The owner of the Minneapolis Star Tribune is disputing a report in the New York Post that the paper is on the brink of bankruptcy. In a statement issued late Friday, Publisher and Chairman Chris Harte said the Star Tribune “currently has sufficient liquidity and is current on all its debt payment obligations.” However, he acknowledged that the company has hired a private equity firm to advise it on business options.

There’s no question things are grim at the “Strib.” The paper has cut 10% of its workforce over the last two years and was one of the leading losers in the ABC audit report published last week. In February, Harte told his people “Total revenue is down almost $75 million in the last two years… classified revenue was down over 50 percent from what it was at the start of the decade.”

A Star Tribune bankruptcy raises the likelihood that the paper’s creditors could end up owning it, and you know how committed banks are to quality journalism. The most likely scenario is massive expense cuts and a fire sale. The Star Tribune’s near-monopoly position does buy it some breathing room, but it’s hard to imagine there would be much hope of attracting new readers from such a crippled state. Ironically, as we noted two weeks ago, readers of the Star Tribune’s website spend almost as much time there as readers of The Wall Street Journal’s wsj.com.

Do J-Schools Hinder Progress?

Vin Crosbie writes a searing commentary on ClickZ about why journalism schools are part of the problem in the newspaper industry, rather than part of the solution. Having spent most of the last year on a sabbatical from consulting to teach journalism, Crosbie says he’s been astounded by the refusal of faculty at various academic institutions to change the ways in which they teach their craft in the face of seismic industry disruption (he’s careful not to point the finger at his own). “What I found were faculties resistant to change and students whose insights and mastery of new media were being eroded by the authoritative resistance to change of so many professors,” he writes.

He estimates that a quarter of J-school professors are actively blocking curriculum change and that they’re intimidating the 50% of the teachers who do want to move forward. Surprisingly, it’s the academics in their 30s and 40s who seem to be most in denial.

Union Agitation in the East Bay

It didn’t take long for union organizers to return to the East Bay. More than half the employees of a chain of newspapers in the region have signed cards demanding that they get union representation. They’ve filed their petition with the National Labor Relations Board, which will probably clear them for a vote.

The unit of MediaNews Group that runs the papers in the area probably thought it had scored an end run around the union nine months ago when it combined enough operations to dilute union membership below the 50% level required for recognition. Now employees of the combined operations have struck back. It’s hard to imagine what either side stands to gain. As a commenter on Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20-Year Club notes, “Gee, now they get to be laid off in order of seniority instead on who can do the job best.”

Your Daily Murdoch

As expected, Cablevision bid $650 for Newsday, which means Murdoch will have to match the ante. Speculation is that he’ll do just that and will eventually walk away with the prize, in part because his offer cuts Tribune Co. in for a tax-efficient minority stake and in part because he and Sam Zell are now good buddies.

Alan Mutter thinks Zell has a secret agenda in cozying up to Murdoch: he sees News Corp. as his exit strategy. Mutter sketches a scenario in which Tribune Co., on the brink of default, sells to News Corp., giving News Corp. cross-ownership of multiple print and TV properties in key cities. Murdoch and Zell then argue before the Federal Trade Commission that such consolidation is necessary for survival in the face of Internet competition. If the FTC modifies the rules, then News Corp. goes on a shopping spree. Intriguing idea.

And Finally

Editor & Publisher has a nice analysis of recent shakeups in D.C. newsrooms, including the ousters of the Associated Press bureau chief and a top national editor at The Washington Post. The common thread appears to be that these people were the victims of political struggles touched off by industry change.

The Economist summarizes the trials of the U.S. newspaper industry. It’s nothing you haven’t read here already, but it’s done in that crisp, efficient Economist style.

Blogging for Time, Justin Fox says newspapers will milk their current business until they die because they just can’t bring themselves to change their print-centric mentality. This statement is followed, curiously, by a discussion of his lunch.

As the story of Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli’s abrupt resignation last week continues to unfold, media critics are piling on with withering commentary about the Journal’s toothless “Special Committee” on editorial independence. At a time when commentators should be training their guns on Murdoch, they’re focusing instead on the group that’s supposed to protect the paper’s editorial integrity from Murdoch.
Jack Shafer’s column in Slate is snarky commentary at its best. Shafer says the committed was publicly humiliated by Murdoch, and isn’t it curious that no one has resigned in protest?

