Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell must be relieved to be back on familiar territory in the real estate business. He’s just put the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower up for sale as well as Los Angeles Times property in historic Times Mirror Square. Technically, Zell says he’s only seeking ways to maximize the value of the properties, but it’s hard to imagine that his options would include making the investment required to redevelop the buildings for the long term. He’s putting them up for sale and potentially buying another year of life for his highly leveraged company. The Wall Street Journal quotes sources estimating the two properties could fetch $385 million.

So the man who said he was going to shake up the Tribune by challenging conventional thinking and breaking the mold is now going back to what he knows best: selling real estate. That kind of vision has got to inspire the troops, especially in the wake of major layoffs at two Tribune papers this week. Edward Padgett has Zell’s memo to employees urging them to keep their eye on the ball and not speculate about what’s up with the property sales.

Assume that more layoffs are on the way shortly. Edward Padgett has the text of a memo from Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller to his staff setting the stage for major cost cuts. We can assume there won’t be a lot of joy around the barbeque at LAT employee picnics this weekend.

The Atlantic has a Q&A with Tribune Chief Innovation Officer Lee Abrams in which he doesn’t come off sounding nearly as goofy as his memos make him out to be. Still, his comments are short on the kind of breakthrough insight that the Tribune probably needs right now.

In Other Layoff News…

• Gannett Co. is looking to cut 150 employees from the Detroit Free Press and the rival Detroit News. That’s about 7.5% of the total workforce, according to Gannett Blog. Management is hoping to make the cuts through buyouts rather than layoffs, but hasn’t ruled out the latter. Detroit is a joint operating agreement town, meaning that the two competing papers belong to the same corporate parent. That’s how bad the advertising climate is. (via Fading to Black)
• We noted yesterday that when the new round of layoffs at the Hartford Courant are complete, the news staff will have been reduced from 400 to 175, or 55%. That’s not the worst of it, though. Alan Mutter calculates following a small layoff just announced at the San Jose Mercury News, its staff will have been cut 63%. Commenters say that estimate might actually be on the low side.

The Future Takes Shape

Veteran journalists might scoff at the joint effort by MySpace and NBC to recruit citizen journalists to cover the upcoming political conventions, but we think it’s an innovative idea. Someone with a lot of talent but without a lot of connections is going to have the chance to gain a national audience for a few days this summer based solely on his or her creativity and hard work. And what the heck is wrong with that?

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Add the San Diego Union-Tribune to the growing list of newspapers that are republishing the best content submitted by users in print. The paper has launched a social network for residents of San Diego county. It’s got all the usual Facebook-like stuff, but editors will be monitoring the discussions and publishing good material in the company’s community weeklies.

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for information and some of the promise and challenge that presents. The NPR example is great.
Speaking of citizen journalism, the Guardian has been reporting on a conference about the future of journalism. Caitlin Fitzsimmons blogs a panel about how news organizations are tapping into crowds

Miscellany

Online Journalism blog has the first in a series of planned stories about semantic journalism. Nicolas Kayser-Bril kicks things off with a plain-English explanation of the semantic Web. Basically, if machines could do a better job of interpreting information, it would make all our lives a lot easier. And the Death Watch editor could catch another hour or two of sleep.

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We have intentionally avoided commenting on the pissing match between the Associated Press and a group of self-righteous bloggers over fair use of AP copy. We tend to side with the bloggers, but we think the AP also has a point. If you’re late to the party or haven’t been following it closely, Editors Weblog has done the legwork for you. This timeline of the dispute is full of links to relevant detail and covers the big issues succinctly.

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Alan Mutter has created the Default-O-Matic, a tool that rates the likelihood that various large newspaper companies will default on their debt. Journal Register Co., whose stock is almost literally not worth the paper it’s printed on, leads the funeral procession, while Washington Post Co. is the healthiest overall. Read this post if you want a quick tutorial on what “default” means. It’s more involved than we thought.

And Finally

LA Times Pressman Edward Padgett shares this gem: “A recent study conducted by Harvard University found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year. Another study by the American Medical Association found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol per year. This means, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!” Have a nice weekend everyone.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group announced this morning that it will lay off 100 people out of its 1,400-person staff, with a disproportionate percentage of the cuts coming from the newsroom. The unit, which owns the Baltimore Sun and several community newspapers, told the Newspaper Guild that 55 to 60 jobs would be cut on the Sun‘s editorial staff, or about 20% of total newsroom employment. The paper will offer buyouts through July 18 and then use layoffs to meet its total job reduction goal.

