The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, an institution in the great northwest for 146 years, is for sale. If no buyer is found within 60 days, the paper will close, idling 170 people. Even if a buyer emerges, it’s almost certain that the P-I will end print operations.

The sobering news was delivered by Steven Swartz (left), president of Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division, in an address to P-I employees Friday while police scanners buzzed and phones rang in the background (here’s the video). Swartz didn’t take questions but he didn’t mince words either. “One thing is clear: At the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in printed form,” he said. “Since 2000, the P-I has lost money each year, and the losses have…continued to escalate.”

Swartz decisively ruled out any possibility that Hearst would attempt to keep the P-I afloat by combining it with the rival Seattle Times. “It is not our intention to attempt to acquire the Seattle Times,” he told the newsroom.

Seattlepi.com has a lengthy news analysis of the event, including quotes from local dignitaries and readers (“I buy the papers for the puzzles,” says one) and an analysis of the likelihood of rescue. The consensus is that the likehood is slim to none, barring intervention by a Microsoft millionaire.  “Right now there are 30 or more newspapers on the market that are profitable, and they’re not selling. So why would anyone buy a paper that’s losing money?” asks one anonymous executive.

They’re not exactly celebrating across town at the Seattle Times, however. The news story in the crosstown rival is a little more blunt in its assessment: “[T]he venerable newspaper — at least in its printed form — almost certainly will fold, industry observers say.” It also devotes more attention the contractual and legal issues than does the seattlepi.com account, which focuses more on the human impact.

In a related analysis story, the Times acknowledges that its rival’s likely closure will be to its benefit, but that doesn’t equate to prosperity. The two Seattle dailies have worked under a joint operating agreement since 1993 in which the P-I shared in a portion of the profits of its competitor. With that albatross lifted from its shoulders – and with the likelihood that a portion of the P-I‘s 117,000 subscribers will join its subscriber rolls – the development is a relief for the Blethen family, which has been besieged by bad news over the last year. But the financial state of the Times is so dire that its rival’s closure is more likely to guarantee survival than prosperity.  Here’s a list of stories we’ve covered. Search the page for “Seattle Times” for details.

Other coverage

• Martin Langeveld speculates on the possibility of an old-fashioned newspaper war between the Times and a reborn, all-digital PI.
• Mark Potts sees similar potential, particularly if some deep-pocketed Microsoftie steps up to the plate.
• Alan Mutter sees a rough year ahead for two-newspaper towns.

Rumors have been floating around for months that the Seattle Times would shut down, so employees at rival Post-Intelligencer were understandably shocked when a local TV station reported a single-sourced story yesterday that the paper is being put up for sale and would be shut down if no buyer is found. No one, from the P-I‘s publisher on down, is confirming the report or even knowledge of the rumor. This doesn’t stop the Seattle Times from quoting numerous staff and local officials commenting about how sucky a shutdown would be, some of them speaking in the present tense. “I think it’s a horrible tragedy,” said Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata, referring to a single-sourced story that no one has confirmed.

Speculation is focusing on a change of management at P-I owner Hearst Newspapers. Incoming President Steve Swartz reportedly sent employees a memo outlining “100 Days of Change” beginning in early 2009, but offered few specifics. Under the joint operating agreement, either of Seattle’s two daily newspapers must be offered for sale for 30 days before being shut down. The report comes as a particular surprise because well-reported financial troubles at the Seattle Times have had most locals thinking it would be that paper going down first. Keep in mind, however, that this is still a single report based on a single source at a single local TV station. The fact that the publisher of is the P-I‘s main rival denies awareness of it should be taken seriously.

A Benevolent History

Jack Shafer’s account in Slate of how newspapers innovated – and then failed – on the Web is a sympathetic story about an industry that’s often criticized for insularity. In contrast to the popular image that newspaper executives were clueless about online competition, Shafer declares that they were actually paranoid about it. In fact, newspapers threw away a lot of money trying to create early online business models.

The Washington Post had constructed its own interactive service by 1994 and nearly every major newspaper was online by 1999. “Newspapers deserve bragging rights for having homesteaded the Web long before most government agencies and major corporations knew what a URL was,” Shafer writes. In earlier years, Knight-Ridder sank $50 million in an Internet precursor called videotex and newspapers had experimented with fax and even audio editions in the early 1980s.

The problem wasn’t innovation, Shafer notes; it was attitude. Newspaper companies’ approach to these disruptive technologies was first defensive and then opportunistic. Once executives were satisfied that their revenue base wasn’t going away they sought to use new media to find new revenue streams as long as it didn’t mess with the model. Commenting on videotex, he writes, “Once [newspaper companies] they determined that nobody could make money from videotex and the technology posed no threat to the newsprint model, they were happy to shutter their ventures.

But that’s the problem. New technologies never succeed when their use is restricted like that. Shafer calls these “nongenerative” services, meaning that no third party industry can innovate on their platforms. AOL is an example of this. Nongenerative services almost always lose out to “generative” media like the Internet because customers can add their own value. That’s basically why the personal computer has 90% market share and the Mac has 10%. Intel CEO Andy Grove titled his book Only the Paranoid Survive. The newspaper industry had the requisite paranoia, but it didn’t have the innovative attitude to match.