“The denutted Dow Jones Special Committee issued its wimpy statement yesterday…What they meant to say was, ‘We’re each paid $100,000 annually, a lot of money for very little work, so if Rupert wants to drive by and hose us down with a swift, hard piss again, just make sure the checks clear.'”

“Denutted?” Brilliant.

Shafer makes no effort to hide his contempt for Murdoch, but he gives the man his due: Murdoch owns the Journal and he’s entitled to do what he wants. The half million a year the owner pays the Special Committee is basically hush money and his recent actions have only demonstrated how little respect he has for the group.

Dean Starkman writes in Columbia Journalism Review that the saga is “getting awfully close to clown-car territory.” He calls out the committee for admitting that it was powerless to prevent Brauchli’s resignation. “It’s stunning to think that a 7,000-word agreement, crafted by some of the most expensive lawyers in the world, does not even contemplate the possibility that an editor might resign.” Of the committee’s admitted surprise at Brauchli’s departure, he adds, “The committee, remember, includes three crack newshounds, supposedly. Woof woof.”

Someone on the committee – most likely Chairman Thomas Bray – should resign in protest. The fact that no one has done so only makes the group look worse. The media’s increasing focus on the committee members’ lavish compensation is making this supposedly noble effort look more and more like a boondoggle for self-indulgent former journalists.

Gawker has more dirt on the internal politicking at the journalism world’s biggest ongoing soap opera. If you’re into that kind of thing.

Murdoch Moves in on Newsday

Murdoch has a clear path to buy Newsday, says the paper itself, even though threats of an FCC penalty loom. Technically, the Newsday purchase would endanger Murdoch’s licenses for his two regional TV stations, WNYW and WWOR. However, any action by the FCC would probably be tied up in court for years, during which time Murdoch could act with impunity and wait for turnover at the FCC and in Congress to change the regulatory scene.

Maybe we’re missing something, but all this talk of Murdoch’s waiting strategy seems to overlook one essential point: the man is 77 years old. Unless Murdoch has discovered a fountain of youth, his “long term” is probably eight to 10 years at most. Whatever legacy he intends to leave in the U.S. media market will have to be played out by then or handed over to a clone. None seems to be standing by.

Newspaper Stocks May be a Bargain

Max Zeledon makes a wordy case for why Gannett, News Corp. and New York Times Co. are three newspaper stocks to buy. He has confidence in the industry’s ability to survive, pointing out that newspapers adapted to the coming of TV, radio and cable and emerged stronger for the experience. Zeledon says his three picks are fundamentally sound companies with diversified holdings and the opportunity to gain share as the industry emerges from its troubles. They appear to be the best of the bunch. However, we’d argue with the comparison of the Internet to radio or cable TV. Neither of those technologies devalued newspapers’ core product the way online competition does.

Edward R. Murrow Rolls Over

The New York Times says CBS is talking with CNN about outsourcing some of its reporting operations to the cable network. The talks are apparently a consequence of the abysmal ratings for CBS’s news programs, which are mired in last place despite the $15 million the network is paying Katie Couric each year to drag the ratings even lower. CBS reportedly laid off 160 employees in 13 cities early last month.

And Finally…

If you aren’t using Twitter, you should be. It’s the most disruptive online technology since YouTube, despite its seeming simplicity, and its technology will change journalism. Last month it saved a man from an Egyptian prison. The guy is a UC Berkeley grad student and he was arrested and imprisoned without charges for photographing a demonstration, TechCrunch reports. He twittered “Arrested” to his 48 followers, who acted quickly to spring him.

The oddmakers are still placing their bets on Rupert Murdoch to emerge from the Big Apple newspaper scrum clutching Newsday, but he apparently won’t get it without a fight. Newsday itself reports that Cablevision is ready to hike its bid above $600 million, meaning that Messrs. Murdoch and Mortimer Zuckerman will probably have to raise their bids as well. Cablevision’s controlling Dolan family apparently feel that Long Island is home turf, and may even join in a joint offer with New York Observer owner Jared Kushner to keep Murdoch’s hands off the paper. Meanwhile, Murdoch has hired former U.S. Senator Alfonse D’Amato to grease the skids with local elected officials, who still have the power to nix the deal.