The Hartfort Courant will cut 57 newsroom jobs, or nearly a quarter of its total editorial staff, along with a corresponding reduction in news pages. At its peak in 1994, the Courant employed 400 journalists. With the most recent cuts, that number falls to 175.

The focus on the editorial department is interesting in light of recent criticism by Tribune Co. executives of journalist productivity. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels made it clear in a call with investors early this month that writers and editors would increasingly be measured by the quantity of their output. They said that most papers in the Tribune portfolio would lose pages and staff in the coming months and outlined plans for a series of redesigns that kicked off with a new look for the Orlando Sentinel this week.

Tribune Co. stands alone in its focus on cutting editorial staff. Most publishers have tried to limit newsroom layoffs out of concern about harming the quality of the product. Tribune Co. executives appear to have no such reservations. Zell and Co. are making a big bet that cuts in quality won’t significantly damage circulation, which is the key to advertising revenue. In a quote on Courant.com, Journalism Professor Rich Hanley of Quinnipiac University said of the shrinking Courant, “People could look at it and say, ‘This is nothing but a shopper on steroids.”

Here’s the memo from Sun Publisher Tim Ryan to employees:

The two key factors that will sustain our company for the future are customer satisfaction and financial stability. Achieving both goals is challenging in the very best of market conditions. In the face of today’s tough economy, adapting to consumer trends while maintaining our fiscal strength is proving to be even more difficult – yet even more critical.

Our long-term strategy of going on offense and creating growth opportunities will continue to get us closer to our goals. Already this year, we generated incremental Sun circulation gains, launched a new, free daily publication, b, which is the first of its kind in the market and, through our “explore” websites, delivered highly-localized news and information for the region’s consumers.

In spite of these early, significant wins, we struggled to achieve our performance goals. So, while we will stay on the offense, we are altering our game plan. In order to align ourselves more closely with our customers, we are retooling our business model, which will include enhancements to our newspaper. In August, 2008, The Sun redesign will debut, giving readers more of what they want – a more concise newspaper with more local news, personally relevant and useful content, consumer information, watchdog coverage, more graphics and better navigation.

By adjusting our business model and redesigning our core publication, we expect to stimulate readership growth and improve our financial performance. Regrettably, our new course also requires us to reduce our workforce by about 100 positions across BSMG. These actions are necessary for us to remain competitive and win in the future, and will enable us to create new targeted print and interactive media for the marketplace that satisfy both consumers and advertisers.

Transition Timeframe

The workforce reduction will include a combination of closing open positions, attrition, and voluntary and involuntary separation plans according to this timeline:

• Friday, June 27 – Voluntary separation packets will be available to all employees (availability to Guild-represented employees is being negotiated with the Guild). Volunteers will have two weeks, through Friday, July 11, to apply.
• Friday, July 11 – Thursday, July 17 – Volunteers will be notified whether their applications were accepted or not; decisions on involuntary separations will be made based upon voluntary results.
• Â Friday, July 18– Employees who are part of the involuntary separation plan will be notified. Voluntary and involuntary separations will occur in early August.

Human Resources, your leadership and plan documentation will provide further detail of plan terms, including compensation, savings/retirement funds and medical benefits. While Tribune does not have a formal severance policy, the formula that the company is using to determine benefits payable to employees affected by the current workforce reductions is more generous than any formula that the company may use after 2008.

Moving Forward

It is extremely difficult for all of us to lose colleagues and friends. However, while we cannot control the current economy, we can control what action we take to create a stronger future. We are, by far, Baltimore’s media leader, and through ongoing innovation to introduce new and exciting media for our marketplace, we will maintain our competitive position.

The leadership team and I will continue to keep you informed throughout this transition. Thank you for your patience, continuing contributions and commitment to our company

Tim

Another Boston Massacre is in the works, with the Herald and Globe both planning cost cuts. The Herald is taking the worst of the blows, announcing that it will lay off between 130 and 160 press operators, electricians and other production workers this summer and outsource its printing to presses in two towns, one of which is nearly 90 miles from its headquarters. The current presses are creaking with age and the paper has been exploring alternatives for some time, including possibly contracting with the rival Globe for printing (that didn’t happen).