Miscellany

Residents of the New Mexican cities of Santa Rosa, Tucumcari, Clovis, Portales, Lovington and a couple of dozen other cities and towns that currently get home delivery of the Albuquerque Journal will have to find something else to read. New Mexico’s largest daily newspaper, plans to stop home deliveries and rack sales in more than 30 communities around the state. This despite the fact that the Journal lost its only competitor, the Albuquerque Tribune, nearly a year ago. The cost of delivery was just too steep, the publisher said. Elsewhere in New Mexico, Freedom New Mexico stopped home deliveries of the Quay County Sun last week.

The Newark Star-Ledger‘s Paul Mulshine contributes an op-ed piece to The Wall Street Journal that reads at first blush like another curse-the-darkness ranting by an aging journo about the unfairness of it all, but that ultimately makes a persuasive case that no blogger in his of her right mind is going to be caught dead covering city council meetings for free.

McClatchy Watch notes a case of online cluelessness by company management. Responding to rumors that McClatchy was closing its Washington bureau, CEO Gary Pruitt sent off a memo to employees scolding them for spreading the rumor without checking with company management. Of course, it’s management’s responsibility to head off rumors quickly, not employees’ responsibility to verify them. If McClatchy had its internal communications act together, there wouldn’t be an audience for a McClatchy Watch.

Layoff Log

• The drip, drip, drip of layoffs continues at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: another 39 people have lost their jobs, including 14 in the newswroom. The AP story reckons total announced cutbacks at the P-D amount to 270 in the last 16 months. (Via PaidContent.org)
• The Winnipeg Free Press is begging employees to accept a buyout in order to avoid laying people off next week. The publisher seeks to reduce headcount by about 5%.
• The Buffalo News is offering buyouts to about 300 workers. There’s no word on how many jobs the paper is seeking to eliminate. A similar offer went out last August to 107 employees, but only about a dozen accepted.
• Dow Jones is freezing salaries for a year, reports MediaBistro. Unlike most media companies, Dow Jones has so far managed to avoid major layoffs.
• NJN Publishing, which produces four weekly newspapers in New Jersey, laid off 25 full- and part-time employees, or about 17% of its staff.

And finally

In a print market that’s hemorrhaging, The Slammer is one newspaper that’s flourishing. Its “newsstand profit margin is four times that of most local dailies, and its circulation has grown to 29,000 – up nearly 50 percent from 20,000 just last year. At more than 500 convenience stores across North Carolina, it’s selling at a buck a pop,” writes The Christian Science Monitor. The secret: The Slammer is full of mug shots, crime reports and allegations of misdeeds. “The men and women, with their dour mugs, bloodied noses, and booze-induced grins, have been arrested for everything from skipping a court date to robbing a food mart. It is, in essence, the local police blotter writ large,” the Monitor writes.

Journalism ethicists bemoan The Slammer‘s perverse appeal, but the genre is spreading. Two papers with a similar format have sprung up in Florida and The Slammer is planning to expand its North Carolina distribution.

The secret isn’t just the mug shots and wrongdoings. It’s also the snarky style the paper uses. It sometimes mocks repeat offenders and hosts weekly features like the worst late-night arrest hairdos. Such public flogging is a “step up from the stocks,” says one critic. But victims don’t seem to mind too much. In fact, “the chief complaints the weekly paper gets come from perps complaining that their photos didn’t get printed,” the Monitor writes.

The media blogosphere has been buzzing over a short interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt in Fortune in which the executive laments the loss of newspaper journalism but doesn’t offer to lift a finger to help the industry financially. Schmidt’s remarks may appear disingenuous at first, but if you consider Google’s philosophy, they’re actually consistent with his previous statements and make sound business sense.

Among the digerati, Schmidt has been outspoken in his concerns about the damage that the industry’s troubles are inflicting on the public’s right to know. However, it makes no sense for Google to intervene to prop up a business model that doesn’t work any more. Google stands to lose plenty from the industry’s collapse. Newspaper content is one of the most valuable assets in Google’s index and users of the company’s news aggregation service are its most attractive demographic audience. Newspapers “don’t have a problem of demand for their product…People love the news,” he tells Fortune.

Google is in an awkward situation: it has the money to prop up the industry, but doing so would be bad business judgment. Schmidt notes that Google can do nothing about the structural problems that plague the industry. Investing in failing business models is simply throwing good money after bad. So, to some extent, people like Schmidt must stand by and watch helplessly as a business that they respect and admire comes apart at the seams.

Schmidt’s position is based on sound business judgment, the kind of judgment that has gotten Google where it is. He shouldn’t be blamed for doing what’s best for his shareholders and employees.

It looks like a chain of Connecticut newspapers that were just days from closure will continue publishing under the guidance of a New Englander. Longtime newspaper executive Michael E. Schroeder (left) has bought the group that includes the Bristol Press, the New Britain Herald and three nearby weeklies. Schroeder was most recently publisher of BostonNOW, a free daily with a promising future that abruptly closed under unusual circumstances last spring. Schroeder was previously with Newsday. There’s no word on what he plans to do with his new possessions, but the papers will continue to publish on their current schedule for now. “We look forward to building upon the rich history of these properties,” reads Schroeder’s quote from the press release.