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Fortune’s Devin Leonard has an insightful analysis of the financial machinations behind the Muroch-Zuckerman dogfight. He says Murdoch’s proposal to Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell isn’t an outright buy but a joint venture between Tribune and News Corp. Such a deal would save the famously tax-averse Zell a lot of money in capital gains taxes while shoring up the money-losing New York Post. Of course, Murdoch would still have to get the deal past the FCC, but his track record there has been pretty good. Meanwhile, Zuckerman probably sees a Newsday-Post combination as a death knell for his Daily News, a fact that may force him to raise his offer.

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Over at The Wall Street Journal, the special committee to oversee editorial independence issued a protest against the way former WJS managing editor Marcus Brauchli’s resignation was handled last week. The committee says it was informed after the fact in a manner that was inconsistent with the letter and spirit of its agreement with Murdoch. It plans to play an active and vigorous role in hiring a successor, said a statement by the five-member committee, whose formal authority is unclear. Chairman Thomas Bray hastened to note that he has no intention of stepping down from the committee, which isn’t surprising, considering that members are paid $100,000 a year for their work.

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Retired LA Times veteran Ken Reich shares his plain-talk view of the difference between Tribune and News Corp., casting his vote for Murdoch. “He invests in his newspapers. He builds them up, rather than tears them down,” Reich writes. He then goes on a tirade against the situation at the LA Times, particularly the “squalid duet [sic]” of publisher David Hiller and editor Russ Stanton. The editor “likes to write memos, and each one is dumber than the one before. He is a lackey to Hiller,” says Reich, who is probably not seeking freelance work from his former employer. Thanks to the LA Times Pressmens Club blog for the link. But guys, you’ve got some serious spyware issues.

Pearlstein Cautions Against Too Much Hyper-locality

Pulitzer Prize-winning business columnist Steve Pearlstein of the Washington Post advises putting the brakes on the rush to hyper-local journalism. In a speech to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers annual conference, he said that readers value business coverage and that news of markets and investments shouldn’t be overshadowed by what’s happening down the street.

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Pearstein’s message was a little too late for the St. Petersburg Times, which is continuing an industry trend by merging its stand-alone business section into the rest of the paper. There’ll be a full page of business news, but stocks are going away, to be replaced by summary market data.

A Peek at the Future

Editors Weblog has two interesting short items today:

• The Norwegian press is integrating computer programmers into its news staff because editors believe that databases and online mashups are becoming a critical part of the reporting process. Norway’s public broadcasting flagship’s latest project is Politikerdatabasen, “a database that currently contains information on all members of parliament in Norway and will expand to include information on the country’s 11,000 local politicians in May.” The editor in charge says that all reporters should learn programming skills, to go along with the photography and video skills they’re now having to adopt.
• The site also tells how the U.K.’s Evening Leader is using Twitter to cover soccer matches. “The tweets, texted every few minutes by deputy editor Martin Wright, appeared both on a widget on the Leader website and on the paper’s Wrexham Twitter account.”

Monday was all about the Audit Bureau of Circulation report, and the news was as hideous as expected. Rather than repeat the numbers, we’ll point you to Editor & Publisher‘s overview story, the list of the largest 25 dailies, the largest 25 Sunday papers and the papers that actually grew circulation.

Big markets fared the worst. The Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Dallas Morning News all reported sickening daily circulation declines of 8.5% or more. Some of the contraction is no doubt due to publishers’ efforts to rein in free and heavily discounted circulation, but the overall trend is clear: The top 10 metropolitan daily newspapers in the U.S. (note that this excludes the nationally cirulated USA Today and Wall Street Journal) collectively lost more than 235,000 daily readers. The Sunday numbers are even more staggering: more than 635,000 readers lost in the top 10 markets in just one year.

There were no clear patterns among the daily figures. On Sunday, it was a case of the bigger they were, the harder they fell. The five biggest markets averaged a 6.6% drop, while the 21^st through 25^th largest papers averaged a 4.2% decline. Patterns were harder to find in the daily numbers. There were a few bright spots: 12 dailies did manage to show gains. But their circulation averages about 100,000, while the 10 largest papers average north of 630,000. And they were all down.

Alan Mutter does a flash analysis and notes that daily circulation in the U.S. is at its lowest level since 1946. Considering that population has more than doubled since then, that adds up to a 50% decline in readership. Sadly, the demographic trends offer little relief. The post-war era was the beginning of a surge in population and in readership. But as we’ve noted repeatedly, today’s kids and young adults don’t read newspapers and aren’t likely to start. The readership pig in the newspaper python is the over-55 crowd, which isn’t desirable to advertisers and which won’t be much of a factor in 15 or 20 years.