Herald Publisher Patrick Purcell made a daring bid for expansion in 2001 with the purchase of the suburban newspaper chain Community Newspapers Co., but he sold the business five years later. The Herald is the perennial also-ran to the Globe in Boston and the loss of so many staffers is a major blow. The move to a printing press in faraway Chicopee also can’t help the paper’s ability to provide timely scores to the sports-crazed Boston fans. Neither of the accounts in the Herald or the Globe mentioned the size of the Herald’s total employee base.

The Globe’s news was less dire: it has asked the unions to agree to a 10% wage cut and is threatening to consolidate printing plans, a move that would strike the unionized workers hardest. The union is pissed, but there may be little they can do. The economic climate doesn’t leave them much negotiating room. The Globe has already been through two rounds of layoffs in the last three years.

Orange County Register Tests Offshoring

The Orange County Register will steal a page from the high tech and customer support industries and outsource some copy-editing to India on a trial basis. The one-month experiment is the first of its kind that we’re aware of, although some newspapers have reportedly toyed with covering routine local government meetings remotely in recent months. Officials at Orange County Register Communications made every effort to characterize the project as experimental and non-threatening to US-based employees, but that’s what tech executives said a decade ago when their industry was first considering offshore outsourcing. Forrester Research now estimates that 450,000 tech jobs a year will migrate overseas by 2012.

There’s no reason for the Register not to do this. Most educated Indians already speak English better than most educated Americans, and minor cultural nuances can be dealt with by domestic editors. What surprised us about this deal is that the Register limited it to one month. It will be impossible to assess success in that short a time, so our guess is that the Register either isn’t serious about the idea deal or that, more likely, its management is trying to minimize the negative public relations impact. In our opinion, it’s a bold approach that could quickly be imitated by many others.

Miscellany:

• When news leaked last week that the Orlando Sentinel was planning a major design overhaul as part of a campaign to change the look and feel of many of the papers in the Tribune Co. portfolio, the Death Watch suggested that readers would care less. Our skepticism has apparently been borne out, as Alan Mutter reports. Less than .05% of Sentinel readers voiced an opinion over the redesign. While eight people felt strongly enough to cancel their subscriptions, the 126 comments voiced in the first couple of days amount to a drop in the bucket. All told, the change is much ado about nothing.
• Palm Beach Newspapers Inc., owner of The Palm Beach Post, the Palm Beach Daily News, the Florida Pennysaver and La Palma, will cut 300 workers from its 1,350-person payroll. The company said it hopes to achieve the reductions through attrition and buyouts instead of layoffs. However, the likelihood of reducing staff by 22% through those means is low. “We are the last major Florida newspaper to implement staff reductions,” the publisher told the Post. However, the percentage of cuts is by far the largest of any nearby paper.
• The newspaper industry has always been able to take some consolation in the fact that (presumably older) C-level executives would continue to prefer newspapers to online alternatives. However, a new study by a Forbes and Gartner finds the opposite. The research determined that the percentage of senior executives who choose the Internet over newspapers as their primary source of business information has increased 37% in the last four years, while preference for newspapers and dropped by the same amount. Quoting from the Editor & Publisher account: “Before starting the work day, C-level executives prefer to access the Web rather than read the newspaper. The number of C-level executives who prefer the Internet first thing in the morning has increased 22% since 2004, while those who prefer to read the newspaper first thing in the morning has declined 11% over the same time period. C-level executives consume media on the Web more than any other medium.”
• Lost in the shuffle of McClatchy’s dramatic cost-cutting moves last week was the news that the Clovis Independent, a weekly serving the Fresno, CA region, would be closed after 103 years. Weeklies tend to rate little attention from big publishers or the media, but they are often tightly woven into the culture of their communities, especially after a century of operation.
• Danny Sanchez reminds us that newspapers are good for more than just reading. You can use them to remove odors from wet tennis shoes, for example. We never knew that!