Selling Local

Steve Outing has a dozen tips for how newspaper companies can make money. Some are amplifications of his earlier ideas and a few are brand new. Two themes run throughout: create lots of niche products and learn to sell them that way.

It’s the latter theme that doesn’t get as much press as it should. Newspaper industry pundits tend to focus a lot on what needs to be fixed on the editorial side of the house (still plenty) but we don’t read that much about ad sales. While admitting that he’s an editorial guy, Outing addresses that issue repeatedly.  Success in the emerging hybrid print/online world demands that ad sales staffs be able to sell targeted advertising aimed at niche interests. This is antithetical to many print sales veterans, who have grown up in a world that demands skill at selling 26-time print schedules to large department stores and cell phone companies.

This is a problem for newspaper companies.  In our own experience working at an Internet publisher a decade ago, we found that sales reps recruited out of the print world were often disasters at online sales.  They didn’t understand how to define the value of niche markets and they sometimes appeared to believe that signed contracts in the few hundreds or thousands of dollars was beneath them.  Yet this is the only way that advertising works online.  The most successful print refugees often came from the classified sales field, where success was all about closing lots of small deals.

Outing’s recommendations deserve careful consideration, as do most of his ideas.  What he doesn’t address in this column is the thorny issue of how to equip a generation of sales reps with a whole new set of skills.  In our experience, it’s difficult at best and often impossible.

Shooting Holes in “Hyper-Local”

Last month, we reported on new Gallup research that shows the Internet closing the gap with local newspapers as people’s preferred news source. Now David Sullivan of “That’s the Press, Baby” has taken Gallup’s own numbers and sketched out a counter-intuitive case that newspaper readership is actually stable or growing among the young people who are widely believed to be abandoning the medium. What’s more, he makes an argument that readers are gravitating to national news and not to the hyper-local content that’s frequently held out as the industry’s salvation.

A big factor could have been last year’s election, Sullivan posits. People just couldn’t get enough of news from the campaign trail, which is too bad because local newspapers were busily paring back national coverage in the name of being more local. There’s no question that national newspapers saw the least erosion in circulation during the last year. Could it be that hyper-local isn’t a obvious as solution as it seems? We weren’t able to give Sullivan’s number-crunching adequate scrutiny, but his logic looks sound. Please have a look and post your comments here.

Here Comes Shirky

If you haven’t read any Clay Shirky, you’re in for a treat. The NYU adjunct professor and author of Here Comes Everybody has a chat with the Guardian about the future of media that yields several fine quotes:

• Newspapers “were such a good idea for such a long time that people felt the newspaper business model was part of a deep truth about the world, rather than just the way things happened to be.”
• “The 500-year-old accident of economics occasioned by the printing press – high upfront cost and filtering happening at the source of publication – is over. But will The New York Times still exist on paper? Of course, because people will hit the print button.”
• “Imagine only having one browsing copy of every book in a bookstore. You could say ‘Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers looks good’, and out pops a brand new copy. Why does a bookstore or a publisher have to be in the shipping and warehousing business?”

Layoff Log

• The Springfield (Mass.) Republican plans to cut 22 full-time and 14 part-time positions, although the cutbacks won’t affect news or sports staffing. There was also some good news for the Republican: it will soon begin printing the Record-Journal from nearby Meriden, Conn.  Apparently, the Connecticut paper’s 30-year-old presses were no longer up to the task. The bad news: the Record-Journal is eliminating 24 full-time and 32 part-time jobs.
• The Wyoming Tribune Eagle revealed that it has cut 14 positions in the past year, but didn’t say how many people it employs. Two more were laid off this week.
• Oklahoma’s second largest newspaper will lay off 28 employees, 26 of them in the newsroom. The Tulsa World said the cuts amount to about 5% of the workforce.
• The Anchorage Daily News is shrinking and re-sectionalizing to accommodate smaller issue sizes. Here’s Editor Patrick Dougherty’s super-nice explanation.

Miscellany

Expect many more papers to follow the lead of Detroit’s Free Press and News this year. Hernando Today, a daily produced by The Tampa Tribune, will cut back to five days later this month by eliminating its Monday and Tuesday editions. Founded as a weekly in 1981, Hernando Today went daily in 1996. It covers Florida’s Hernando County.

Detroit-area writer Dave Hornstein has an interesting history of the newspaper wars – or lack thereof – in Detroit. The miserable condition of the two dailies in that city is largely self-inflicted, as Hornstein tells it. The killer was a bitter battle between newspaper management and labor unions that led to a lockout, large circulation declines and $500 million in losses in the late 1990s. Add to that a couple of ownership changes and major modifications to the joint operating agreement and you have two organizations that were severely weakened when the recession hit. Under those circumstances, it’s not surprising that Detroit was the first city to swallow the bitter pill it did last month.