Layoff log

The Orange County Register, whose 11.9% daily circulation decline was the largest among the top 25 dailies, will lay off 80 to 90 people, or about five percent of its workforce. This is the third round of layoffs in a year for Orange County Register Communications, which is the Register’s parent. That’s either a sign of poor management or a completely unpredictable market. The worst way to cut expenses is by dribs and drabs. It saps morale and spreads fear among the survivors.

The Raleigh News and Observer downplayed the news that it will offer buyouts to about a quarter of its staff. No more than 1% to 2% of the employees are expected to take the deal.

WSJ’s Mystery Man Demystified

The New York Times profiles Robert Thomson, the de factor editor of The Wall Street Journal in the wake of Marcus Brauchli’s abrupt resignation last week. The generous profile portrays Thomson as a talented journalist with loads of people skills. In previous assignments, his staff reportedly loved him. His reluctance to cut headcount would make him an unlikely choice to initiate mass layoffs at the Journal. He’s also got Rupert Murdoch’s ear.

One Reason Why the FT is Ascendant

Editors Weblog is running a series of interviews about the future of journalism, and the latest one is with Dan Bogler, Managing Editor of Robert Thomson’s old employer, the Financial Times. If you want to hear the perspective of an editor who gets it, read this interview. Bogler has no illusions about what’s happening to his industry. We’ve gone from zero videos on our website to over 100 per month in the last 18 months. That’s part of the continuum: it’s us doing the same thing in different distribution channels,” he says.

Asked if the golden age of investigative reporting is over, he responds matter-of-factly, “The idea that journalists have to do long-term, deep, undercover investigations where they reveal something months later – I don’t think it works like that anymore. [J]ournalists working under cover, developing sources and breaking big scandals is less likely; but revealing news that people don’t want out there, on a short term basis, uncovering a scandal and having it come to light, that’s more likely.”

Bogler betrays no defensiveness, resentment or belligerence. He’s adapting to change. With editors like this at the helm, its no wonder the FT is coming on so strong in the U.S. market.

And Finally…

Is he a blogger? A journalist? A marketer? James Arndorfer is all three. His BrewBlog frequently breaks news or casts new light upon happenings in the beer industry. But Arndorfer is a full-time employee of Miller Brewing, which openly supports BrewBlog. Rival Anheuser-Busch is a favorite target for negative news or snarky analysis, but Arndorfer says he isn’t afraid to tweak the nose of his employer. It’s all very new media-ish. Read the WSJ profile.

Will New York City soon have two New York Times? That hasn’t happened yet, but the trend appears to be in that direction. The Project for Excellence in Journalism analyzed The Wall Street Journal’s editorial profile in the four months before and the three months after Rupert Murdoch’s takeover. It found that business coverage is down sharply in favor of political and international stories. While the Journal still runs far more business news than the Times, the papers appear to be headed toward a similar content model.

The tricky part for the Journal will be figuring out how to sustain its strength (and brand equity) in business coverage and not look too much like the Times. Meanwhile, you have to believe that the Financial Times is salivating at the prospect of moving in on the Journal’s traditional market.

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Newsosaur Alan Mutter believes that Murdoch’s strategy in New York is focused on the Daily News, not the Times. He runs some numbers on what would happen if Murdoch controlled both Newsday and the New York Post and concludes that Mortimer Zuckerman’s Daily News would be painted into a corner. One Newsday asset that many reports have overlooked is AM New York, a free daily with 314,000 circulation. The Newsday-Post combo would dominate the profitable Sunday market while AM New York would squeeze the Daily News’ weekday business. When you add up all the Murdoch strategies, you can see New York eventually becoming a two-publisher town, with one publisher holding three of the four titles. 

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This may answer some recent questions raised on Wall Street about just what Murdoch is trying to accomplish. Put all the pieces together and the answer appears quite clear.

Perhaps this prospect is injecting some jackrabbit juice into the U.S. Senate, which looks set to strengthen the ban on cross-media ownership in large markets.

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On a completely unrelated note, Slate’s Jack Shafer calls out Murdoch for what Shafer says is habitual lying about his 1993 decision to dump the BBC from his Star satellite TV system. The short piece is of mainly historical interest, although it does manage to use the term “genocidal tyrant” as anchor text. If you query Google on that term, you get a page full of Murdoch references.

