Mark Potts elucidates a criticism of pack journalism that we’ve been expressing for some time: Why do news organizations send so many people to cover the same event?  Potts observes that the Tribune Company “had 14 reporters, columnists and photogs at this year’s Super Bowl, even though neither Super Bowl team came from a city where Tribune actually has a newspaper.” Tribune Co. has apparently wised up and is consolidating some sports beats. Potts also points to the Dayton Daily News, which recently forced its Cincinnati Reds beat reporter into retirement. Potts estimates the paper was spending about $250,000 a year for the 37-year veteran to cover a baseball team 55 miles away that was already being covered by the AP. Perhaps that money would be better used to double up on coverage of local sports, although Potts doubts that’s what’ll happen.

We feel the same way whenever we watch a political convention or a Presidential press conference. Hundreds of journalists travel from far away, stay at expensive hotels and drink top-shelf booze to report the same things everyone can already see on TV. Is it possible that Super Bowl trips are used as rewards for treasured staffers? Could a couple of nice dinners out or a $1,000 bonus accomplish the same objective at less cost? We’re just asking.

Although we outsource most of our layoff coverage to the vastly superior work of Erica Smith, we occasionally see news that merits a comment. Such is the case in San Diego, where anyone who thought Platinum Equity would be the white knight to preserve jobs at the Union-Tribune should have those dreams dashed by the latest round of layoffs. The new owner cut 112 jobs this week on top of 192 announced shortly after Platinum assumed control in May. That means Platinum has laid off nearly 30% of the U-T’s workforce in less than four months. The story on the U-T website reads like a press release, mixing news of the job cuts with upbeat talk about investments in new pagination systems and improvements in local reporting. There is no effort to analyze the impact of Platinum Equity’s ownership on the staff or the product they produce, and no comments about the human impact. Perhaps that’s being held for a day two story.

We also have to give the Journal News of Westchester County a nod for their innovative idea of firing all 288 employees and inviting them to re-apply for 218 jobs. It’s not layoff, it’s a job fair! Seriously, the company plans to make all rehiring decisions final by the week of August 24, which means that managers must conduct 218 interviews within the next two weeks. Just shoot us. Fortunately, August is a slow week in the publishing business.

Journalism Online, LLC, the company formed by Steven Brill to help newspapers charge for content, said 506 publications have now signed up for its affiliate network. In a press release carefully crafted to avoid the gaze of antitrust regulators, the company said its customers are eyeing annual charges of $50 to $100 per subscriber “with little diminution of overall page views or online ad revenue.” Neat trick.

Sites with one million monthly page views can expect to earn an additional $5 million to $10 million annually through reader revenue, which figures out to about 40 to 80 cents per page view. Wow, if any plan can generate 40 cents per page view, sign us up! Journalism Online was cautious to stress that each individual publisher will make its own decisions about what, and whether, to charge. “We’re giving them all the dials to turn…but they will be the ones turning the dials,” Brill said.

Perhaps the best argument we’ve seen against citizen journalism is the parade of crazies showing up to criticize the Obama health care plan. The thought that some of these people could acquire a following is truly unsettling. Sacramento Bee cartoonist Rex Babin illustrates this brilliantly, provoking the usual rash of political diatribes.

Another group of Rocky Mountain News ex-pats is taking a run at a new-media publishing model with a paid-subscription component. The Rocky Mountain Independent debuted yesterday with a staff of 14 ex-Rocky employees and a determination not to repeat the mistakes that were made by InDenverTimes, a startup that struggles along on life support after badly missing its goal of recruiting 50,000 paying subscribers. Several members of the Independent staff also worked at InDenver Times.

The new site will be mostly free but with a small collection of columns and in-depth pieces behind a $4/mo. pay wall. Staffer Steve Foster (right), a former assistant sports editor at the Rocky Mountain News, likened the model to ESPN, which is mostly ad-supported but which also has a small amount of subscriber-only material for diehard sports enthusiasts. Foster said editorial content will focus on “larger, broader stories…We’re not as interested in following somebody on the campaign trail on a daily basis. We’d rather step back and assess someone’s chances in an election.” If anyone can detect a difference between that approach and a daily newspaper’s please let us know. Foster also said the Independent will run long pieces, too, which challenges conventional wisdom that online readers don’t have the attention span for that kind of material. The reason? As magazines and newspapers shrink, there’s less long-form journalism being published any more. That creates demand.

Some Good News, Some Bad News on Ad Front

ZenithOptimedia sees some light at the end of the tunnel for advertising. The plunge in global advertising appears to have reached bottom in the second quarter and is poised for some recovery. The agency also trimmed its forecast of a 6.9% decline in advertising spending for 2009. Growth will come mainly in online ads, which is the only segment to expand this year. Within that segment, search advertising has the greatest momentum, with expected growth of 20% this year. The big losers are newspaper and magazine advertising, which the agency expects to decline nearly 15% this year.

