Google said it would have a big announcement at its developer conference this week, and it didn’t disappoint.  Google Wave will be the buzz of the Internet in the months between its demonstration last week and its rollout at an undisclosed time later this year.  Wave has some important implications for the news industry, so it’s a good idea to become familiar with it. Here’s our early reaction.

Wikis are important metaphor for newsgathering.  They enable multiple authors to flexibly contribute information and edit each other’s entries to build a kind of living news account.  Wikipedia is, in many ways, a metaphor for the newspaper of the future.

Google has always liked wikis.  Its search engine results page is being slowly rejiggered to add wiki functionality and recent initiatives like Knol are a Google spin on Wikipedia.

Wave takes the wiki model to a new level with the addition of Twitter-like immediacy along with classic e-mail and discussion techniques like the inbox and threading. Wave also has the ability to handle just about any kind of file you can throw at it.  Adding documents, webpages and media to a Wave workspace is a drag-and-drop procedure, and once the content is there, everyone can edit it.

Open and Extendable

Google Wave has some cool bells and whistles, such as its real-time updates (you can actually see your friends typing, letter by letter), flexible conversation threading and embedded search.  But what’s more important is some of the underlying plumbing.

For starters, the application is open source, meaning that third-party software developers will quickly improve and build upon it.  Google learned its lessons from its Maps service: enabling people to easily extend the engine results in a much richer resource for everyone.  Maps is now the undisputed leader in its space, having displaced some entrenched competitors in just four years.

Second is Wave’s flexibility.  Wikis have always suffered from usability problems in this respect.  It’s fairly easy to edit basic text information, but incorporating multimedia can be a chore.  The Google demo shows people dragging and dropping photos and video files into a Wave workspace with ease, making them immediately available to everyone participating in a Wave.

Finally, Wave is shareable out of the box.  Any Wave can easily be turned into an “embed” and placed on another website.  Visitors can join a conversation from within the embed.  This is kind of like blog comments on steroids.  A real-time interaction can be going on between multiple users of a Wave with the results appearing on many other websites.

Work in Progress

Wave is still demoware, and its first public iteration will no doubt lack many features.  But this looks to be an important new development in the way groups process and build information repositories.  For news organizations, it could be an opportunity to really involve readers in an ongoing conversation that aggregates multiple perspectives and a workspace that is still managed by professional editors.  The real-time chat functionality could be a potent competitor to Twitter.

News organizations have a new problem to solve: information overload.  This is a complete reversal of their traditional service as information gatherers.  Today, the bigger problem is to parse and organize the deluge of information that comes at us.  Google Wave will no doubt add to that deluge, but it also has the capacity to help us organize and make sense of it.

Jeff Jarvis speculates on some possibilities.  Mashable has a comprehensive overview of the product and a first hands-on trial. Google Blogoscoped has the entire one-hour-plus demo from the Google Developer Conference.

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.

Once upon a time, a negative review in a major newspaper was the death knell for a new theatre production.  Today, it’s an invitation for the offended party to strike back.

Michael Maso,  managing director of Boston’s Huntington Theatre Co., did just that yesterday with this snub of the Boston Globe, and he cited comments from playgoers on the Globe‘s own website as justification for his position.  Here’s an edited version of his message:

After a full week of laughing, cheering, and deeply appreciative audiences for Pirates! – including many families with small children – I was astonished to read the Boston Globe’s aggressively negative review of Pirates! last Friday. I was further dismayed to hear that some of our subscribers did not attend their scheduled performance this past weekend due to that one review.

In over three decades of producing plays, I have never felt such a disconnect between the audience’s experience in the theatre and the reflection of a critic. From the very first line of the review, the Globe critic makes it clear that she is angry at the audience for responding with cheers and laughter throughout the evening.

Every other Pirates! review has been overwhelmingly positive. The Boston Herald praised it as “a treasure to behold” and “the kind of pure, giddy entertainment springtime stages are made for,” and The Patriot Ledger, BroadwayWorld.com, Berkshire Fine Arts, Cape Cod Times, Examiner.com, The Boston Guide, and BostonMan.com all agree.

Don’t take my word for it; just ask anyone who has seen it, or read the 65-plus comments on the Boston.com website written by audience members themselves.

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.'”

The tsunami that swamped the newspaper industry in 2008 appears to be spreading to the magazine business. “Virtually every major magazine is experiencing an often-substantial decline in ad pages,” says MediaPost, citing year-to-date numbers.