Perhaps hoping that no one would notice bad news if it was released on a post-Memorial Day Friday afternoon, the Newspaper Association of America quietly reported that advertising sales by US newspapers fell a record 14% in the first quarter, with real estate and recruitment ads both shrinking 35%. The results are worse than even the most pessimistic skeptics predicted and may indicate that the industry has entered an irreversible death spiral.

BusinessWeek’s Jon Fine thinks the unthinkable: one or more major metro dailies will go under within the next 18 months. It isn’t such an outrageous idea. Rising newsprint and gasoline prices are layering more burdens on top of an already troubled industry that distributes its product by truck. Some publishers have seriously floated the idea of cutting out unprofitable Monday and Tuesday editions. MediaNews CEO Dean Singleton recently estimated that 19 of the top 50 US newspapers are losing money.

If more than a third of top US titles are losing money, then the spiral has probably begun. The only way to stop it is to cut deeply and painfully, with staff cuts of 40% or more and a primary focus on online delivery.

However, that’s not likely to happen. Businesses in trouble rarely have the stomach or the investor support for substantive change. Instead, they do what all of them are doing today: cut 5% to 10% here and there until they slowly bleed to death. I outlined this scenario in my 2006 essay on the collapse of newspapers and the reinvention of journalism:

Newspapers will be forced to lay off staff in order to maintain margins. Cuts in services will lead to cuts in editorial coverage, making papers less relevant to subscribers. As circulation declines, advertising rates will have to come down to remain competitive. This will put more pressure on margins, leading to more layoffs, more cost cuts, more circulation declines and more pressure on margins. Once this spiral begins, it will accelerate with breathtaking speed.

If you look at Alan Mutter’s analysis of the McClatchy layoffs, you can see how this scenario could play out. In Mutter’s view, the cuts won’t even cover a quarter of McClatchy’s revenue shortfall. That means more cuts will have to be made, further hobbling the capacity for its papers to produce a quality product. Reader attrition continues. And so on and so on.

Each of these trends is playing out right now, only a lot faster than I predicted. The longer publishers fiddle with hiring freezes and redesigns, the longer they put off the tough decisions that could still save some of them. Unfortunately, for the majority of US newspapers, it’s already too late.

Big Changes in Store at the LA Times?

Speculation has swirled for a few weeks that Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller won’t last the summer, but now the rumors are getting louder. After losing out in an attempt to undermine his own editor last week, Hiller now looks vulnerable, and there are reports that he could be gone as early as July. The changes could also be accompanied by deep cuts in the LA Times editorial staff. We’ve heard up to 19% of the newsroom could be let go, though no decision has been made yet. The LA Times was one of the papers recently singled out by Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell and COO Randy Michaels for poor journalist productivity.

And Finally…

CNN reports on a Yahoo employee who Twittered his layoff in February and gained an eager following. Ryan Kuder recently took a job from the hundreds of leads contributed by his Twitter followers . His story was covered on prominent blogs and has now jumped to mainstream media. All of which shows how one person can make a difference these days.

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.

Media General, which has been reeling from its exposure to the weak Florida market, is eliminating 250 to 260 jobs at The Tampa Tribune, WFLA-TV and other Florida properties. The cutbacks came through a combination of buyouts and layoffs that have been ongoing much of the year. Another 50 or 60 people are yet to be laid off, according to the company’s head of Florida operations.

The Salt Lake Tribune is implementing a hiring freeze. In a statement, Editor Nancy Conway gave a lesson in double-speak: “Clearly, we’re going to try to keep the core product strong. The reality is it will probably decrease in size. We’re trying to improve on our online publications, although they’re very successful as well.” Um, okay.

The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, NY has laid off six employees on top of the 12 people cut free last year. That leaves 162 people who must be confident that management has got things firmly under control.

The Raleigh News & Observer is preparing to announce layoffs of about 10% of its newsroom staff, according to a local TV station. The paper tried offering voluntary buyouts to a quarter of its staff in April, but few were expected to take the package and few apparently did. Management has reportedly told staff that layoffs are coming but has given no timeline or details, leaving employees anxious and fueling the rumor mill. Perhaps the layoff process should start with firing the manager who came up with that bright idea for boosting morale. (via McClatchy Watch).

Need more bad news? Newsprint prices are headed up by as much as 10%, says Poynter’s Rick Edmonds. Citing a recent analyst call, he says the sharp increases, which are fueled by high energy costs and a strong Canadian dollar, will force more papers to reduce their width by about 9% and test reader tolerance for thinner paper stock.