 Richard Pachter says the new book, The Man Who Owns the News: Inside the Secret World of Rupert Murdoch, is well worth a read. The inside scoop on what went on with Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal acquisition is worth the price of admission (a modest $19.77 on Amazon) and the reviewer praises author Michael Wolff for maintaining balance in a book about a man who inspires strong opinions from both fans and foes. Interesting tidbit: while Murdoch’s Fox News is often criticized for its right-wing slant, the media mogul’s Sky News network in the UK has a liberal tone. Murdoch is politically conservative, but his current wife has broadened his thinking.

Steve Yelvington has created The Shutdown List, an interactive timeline of newspaper closures. The site appears to be more of a programming exercise than an actual tracker, but it’s a lot slicker than our lousy RIP list to the left. You can submit your own candidates for inclusion.

We thought we’d never see this one: The New York Times has started selling advertising on its front page.  Yesterday’s issue carried a 2 1/2-inch strip ad at the bottom of page one from another distressed media company: CBS. It was the first time in the newspaper’s 157-year history that an ad has appeared on the front page.

The Times rolled out the program quietly, making no advance announcements and covering the news matter-of-factly in its business section. MediaPost notes that the Times’ concession illustrates just how bad the business is. “Although many big newspapers have offered advertisers front-page spots, The New York Times long prided itself on presenting readers with nothing but news–in keeping with the paper’s reputation for substance and gravitas,” it said.

The Times‘s own account notes that most newspapers offer some front-page ad space, but the Times and the Washington Post have been long-time holdouts. Today’s edition doesn’t have a front-page ad.

Last month we told you about new Gallup research that showed the Internet is fast closing the gap with local newspapers as the number one news source in the US. Now Pew Research says the lines have crossed. The survey of 1,489 adults found that 40% said they get most of their national and international news online, compared with 35% who rely primarily on newspapers. Television continues to the number one choice, at 70%. Among people under 30, however, the Internet is now just as popular as television for news. In fact, among that age group, the Internet’s role as a primary news source jumped from 34% to 59% in just 15 months, a leap that suggests that these results might be an aberration. We’ll know soon. Pew conducts the survey roughly once a year. There’s also information about the top news stories of 2008, a list dominated by economic issues.

A Public Utility

Should newspapers get a government bailout? One Connecticut lawmaker says yes. Frank Nicastro of Connecticut’s 79^th Assembly district is worried that Journal Register Co. will carry out its threats to shutter the Bristol Press and he’s asking the state for loans, tax breaks or anything else that will save the daily. The Press reportedly has just 11 days to live.

Nicastro’s campaign has fueled an ongoing debate over whether newspapers are entitled to the same government support as airlines, banks and the automobile industry have received. Some people say newspapers are an essential public utility that a democracy can’t afford to lose. Others think the market will find a way to provide this service one way or the other. Almost everyone admits there’s a conflict-of-interest question when a government funds its own watchdog, kind of like letting the banking industry regulate itself. We have an opinion, but we’d like to hear yours, so we made this into a poll question. Cast your vote in the sidebar widget to the right.

A Different Kind of Death Watch

“My beat at The Globe and Mail is the dead,” writes Sandra Martin, in a quote that already goes on our short list for best of 2009. That’s only one of many good lines in her superbly written piece on the craft of obituary writing, one of the least understood and most often satirized disciplines in journalism.

Martin is the Toronto Globe and Mail‘s chief obituary writer and she really, really likes the job. So do a few hundred other people who make up the Society of Professional Obituary Writers (SPOW) (“The first time I Googled the society’s acronym, I came up with ‘sex position of the week,'” Martin comments in another of the 3,700-word essay’s good lines). This fun and fact-filled feature touches on some of the profession’s stickier issues, such as how to balance facts about the deceased’s sexual escapades with the need to avoid angering grieving relatives or how to tell a person you’re interviewing them for their own obituary. She also describes the nightmare all obituarists face: what to do when someone dies suddenly and you’ve got nothing prepared on them.

Martin’s words are relevant to the topic of newspaper survival. She cites Northwestern University research that found that obits were “important” to 45 per cent of readers and “very important” to an additional 12 per cent. That wouldn’t surprise the people at Eons, a social network for baby boomers. They discovered that death notices quickly became the most popular features on their site, which is why they launched Tributes.

Obituary writing isn’t morbid, Martin notes. Rather, it is “about life; death is merely the occasion to set the subject into context.” Read this delightful story and you’ll probably agree that this beat has plenty of, er, life to it.

Miscellany

The Kansas City Kansan will end an 87-year print run on Wednesday when it ceases twice-weekly publication and goes online-only. The Kansan was once the only daily newspaper serving Kansas City, Kan. The revamped website will invite lots of reader contributions through photo-sharing and blogs. Half the staff will be cut. That’s four people. (via Todd Epp).

“Newspaper stocks fell an average of 83.3% in 2008 – twice the fall of the S&P 500 – wiping out $64.5 billion in market value, according to Alan Mutter’s Newsosaur blog.” Want more stats like that? Jeff Jarvis has assembled a few and is asking for more contributions.