The pickup can’t come too soon for the beleaguered magazine industry, which has seen 279 titles close their doors this year already and another 43 end their print versions. The good news: there have also been 187 new launches. However, the trend is in the wrong direction, according to MediaFinder, which notes that in the second quarter alone, 77 magazines have launched while 184 have folded.

Overzealous WaPo Marketer Ruffles Feathers

Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth cancelled plans for a series of dinners at her home after an overzealous Post marketing executive issued flyers positioning the events as a way for sponsors to buy access to the paper’s journalists and members of Congress. Weymouth said the promotions “should never have happened… We’re not going to do any dinners that would impugn the integrity of the newsroom.” Post Editor Marcus Brauchli said he was “appalled” by the promotions that promised “an exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done.”

The whole affair was a platform for strong language on the part of participants and observers. Boston University’s Tom Fiedler said he was “astonished” at the Post’s “crossing a boundary line that seems to me painted so brightly white.” Charles Pelton, the Post marketing executive who created the flyers, said he had been “sloppy” in allowing them to go out. A spokesman for Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, called the dinner as advertised “a radioactive event.” Everyone flagellated themselves fully and promised not to let it happen again.

Miscellany

Gannett Blog has a letter that was apparently sent to employees of Gannett’s 10-paper Newspaper Network of Central Ohio that outlines plans to consolidate 10 regional newspapers under a single editor. The letter is from Linda Greiwe, publisher of the Newark (Ohio) Advocate. It outlines plans to consolidate page production into two locations and to form an “enterprise and data reporting team of two people” who will “write in-depth daily and project stories on issues that impact as many NNCO markets as possible.” Headcount will be reduced but the job losses are not part of Gannett’s larger 1,400-employee layoff announced last week.

Talking Points Memo, the fledgling new-journalism venture run by Josh Marshall, just took a venture funding round from Marc Andreessen, creator of the Netscape browser. The investment is small – less than $1 million – but it’s an important step for TPM, which has been bootstrap-funded until now. Marshall told TechCrunch the company is profitable and has 11 full-time employees. After this cash infusion, it will no doubt have more.

The bankrupt Tribune Co. may be under legal protection from debtors, but it isn’t protected from the realities of the market. The company’s revenue slid 23% in the first five months of the year and its profit margins have dwindled from 19% to 8% during that time, according to a Morningstar analysis. Tribune Co. doesn’t have to report financial results while in bankruptcy, so Morningstar derved the financial picture from an analysis of “operating receipts” reported so far this year. While the company is still cash flow positive, the declining margins would indicate that its debts will have to be significantly restructured to enable it to emerge from bankruptcy. The good news is that the company appears to be close to selling the Chicago Cubs to a local family for a reported $900 million. The Cubs have been for sale for two years. Tribune bought the team and the stadium for $20.5 million in 1981, representing a capital gain of nearly 4,500% in 28 years.

A new study finds that small newspapers are faring better than large ones, although only marginally. Media Post reports on the study by Inland Press that found that papers with less than 15,000 circulation actually saw revenue increases of 2.4% over the last five years. While that’s tiny, it’s a lot better than the 22% decline experienced by the overall newspaper business. However, the study also found that there’s plenty of pain in small markets, particularly at papers in the 25,000-to-50,000 circulation range that are under heavy debt loads. “If this trend continues, bankruptcy and sale or closure could follow for scores of newspapers, as the plague afflicting big metro dailies infects smaller markets,” it asserts. The problem many markets, of course, is debt. Heavy debt burdens are forcing big publishers to plow profits into loan payments instead of investing in their properties. Small publishers without much debt are better positioned overall to weather the crisis.

Trying to come up with someone to blame for the newspaper industry’s crisis? Try Macy’s. The department store chain has chopped more than half of its spending on newspaper advertising since 2005, Alan Mutter reports. He estimates the bite at $616 million annually. And considering that Macy’s it itself a chimera of smaller department store chains, the aggregate loss may be even larger. Macy’s was the second-largest newspaper advertiser in 2008, surpassed only by Verizon.

Tomorrow is the deadline to get in bids to buy the Boston Globe, so hurry!

The Houston Business Journal conducted a non-scientific poll asking readers, “If your local daily newspaper stopped its print edition, would you miss it?” Fifty-six percent said they wouldn’t, with many adding that biased coverage is their biggest complaint.

The San Francisco Chronicle shut down its presses on Sunday after more than 140 years in the printing business. The function has been outsourced to Transcontinental, Inc., the sixth largest printer in North America. More than 200 unionized pressmen lost their jobs.