Other News

• The Boston Globe avoided layoffs as 23 employees accepted buyout offers. We just don’t know who they are, and the Globe intends to keep it that way. Romenesko has the memo.
• A day after Wall Street pushed stocks of three newspapers to historic lows, the issues bounced back big on Thursday. Some bloggers are calling the stocks a bargain at current levels and fears appear to be easing about the credit crunch, which should lift spirits at debt-laden newspaper companies.
• Nielsen posted comparisons of view time spent on various newspaper sites in March, 2008 versus a year earlier. Editor & Publisher noted that only 11 of the top 30 sites reported increases. What struck us was that the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Houston Chronicle websites get almost as much reader time as NYTimes.com and significantly more than WSJ.com. What are they doing right?

The New Communications Forum conference brings together some of the leading thinkers in social media for three days of discussion about where media and marketing are heading. Increasingly, journalists are in the audience and on the agenda. This year, the Forum devoted one of its five tracks to the changing face of journalism.

There are some young, smart and visionary young journalists in the crowd. They understand that the world is changing and they’re not only prepared but eager to lead the charge. Talking to them gives you confidence in the future of journalism.

But they all cite the same problem: editors don’t see the need for change. “We’re still explaining to editors why reporters need to blog,” said one San Jose Mercury News journalist. “They’re very focused on the print publication which, after all, generates most of the revenue.”

Print is, indeed, the cash engine at newspapers, but it’s generating less and less green while the future of the business is clearly online. While many newspapers have made efforts to integrate their print and Web operations, the commitment is half-hearted, journalists said. “The print staff still sees the online reporters as second-class citizens,” said one online editor.

As positive as these young journalists are about the future of their profession, one gets the sense that they’re frustrated and restless. They’re trying to effect change from within but running up against too many roadblocks. It seems unlikely that many of them will stay with their current employers for long. “I’m here trying to drink up as much as I can to improve my own skills,” said an editor at an east coast daily. “If I need to go out on my own at some point, I want to be ready.”

McClatchy Earnings are Worst of a Bad Lot

McClatchy reported some of the worst results of any newspaper publisher for the first quarter, with revenues sagging 13.8%. The company was particularly hard-hit in California and Florida, which accounted for 56% of the chain’s revenue decline. Among the eye-popping numbers: classified revenue was down 25.7%, led by real estate advertising (down 35.8%), help-wanted ads (off 33.4%), and automotive business (down 16.1%). As reported earlier, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt sees no bottom to the downturn.

Wall Street is hammering newspaper stocks. On an up day for the Dow, three newspaper issues hit all-time lows.

Even Free Papers Feel the Pinch

Metro International SA, which publishes more than 100 free daily newspapers in 23 countries, saw revenue decline 6.1% in the first quarter. The publisher is feeling the same ad pinch as its subscription-driven peers. “The U.S. market is probably the worst it has been since the 1930s for media companies,” Metro Chief Executive Per Mikael Jensen told The Wall Street Journal. Metro plans to cut about 20% of its U.S. staff and is reviewing its New York, Boston and Philadelphia properties for possible sale.

WSJ Airs Dirty Laundry of ME Ouster

Outgoing Wall Street Journal managing editor Marcus Brauchli was under careful scrutiny from the beginning by News Corp. management, which wanted to see rapid change at the paper and which was frustrated from the beginning at Brauchli’s reticence to expand the Journal’s scope, shorten stories and write punchier headlines, according to a piece in Wednesday’s Journal. The paper airs its dirty laundry in a nearly 2,000-word article that details how Brauchli was kept out of the loop on changes in production and design and yet was seemingly unaware of long-brewing plans to replace him.

Brauchli was given his walking papers in a meeting about two weeks ago, although the story says Brauchli offered little resistance. He’ll stay on as a consultant. The Journal’s committee on editorial independence is supposed to approve the choice of a successor, but the rapid pace of turnover at the paper would indicate that Rupert Murdoch won’t look favorably upon too much opposition.

Members of the Bancroft family, who opposed the Journal’s sale to Murdoch, say they’re not surprised by the turn of events. “This is why I was not in favor of selling the paper to that man,” said Jane Cox MacElree, who controlled 15 percent of the family’s Dow Jones shares. “Words mean nothing to him, unless they’re his.”

