedule that long, but that readership can be milked for some time to come.

The harvesting strategy makes sense economically, strategically and environmentally. It’s pointless to throw good money after bad chasing new readers with deeply discounted subscriptions that are canceled after three months.  Loyal readers are more attractive to advertisers than bulk circulation and can command higher CPMs. And this means fewer papers going in landfills.  Treating print as a cash cow enables publishers to plow whatever profits are left into new platforms.  Their companies will grow smaller over time, but at least they’re more likely to have a future.

Miscellany

Dan Froomkin begins a four-part series at Nieman Journalism Lab on a prescription for the news industry.  He argues that the bland, expressionless voice that journalism organizations have adopted for the past 40 years has undermined their appeal. “We stifle some of our best stories with a wet blanket of pseudo-neutrality. We edit out tone. We banish anything smacking of activism. We don’t telegraph our own enthusiasm for what it is we’re doing.” In part two, he argues for putting passion back in news reporting.

The Wall Street Journal is running an interactive map that shows “adverse events at the top 100 newspapers” since 2006.  You can mouse over the regions and see information on layoffs, circulation trends and business conditions.  It ‘s accompanied by a dense, ugly chart with detailed information and lots of unexplained columns.  It also doesn’t include recent information like the closure of the Tucson Citizen.

San Diego Valley Reader has an extensive profile of Tewfiq (Tom) Gores, the billionaire who runs Platinum Equity, the partnership that bought the San Diego Union-Tribune. The piece details the controversial background of Gores’ uncle, Tom Joubran, an Arab immigrant who prospered as a grocer in Flint, Michigan but whose background may involve some criminal activity.  It suggests that the Union-Tribune may adopt a strong pro-Palestinian editorial position, which would be quite a contrast from its traditional Republican leanings.

USA Today has a cover story in its money section today that was reported entirely on Twitter. Reporter Del Jones asked CEOs to comment on whether the country is drifting toward a European style of capitalism.  Their responses are reproduced in the staccato shorthand that Twitter’s 140 character limitation imposes.  Absent from the discussion are the founders of Twitter – Evan Williams, Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone – who failed to respond to numerous tweeted requests.  Of course, with more than 2 million followers between them, they’re probably busy.

Is Twitter a blessing or a curse for newsrooms?  Editors are struggling with that issue in light of a recent episode in which a New York Times reporter tweeted news of the company’s discussions with Google from a supposedly confidential meeting. The Times raised eyebrows yesterday by appointing Jennifer Preston, the former editor of its regional sections, as the paper’s first social media editor.  The job involves coordinating the newsroom’s use of social media, but it can also be seen as an effort to rein in reporters from sharing news before it’s been fully baked. Similar positions have recently been created by BusinessWeek, the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Journalism professor Edward Wasserman tells how Matt Drudge supposedly broke the story of President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern more than a decade ago.  In fact, Drudge didn’t break the story but rather related the fact that Newsweek was sitting on it.  The information had been leaked to Drudge by a disgruntled Newsweek staffer, making it possibly the first example of reporters using social media channels to take publishing into their own hands.

Wasserman says the real risk of Twitter is that it will incline journalists to spend more time in front of their computer screens and less time pounding their beats.  What the issue really comes down to is control.  Editors are struggling with the conflicting priorities.  On the one hand, they understand that tools like Twitter help satisfy readers’ needs for immediacy and transparency.  On the other, they have trouble accepting the idea that reporters can now take their stories directly to the public without an editor’s approval. The Wall Street Journal recently issued guidelines for appropriate uses of social media by its staff, including the requirement that reporters gain approval before “friending” confidential sources.

The Times says that Preston won’t be a Twitter cop, but the coordinating function can involve shutting down social media just as easily as enabling it.  In the end, editors will lose this battle.  Media organizations have to get used to the idea of writing their first draft of history without level of fact-checking and oversight to which they are accustomed. That’s because if they don’t do it, somebody else will.  This isn’t a comfortable idea, or even a good one, but it’s where the media world is headed.