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

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

Schedule Cutbacks Have Unforeseen Effects

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

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

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

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

R.I.P. Ann Arbor News

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

Miscellany

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Finally…

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

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.

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 Columbia Journalism Review explores the changes at The Wall Street Journal that have made it an enigma among US newspapers. In an atmosphere of decline and panic, the Journal is growing both print and online subscriptions. While its advertising revenue has suffered along with the rest of the industry’s, there is a sense that this paper is doing something right. It’s “moving the needle,” as journalist Liz Featherstone notes at the outset of her 3,300-word analysis.

Moving the needle is apparently a sore spot at the Journal. Some people see the phrase as a euphemism for dumbing down the content, and their opinion has some merit. A 3,300-word analysis like Featherstone’s would have a tough time getting in the paper these days. Featherstone counted a dozen stories of over 2,000 words in the front section during a one-week period in 2007. In a more recent comparison, that total had dwindled to three. Instead, the Journal has got reporters chasing news in general and The New York Times in particular. Stories are shorter, reporters are running from press conference to press conference and the Journal no longer seems to regard its mission as being to explain capitalism. Instead, it’s becoming a hard news-driven international wire service with a specialty in business topics.

Reader Focus

Under new editor Robert Thomson (left, WSJ photo), the paper has become more focused on giving his readers what they want, even if that isn’t what the journalists like.  Featherstone snagged an interview with Thomson, who refers disdainfully to some newspapers as being written more for journalists than for their readers.  The reference is clearly to the Journal itself.

Thomson sees today’s constantly distracted, media-agnostic reader as needing quick information delivered in plain language.  Some see this approach as a heretical rejection of the principles of legendary editor Barney Kilgore, who guided the paper for 27 years and who oversaw its meteoric growth.  But others believe Thomson is simply staying true to Kilgore’s principles of giving readers what they want, rather than what journalists think they need.

The Journal story isn’t a simple one.  While Rupert Murdoch has clearly put his stamp on the organization he acquired for more than $5 billion nearly two years ago, fears that he would meddle with the paper’s editorial voice haven’t materialized.  Murdoch has also proven to be strikingly eager to support editorial quality, such as when he personally stepped in to prevent the government of China from denying a visa to a Journal Beijing reporter.

Many journalists have found themselves at odds with the new direction of the paper and have left with thinly disguised disgust.  But others are fully on board with management’s efforts to make the Journal more relevant to its audience in an effort to insure its long-term vitality.  This story is a balanced account of a journalistic institution in the midst of a transition that has torn at the fabric of its organizational values but that is clearly succeeding in the marketplace. For better or for worse.

Miscellany

There are limitations to how far one should go in giving readers what they want, of course.  The Chicago Tribune apparently stepped over that line recently with an experimental project initiated by the marketing department to seek feedback on stories that hadn’t yet been published or even fully reported. A group of reporters didn’t like this idea one bit, and 55 of them signed an angry e-mail in protest. Editor Gerould Kern quickly backtracked, issuing a statement calling the experiment “a brief market research project that tested reader reaction to working story ideas.”

The Trib went too far, says Newsosaur Alan Mutter, but the fundamental idea has merit.  Mutter sees nothing with using a little market research to shape content, even if it’s only keeping an eye on the most e-mailed stories. He relates the practice of one South American newspaper that posts stories to a website as soon after they clear editing but before they appear in print.  Editors then monitor online activity through the evening and take reader interest into account in laying out pages.

The rule of thumb with buyouts is to take them early because the terms get worse as time passes. Now we’re seeing news organizations do away with severance packages entirely. It happened at the Reading Eagle last week, where 52 staffers were shown the door with just two weeks of health insurance coverage to tide them over. One of the laid-off employees had been with the paper for 45 years.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal just laid off 19 newsroom people without any severance, according to one of the victims, who contacted us.  What they did get was instructions on how to tap into their Guild Retirement Income Plan at a penalty of 10% plus tax withholding at 20%.  Or laid-off employees could elect a lump sum payment from the plan, which would lead them with retirement annuities of less than $10 a month, in some cases. “Will that even pay for a prescription for ‘sugar diabetes’ medicine?” the former employee asks. “I’m in my 40s but everybody over 65 in my family has the ‘sugar diabetes,’ as we call it here in the South.”

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which has been hemorrhaging readership, has got a clever new campaign to promote coziness within the newspaper. Called “Unplug. It’s Sunday,” the promotion positions “the old-school Sunday newspaper as a refuge from the constant buzzing and beeping of smart phones, instant messages and e-mail that marks the modern workweek,” according to a short article in AdWeek. We think it’s a great idea.