And Finally…

• Philip Stone thinks the unthinkable: editorial and advertising departments should work more closely together. It’s been done before, he says. The two operations team up on an idea with sales appeal and then go their separate ways to fulfill the mission. Purists will had this idea, Stone writes, but “editorial must now surely understand its very jobs depend on how well advertising does its job. And any help editorial can give to advertising to bring the bucks in should be par for the course.”
• Two environmentalists disrupted a speech by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. One ran on stage and heaved a pie at the writer. Friedman tried to duck the flying confection, but it caught him in the face and torso. No one was injured and the woman and her accomplice were arrested.

Reports Say Newsday Goes to Murdoch; Rivals Disagree

Tuesday must have been a busy day for media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who concluded a handshake deal with Tribune Co. to buy Newsday while also removing the top editor of another area property: The Wall Street Journal. Newsday said its price would be $580 million, which would just about cover Tribune’s impending debt obligation. Murdoch has already contacted the county executives of two Long Island counties to confirm that he’d be spending more time there. He told one of them that he hopes to conclude the deal in two weeks.

News of the Newsday sale was first reported on Monday, and dribs and drabs of information filtered in yesterday. Editor & Publisher says the deal isn’t done yet. Rivals thought they had until next week to submit a bid and plan to do just that. E&P also notes that Murdoch’s ownership of three newspapers (he also has the Daily News) and two TV stations in New York could raise regulatory concerns. It sounds like the fat lady has yet to sing on this deal.

More Tumult at the WSJ

Meanwhile, the managing editor of The Wall Street Journal resigned after less than a year on the job. The announcement made it clear that this was a Murdoch bag job. Marcus Brauchli had appeared in public less than two weeks earlier acting like a good company man, and the official statement said only that he was leaving to become a consultant. In his letter to the staff, which the Journal published, Brauchli said, “Now that the ownership transition has taken place, I have come to believe the new owners should have a managing editor of their choosing.” That can’t have lifted the already low morale on the staff.

E&P was all over this story, too, noting that Brauchli was respected as a guardian of editorial independence and wondering what role the newspaper’s editorial independence committee would have in choosing a successor. Given the success Murdoch has had in effecting momentous change at the Journal in such a short time, it’s likely that the owner will get his way.

Times Management Caves

The prospect of being cornered by Murdoch must have the Sulzbergers nervous. Under pressure by two large investors, the Times ownership added representatives of those funds to its board and expanded the total board size to an unwieldy 15 members. Chairman Arthur Sulzberger also dismissed talk of a possible sale of the company, which is what chairmen usually say just before they sell the company. Michael Bloomberg is rumored to be interested.

Sulzberger also outlined a four-part turnaround strategy for Times Co. including cost cuts of $230 million this year, the sale of some divisions and expansion of its online advertising programs with Google and Yahoo.

Latest Earnings Reports Dribble In

News that Journal Communications’ first-quarter profit dropped 91% would usually have some brokers on the ledge, but in this case the previous year’s numbers were boosted by an extraordinary gain. The actual revenue decline was about 9%, on par with recent results posted by other publishers. The industry-wide trend is clear. Year-over-year declines are running at about 10%. In an otherwise upbeat note to staff, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt confirmed that the double-digit percentage declines are a fact of life adds, “At this point we simply can’t tell when this decline will end.”

Short takes

• The Chicago Sun-Times is on track to turn a profit by the end of the year, according to a memo prepared for potential buyers of parent firm Sun-Times Media Group. The company has been victimized by industry trends and past wrongdoings by two former executives. BusinessWeek recently speculated that it may not last a year.
• The Fort Worth Star-Telegram laid off 15 employees, including eight in the newsroom. The layoffs were apparently a surprise.
• Five full-time employees and four part-timers will be laid off at Maine’s Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel. Both papers are up for sale by its Seattle-based owner.

Earnings Drumbeat Continues, but With Fewer Surprises

Gannett’s quarterly earnings continued the pattern established by the New York Times Co. and Media General last week, but at least they weren’t surprising. Earnings were down 9% on an 8% drop in revenue. The industry-wide slump in classified ad revenue pulled down the numbers, with real estate and recruitment ad sales both down more than 24%. Gannett continues to benefit from having USA Today, which saw actual growth in the entertainment, financial and advocacy (whatever that is) categories. However, total ad pages at the national newspaper were still off 14%.

