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.

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.

How successfully are newspapers making the jump to the Web? It depends on whom you believe. A lot of research is trying to make sense out of people’s online reading habits as they relate to newspaper brands, and the numbers are inconclusive.

The monthly Audit Bureau of Circulation figures are due today, and the news is not expected to be good. Editor & Publisher got the drop on the figures and says that for the six months ending in March, daily circ was off 3.5% and Sunday was down 4.5%. The ABC has started tracking online readership for the first time, but it’s too soon to compare numbers. E&P did cite research by Scarborough Research that showed that combined print/online reach of major dailies is slowly declining.

“When comparing 20 papers, only two — The Atlanta Journal Constitution and The Oregonian in Portland — increased their integrated market reach year-over-year,” the story says. A Scarborough exec verifies, “Print [readership] is in a steady decline, and online readership is growing but the declines in print are not being offset by the increases in online readership.

The good news is that display advertising on newspaper websites is booming, according to a Media Post analysis. The bad news is that online classified advertising isn’t. That combination is leading to slowing growth in newspapers’ digital revenues.

But wait, there’s more good news. A Newspaper Association of America report, based on research commissioned by Google, finds that 30% of Internet-using newspaper readers went online to research a product they saw in a newspaper. It adds that 70% of those readers then made a purchase. The fact that the research was sponsored by Google will no doubt help make it appear more credible.

Notes

• Reports from several sources say The New York Times will announce its first-ever editorial layoffs this week after fewer people took the paper’s buyout offer than management had hoped. Speculation is that 30 people will lose their jobs. Expect massive news coverage of this relatively small workforce reduction, mainly for its symbolic importance.
• Speaking of the Times, the paper has a eulogy for the Capital Times, a Wisconsin afternoon institution that closed its print edition last week. The shutdown was announced in February. The Times piece has some interesting tidbits on the former popularity of afternoon dailies, which are declining faster than their morning counterparts. Afternoon papers have been hit particularly hard by online competition.
• PBS’s Idealab has “Ten Things Journalists Should Know About Surviving In a High-Tech Industry,” including “Jobs are temporary. Friends are forever” and “Nobody has the right qualifications.” This list is right on the money. Journalists considering the shift to online media organizations need to understand that the jobs aren’t lifetime guarantees. You’re on your own, but you can learn a tremendous amount and prosper more than you would as a Guild lifer .

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.

We wish we could end the week on a happy note, but as we noted on Monday, it’s earnings season. Unfortunately, the news couldn’t be much worse. If troubles at the New York Times and Media General are any indication, the rest of the year could be ugly.

New York Times Co. Troubles Deepen

The New York Times Co. swung to a small loss in the first quarter from a $24 million profit a year ago. In a conference call, the CEO didn’t indicate that things were going to get better any time soon. The more worrisome trend may be that online growth is now slowing.

As a result, it looks like the Times newspaper will have to resort to some layoffs to achieve its goal of a 100-position reduction in workforce. Not enough people have taken the buyout offer. The deadline is next Tuesday and the layoffs, if they happen, will be the first in the paper’s 167-year history.
The media’s focus on the 100 job cuts at the Old Gray Lady may obscure the bigger view of the NYT Co. crisis. Media Post points out that the company has cut over 2,000 jobs – about 18% of the total staff – since 2003. The reason for the low response to the recent buyout offer is that the job market is so bleak for ex-journalists, the article suggests.

It offers this cheery quote from analyst Ken Doctor: “Clearly, the decline in revenues is deepening. At this point, there really is no bottom.” As layoffs continue, in future he predicts “a lot of newspapers hiring part-timers, stringers and bloggers–but no more full-time, $50,000-a-year jobs.”

Media General Hammered by Florida Exposure

The news was even worse at Media General, which is heavily dependent to the recession-laden Florida market. The quarterly loss of $20.3 million is more than three times last year’s loss. But check out the declines in these ad categories:

• Newspaper ad revenue off 19.1%
• Interactive media revenue down 3.3% (this is the future, remember)
• Classified ad revenue off 28%
• National ad revenue down 21%

It’s not surprising that Media General just offered buyouts to half the employees in its Florida Communications Group. The terms are generous, ranging up to 39 weeks of pay. Media General didn’t say how many jobs it hopes to eliminate with the offer, but it did say that layoffs are possible.