And Finally…

Does Lindsay Lohan really look like Gollum from The Lord of the Rings trilogy? You decide. TotallyLooksLike.com will help you make the decision. The site has scores of photo pairs contrasting well-known celebrities with other figures who bear a striking resemblance to them, although we’re sure the likeness wasn’t intentional. Does Mary Kate Olson Totally Look Like Ozzy Osbourne? We didn’t think so till we saw the two in their separated-at-birth photo. See for yourself. You’ll be sharing the images with your friends within minutes. We guarantee it. Use Facebook.

Some of journalism’s most prestigious brands took it on the chin in the new round of circulation figures released this morning by the Audit Bureau of Control. Collectively, the 395 newspapers reporting numbers experienced a 7% year-over-year decline, with some of the worst declines occurred at big-city titles in the Northeast.

There was little good news, except for The Wall Street Journal‘s continued gravity-defiance. The paper squeaked out a .61% circulation gain and is now more than twice as large as The New York Times.  Some other troubled papers, like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Minneapolis Star Tribune, also showed only minor declines in the most recent six months.

USA Today, which has managed to maintain relative stability in previous reports, fell with a thud, dropping almost 7.5%.  Marriott Corp.’s recent decision to stop delivering the paper to hotel guest rooms won’t affect the numbers until the next reporting period

These figures shouldn’t be taken as a snapshot in time but rather as a trend. Newspaper circulation falls for all sorts of reasons, including voluntary cutbacks by publishers.  Trends become evident only over multiple reporting periods. With that in mind, the titles listed below have to be considered the most at risk, since they have shown average declines in the double digits over the last two reporting periods.

Miscellany

Jeff Jarvis asks journalists to focus on where they add value and to stop doing everything else. “If you can’t imagine why someone would link to what you’re doing, you probably shouldn’t be doing it,” he writes. Jarvis cites the example of TV reporters dashing from place to place to tape standups in front of iconic institutions. They’re not reporting, they’re simply relating commodity information in a contextual setting. Why are TV stations spending money on this?  “When we cut out all the incredible waste – those standups and rewrites and frills and blather – and when we have an ecosystem that rewards unique value, as the internet does, then I think we could end up with more journalism, more reporting,” Jarvis says.

Robert Picard tweaks bankrupt newspaper companies for paying large executive bonuses, calling the argument that said such payments are necessary to retain good people “hollow.” Few people are leaving good jobs in a time when nobody’s hiring, Picard writes. Bankruptcy is a time to restructure, not just get out from under your obligations. The good news: Picard believes “Most newspapers… are surviving the downturn and will be serving their communities for many years.”

The Springdale (Ark.) Morning News has laid off nine newsroom workers and an unspecified number of employees in other groups, reports in its newsroom, in addition to cuts in other departments within the paper, reports KSFM television. The paper will also reduce its size and page count. The station’s spare report is typical of those we see on TV websites. If most of these stations didn’t have newspapers and wire services feeding them copy, they wouldn’t have any news at all.

The Los Angeles Daily News laid off at least four more newsroom employees, according to a blog maintained by its Newspaper Guild chapter.

Boston Globe unions staged a rally last Friday to save the paper, which faces a shutdown decision at the end of this week. Speeches by union members were reminiscent of the greatest Samuel Gompers oratory, only the problem is that the Globe‘s parent is flat on its back. Cutting executive pay isn’t going to close an $85 million profitability shortfall.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reached agreement with the union representing 300 newsroom workers that gives the publisher $1.7 million in cost relief. The deal includes a 3% cut in base wages, a 30% cut in merit pay, two days of unpaid furlough in each of the next two years, a freeze in some pensions and a reduction in severance.

New media enterprises are rising out of the ashes of their collapsed predecessors.

Sportswriter Sam Adams is one of several INDenver Times staff who introduce the new site on video

A group of 30 former Rocky Mountain News staffers has launched INDenverTimes, a professional-looking news site that aims to cover local news, sports, business, arts and entertainment, along with “a Denver perspective on national news.” The venture will take a novel approach to subscriptions when it begins charging for premium access in two weeks. Paid subscribers will get “access to the INsider Channel where you can have a direct, real time conversations with our editors and writers…from 10 am to 5 pm every weekday.” The channel will also go live if breaking news happens at other times of the day.

In its first month, the operation recorded 70,000 unique visitors and more than 311,000 page views, or about as much traffic as a top-500 blog. Funded by entrepreneurs Kevin Preblud, Brad Gray and Ben Ray “three Denver entrepreneurs” (we’re trying to get their names), the venture has a hybrid revenue model and has recruited an impressive list of writers and business-side executives. The site also looks clean and well-organized. Believe it or not, this venture is running on WordPress, the same content management system that powers this blog. They’re just doing a lot more with it.