There was nothing from Lee Enterprises or JH Belo to lift investors’ spirits. Lee hit a 52-week low after reporting a quarterly loss while Belo’s new pure-play newspaper company said its results would disappoint. Both got slammed on Wall Street. However, investors rewarded NYT Co. and Media General for making progress in their shareholder battles.

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Tacoda founder Dave Morgan writes in Media Post that a lot of big media companies are going to collapse, victims of declining revenues and high fixed costs. We agree, and we said as much nearly two years ago. Morgan sees opportunity in decline. The collapse of many metro newspapers will create a vacuum for distribution channels that can deliver sponsorship messages to local communities. He speculates on those opportunities.

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The Associated Press is doing its part to throw them a lifeline, however. It’s cutting its fees in response to protests from newspapers. The move will save members about $14 million in total, or more than double the savings of the original AP proposal. Attendees at the recent American Society of Newspaper Editors convention were reportedly still grousing about the charges, though.

Would Founding Fathers Have Defended Behavioral Targeting?

The Newspaper Association of America has weighed in on the Federal Trade Commission’s debate about privacy standards over behavioral targeting, taking the unusual stance that this is a First Amendment issue. According to the group, publishers should not be infringer in any way from delivering ads, even if that means collecting information about people’s onliine activities that could potentially reveal their identities. Apparently the NAA feels that since the Constitution doesn’t guarantee a right to privacy but does guarantee a right to free speech, behavioral tracking is legally protected.

The Changing Ad World

Louis Hau writes in Forbes about the increasing chuminess between editors and ad sales people. This is a new fact of life, he suggests. Newspaper ad sales people haven’t historically been oriented toward developing new lines of business, so they need all the help they can get. Editors need to cooperate on business opportunities in order to keep their jobs. This new reality challenges the traditional church-state separation of mainstream journalism, but we’d better get used to it because this is the way media is evolving.

Ohio Papers Try Sharing

A group of Ohio newspapers has gotten together to share stories and even reporting assignments in a novel response to the cost-cutting pressure that all newspapers are feeling. 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 idea goes against reporters’ natural competitive spirit, but it’s probably delivering better news to the readers. The outlets are even teaming on some joint reporting projects. So instead of having five different papers covering the same state house story, they’re actually spreading around their resources and minimizing duplication of effort.

Debating Old vs. New Media

The New York Times’s Sunday blockbuster story about the Pentagon’s secret media manipulation campaign is generating some understandable chest-thumping by newspaper editors. Crosscut Seattle comments that a story like that took shoe leather, not laptops, and praises its local journals for being willing to go to court to get access to secret documents. No blogger is going to go that extra step, says editor Chuck Taylor.

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CBS has launched a citizen journalism website where people can upload news by cell phone, Editors Weblog reports. What will be really cool is when news organizations don’t relegate citizen journalism to an online ghetto and actually start integrating readers’ comments with staff reports on their main sites. This short article points to a couple of examples of that.

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Glenn Frankel, Hearst Professional in Residence at Stanford University and former Washington Post reporter, writes Romenesko a tongue-in-cheek commentary on Slate columnist Jack Shafer’s recent counter-intuitive sermon in praise of buyouts. Frankel comments on a recent visit to the SJ Merc: “The spaciousness and the blessed silence reminded me of the peace and tranquility I found in abandoned villages in Kurdistan in 1991 after the Iraqi army had passed through during its own special buy-out program.”

Advice for the Digitally Challenged

Steve Buttry uses a call for help from a digitally challenged newspaper editor to outline his prioirities for journalists who are struggling with online change. Among them: start liveblogging, hyperlink aggressively in your stories and learn to Twitter. He links to this Palm Beach Post liveblogged trial coverage as an example of where reporting could go. He also recommends journalists pick a couple of technologoy areas outside of their comfort zone and set out to master them – fast.  “Come down off the ledge. We have a lot to learn and it’s going to be fun,” he concludes. There’s no doubt about the first part of that statement, but we suspect that many ink-stained wretches may disagree with the second.

Hope in “Hyperlocal”

EMarketer has an interview with the CEO of hyper-local news services Topix.net. He sees big opportunity in local markets for everyone, including newspaper. EMarketer supports that view with the chart at left.