And the Bad News Spreads

More talk of layoffs, closings and cost reductions. Here’s the rundown:

• The Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20-Year Club has the scoop on Advance Publications’ plan to shut down one of its two production facilities. Advance Publications publishes the Newark Star-Ledger. The two plants employ more than 600 people, though it’s not clear how many jobs would be cut. A decision is expected within the next few weeks.
• Times are hard, indeed, in the New York-Philadelphia corridor. The AP reports that the owner of Philadelphia’s two largest daily newspapers told a judge last week that unraveling its pension mess could lead to more layoffs. One of the two pensions the company merged is underfunded and the costs of bringing it up to snuff were unanticipated. In January, Philadelphia Media Holdings LLC said it had to cut costs by 10% or its viability would be in doubt.
• The Toronto Star will cut 160 jobs, or a little less than 3% of its total workforce. The Canadian Journalism Project points out that this is disconcerting in light of the recent reports that the Canadian newspaper industry is faring much better than its U.S. counterpart.
• The Raleigh News & Observer just told its staff that layoffs may be needed to cope with the business downturn. The paper employs 206 editorial staff.
• The suburban Chicago Daily Herald laid off an unspecified number of employees throughout the company. Classified ad revenues are off as much as 45% year-over-year.
• And finally, further evidence that Sam Zell’s Tribune Co. empire may be unraveling. Revenues continue to fall faster than expected, and now Zell is talking about selling off “newspapers and other properties.” Could that mean that titles other than Newsday may go on the block? One recent report said the LA Times may be in play.

But wait, there’s even more: The source of many of the industry’s problems is doing just fine. Blogger Roy Greenslade notes that Craigslist.org has quietly expanded its global footprint by 120 cities, bringing the total to 570. Craigslist may be the single biggest financial competitor the newspaper industry has. Here is the devastatingly brief, haiku-like announcement from Craig Newmark.

Finally, Philip Stone comments on the empty halls at the once-great Nexpo newspaper equipment trade show. It used to be that Nexpo was so big that only a few convention centers in the country could accommodate it, he says. But at this year’s event, you could have rolled a bowling ball down the expo floor and not disturbed anyone.

Go bowling this weekend. We can use a break.

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.

Better Make That A Double; It’s Earnings Time

Today’s lead factoid: The American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) says the number of U.S. newsroom journalists shrank to its lowest level since 1984 after total cutbacks of 2,900 in 2007. Update: Newsosaur Alan Mutter says this survey is a load of hooey.

In this week’s news, earnings season is upon us, and investors will be watching nervously as Media General and the New York Times Co. kick off what is likely to be a gruesome round of financial reports. Reuters says Media General revenue could fall 10.6% and lose money. The revenue slide at the times is expected to be a more modest 3.5%.

The news from Journal Register Co. could be worse than that. The floundering chain is being delisted by the New York Stock Exchange this week, which is hardly surprising given that its stock is off more than 99%. The company has hired an investment banker to explore it options. What a rapid fall from grace. Your obedient editor actually owned a few shares of this catastrophe two years ago when one of the leading money magazines called it a sleeper. Today, it looks like sleep of a permanent variety is a more likely possibility.

Alan Mutter writes that JRC was actually a model of expense management under the reign of CEO Robert Jelenic, but the disasterous acquisition of a chain of newspapers in the Detroit area saddled the company with a debt burden that may now pull it under. Some of Mutter’s stories about Jelenic’s obsession with expense reduction are amusing. What’s not amusing is the outlook: with debt at seven times trailing operating earnings and a business rooted in declining markets, it looks unlikely that JRC can successfully pull out of this tailspin.

Rate of Decline Quickens In Seattle

How bad is the newspaper business in Seattle? Despite owning a legally sanctioned near-monopoly, the Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer have seen revenues drop more than 25% since 2000. What’s potentially worse is that online revenues are shrinking, too. No doubt the 2000 figures were bolstered by recruitment advertising revenue during the tech stock bubble, but the current year-to-year declines are outstripping industry averages. The fact that the company has made two major belt-tightening moves in just four months indicates that the shrinkage of its business is racing ahead of its own forecasts.

Crosscut Seattle publisher David Brewster has some ideas for rejuvenating the struggling Times. He advises the company to start delivering more products to people’s doorsteps, create an advertising network to sell locally on behalf of national advertisers and find a big partner, among other things.

Good And Bad News In The Numbers

This chart from eMarketer illustrates painfully the obscuring effect of percentages. Online ad sales at U.S. newspapers were up almost 19% in 2007, while print sales were down 9.4%. But the online revenue increase amounts to just $500 million, compared to a $4.4 billion drop in print sales. That means that print contracted eight times as fast as online expanded last year. This trend is ominous. In 2006, the falloff in print sales was only 1.3 times the growth in online sales.