Also, some former Seattle Post-Intelligencer staffers have launched a nonprofit online newspaper with regional coverage. Seattle PostGlobe is basically a multi-author blog that covers news, sports, lifestyles and opinion. It’s very early-stage and looks it, but we’ll keep an eye on this bootstrapped operation as it gets its sea legs.

Street Brawl in Boston

The Boston Globe, evidently tired of all the razzing it was getting about its threatened shutdown, fires a return volley at crosstown rival Boston Herald. Weekday circulation at the Herald is off 38% in the last decade and the newsroom staff has been cut by half. Yadda yadda. What’s really interesting about this story is a comment posted by Tom Mashberg, the Herald Sunday editor who’s quoted in the piece. Mashberg reprints part of an e-mail sent to him by reporter Keith O’Brien in which O’Brien outlines plans to include Mashberg’s comments about the Globe‘s perilous situation that don’t appear in the story. He also notes that the fact that the Herald is actually profitable isn’t mentioned, either, despite a lengthy discussion about what the Herald is doing to survive. “Looks like the editors got hold of this and turned it into a hatchet job,” he says.

Jules Crittendon, a Herald editor, minces no words telling what he thinks of the Globe story and the Globe in general. “One Herald reporter is worth something like 5 to 10 Globies, for all their inflated sense of self-worth,” he writes. And he’s just getting started. Crittendon rips the Globe for a self-important attitude, lazy reporters, layers of redundant management, endless story lengths and on an on. If you hate the Globe to begin with, his blog entry will warm your heart.

The Globe‘s negotiations with its unions continue to be rancorous. The Newspaper Guild now says it will negotiate concessions related directly to cost cuts, but won’t talk about issues like the elimination of lifetime job guarantees for about 190 veterans and the end of seniority rules in layoffs. The Guild is also calling for negotiations to be performed in public and says it wants to deal directly with any potential acquirer on the cost-cut issue. The union’s defiance is a marked contrast to the relatively quick work the San Francisco Chronicle‘s unions made of Hearst’s demands to cut costs. By the way, Globe managers are feeling some of the pain, too. Bonuses have been eliminated for this year, affecting more than 200 people, including the publisher.

Government Bailout for News Infrstructure

Mark Cooper suggests a hybrid approach to saving quality journalism: a “media stimulus package” that could give new localized news services a platform upon which to build profitable businesses. ” Just as IT health and education funds seek to build a new infrastructure for public service in their areas, IT media funding can build infrastructure in the journalism space,” writes Cooper, who is a fellow at the  Donald McGannon Communication Research Center at Fordham University.

Summarizing his argument on Huffington Post (a fuller discussion is here) Cooper notes that major metro dailies are being hit hardest by changes in reader and advertiser behavior because they need to be all things to all people. Although most major metros have discarded much of their national and international coverage, they’re still forced to do too much with too few resources. Shoring up these doomed businesses isn’t the answer, Cooper says. Instead, we should look to the existing media models “that are closest to the emerging citizen-media, like public governmental and educational cable channels on the TV side and low-power FM on the radio side.” These media have long been under-funded, but they have the best chance of molding their models to the new participatory journalism. As long as the US is pouring $1.6 trillion into broken banks, how about a few billion to lay the foundation for a new media infrastructure?

Uh-Oh. It’s Earnings Time

Gannett kicked off the earnings parade, which looks to be more of a funeral procession this year, announcing a60% drop in profit on an 18% slide in revenue. Bad as the numbers were, Gannett’s operating profits actually beat analysts’ expectations by a penny. They also weren’t as bad as the 30% declines expected by some analystsquoted in The New York Times last week.  Those analysts mostly agree that this is a 100-year flood for the industry with the combination of recessionary pressures, catastrophic business problems in some key advertising segments and rising paper and fuel costs sending many publishers into the red. They also agree that more papers are likely to close this year. The revenue plunge isn’t hurting small newspapers and broadcast outlets quite as hard, but even they are expecting double-digit declines.

And it isn’t just newspapers. “Magazines collectively recorded a 25.9 percent plunge in ad pages in the first quarter, with revenue falling 20.2 percent,” says Seeking Alpha’s Jeff Bercovici. ZenithOptimedia is projecting the worst declines in ad spending since it started keeping statistics in 1980: overall US spending down 8.7% with newspapers down 12% and magazines down 11%.