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A new entrant in the “hyperlocal” news market is OurTown, an aggregation of small websites run by local editors, who apparently will also sell ads and keep most of the local revenue. OurTown sites are intended to serve very concentrated audiences, with spheres of coverage limited to just a few miles.

Let’s Close With Some Good News

Starbucks, which has shunned advertising in general, not to mention newspaper advertising, is changing his tune.  The coffee retailer is launching a national promotion that uses newspapers as its centerpiece, according to Editor & Publisher. The full-page ads show a chalk outline of the familiar Starbucks paper cup, with the only text being a date: 04 08 08. The campaign is part of a broader Starbucks effort to get back to its roots, the result of criticism that its rapid growth has tarnished the comfortable ambiance that made it such an appealing place to hang out.

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Further indication that the woes afflicting U.S. newspapers haven’t yet spread north of the border. E&P says: “Total revenues for Canadian newspapers barely dipped in 2007, as accelerating online ad sales offset a dip in print, according to data released Thursday by the Canadian Newspaper Association…Print ad revenues that dipped 2.4% in 2007 were offset by online revenues growth of 29%.”

Free daily BostonNOW abruptly closed, idling 52 full-time employees. According to a story in the final issue, the decision was driven by financial difficulties at the paper’s Icelandic parent. “[T]he tumult in foreign credit markets has forced a change in our original understanding and their focus now appears to be primarily upon their core retail holdings. North American media is not even a distant second,” the CEO said. The shutdown bucks a trend. Free dailies have been a growth market in the US and are enormously popular in Europe, where a greater percentage of the population uses public transportation. In fact, a new free daily called “b” just launched in Baltimore.

Grab Bag

Here are some interesting stories that have accumulated in our RSS readers but which we haven’t had the chance to publish over the last couple of weeks. They’re too good to overlook:

Author, professor and media expert Robert Picard posts an upbeat account of the state of traditional media industries on his blog. The way he sees it, media industries are changing and change is difficult to handle, but the need for robust mainstream media will exist for a long time, the economic picture isn’t nearly as dire as many people think and we all have reason to be optimistic.

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The Daytona News-Journal is for sale. The paper, which is owned by News-Journal Corp., was put on the block after News-Journal lost a court appeal and was ordered to either pay Cox Enterprises $129 million or sell the newspaper. News-Journal is in no position to raise that kind of cash these days, so the paper goes on eBay. Or wherever they sell newspapers these days.

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Alan Mutter sees a dark side to the Washington Post’s recent haul of a half-dozen Pulitzers: It’s one of the few newspapers that still has the resources to produce the kind of journalism that wins the prize. Quoting: “Sadly, only a shrinking handful of fortunate newspapers have a realistic hope of capturing the prize in the future.”

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Via Editors Weblog: San Jose Mercury News designer Martin Gee has posted a photo documentary of the effects of several rounds of layoffs and buyouts in his California newsroom. It’s a sad human story told in pictures in which very few humans are present.

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Illinois’ third largest daily is asking staffers to take off one unpaid day per month and is hinting at layoffs. The DailyHerald of suburban Chicago has been slammed by a 45% drop in help-wanted advertising, a 40% fall in real estate advertising and a 35% decline in ads associated with home improvement. Plus newsprint price increases are unwelcome.

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In an interview with Forbes, TV newsman Tom Brokaw says, “I was at MIT yesterday with the best and brightest. There were about 15 students in the room with me, and I asked how many of them read a newspaper on a daily basis. Two hands went up. Then I asked how many watched the evening news on a nightly basis. No hands went up. And then I asked how many spend a lot of time during the day going to their PDA or computer to find out what’s going on, and every hand went up.”

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It’s not a layoff, it’s an “accomplishment celebration!” At least that’s how the publisher of the Washington Times phrased it in a memo to his staff. John Solomon praised the staff for coming up with creative ideas to improve profitability but said it just wasn’t enough. Layoffs are coming, though he didn’t say how many.

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The American Journalism Review posts an opinion by a newspaper consultant and former reporter who points out the futility of current cost-cutting efforts. “Can newspapers really expect to recapture what they have lost with less circulation, a thinner newspaper offering fewer services to readers, with editorial products undermined in breadth and depth by layoffs and space constrictions? I think not,” says John Morton, echoing similar comments by the late, great Molly Ivins. Morton notes that in the past, newspapers have been able to recover from downsizing initiatives because they had so little competition, but that just isn’t the case any more.