In the new world of journalism, anyone is potentially a journalist, even if only for a few minutes. This idea doesn’t sit well with a lot of media veterans, so it’s no surprise there is debate over the tactics of the Huffington Post and its employee, Mayhill Fowler, that led to two big campaign scoops.

The most recent one, which every political junkie heard by now, concerns a three-minute rant by Bill Clinton over a Vanity Fair report questioning the propriety of his post-presidential decorum. Clinton’s remarks were captured on video by Fowler, who didn’t identify herself as a reporter but who claims to have had the video camera in plain view while Clinton was talking. The LA Times account describes the recorder as “candy bar-sized” and Clinton claims to have not known he was being recorded.

Fowler also recently caught Barack Obama criticizing small-minded Americans in comments that were not meant for reporters.

Fowler claims no professional journalism experience, which means she isn’t a “true” journalist, to use a phrase favored by veteran editors. Yet no one can dispute the veracity of her reports. After all, they’re on tape.

The hot potato for professional journalists is that ordinary people with a $100 video camera can now capture major news events that the media miss. The problem for public figures is that these folks don’t necessarily identify themselves as journalists or operate by the rules. And since public figures have practically no coverage under libel laws, their every utterance is potentially fair game for the media. Which is actually a problem for the media.

Layoff Log

• Continuing the trend toward newspapers burying their own bad news, The Day of New London, CT cut about 12% of its jobs and relegated the news of the cuts to an inside business page on a Saturday. The comments are as interesting as the story on The Day‘s website. Readers question whether senior executives are taking pay cuts and cite a director’s profile from dating site Match.com, of all places, as a source of information about the director’s compensation for his services.
• Layoffs are spreading into the magazine industry, which until now has been far less affected by the ad sales slowdown than the newspaper business. Folio magazine reports that three publishers are announcing layoffs. Meredith Corp. will cut 60 positions and leave 60 other open jobs unfilled. B-to-b publisher Reed Business Information is eliminating 41 jobs in advance of its divestiture by parent Reed Elsevier. And another b-to-b stalwart, Penton Media, will cut 42 jobs. There’s no word on what percentage of the workforce these layoffs constitute.
• The Cleveland Plain Dealer is one of a ring of innovative Ohio newspapers that came up with the idea of putting aside rivalries to share resources. That isn’t going to save it from the storms that are battering the industry, though. Cleveland Leader reports that management plans to cut 35 pages of news a week along with 20% of the workforce. That’s on top of a 17% cut in positions after a recent buyout.

Miscellany

Craig Stoltz reviews the redesigned websites of the ultra-conservative Unification Church-backed Washington Times and the Bay Area-bred San Francisco Chronicle and concludes that, surprisingly, the Times is the one doing the innovating. Whereas the Chron‘s new design is more of the same, he says, Times has apparently started with a blank slate and rethought its approach to news presentation without bias toward print or anything else. The most innovative new feature is the Dig Deeper button, a hyperlink that literally flips a story on its head to show more background and detail. Try it; it’s neat. (via Jeff Jarvis).

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Editors Weblog rounds up some data and opinion from around the industry and shows why the economics of online advertising don’t comfortably replace the print model. There’s a study that shows that readers of nytimes.com spend an average of 68 seconds per day with the paper, compared to 16 minutes for the print edition. And the bounty of alternatives means that ad rates are under constant competitive pressure. Quoting Scott Karp of Publishing 2.0, “Print circulation is about 10% of total audience reach, while online advertising revenue is 10% of total ad revenue — the economics are nearly the perfect inverse of what they should be.” This is not an optimistic piece.

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Gannett Co. will write down the value of its assets by up to $3 billion, blaming troubles at its UK operation. Gannett is widely to considered to be one of the most financially sound US newspaper publishers.

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Google CEO Eric Schmidt says his company has a “moral imperative” to help the newspaper industry and that the company’s recently acquired DoubleClick ad service could help. He didn’t offer any more details. Newspaper publishers must be breathing a huge sigh of relief.

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Dan Schultz of MediaShift Idea Lab proposes a five-step process for vetting news that originates from citizen journalists. It involves link analysis, commenting, geotagging and moderation, among other things. Content Ninja has an analysis.