Miscellany

In a sign of the times, the world’s largest maker of newsprint has filed for bankruptcy protection. Abitibi-Bowater, which was formed from a 2007 merger, is struggling to pay $8.78 billion in debt. Even though the Canadian company controls 45% of the North American-based newsprint market, a steep drop in demand has slammed its business. The company has already cut paper production 25% this year. Its 25 pulp and paper mills and 30 wood products plants will continue to operate for now, but some are likely to close as part of the restructuring.

Employment levels in American newsrooms are now lower than they’ve been in more than 25 years, the American Society of Newspaper Editors reports.  The industry shed a record 5,900 jobs last year, more than double the previous record of 2,400 eliminated in 2007. Erica Smith pegs the number much higher at nearly 16,000 reported layoffs in 2008. Employment levels are now comparable to those from the early 1980s. The good news (we guess): there was a 21% rise in online-only journalists last year, to 2,300. Incidentally, the American newsroom remains mostly white: Minorities make up 13.4% of the workforce and 450 newspapers employ no minorities at all.

More people still rely on newspapers for their news than on the Internet, according to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Parade Publications and published by the Newspaper Project. The study of 1,004 US adults also found that 90% of Americans rely on printed or online newspapers for their news and that newspapers are the only medium used more for local than for national news. The research confirms what most people already know: newspapers are important news sources. It doesn’t cast any light on the real problem, though, which is how to create a business model for them that works.

Sam Zell now admits that his highly leveraged 2007 purchase of Tribune Co. was a mistake. For some reason, several news outlets thought this was newsworthy. Zell is always good for a quote, though: Commenting on the prospect of finding a merger partner for his bankrupt company, Zell said, “That’s like asking someone in another business if they want to get vaccinated with a live virus.”

The Orlando Sentinel laid off 50 people last week and didn’t announce it, according to an anonymous comment on this Chicago Tribune story. The person is right that there was no announcement, but we couldn’t confirm the layoffs.

The New York Times is cutting and consolidating some sections in order to save money. Gone are Escapes, a travel guide published on Fridays, as well as Sunday sections that only go to readers in the New York metropolitan area. They’ll be combined into a new Sunday section featuring regional information. Fashion coverage is axed from the weekly magazine and the guide to each day’s newspaper will be consolidated into a single page.

And Finally…

A reader in upstate New York reports on this example of an over-eager, and ultimately failed, Albany Times Union promotion:

I only wanted Sunday’s paper but then they started delivering Thursday and Saturday for free.

When I tried to stop the free Thursday and Saturday papers, they offered me the whole rest of the week for free. I said no, I only wanted Sunday. They said okay and for a while I only got Sunday deliveries, but then I started getting Thursday and Saturday again. I figured it had something to do with local ads on those days but it still annoyed me.

I was so frustrated that I decided to stop delivery altogether. That’s when I was told “You don’t want to put your paper carrier out of a job do you?”  And then they offered me a totally free subscription seven days a week for three months. I didn’t accept it. I just wanted them to stop delivering free papers that I didn’t have time to read and was just throwing out.

So the irony of the whole thing is that because they kept sending me free papers, they lost me as a customer.”

“Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper publisher by circulation, reports earnings on Thursday, kicking off what is expected to be the ugliest quarter in recent memory for the industry,” says The Wall Street Journal in a blunt assessment of the coming earnings season. USA Today is expected to take it on the chin when Gannett announces its results. Forthcoming numbers from the Audit Bureau of Circulations are expected to show a six-month decline of about 100,000 in USA Today‘s 2.3-million circulation, largely as a result of lower occupancy in hotels.  Free hotel distribution accounts for more than half of the paper’s 2.3 million circulation.

Adding to USA Today‘s woes is Marriott’s decision to make room delivery of newspapers optional. Citing environmental concerns, the hotel chain said it will now offer guests a choice of papers or no paper at all, if they so choose.  Declining readership was also a factor in the decision, which will reduce daily circulation by about 50,000 across the US.  One quarter of travelers didn’t even crack open the newspaper that was delivered to their doorstep, a spokeswoman said.

Ugly Spat Over LA Times‘ Front-Page Ad

An internal battle of the Los Angeles Times over the publisher’s decision to run a front-page ad resembling news story highlights growing tension between editors and publishers as the industry revenue woes deepen.  The ad ran last Thursday below the fold in a position and typeface that some people believe could be mistaken for a news story (left). Charles Apple has an image of the entire front page. In an interview with TheWrap, LA Times executive editor John Arthur called the ad “horrible” and “a mistake.” However, the VP for entertainment advertising at the paper said Arthur’s boss, editor Russ Stanton, “approved both advertorial units.”

Not so, says Stanton, who told the Times’ own reporter that the ad ran over his objections. “There is not an editor in this nation — including me — who really wants to see something like that on the front page of his or her publication,” Stanton said. Publisher Eddy Hartenstein said he made the decision to run the ad because of the perilous financial situation at the newspaper. “I’m just trying to keep the lights on here, folks,” he told an angry newsroom last week.