“Substantial” is being kind. Look at these ad page declines in 2009: Among women’s titles, Allure, Lucky, and Vogue are all down over 30%, and W is down 44%. Among magazines targeting men, Power & Motoryacht is down 63%, Boating down 49%, Automobile down 43%, and Motor Trend and Road & Track both off more than 31%.

In the lifestyle category, Details is down 38%, Maxim off 33.5% and GQ down 32%. Spin down 28%, Vibe off 39%, Gourmet off 46% and Bon Appetit down 34.5%.

Of 118 titles tracked by Media Industry Newsletter (MIN) Online, only eight saw year-to-year growth from 2008 to 2009.  The rest continued a pattern of decline that began in 2007, and the rate of drop-off is accelerating.  Subscribers are also beginning to flee the venerable titles in droves. Among the titles seeing year-over-year circulation losses of more than 10% are Reader’s Digest, Ladies’ Home Journal, Entertainment Weekly, and Redbook. And that’s not factoring in the deeply discounted subscription rates that publishers are using to lure subscribers these days.

Last Gasp for Newsweek?

“Newsweek executives are gambling that advertisers will support the equivalent of shifting from beer to wine,” writes the Washington Post‘s Howard Kurtz, summing up a major redesign of the weekly newsmagazine that appeared this week.  Newsweek is cutting its circulation in half to 1.5 million, increasing both its subscription and cover prices and adopting an editorial profile looks like the Economist: lengthy, opinionated pieces analyzing national and international affairs.  Gone are the summaries of weekly news that have long defined the category.

“The staff doesn’t understand it,” says editor Jon Meacham, but Newsweek really has little choice.  The age of mass media is giving way to the era of targeting, and even 1.5 million subscribers may be too many to serve effectively. Newsweek is on a run rate to lose $20 million a quarter, so this is probably a last gasp for the 76-year-old newsmagazine. Time, with a circulation of 3.25 million, now stands alone in the category of broad, general purpose weeklies that once dominated the newsstands.  It’s still on track to deliver a “substantial profit,” this year, although even Time has also reduced its circulation base, although less dramatically than its competitor, from a peak of over 4 million.

It’s interesting that clicking on the link to the story in the Post, whose parent company owns Newsweek, delivers a pop-up ad for the Economist, which is the one weekly newsmagazine that seems to have gotten it right.

Wired Stuck in the Middle

And what about Wired, the hip digital lifestyle magazine that chronicled the dot-com revolution? Surely it has figured out how to bridge the print-digital divide. Nope. Its business is in the tank, and even Chris Anderson, the new-economy guru editor whose books have foreseen foretold the emergence of hyper targeted media and free content, doesn’t seem to know what to do.

Ad pages are off 50% this year, making Wired the third worst performer among the 150 magazines tracked by MIN. The problem may be systemic.  Wired serves the digerati, whose natural preference is online media.  The publication’s website is operated almost entirely independent of the magazine, and despite multiple design awards, the print version of Wired has been unable to find the popular appeal that could make it a million-circ powerhouse. At 704,000 subscribers, it’s one of the smallest magazines in the Condé Nast portfolio. It lacks the scale to support giant branding campaigns by luxury products, but is too large to deliver efficiency for smaller advertisers.  It’s an uncomfortable place to be: in the middle.  And Condé Nast, which has already shuttered two major titles this year, is probably not in the position to invest in it.

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.

The president and publisher of the Louisville Courier-Journal delivered a rousing defense of the newspaper industry a couple of weeks ago in a speech that was just published yesterday. Arnold Garson used facts, statistics and a few points of information we hadn’t seen before to argue that the industry’s impending doom is greatly over-exaggerated, concluding that “The Courier-Journal will publish my obituary and yours, but not its own.” The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) should make him an industry spokesman.