John Schrag of the Forest Grove (Ore.) News-Times resists the urge to wring his hands and instead gives specifics on how staff cutbacks are affecting city-hall reporting. This column manages to be both opinionated and dispassionate, documenting with examples how citizens are less informed about their government because reporters aren’t there to sit through the boring meetings. Bloggers, Schrag writes, “may show up in Salem, but I doubt they’ll be posting reports about the Banks Budget Committee or the county’s Joint Watershed Commission.” True that.

Editor & Publisher‘s Mark Fitzgerald lists his choices for the top 10 industry quotes of 2008. Many relate to the stocks of major companies becoming worthless. And Christopher Wink posts some gems in his Twelve months of top journalism blog posts in 2008.

Terrible financial results barely merit a mention any more, other than the fact that each month or quarter seems to be worse than the one just preceding it. Media Post reports ad revenues fell 22.4% at McClatchy in November and publishing revenues were down 17.9% at Media General. The sole bright spot: online revenue was up over 7% at both companies.

Swift Communications has cut staff at its Western Slope newspapers in Colorado and closed some weekly papers. Unspecified cutbacks were made at the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Aspen Times and Grand Junction Free Press. The company shuttered the weekly Carbondale Valley Journal, Leadville Chronicle and the Spanish-language La Tribuna based in Glenwood Springs.

And Finally…

Here are the results of our recent query about the drama in Detroit. Thanks to everyone who voted. We’re trying out a new polling app in the sidebar to the right and will keep plugging away till we find one that we like. Suggestions are welcome:

Note: An earlier version of this story was erroneously headlined “Survey Says Web is #1 News Source.” A reader pointed out that television still holds the top spot.

We wrap up our review of the highlights of 2008 with a selection of the best quotes we carried.

What’s black and white and completely over? It’s newspapers.”

– Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

“We wish Scripps well as it leaves the Denver newspaper market.”

–Denver Post Publisher Dean Singleton, effectively closing the door on any chance he would rescue rival Rocky Mountain News

“Today is set aside as National Punctuation Day (though, like National Grammar Day [March 4, isn’t it?], an occasion I’m inclined to approach with some misgivings); it has been commemorated since 2004 by Jeff Rubin, the self-described Punctuation Man (!) and his wife, who, since “premiering Punctuation Playtime in September 2006 … have been as busy as commas in a Sears catalog,” and who carry the message that “careless punctuation mistakes cost time, money, and productivity”: a proposition that merits examination – and illustrated here by a sentence that will have included all 13 standard punctuation marks when it arrives at a full stop.”

–John McIntyre, Baltimore Sun copy desk director, demonstrating how to use all 13 stanbdard punctuation marks correctly in a single sentence

“You are not in the newspaper business. You are in the business of going into your communities, finding stories, processing them and delivering them back to your clients and charging advertisers for those eyeballs.”

– Journalism futurist Michael Rosenblum, to the Society of Editors

“The newsroom…is down to seeds and stems in terms of numbers of reporters, photographers, copy editors and sports writers.”

–Mike Tharp, executive editor of the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star, leaving little doubt that he has inhaled

“Victimhood is an irresponsible abdication of responsibility, a surrender.”

— Jeff Jarvis, on journalists’ protests that the newspaper industry’s predictament isn’t their fault.

“The newspaper industry is an abusive relationship. We keep getting beat up but we keep coming back because we love him.”

—Martin Gee, administrator of a new group on Facebook called Newspaper Escape Plan

“I repeatedly witnessed bizarre behavior at newspapers that no other business would ever allow. Some reporters and columnists were frequently drunk or on drugs on the job. Such conduct was not simply tolerated, it was condoned. These third-rate Hunter Thompsons screwed up appointments and scrambled facts but were never called to account for their mistakes, incivility or disruptive behavior.”

—Political consultant Clint Reilly

“We wish Jay well and will miss him – not personally, of course – but in the sense of noticing he is no longer here, at least for a few days.”

—Chicago Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke on the paper’s bitter breakup with sports columnist Jay Mariotti

“Many of our regular readers regard us like the electric company or water utility. Yes, everyone wants electricity and water and it’s a pain to do without them. But your soul just isn’t stirred by the sight of working faucet or wall socket.”

—Chicago Tribune Editor Gerry Kern on giving readers what they want

“These guys are in a world of hurt and we as a community need to find economic models that will fund really great content.”

—Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the decline of investigative journalism resulting from newspaper layoffs, a problem for which his company bears no small responsibility

“Galleria escalator stalls, dozens of riders trapped”

—Headline in Not The Los Angeles Times, a parody website

[Veteran journalists told us that if] young people were leaving, it was because they were wimps, and good riddance.”

—Vickey Williams of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center on the challenges of changing newsroom culture

“The inessentialness of copy editors is underscored by the advent of sophisticated spellchecking systems which have introduced a hole new level of error-free proofreading. No longer can we say that the editor’s penis mightier than the sword.”

—Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, in playful response to executives’ comments that the paper needed fewer copy editors

“A prototypical publisher selling 250,000 newspapers on each of the 365 days of the year adds nearly 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s roughly equivalent to the CO2 spewed by almost 3,700 Ford Explorers being driven 10,000 miles apiece per year.”