Barriers to front-page advertising have been falling recently as publishers struggle to get creative. The New York Timesshattered tradition in January with a front-page strip ad for CBS and the Boston Globe followed suit just two weeks later.

Miscellany

Newspaper executives like to point out that their total readership — including the Web — is bigger than ever.  However, online ad revenue is still growing more slowly than the market as a whole, according to Alan Mutter.  The most alarming recent statistic: “Interactive revenues for newspapers dropped by 1.8% in 2008 to $3.1 billion at the same time overall online ad sales in the United States surged 10.4% to a record $23.4 billion,” Mutter writes. What’s more, newspapers’ online ad revenues today are 13.3% of the overall market, the lowest share ever.  Mutter suggests that the culprit is newspapers’ practice of up-selling print advertisers with discounted online campaigns, a strategy that grows weaker as print sales decline.  Publishers need to develop sites that look more like the Web and less like digital versions of their print products, he advises.

The Chicago Tribune is cutting another 20% of its already depleted newsroom staff. The paper didn’t say how many employees are left in the newsroom, but there were about 440 as of the most recent layoffs in February. The paper is also reorganizing some production groups, merging copy editing, page design, graphics, imaging and some photo editing into a single department.

Writing on Slate, Jack Shafer takes on joint operating agreements as the great sucking sound that weakened the newspaper industry.  “The tragedy of the joint operating agreements is that instead of making the stronger paper stronger, the arrangement tends to weaken it,” he says, pointing to the San Francisco Chronicle as the poster child example. “Had the Chronicle and the Examiner been forced to compete on the business side in 1965 instead of to collaborate, a clear victor would have a fighting chance at surviving in today’s environment.” Instead, the Chronicle was forced to support the weaker Examiner to the point that both papers were worse off.

The Gannett-owned Observer & Eccentric Newspapers will cease publication of five print and Web editions of the Eccentric chain in suburban Detroit on May 31. Gone are the Birmingham, West Bloomfield, Troy and Rochester editions of the Eccentric. Two other newspapers will be merged into the South Oakland Eccentric, serving nearby communities. The consolidation will result in the loss of 44 jobs.

The Huffington Post has published a terse set of editorial guidelines, demonstrating that the standards being applied to citizens journalists don’t differ all that much from those practiced by mainstream media.

And Finally…

Is that a penguin on the telly? Well, a few penguins, actually, but click the image to see the truly awesome spectacle of what happens when penguins congregate. This is one of the photos on Incredimazing, a website devoted to collecting bizarre images submitted by people like you and me. If you want to scramble your brain, check out the M.C. Escher car.

The New York Times Company shocked the newspaper industry last week with its threats close the Boston Globe on May 1 unless Globe unions give back $20 million in concessions.  There’s new evidence that the May 1 date is a bluff and that closing down the Globe could cost the Times more than keeping it in business.

The Newspaper Guild is taking an initially defiant stance on the Times’ request that the union shoulder half of the $20 million in targeted cost savings. “We’re willing to consider some concessions but not the draconian amount they put forth,” said union president Daniel Totten, in an apparent call of the Times’ bluff. He also characterized the Times’s demand for freedom to lay off people without regards to seniority as “a nonstarter.” Globe reporter Scott Allen, who has a lifetime employment guarantee, commented “Now, nobody thinks that if we make these concessions, there won’t be more cuts in a few months.” Yes, Scott, we think you can count on that when the paper is losing $85 million a year.

The very act of closing the paper would trigger huge expenses in itself. The Boston Herald analyzed public records and found that union members could be entitled to up to 50 weeks of severance pay and that underfunded pension liabilities could swell the total cost to more than $100 million.  Contractual obligations also make the Globe a tough property to sell, since few buyers would want to assume open-ended liabilities like the lifetime employment pledges to 435 employees.  The only way to cancel the guarantees, apparently, is to close down the paper.

If the Times Co. plans to carry forward with its threats, it has yet to tell the government. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) act requires most employers with more than 100 employees to give 60 days’ notice of plant closings and mass layoffs.  The Times Co. hasn’t yet filed a WARN notice, although it could still shutter the paper and pay employees for 60 days thereafter.

The Globe is raising its newsstand prices by as much as 60% in a gamble that readers will help pick up some of the bill for keeping the paper afloat. Residents outside of Boston will now pay $4 for a Sunday paper, compared to the current $2.50.