There’s good news, though. Newspapers are doing pretty well in local advertising markets, according to Borrell Associates. Quoting from Media Post: “The survey of 3,000 local Web publishers found that newspaper sites garnered 26.9% of total local online advertising dollars, and also forecast big increases in spending for online video in particular in 2008. Overall, in 2007 newspaper Web sites netted over $2 billion in local online advertising. Thus, according to Borrell, they dwarfed online Yellow Pages sites…” The researcher says the secret is that newspapers are learning to sell better to local advertisers.

And finally…

Los Angeles Daily News Editor Ron Kaye quit 23 years after joining the paper and one month after being forced to lay off nearly 20% of his newsroom staff. “All good things in life come to an end sooner or later, even my love affair with the Daily News,” he wrote. with characteristic bluntness. Noted the E&P writeup: “During his tenure at the Daily News, Kaye became the public face of the newspaper, and his bombastic personality and scathing criticism of Los Angeles City Hall shaped the editorial pages of the paper.”

Romenesko treats us to t-shirts given out at a recent Hartford Courant awards event.

All News Must Stand On Its Own

Encyclopedia Britannica kicks off a “Newspapers & the Net Forum” with an excerpt from Nick Carr’s new book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google.He states what publishers have known for some time: the shift from print to online delivery changes the product entirely. No longer can high-margin classified ads support expensive investigative reporting. In today’s world, every item of content is an island and must stand on its own merit. Advertisers want contextual adjacency. This creates pressure to publish stories about high-definition TVs instead of stories about Iraq.

Among the more than two dozen comments is one that notes “I have a copy of Newsweek with a cover story entitled, if I am recalling correctly, “Are Newspapers Dead?” The magazine is from around 1965. So this debate has been going on a long time.” True, but this is the first time those predictions really appear to be coming true.

The Forum goes on all week with some other provocative topics that I promise to get around to reading. Here’s the index page.

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Rethinking the Value of News

Tom Abate thinks newspaper publishers could learn a few things from the airline industry. In other words, figure out how to charge different prices for the same product. As he sees it, the background notes that a reporter collects, which would never be of interest to a mainstream newspaper audience, could be a gold mine to businesses that specialized in that area. Use a blog to publish those notes and attract those special-interest readers and then sell ads to businesses that will pay top dollar to reach those people.

Abate laments all the attention being paid to Fark.com, a snarky linklog with a juvenile sense of humor. Newspapers shouldn’t be trying to out-Fark Fark, he says (although, if you look at Fark, it sends a lot of traffic to newspaper websites), but should focus on attracting the highly engaged readers who appreciate depth and context. There’s sensible thinking behind his comments, although the airline industry isn’t exactly the gold standard of business models and the devil would be in the details.

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Abate would probably find a soul mate in Ted Gup, a journalism professor at Case Western. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, he laments his students’ appalling ignorance of basic current events.

Quoting:”Nearly half of a recent class could not name a single country that bordered Israel. In an introductory journalism class, 11 of 18 students could not name what country Kabul was in, although we have been at war there for half a decade. Last fall only one in 21 students could name the U.S. secretary of defense. Given a list of four countries — China, Cuba, India, and Japan — not one of those same 21 students could identify India and Japan as democracies. Their grasp of history was little better. The question of when the Civil War was fought invited an array of responses — half a dozen were off by a decade or more. Some students thought that Islam was the principal religion of South America, that Roe v. Wade was about slavery, that 50 justices sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, that the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1975. You get the picture, and it isn’t pretty.”

In his view, we’re raising a generation of kids who are so distracted and self-absorbed that they’ve tuned out the rest of the world. And part of the problem is that the don’t read newspapers or watch serious television.

Confidence in the Future

The publisher of the LA Times says the company is getting it together. In a memo to employees published on Los Angeles Times Pressmens 20 Year Club, David Hiller talks of adding 400 new regional advertising accounts, expanding Spanish language products and topping 100 million page views online the last two months running. There’s a new organization, new management and a commitment to build a vision and financial model that is sustainable for the long term. He also mentions in passing that there will only be merit raises this year and that they’ll be three months late. The Pressmen tap dance on that news. More to come during an April 30 town meeting.

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Meanwhile, the Albany Times Union believes in the future of print. The company’s about to spend $55 million to enlarge its headquarters and install a new printing press that will print color on all pages. The additional 70,000 sq. ft. faciliity is also intended to position the Times Union as a printer for other publications in the region.