The 3,400-word speech is well worth reading its own right, but here are the Cliff Notes of what Garson said:

• Yes, some newspapers have closed this year, but compared to the carnage among auto dealers and real estate brokers, the industry looks pretty good. Markets can adjust without collapsing.
• The Courier-Journal has cut back just like everybody else. That’s part of running a sustainable business.
• The most troubled newspapers today are those covered by now-irrelevant duopoly agreements that have kept weak competitors afloat. “Newspapers in Joint Operating Agreements are going to disappear,” he said, adding that this consolidation process has been going on for over a decade.
• The Courier-Journal‘s market penetration is up five percent over the last two years. The company’s print, online and mobile products now reach 85% of the adults in its core market every week and touch them an average of 5.6 times each week. By contrast, this year’s Super Bowl reached only 41.5% of the US adult population.
• One of the reasons is that the Courier-Journal has the dominant local website in its market.
• The big reason circulation is trending down? “Do Not Call. This federal legislation enacted in 2003 shut down overnight the newspaper industry’s No. 1 subscriber acquisition tool, and the only acquisition method that is economically efficient.” Garson added that Do Not Call legislation forced publishers to revise their business models, which had been based on high churn and low acquisition cost, to models based on high retention. This transition triggered circulation declines, but the situation is stabilizing.
• Young adults do read newspapers. Garson said his printed newspaper reaches 74 percent of the 18-34 year-olds in its market every week.

Wrapping up a persuasive argument, Garson imagines holding a press conference to announce a new product called a newspaper to a world that had only known electronic publishing. He ticks off the advantages: compact, professionally organized, factual, porn-free and you can read it on an airplane. The NAA should package up this idea instead of its current baffling Rube Goldberg campaign.

Clearly, not all publishers are the Courier-Journal. Judging from Garson’s commentary, the paper understood some time ago that it needed to focus itself locally and use all the channels its customers were using. There are also undoubtedly some factors that are unique to Louisville that support the Courier-Journal‘s relative health.

However, there are lessons any publishing executive can learn from Garson’s spirited defense. Statistics can work two ways and this publisher has dug up a few that make his business prospects look pretty good.

A chance meeting with a reader this morning reminded us of this 2004 video by the Museum of Media History, which we realize not everyone has seen. It’s a futuristic look back from the year 2015 at Google’s successful march to aggregate and customize the world’s information. Although dated, it’s startlingly accurate in some respects. It’s kind of cool till you get near the end. Then, well, you decide.

First issue of the Arizona Citizen, 1870

The 138-year-old Tucson Citizen, AmericaArizona’s oldest newspaper, will print its last edition tomorrow, even as a prospective buyer howls in protest.  The paper will continue online with what is being called a “modified” edition focused on commentary and opinion, but without news or sports coverage the newspaper is effectively dead

Founded in 1870 as the Arizona Citizen, the daily has gone through a painful downsizing process, culminating in a bizarre series of late rescue attempts.  Owner Gannett Co. announced in January that it was putting the Citizen up for sale and would shut down the paper in March if no buyer was found.

In February, the Justice Department said it was investigating the Gannett sale due to allegations that the company would not give up its interest in a joint operating agreement (JOA) it has with Lee Enterprises, publisher of the Arizona Daily Star.  JOAs are legally sanctioned duopolies that enable partners to share profits and back office operations while maintaining competing editorial voices. Without the JOA, the Citizen is effectively a money pit.

Failed Rescue Attempt

On March 16, just five days before the scheduled shutdown,we posted our first RIP for the newspaper, but the next day  Gannett announced that two “very interested buyers” had emerged.  In fact, the Citizen had at least five suitors during its final months, but none wanted to pay Gannett’s price. Meanwhile, the Justice Department confirmed today that it has closed its investigation into the sale and will let the Citizen shut down.

The howls of protest are from Stephen Hadland, CEO of Santa Monica Media Corp., who says he still wants to buy the Citizen and who claims Gannett refuses to budge on price.  The Citizen reported in March that Santa Monica Media is a “blank check company” that exists solely to perform mergers and acquisitions. Hadland has asked the Arizona attorney general for a temporary restraining to prevent Gannett from closing the Citizen.  With no further interference from the Justice Department, however, it appears that the closure is a done deal.

In a final strange twist, a Gannett implied that the stub of a website being kept in operation may be nothing more than a sop to the Justice Department to let the deal go through.  Gannett revealed almost no details about the plans for the online operation and refused to say how long it will keep the site in operation.

The Citizen employs 60 people, most of whom will lose their jobs, although some may be retained to staff the Web operation.

Update 5/16/09: Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a complaint in U.S. District Court in Tucson late Friday to block the closure of the Citizen. A temporary restraining order is being filed. The move appears to have been initiated by Santa Monica Media Corp., which says it bid a fair price for the paper but Gannett refused to negotiate. As of 10:30 a.m. MST on Saturday, if was still unclear if Saturday’s issue would be the last.