Time-Spent-Reading Numbers Baffle

The latest Nielsen online reports about the amount of time people spend on newspaper websites has been released, and again the results are all over the map.  A sampling of the monthly time-spent-reading figures comparing April 2008 to April 2009 (percentages approximate):

• Wall Street Journal down 40%
• Chicago Tribune up 20%
• San Francisco Chronicle up 35%
• Atlanta Journal Constitution up 90%
• Seattle Times down 60%

And on and on.

Editor & Publisher tries to sort all this out.  It talks to the assistant managing editor for digital at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose readers spend an average of 40 minutes per month on the site. Terry Sauer tells E & P that the high numbers may be due to the placement of homepage links on individual articles, but he admits it lots of other papers do this as well.

Maybe the real issue is that time-spent-reading is a poor indicator of affinity.  With more and more people using tabbed browsers, it’s possible to leave a webpage open for hours without looking at it.  Also, heavy spikes of traffic prompted by local news events may actually drive down time-spent numbers because visitors come and leave so quickly.  Finally, a one-month snapshot in time is virtually meaningless.  Nielsen would do better to measure affinity in increments of at least six months.

Pressmen Feel the Pain

Newspaper cutbacks are falling apart on the shoulders of pressmen, the true ink-stained wretches of the industry.  Some big papers have cut back their pressroom staffs by 50% or more. Last year, the Boston Herald outsourced its print operations and cut 130 production jobs. The Boston Globe then said it would close its Billerica plant and lay off as many as 200 employees. The pressroom that printed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and still print the Seattle Times has been whittled back from 62 to 27 employees.

Against that backdrop, unions representing mailers and printers at the Globe this morning agreed to concessions with the New York Times Company that chop more than $7 million in salaries and benefits.  The pressmen’s meeting was described as “angry.” Unions representing editorial staff and drivers are scheduled to vote on concessions next month.

The Joy of Bankruptcy

Editor & Publisher has an excellent piece on the wonders and dangers of bankruptcy.  The story is timely because many newspaper companies must face the music this year.  Some people think the newspaper business is losing money, but that’s actually not true.  Most major dailies still make an operating profit but their ownership is burdened with crushing debt acquired during the ill-conceived consolidation binge of a few years ago.

On the plus side, bankruptcy is a way to freeze debt payments, cancel long-term contracts and renegotiate debt, often to much lower levels.  The negatives: Less flexibility to invest in anything beyond keeping the lights on, difficulty finding suppliers and the possibility that a judge could decide that the company isn’t worth saving.

That last item is the most ominous one for the industry.  E & P notes that judges will permit a company to exit bankruptcy only if they believe that the company has a reasonable chance of surviving.  If the judge doesn’t buy that prospect, he or she can simply shut down the operation.  That hasn’t happened yet, but with organizations like Tribune Co., Sun-Times Media Group, Journal Register Co., Philadelphia Media Holdings and the Minneapolis Star Tribune already in bankruptcy and several other companies facing the prospect, the picture could take shape quickly.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday slashed its rating on McClatchy Co. deep into junk-bond territory after the company offered to buy back $1.15 billion in debt at just 20 cents on the dollar. McClatchy is now rated a CC borrower, which is just three steps away from a default rating.

Miscellany

Jim Hopkins, who started Gannett Blog nearly two years ago, will put it in hibernation at the end of September. Hopkins says he never intended to publish the blog longer than two or three years to begin with and that his decision was hastened by the increasingly negative tone of the roughly 4,000 comments he receives each month.  The news will no doubt come as a huge relief to Gannett executives, since the blog had become a major soapbox for disgruntled employees.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch moved circulation functions to two other newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises, cutting 39 jobs in the process.

The Huntington, W.Va. Herald-Dispatch cut 15% of its workforce, or 24 positions.

Talking Points Memo, the Web startup that has drawn attention as a possible model for new journalism, unveiled a new design that looks a lot more like a newspaper. Alexander Shaw talks about the thinking behind the new look, which moves more news “above the fold.”

And Finally…

British workers in the media, publishing and entertainment industries are the heaviest drinkers, according to the Department of Health. A survey of 1,400 people by YouGov found that media people consume an average of 44 units (presumably, 1.5-ounce drinks) a week, or almost twice the recommended maximum. The finance, insurance and real estate sectors came in second at 29 units per week.