Silver Linings in Pink Slips

Slate’s Jack Shafer sees some goodness in the latest wave of buyouts: a chance to bring new blood into the organization. The boomers who sit atop the editorial pyramids at all the big publications are too invested in the way things have always been done, he says. Get some whippernsappers in there for whom experimentation is a way of life.

Quoting: “‘There goes our institutional memory,’ somebody usually laments whenever a graybeard leaves a news organization. The speaker is usually another graybeard who, if pressed, couldn’t tell you what is so vital about the institutional memory wheeling out the door.”

Buyouts can mean rebirth for those taking the buyout, too, Shafer says. Longtime Washington Post political reporter Thomas B. Edsall is now at Huffington Post, where he says seeing his work appear without the meddling of a dozen editors is a rebirth.

And Finally

Leave it to Canada to buck the North American trend. Newspapers are actually doing pretty well up there, says Editors Weblog: “Total 2007 revenues, including online operations, slipped only 0.8%, with print advertising decreasing 2.4%. In contrast, online revenue grew 29% over 2006. Newspaper circulation as well took a very minor fall in 2007, decreasing 1.2% after a 3.8% rise the previous year.”

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A Racepoint Group blogger saw some value in my opinions and interviewed me about the future of newspapers. The fellow is a regular NDW reader, which makes the whole thing rather incestuous. Or perhaps circular. In any case, I blather.

Tribune Co. Faces Default Threat

Reuters digs into Tribune Co.’s finances and decides that they’re pretty grim. Unless the current ad revenue trend turns around, Tribune could default on nearly $4 billion in debt and interest payments due at the end of 2009. That could force the company into receivership and asset sales. However, CEO Sam Zell is going to have to sell assets to cover debt payments, anyway. Reuters says Tribune’s previous management grossly underestimated the 2007/2008 revenue picture, which raises the question of whether Zell would have a legal case that he was sold a bill of goods.

Best quote in the story is from Zell, who recently joked to an audience that going from real estate to newspapers was like “going from leprosy to cancer.” He sure knows how to motivate the troops. Meanwhile a Lehman Brothers Analyst is reducing guidance on McClatchy’s earnings, saying it also faces a risk of default.

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LA Observed has assembled some of the parting e-mails sent by laid-off staffers at the LA Times. Several take shots at TribCo owner Sam Zell. “You want people to ‘Talk to Sam’ but not to ‘Talkback to Sam,'” says one.

But Journal Register May Go First

Looks like the Journal Register could be the first big newspaper company to go bankrupt. Editor & Publisher quotes the New York Times as saying that the company may be unable to service its $625 million debt load on revenues that were $90 million last year and that could fall to $70 million this year. This creates the nightmare prospect of JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank owning a newspaper company, which has never happened before in this traditionally predictable and stable business. It’s also hard to imagine who would buy the assets for something more than pennies on the dollar. Sam Zell, perhaps?

Some Newspapers Doing Just Fine, Thank You

The media buzz over the tailspin of major metro dailies obscures the fact that there are newspapers that are actually growing. New America Media notes that the ethic press is benefiting from the tide of immigration and actually creating jobs where the dailies are laying off. Daily newspapers in Korean, Chinese and Spanish are seeing healthy circulation growth, although they struggle with the same advertiser reticence as their English-language counterparts.

Dallas Publisher Urges Focus on Future

James Moroney, publisher and CEO of Dallas Morning News, told the 9th International Online Journalism Symposium what newspapers must do to survive. “If you are in the newspaper business, you are in the business of managing decline. If you are in the news and information business, then you have a healthy future,” he said. His organization has a strategy built all around hyper-local. No numbers cited.

TV Layoffs Hit Most Visible Journalists

Brittney Gilbert, who blogs for KPIX in San Francisco, writes about the layoffs of 14 people at the station, including two reporters who have five Emmys between them. She also notes that she, who looks to be about 27, was spared. This is the form that layoffs usually take, unfortunately. The most seasoned, highest paid staffers are the first to go. And who’s going to hire them?

Vermont Publisher Leaves for No Apparent Reason

The publisher of the Brattleboro Reformer is leaving after only two years. He says he likes Brattleboro and he isn’t leaving for any particular reason. No one seems to question why he would quit so early in his tenure. It’s all very Brattleboro.

Circulation is hardest hit, with 45 positions cut. Newsroom is second big loser with 30 laid off and 19 positions frozen. Suburban bureaus to be closed. Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild Blog has the ugly details.

Update: E&P says cuts will total 200, taking into account reductions and frozen open positions. Publisher’s memo says 191. It’s a lot, in any case.