—Alan Mutter, a journalist and former CEO who admits to owning an SUV

“At least with Tribune, you could have a rational fight; they never shouted obscenities at me. I wish somebody could tell [Sam Zell] that he’s presiding over important newspapers and that sounding like a knucklehead won’t work in the newspaper business.”

—Dean Baquet, former Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief, in an interview with LAMag.com

“In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.”

–Humorist Dave Barry, quoted in RegretTheError.com

We wrap up our review of the highlights of 2008 with a selection of the best quotes we carried.

What’s black and white and completely over? It’s newspapers.”

– Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

“We wish Scripps well as it leaves the Denver newspaper market.”

–Denver Post Publisher Dean Singleton, effectively closing the door on any chance he would rescue rival Rocky Mountain News

“Today is set aside as National Punctuation Day (though, like National Grammar Day [March 4, isn’t it?], an occasion I’m inclined to approach with some misgivings); it has been commemorated since 2004 by Jeff Rubin, the self-described Punctuation Man (!) and his wife, who, since “premiering Punctuation Playtime in September 2006 … have been as busy as commas in a Sears catalog,” and who carry the message that “careless punctuation mistakes cost time, money, and productivity”: a proposition that merits examination – and illustrated here by a sentence that will have included all 13 standard punctuation marks when it arrives at a full stop.”

–John McIntyre, Baltimore Sun copy desk director, demonstrating how to use all 13 stanbdard punctuation marks correctly in a single sentence

“You are not in the newspaper business. You are in the business of going into your communities, finding stories, processing them and delivering them back to your clients and charging advertisers for those eyeballs.”

– Journalism futurist Michael Rosenblum, to the Society of Editors

“The newsroom…is down to seeds and stems in terms of numbers of reporters, photographers, copy editors and sports writers.”

–Mike Tharp, executive editor of the Merced (Calif.) Sun-Star, leaving little doubt that he has inhaled

“Victimhood is an irresponsible abdication of responsibility, a surrender.”

— Jeff Jarvis, on journalists’ protests that the newspaper industry’s predictament isn’t their fault.

“The newspaper industry is an abusive relationship. We keep getting beat up but we keep coming back because we love him.”

—Martin Gee, administrator of a new group on Facebook called Newspaper Escape Plan

“I repeatedly witnessed bizarre behavior at newspapers that no other business would ever allow. Some reporters and columnists were frequently drunk or on drugs on the job. Such conduct was not simply tolerated, it was condoned. These third-rate Hunter Thompsons screwed up appointments and scrambled facts but were never called to account for their mistakes, incivility or disruptive behavior.”

—Political consultant Clint Reilly

“We wish Jay well and will miss him – not personally, of course – but in the sense of noticing he is no longer here, at least for a few days.”

—Chicago Sun-Times editor Michael Cooke on the paper’s bitter breakup with sports columnist Jay Mariotti

“Many of our regular readers regard us like the electric company or water utility. Yes, everyone wants electricity and water and it’s a pain to do without them. But your soul just isn’t stirred by the sight of working faucet or wall socket.”

—Chicago Tribune Editor Gerry Kern on giving readers what they want

“These guys are in a world of hurt and we as a community need to find economic models that will fund really great content.”

—Google CEO Eric Schmidt on the decline of investigative journalism resulting from newspaper layoffs, a problem for which his company bears no small responsibility

“Galleria escalator stalls, dozens of riders trapped”

—Headline in Not The Los Angeles Times, a parody website

[Veteran journalists told us that if] young people were leaving, it was because they were wimps, and good riddance.”

—Vickey Williams of Northwestern University’s Media Management Center on the challenges of changing newsroom culture

“The inessentialness of copy editors is underscored by the advent of sophisticated spellchecking systems which have introduced a hole new level of error-free proofreading. No longer can we say that the editor’s penis mightier than the sword.”

—Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten, in playful response to executives’ comments that the paper needed fewer copy editors

“A prototypical publisher selling 250,000 newspapers on each of the 365 days of the year adds nearly 28,000 tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. That’s roughly equivalent to the CO2 spewed by almost 3,700 Ford Explorers being driven 10,000 miles apiece per year.”

—Alan Mutter, a journalist and former CEO who admits to owning an SUV

“At least with Tribune, you could have a rational fight; they never shouted obscenities at me. I wish somebody could tell [Sam Zell] that he’s presiding over important newspapers and that sounding like a knucklehead won’t work in the newspaper business.”

—Dean Baquet, former Los Angeles Times editor-in-chief, in an interview with LAMag.com

“In yesterday’s column about badminton, I misspelled the name of Guatemalan player Kevin Cordon. I apologize. In my defense, I want to note that in the same column I correctly spelled Prapawadee Jaroenrattanatarak, Poompat Sapkulchananart and Porntip Buranapraseatsuk. So by the time I got to Kevin Cordon, my fingers were exhausted.”

–Humorist Dave Barry, quoted in RegretTheError.com

We sorted through our 147 entries of 2008 to come up with the stories that surprised us, delighted us or made us shake our heads in disbelief. We’re presenting them as a series of posts entries over four days. Tomorrow we’ll conclude with our favorite quotes of the year.