Two new entries in the almost-but-on-second-thought-no front: Google considered buying a newspaper but decided against it. Eric Schmidt tells the Financial Times that “There is a line and we’re going to stay on our side of it.  We have done well by letting content people creating great content in their own way.” He also says Google has no interest in buying The New York Times, but says David Geffen would make a great owner.”

Schmidt, whose company is often reviled as the great Satan by newspaper publishers, says that the loss of smaller papers come in particular is a tragedy. “The reporting that keeps the mayor honest is going to be gone and I don’t know what to do about that,” he says.

Without explicitly stating that newspapers should become nonprofits, Schmidt implies that the model has appeal. “Newsgathering and profitability model has always been an uncomfortable relationship,” he says. But he dismisses the idea that nonprofit is a panacea. “I don’t know how to solve the problem taking for-profit structures and transitioning them to a nonprofit world without some very generous person between,” he says. But that’s not going to be Google.

There’s a 10-minute video at the link above. If you think Schmidt is some kind of business velociraptor, watch the vid.  He has a Ph.D. in engineering, is thoughtful and contemplative and is also flat-out brilliant.

Also in the might-have-been category, the Washington Post‘s two managing editors told visitors to an online chat last night that the Post considered expanding its distribution base into Baltimore, where the Sun is hemorrhaging, but decided against it. “The best and most cost effective way to get us in Baltimore is either online or through a Kindle subscription,” they wrote as one. “We have indeed evaluated whether it makes economic sense for us to sell subscriptions in the Baltimore area and determined that the math doesn’t work in our favor.”

Miscellany

That’s all she wrote for the Tucson Citizen. A last-ditch attempt attempt by the Arizona attorney general to save the newspaper failed when U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins said the AG had failed to show that violations of antitrust laws or of the Newspaper Preservation Act had occurred. Quoting verbatim: “While regrettable that the Citizen‘s illustrious legacy must come to end, it can not be said at this time, the decision to close the Citizen involves an anti-trust violation. The Court can not say at this point in time that there is a violation of the Newspaper Preservation Act,” wrote the judge, who definitely should hire one of the Citizen‘s laid-off copy editors.

The Federal Trade Commission will hold a series of workshops entitled “Can News Media Survive the Internet Age? Competition, Consumer Protection, and First Amendment Perspectives” beginning on September 15. From the release: “The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including possible business and non-profit models for news organizations, the role of targeted behavioral and other online advertising, whether additional, limited antitrust exemptions may be necessary under these unique circumstances, and the implications of online news for both copyright protection and the availability of broadband access.”

The Associated Press is offering a novel buyout program: employees get $500 for every year of service but their pension benefits are increased to 14% to 16% above that which they would normally receive. The plan is clearly aimed at older employees. Applicants must be at least 55 years of age with at least 10 years of AP service and the combination must add up to 75.

Latest layoffs totals, from Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog:
Salt Lake Tribune: 3
Raleigh News & Observer: 31
Durham, N.C. Herald-Sun: 7
Detroit Newspaper Partnership: 150
Baton Rouge Advocate: 49
Honolulu Advertiser: 15

And Finally…

From the Columbia Journalism Review: “Stephen Colbert weighed in on future of journalism right now, taking a side in the debate over the role of print: ‘Newspapers are an important part of our lives, not to read, of course, but, when you’re moving you can’t wrap your dishes in a blog.'”

David Geffen

Will The New York Times Co. go under?  Don’t bet on it, says Fortune magazine.  Sure, the Times has significant business challenges, and it’s actively looking for ideas to rescue its business, but there is no shortage of investor interest in the Old Gray Lady. Hollywood mogul David Geffen reportedly made an unsuccessful play to buy the 19% stake in the Times held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners recently, Fortune says. Google also seriously considered investing in the Times before deciding against the move.  Meanwhile, the controlling Sulzberger family publicly says they’re not interested in selling.

The Times has a lot of problems on the business end, but its brand equity is the envy of the industry.  The problem is, at current run rates, the company will be insolvent in two years.  Rather than going under, it’s more likely that the Times will be picked up by one or more wealthy investors who are already knocking at the door or will radically change its business model.