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It’s depressing to see newspapers shutting down ventures in new markets. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel will close a free weekly aimed at young readers. A memo posted by Romenesko cites two years of ad declines and increasing newsprint costs as the double whammy.

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The new venture by former Wall Street Journal managing editor Paul Steiger has debuted. Pro Publica will produce investigative reports in partnership with other media outlets and publish those stories first on the partner’s print and Web properties. The initial site is nothing more than a roundup of news from other sources, but the site is almost fully staffed and original material will begin appearing shortly, according to the “about” page. Pro Publica is a nonprofit funded by some big charitable organizations. It will initially employ 27 journalists.

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Paul Bradshaw wants to know if blogging has changed the way journalists work. You can take his short, anonymous survey here.

And Finally…

The Online Journalism Blog is piercing the gloom with a new website where journalists can tell why it’s a great time to be in the business. It looks like Jolly Journalist just debuted, so hurry on over to be one of the first to comment.

The Washington Post’s voluntary staff reduction has cost it a lot of fine journalists but perhaps no loss is greater than that of Rob Curley, the Kansas wunderkind whom the Post recruited less than two years ago to lead its Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive division. Curley and at least five of his staff members are pulling up stakes and moving to Las Vegas to work on unspecified projects at the Las Vegas Sun.

Juan Antonio Giner aptly sums up the tragedy this is for the Post, which has long been one of the more progressive papers in its approach to new media. We can only speculate on Curley’s motives. In an entry on his blog last week, Curley paid homage to all the fine talent at the Post and the support he’s received, but notes, cryptically, “I probably wasn’t the best fit with the organization….In Las Vegas, our team has a chance to help shape an entire organization.” Perhaps they didn’t have the chance to do that in Washington.

The bio on the Washingtonpost Newsweek site sums up Curley’s accomplishments:

• Director of new media and convergence for the Naples Daily News and its sister publications along Florida’s Gulf Coast;
• Management positions in the interactive editorial operations for the Lawrence (Kansas) Journal-World, during which time he gained national prominence as one of the first online editors chosen to lead a news organization’s entire print and broadcast news operations;
• Editor & Publisher named the Lawrence Journal-World as one the 10 newspapers in the United States that does “it right” in 2004. The Naples paper later received similar praise.

Washington’s loss in Las Vegas’ gain.

Time, Inc. Joins User Content Parade

Another publisher – this time a unit of venerable Time, Inc. – tries its hand at a print publication composed entirely of user-generated content. This Old House – renamed Your Old House for this experiment – is the product of “thousands of e-mails, letters, photos and projects since editor Scott Omelianuk’s first call for submissions in his December editor’s letter.” The magazine set up a website to accept content and promoted the initiative in broadcast and online. 8020 Publishing and the Hartford Courant are doing the same thing, perhaps indicating that editors are finally warming to the idea that their readers have something interesting to say. It isn’t easy, though. Editors say the quality of ideas contributed by readers is remarkably good, but the copy needs a lot of work.

Layoff Log

• The nonprofit St. Petersburg Times will try to cut staff through an early retirement incentive but might have to resort to layoffs later this year, according to a publisher’s memo. Attrition has reduced headcount from 1,500 to 1,300, but it still isn’t enough. The newspaper is also freezing wages for a year. (via Romenesko)
• Massachusetts-based SouthCoast Media Group has laid off five full-time and nine part-time employees. Like many news organizations that report on their own staff reductions, SouthCoastToday.com didn’t give any clue as to big this layoff is, other than to note that the move reduces employment by less than 5 percent. Quotes from the publisher demonstrate unrealistic optimism about to the future.

After stating confidently last week that his deal to buy Newsday was as good as done, Rupert Murdoch abruptly pulled out of the bidding, ceding ownership to Cablevision. Thus ends a month of speculation about Murdoch’s supposedly devious strategy to corner the New York market and then spread is his publishing empire westward.

Maybe.

As Newsday points out in its own outstanding coverage of the saga, Murdoch walked away from the Dow Jones deal several times before eventually settling on the price he wanted. So the concession to Cablevision could be a ruse meant to force Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell to make a decision (Alan Mutter has a fine analysis of the dire circumstance at the Tribune, whose debt service obligations were an incredible 24% of revenues in the first quarter).