Creative Solutions

A group of Ohio newspapers got together to share stories and even reporting assignments in a novel response to cost pressure. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Toledo Blade, Cincinnati Enquirer and Akron Beacon Journal now post all their daily stories on a private website where editors can pick whatever they want and publish it in their own pages. The tactic has now been tested in several other parts of the US.

Pasadena Now, a small weekly, fired its entire editorial staff and farmed out coverage to a staff of Indian writers recruited on Craigslist. Publisher James McPherson pays the virtual staff about $7.50 per 1,000 words, compared to the $30,000 to $40,000 he was paying each reporter annually. The Indian writers “report” via telephones, web harvesting and webcams, with support and guidance from McPherson and his wife.

Neighborsgo.com, a spinoff of the Dallas Morning News, uses a social network to anchor a community journalism initiative. Local residents create profiles and post information about their interests, and some celebrities are emerging, like the Helpless Housewife (right). Every week, editors dig through content submitted by citizens and produce 18 local print editions.

Research and Markets released a report entitled “Offshoring By US Newspaper Publishers” that sees big growth in the newspaper outsourcing industry, particularly in India. About 2,300 people were employed offshore to serve US and UK newspaper companies in July, 2008, the report said. However, “The total offshore opportunity from newspaper publishers is estimated to be approximately $3.5 billion,” in the long run.

A team of enterprising publishers in the UK produced a four-page newspaper created entirely by hand. “Every word and every image and every mark of any kind in The Manual was drawn by a team of volunteers – mostly illustrators,” the website says. The group foresees a day when “handmade qualities can transform newspapers from ‘junk’ to collectable.

The Politico, a Washington-based boutique news service that specializes in Capitol Hill coverage, signed up more than 100 newspapers for its news service, including the Arizona Republic, Des Moines Register, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Philadelphia Inquirer. Launched in early 2007, the specialized print/online/broadcast hybrid focuses exclusively on politics, is reportedly profitable and has become a must-read for political junkies.

CNN announced plans to challenge the Associated Press with its own wire service. The AP suffered subscriber flight in 2008 as several large newspapers have canceled their subscriptions, claiming the price is too high.

The Chicago Sun-Times offered 44 copies of its Nov. 5 front page on eBay as a “museum wrap fine art giclée print on canvas.” Nov. 5 was a rare bright spot in an otherwise disastrous year. The historic election created a brief surge of demand and many publishers sold out that day’s issue.

The Sun-Times had another idea to attract readers: It brought back dead columnists. “Vintage” columns written by Chicago institution Mike Royko began appearing in August, some 11 years after Royko died. The first one was about a Windy City citizen who was also dead.

Brave New World

Huffington Post employee Mayhill Fowler captured a three-minute rant by Bill Clinton about a Vanity Fair report that questioned the propriety of his post-presidential behavior. Fowler didn’t identify herself as a reporter but said she 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.

CNN reported on a Yahoo employee who Twittered his layoff in February and gained an eager following. Ryan Kuder eventually took a job from the hundreds of leads contributed by his followers . His story was covered on prominent blogs and in mainstream media.

Talking Points Memo was awarded a George Polk Award for its coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys. The New York Times account pointed to the difference between the new breed of online reporting and traditional print journalism. Chief among them is the involvement of readers in the process. Editor Joshua Micah Marshall has even been known to give “assignments” to his readers, asking them to comb through official documents.

Gutsy Moves

Monitor Editor John Yemma

Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing cancelled his newspaper subscription and wrote about it at length, invoking a deluge of scorn from newspaper vets. Outing stuck to his guns.

Tampa Tribune intern Jessica DaSilva documented a contentious meeting about the need for change at the newspaper and posted the editor-in-chief’s comments on her blog. The young woman endured a torrent of abuse from veteran journalists, including many personal insults, as more than 200 comments piled up on her blog. The incident dramatized the industry’s difficulty in dealing with change.

Land of the Rising Seniors

Newspaper sales in Japan are 2.5 times those of the US as a percentage of the population and journalist layoffs are all but unheard of. The reason: the population is declining. The percentage of children 14 and younger is the lowest it’s been in 100 years and the overall population of Japan is expected to decline by a third over the next 50 years. The lack of a new generation of Web-savvy upstarts means papers have less pressure to move online and figure out how to serve a new audience.

Just Plain Fun

The Onion offered a tutorial in how to write a provocative magazine cover line (right).

A tongue-in-cheek investigation by IowaHawk rounded up recent incidents of criminal activity by journalists and concluded that newsrooms are at risk of becoming a “killing field.” Of course, the reporters could have conducted the exercise for lawyers, accountants or plumbers and come to the same conclusion. The best line was from Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit: “I think it’s unfair to single out journalists as thieves, or violent, or drunks, or child abusers. Sometimes they’re all of the above.” The chart is amusing, too.

We sorted through our 147 entries of 2008 to come up with the stories that surprised us, delighted us or made us shake our heads in disbelief. We’re presenting them as a series of posts entries over four days. Tomorrow we’ll conclude with our favorite quotes of the year.