Newsweek reports that Geffen’s overture was made with the intention of converting the Times to a nonprofit institution under a structure similar to that created by the late Nelson Poynter, whose nonprofit Poynter Institute runs the St. Petersburg Times.  That paper has suffered along with everyone else, but its nonprofit status gives it some wiggle room to absorb losses, and it’s increasingly attracting attention for the quality of its work, including two Pulitzer prizes last month.

Inside the Times, there’s a working group studying the options for radical transformation.  If all options are indeed on the table, then the Times could be looking at a much smaller and more focused editorial model. Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer got some attention last month by suggesting that the Times could get by with a staff of as few as 60 reporters by cutting back on nonessential coverage and partnering for the rest.  That idea isn’t likely to be popular at a paper known for its vast resources, but the Times could set a standard for the industry by reshaping its self around a partnership model.

Baltimore Sun: Retooling or Shutting Down?

The Politico writes of the “Dark Day at Baltimore Sun“ in a piece that reads like an epitaph. The Sun‘s newsroom staff has been cut back from a high of 420 people to just 140. The paper recently closed its bureau covering Annapolis, the state capitol. Two columnists recently sent to cover an Orioles game were laid off before the ninth inning. Coverage of Washington has been outsourced to pool reporters from parent Tribune Co.

Executives say it’s all part of the process of retooling the Sun into an Internet-ready machine. “”If you’re looking to transform yourself, you really better stop looking at yourself as a newspaper company rather than as a digital media company,” says Monty Cook, the paper’s new editor. He said the Sun continues to devote itself to “watchdog journalism,” but admits that “the days of the six-part series are gone.” That’s probably true. The investigative team at the paper, which once numbered four reporters, is down to one person.

Editors See Brighter Future

The Associated Press Managing Editors survey finds a wellspring of optimism about the likelihood that newspapers will return to profitability. Just 17% of the editors surveyed said they believed the industry would go extinct while 60% said they’ll be profitable again. However, respondents overwhelmingly said they are having a harder time delivering quality information to their readers, which is not surprising giving the nearly 20,000 job cuts in the industry over the last 18 months.

Editors continue to be caught in a cost-cutting cycle that limits their ability to think outside the box. Fifty-seven percent said they didn’t have enough money to innovate and 31% said their people don’t have the skills to change with the times. Nearly 40% said they are devoting more space to “hyper-local” news, which is surprisingly low given the trends in reader news consumption. Nearly three in four said they’re sticking it out because they believe in “the mission of journalism.”

Most chilling quote: “”Our newspaper’s biggest revenue source today is foreclosure notices,” said Clifford Buchan, editor of the Minnesota-based weekly Forest Lake Times.

Miscellany

Investor John W. Rogers Jr. says it’s time to buy Gannett Co. Yes, media stocks are beaten down, says Rogers, who’s chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Investments, but “when a company with strong franchises like Gannett sells for one times trailing earnings and three times expected 2010 earnings, I step up and swing.” Rogers says newspaper companies are highly vulnerable to trends in cyclical markets like automobiles and real estate.  Once those sectors recover, though, growth should return.

It isn’t over yet for the Tucson Citizen.  A federal judge is expected to rule today on whether the Citizen, which formally closed down on Saturday, must resume publication. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard argued that Gannett Co. and Lee Enterprises violated antitrust laws by closing down the weaker of the two players in a joint operating agreement between the Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star in order to wring more money out of the surviving property.  A core shutdown staff of eight people remains at the Citizen, and it’s unclear how many staffers could be recalled to restart the paper if the judge so orders.

The Ann Arbor News will publish its last issue on July 23.  The paper announced plans to shut down back in March, but we didn’t know a precise date until now. An online version will continue to pump out news 24X7.

At least 14 news ombudsmen have lost their jobs in the past year, writes Andrew Alexander, who holds that title at the Washington Post.  Among the reasons: ombudsmen are considered less essential to the editorial function than reporters and a new crop of bloggers is now filling some of the watchdog role.  However, ombudsmen may be more important than ever, Alexander writes, noting that he is on track to receive more than 50,000 reader messages this year. “They want an informed judgment from a professional journalist who has been empowered by management to directly confront reporters and editors with unpleasant questions.” Kevin Klose, the new dean of the J-school at the University of Maryland, has suggested that a consortium approach could provide the same reader-advocacy function for less money.