On the other hand, as Newsday points out, a sale to Murdoch could have raised significant antitrust and regulatory issues. With Zell under intense pressure to generate cash, a quick sale to the cash-rich Cablevision could be a more practical option.

For now, it appears that this story is over. Murdoch was reportedly having a grand old time at the Time 100 gala dinner in New York last week, while Mortimer Zuckerman sulked in a corner. Murdoch conceded to a reporter that he might have been a bit hasty in declaring victory in the bidding a day earlier. His demeanor didn’t indicate that he was tired or frustrated about the sudden collapse of the deal. Rather, his relaxed confidence may have been that of a skilled card player waiting to see if his bluff will be called.

Small Town News Outlet Writes New Rules

Columnist Jerry Large of the Seattle Times tells the story of a community newspaper that is thinking differently. The Orting News is an online service that’s filling a void left by the death of a local newspaper. It has ramped up to 14,000 subscribers with a model in which nearly all the reporting is done by members of the community. Anyone can submit an article, and the only fact-checking is an e-mail verification that the sender is who he or she says. Any disputes or corrections are sent directly to the writer. Paid writers cover the really important stuff.

An interesting comment Large’s column is this one: “The Orting News isn’t journalism.” Really? According to who?

Losses & Layoffs

• In what has become an all-too-common refrain of late, Gannett said it’s offering buyouts to about 160 workers at five of its six newspapers in New Jersey. If there aren’t enough takers, layoffs are likely.
• Editor & Publisher cites an SEC filing in which McClatchy estimates its 49.5% stake in the publisher of The Seattle Times has fallen more than a third since last December and 88% from its value at acquisition in late 2006.
• Community newspaper publisher GateHouse Media reported a first-quarter net loss of $28.8 million compared to a $6.1 million loss a year ago. Total revenues were up 78% but same-property revenues fell 4.2%. Gatehouse’s strategy is to buy up newspapers and then use free cash flow to pay out dividends that drive up it stock price. However, even that strategy doesn’t appear to be working these days.

Editor & Publisher has an interesting piece on the debate over paid subscription newspaper websites. It cites a rivalry between the well-established Watertown Daily Times of upstate New York and NewZjunky, a one-man link log that’s beating the tar out of the local newspaper online (That’s the Press, Baby had this story three months ago). The daily just took down its pay wall and is seeing Web traffic increase, but at what cost?

The quandary for newspaper publishers is whether to treat online audience as an extension of print subscribers or to level the playing field and compete for eyeballs with everybody else. The first scenario dictates that you circle the wagons around a paid model, and some 50 small newspapers have done exactly that. But the second option may be the only one that offers hope for long-term survival.

Business News

Newspaper Delisting Watch: Sun-Times Media Group (STMG) joins Journal Register on the list of newspaper companies recently kicked off the New York Stock Exchange. No matter, though. You’ll be able to invest via the Pink Sheets. STMG is exploring strategic alternatives, as are many others.

How to lose $75 million in 12 months: Avista Capital Partners, the owner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, has taken a $75 million goodwill write-down on its investment because of declining circulation and advertising revenue. Avista bought the paper in late 2006 and took the write-down a year later. Star Tribune revenue fell $75 million between 2005 and 2007.

Miscellany

Alan Mutter documents a trend that many people in the business probably understood instinctively: newspaper advertising declines are proportional to growth in broadband adoption. The good news? There’s still money to be made in Mexico.

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The Newspaper Guild has filed a grievance against The New York Times over a small number of layoffs that were necessary to meet the Times‘ goal of a headcount reduction of 100 people. Demonstrating logic that only a union leader can appreciate, New York Guild President Bill O’Meara said that his union “values quality journalism” and so would be filing a grievance because the layoffs were based on merit rather than seniority. (via Romenesko)

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Editors Weblog has released more results of its Newsroom Barometer survey of more than 700 editors from around the world. Among them are detailed findings about the biggest threats to editorial independence, investment priorities and more.

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Boston Globe EVP Al Larkin is retiring after a 36-year career. His job will be redistributed among other people. Larkin oversaw the Globe’s Pulitzer-winning coverage of school desegregation in the 1970s. The paper’s work at that time really put it on the national map.