The Globe‘s crosstown rival Herald, which can barely disguise its glee in covering this story, also reports that four Guild leaders and six governing board executives are among those with lifetime job guarantees. Those guarantees are one of the biggest obstacles to selling the paper and are a primary negotiating point between the Times Co and the Globe unions.  The guarantees are causing friction within Newspaper Guild ranks, as some members believe that the leadership will be unwilling to negotiate in good faith out of fear of losing their jobs.

The Herald’s rapacious columnist, Howie Carr (left), skewers his blue-blooded competition for a series of past errors provoked by lapses in judgment.  Too bad there are no hyperlinks; it would’ve been nice to read the background on this stuff.

Meanwhile, the Globe itself notes a trend: newspaper owners are increasingly using the threat of closure to extract concessions from their unions. Hearst’s success in gaining significant givebacks from the union in order to keep the San Francisco Chronicle afloat may have prompted the Times Co. to threaten the Globe with oblivion. Also, Members of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild in Seattle were scheduled to vote this week on accepting a wage freeze and two weeks of unpaid furloughs in exchange for keeping the Seattle Times afloat. A similar holdup is going on in Maine. Could it be that newspaper owners are merely posturing in order to gain concessions from the unions? Nah, they both have the higher goal of quality journalism in mind.

Is AP Worst Content Thief?

A new blog called The Future Of Newspapers features a guest column by veteran Denver sports writer Dave Krieger that poses a curious question: How can the Associated Press proposed to champion the intellectual property rights of newspapers when the AP is itself the worst violator of those rights? Krieger notes that readers don’t make a distinction between the source of information and where they consume it. News from the Denver Post that appears on ESPN.com is presumed to be from ESPN.

“Why should any newspaper in the Internet age be a member of an organization that takes that paper’s original material, rewrites it and distributes it around the world without attribution or compensation? In fact, an organization that charges the newspaper for the privilege?” The AP had some utility when newspapers were expected to provide national and international coverage, but obligation is gone now.  For most metro dailies, the AP is nothing more than a subscription service that pirates their content and distributes it free on the Internet.  He has a point.

Miscellany

Executives might want to look at what’s going on at the Virginian-Pilot, where management reports that the financial outlook is brightening even as it lays off another 40 employees.  The company has cut nearly 20% of its workforce in the past year and reduced its newsroom staff by 30% since early 2007, but it has also taken some initiatives to diversify and grow revenue. These include targeted websites, expansion of entertainment coverage and contracts to deliver national newspapers in its region. While print revenue continues to fall, management said online revenue is growing. The newspaper turned a profit in the first quarter and March was its best month in a year.

Boston University’s newspaper asks three journalists-turned -academics if university partnerships could be a solution to newspapers’ financial troubles.  They agree that university endowments could be an important source of support for failing journalist enterprises and that universities have a duty to support worthy cultural and public service institutions.  However, educational institutions are not known for acting quickly and trustees would probably balk at taking on financial liabilities as daunting a complex as those that the industry faces.

Rosa Brooks fires a parting shot in her swan song as a Los Angeles Times columnist. She’s going to the Pentagon as advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy, but she fears that the evisceration of her industry will leave the American public wanting. She “can’t imagine anything more dangerous than a society in which the news industry has more or less collapsed.” Brooks believes that the government must step up to the plate and subsidize journalism, which isn’t the same as subsidizing media. The problem with existing subsidies is that they “have actually contributed to the decline of high-quality journalism by enabling monopolies, freezing out smaller and locally controlled media outlets and encouraging large corporations to treat the news as just another product,” she writes. The issue isn’t how to save the media, but how to save quality.

The Reno (Nev.) Gazette-Journal is laying off 35 people, or about 10 percent of its workforce, and closing a weekly paper in Carson City. These are in addition to 61 other positions eliminated since December.  Do the math, and the paper has cut almost 25% of its workforce in the last four months.

Veteran newsman Ric Cox has launched a blog called “Save Our Tribune” that’s dedicated to “rescuing Chicago’s leading newspaper.”  In one of his initial posts, he suggests ways that the Tribune can make online subscriptions palatable to users who are accustomed to getting news for free.

And Finally…

Some residents of Omaha, Neb. have created a satirical website to celebrate “Totally bogus news from the mid-heartland.”  The principal target of its barbs is the Omaha World Herald, “which has laid off employees twice (usually after throwing an extravagant party for an ex-publisher), cut back circulation, and now runs obits where it used to run op-eds,” according to a promotional message. One of the early posts notes the possibility that the state may create a precedent in capital punishment due to a typographical error. “The state might be replacing the electric chair with ‘lethal infection’ rather than the intended ‘lethal injection,'” the editors write, noting that some members of the Senate Judiciary Committee actually like the idea. One of them “added an elegant provision permitting the use of a piece of rusty barbed wire to begin the process and inject the pathogens,” says the site.