Creative Solutions

A group of Ohio newspapers got together to share stories and even reporting assignments in a novel response to cost pressure. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Columbus Dispatch, Toledo Blade, Cincinnati Enquirer and Akron Beacon Journal now post all their daily stories on a private website where editors can pick whatever they want and publish it in their own pages. The tactic has now been tested in several other parts of the US.

Pasadena Now, a small weekly, fired its entire editorial staff and farmed out coverage to a staff of Indian writers recruited on Craigslist. Publisher James McPherson pays the virtual staff about $7.50 per 1,000 words, compared to the $30,000 to $40,000 he was paying each reporter annually. The Indian writers “report” via telephones, web harvesting and webcams, with support and guidance from McPherson and his wife.

Neighborsgo.com, a spinoff of the Dallas Morning News, uses a social network to anchor a community journalism initiative. Local residents create profiles and post information about their interests, and some celebrities are emerging, like the Helpless Housewife (right). Every week, editors dig through content submitted by citizens and produce 18 local print editions.

Research and Markets released a report entitled “Offshoring By US Newspaper Publishers” that sees big growth in the newspaper outsourcing industry, particularly in India. About 2,300 people were employed offshore to serve US and UK newspaper companies in July, 2008, the report said. However, “The total offshore opportunity from newspaper publishers is estimated to be approximately $3.5 billion,” in the long run.

A team of enterprising publishers in the UK produced a four-page newspaper created entirely by hand. “Every word and every image and every mark of any kind in The Manual was drawn by a team of volunteers – mostly illustrators,” the website says. The group foresees a day when “handmade qualities can transform newspapers from ‘junk’ to collectable.

The Politico, a Washington-based boutique news service that specializes in Capitol Hill coverage, signed up more than 100 newspapers for its news service, including the Arizona Republic, Des Moines Register, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Philadelphia Inquirer. Launched in early 2007, the specialized print/online/broadcast hybrid focuses exclusively on politics, is reportedly profitable and has become a must-read for political junkies.

CNN announced plans to challenge the Associated Press with its own wire service. The AP suffered subscriber flight in 2008 as several large newspapers have canceled their subscriptions, claiming the price is too high.

The Chicago Sun-Times offered 44 copies of its Nov. 5 front page on eBay as a “museum wrap fine art giclée print on canvas.” Nov. 5 was a rare bright spot in an otherwise disastrous year. The historic election created a brief surge of demand and many publishers sold out that day’s issue.

The Sun-Times had another idea to attract readers: It brought back dead columnists. “Vintage” columns written by Chicago institution Mike Royko began appearing in August, some 11 years after Royko died. The first one was about a Windy City citizen who was also dead.

Brave New World

Huffington Post employee Mayhill Fowler captured a three-minute rant by Bill Clinton about a Vanity Fair report that questioned the propriety of his post-presidential behavior. Fowler didn’t identify herself as a reporter but said she 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.

CNN reported on a Yahoo employee who Twittered his layoff in February and gained an eager following. Ryan Kuder eventually took a job from the hundreds of leads contributed by his followers . His story was covered on prominent blogs and in mainstream media.

Talking Points Memo was awarded a George Polk Award for its coverage of the firing of eight United States attorneys. The New York Times account pointed to the difference between the new breed of online reporting and traditional print journalism. Chief among them is the involvement of readers in the process. Editor Joshua Micah Marshall has even been known to give “assignments” to his readers, asking them to comb through official documents.

Gutsy Moves

Monitor Editor John Yemma

The Christian Science Monitor said it is all but exiting the print business. Management chose the paper’s 100^th anniversary year to make the shift, attracting worldwide attention. The Monitor‘s dramatic move legitimized frequency cuts as a survival tactic. Other papers have followed its lead.

Editor & Publisher columnist Steve Outing cancelled his newspaper subscription and wrote about it at length, invoking a deluge of scorn from newspaper vets. Outing stuck to his guns.

Tampa Tribune intern Jessica DaSilva documented a contentious meeting about the need for change at the newspaper and posted the editor-in-chief’s comments on her blog. The young woman endured a torrent of abuse from veteran journalists, including many personal insults, as more than 200 comments piled up on her blog. The incident dramatized the industry’s difficulty in dealing with change.

Land of the Rising Seniors

Newspaper sales in Japan are 2.5 times those of the US as a percentage of the population and journalist layoffs are all but unheard of. The reason: the population is declining. The percentage of children 14 and younger is the lowest it’s been in 100 years and the overall population of Japan is expected to decline by a third over the next 50 years. The lack of a new generation of Web-savvy upstarts means papers have less pressure to move online and figure out how to serve a new audience.

Just Plain Fun

The Onion offered a tutorial in how to write a provocative magazine cover line (right).

A tongue-in-cheek investigation by IowaHawk rounded up recent incidents of criminal activity by journalists and concluded that newsrooms are at risk of becoming a “killing field.” Of course, the reporters could have conducted the exercise for lawyers, accountants or plumbers and come to the same conclusion. The best line was from Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit: “I think it’s unfair to single out journalists as thieves, or violent, or drunks, or child abusers. Sometimes they’re all of the above.” The chart is amusing, too.