Time magazine writes about the first crop of graduates from a new master’s program at the Medill School of Journalism that aims to blend programming and journalism skills. Medill is the most prominent of several academic institutions that are dabbling with crossover programs that seek to make the news more accessible and multi-dimensional through technology. One outcome of the students’ labors has been NewsMixer (right), a site that enhances the reader commenting experience by enabling contributors to start discussions, post quick tweet-like messages or write thoughtful letters to the editor about stories or elements within stories. The text is annotated with these comments and questions and Facebook Connect integration takes the conversations to other venues.

Most of the students in the Medill program are techies. They spend three quarters learning the craft of traditional reporting and then team up with students from the traditional journalism side to develop an application that delivers information in a new way, enhances the reader experience or makes journalists more productive.

Speaking of new ways of presenting news, a group of senators began working on a bill to overhaul of the US health care system this week, but NPR turned the camera around on the swarm of lobbyists who filled the hearing room. The radio network published photos of the scene, annotated with information about the lobbyists pictured there. And it’s asking readers to contribute information about people the staffers couldn’t identify.

Also, take a look at Newsy, an online video site that aggregates perspectives on important stories. Jessi Stafford, a recent University of Missouri graduate and Newsy intern, told us about it. “Newsy.com creates videos that analyze and synthesize news coverage of important global issues from multiple sources. Its method of presenting the ways in which different media outlets around the world are covering a story lends itself well to understanding complexities.” Newsy aggregates coverage from all kinds of news outlets and presents it in a packaged video format similar to what you might see on the evening news. A newsy “anchor” guides the viewer through a variety of perspectives and attempts to explain what’s going on using these multiple sources. We’re not sure it’s easier to follow than a print digest, but it’s certainly different. See an example below.

You Are What You Tweet

The Australian media watchdog site New Matilda comments upon the ethical dilemmas presented by Twitter. It tells the story of Sydney Morning Herald technology writer Asher Moses, who was publicly embarrassed recently over comments he made about a sex scandal involving a prominent former rugby star. Moses’ comments were made during his off hours, but hasn’t stopped many Australians from questioning the journalist’s impartiality.

Julie Posetti wonders whether Twitter’s humanizing capacity is a blessing or a curse for journalists. Twitter “merges the professional and the personal, the public and the private — blurring the lines of engagement for journalists trained to be didactic observers and commentators rather than participants in debates and characters within stories,” she writes. Twitter makes journalists more accessible and thus more appealing, Posetti notes, but should people who are supposed to be rigidly unbiased be allowed to share their views on anything? Moses says he’s made up his mind. “He’s now decided to restrict his Tweeting to purely work-related messages.” BTW, it’s worth checking out Posetti’s Top 20 Tips for Journo Twits.

Miscellany

Small and mid-sized newspapers may be a bargain in the current market, according to a study by brokerage firm Cribb, Greene & Associates. Despite the fact that smaller papers haven’t suffered the steep losses of their big-city brethren, many publishers are putting them up for sale out of fear of losing further asset value. Asking prices are between four and eight times earnings before income tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), compared to 10 to 14 times EBITDA a few years ago, the firm said. This is despite the fact that revenue declines at these papers have been only about half that of major metro dailies.

At least two potential buyers for the Boston Globe have emerged, and owner New York Times Co. is doing everything it can to welcome them. Former advertising executive Jack Connors and private equity investor Stephen Pagliuca have received permission to team up on a bid. There is also reportedly a rival bid by former Globe executive Stephen Taylor, whose family originally sold the paper to the Times Co. for $1.1 billion in 1993. The Times Co. sweetened the pot by announcing that buyers would only have to assume $51 million worth of pension obligations for the Globe and another $8 million for the Worcester Telegram instead of the full $200 million+ for which the current owners are liable. In an unrelated event, the paper’s editorial page editor, Renée Loth, announced she is leaving the paper after 24 years for unspecified new adventures.

Circulation at the Los Angeles Times passed one million in 1961. Last month it passed one million again – only headed the other way. Edward Padgett remembers. Meanwhile, the revolving door continues in the top editorial ranks: John Arthur (left) is out as executive editor after 23 years at the paper. A memo from Editor Russ Stanton makes it clear that the decision wasn’t Arthur’s.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says media companies should stop waiting for the market to bounce back because it isn’t going to bounce back. In the future, “All content consumed will be digital, we can [only] debate if that may be in one, two, five or 10 years,” he told the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, where he was named media person of the year. What’s more, advertising will continue to migrate online, leaving a smaller pie for traditional media companies to share.

Gannett Co. will lay off 1,400 people, not the 4,500 that was rumored. Still, that brings to 5,400 the total layoffs in the past year, which is about 12% of the company’s workforce. Gannett Blog is tracking the reductions, both announced and unannounced, from reports submitted by employees at local Gannett offices. As of this morning, the count is up to 205.

Magazine publishers might want to catch the next flight to London to find out what the heck they’re doing right at The Economist Group. The publisher of The Economist just reported a 26% jump in profit on a 17% increase in sales in the first quarter. Circulation grew 6.4% to nearly 1.4 million while Economist.com ad revenue leapt 29% and page views climbed 53%. Don’t these people know the media is dying? Interestingly, The Economist enjoys a much hipper image in the US than it does in its native land. In fact, the company just launched a new video ad that portrays a young man walking on high wires across a European city, seeking to highlight its appeal to young readers.  The average Economist reader in the US is 39 years old. In the UK, where the magazine has a more serious image, the average if 47.

Following up on last week’s excellent report on the subtle disruptions caused by newspaper frequency changes, Editor & Publisher looks at the link between reduced frequency and online traffic. Its findings, while preliminary, indicate that newspapers that have backed off from a daily schedule are seeing encouraging reader migration to their websites. At Seattlepi.com, the online successor to the shuttered Post-Intelligencer, unique visitors have grown steadily since the paper went online-only in March, according to executive producer Michelle Nicolosi. “We haven’t lost readers,” she tells Jennifer Saba.

In Detroit, the first major city to lose home-delivered daily newspapers, readers have flocked to websites for the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News, with April traffic at the Freep shooting up 74%. Also notable is that downloads of the e-editions – or electronic newsprint equivalents — of the two papers increased sevenfold when daily home delivery ended. Executives at other, smaller papers that have trimmed frequency also report encouraging trends online. Although it’s still too early to tell, initial indications are that print readers retain loyalty to their local brands.

St. Pete Times Shows How It’s Done

The St. Petersburg Times has a 15,000 word exposé on the Church of Scientology that serves as an example of how news organizations can transcend the traditional walls between words and other media.  The package includes a mini video documentary on the home page that looks like it was done by a television crew.  In addition, video interviews with church defectors are aired out for those who want more detail. There’s also a short narrative about how the package was reported, an audio clip of a church spokesman denying the allegations and even an indignant letter from church leader David Miscavige, who is the bad boy in the whole affair.  There’s also a rather self-serving list of references from other media outlets to the work done by the Times.

Online Journalism Blog critiques the package, giving a generally favorable remarks.  It compliments the paper’s use of links to other sources as a way of providing background rather than rewriting everything in its own words.  The blog points out some shortcomings, including spotty use of social media tools to promote and brand the story as its own.  Online Journalism Blog should not throw stones, however.  Its links to the source material on Tampa Bay.com are mostly dead because of a improper use of a referral URL.

Regrettable Error

Would you fire a reporter over this story? the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal did.  Journalism student and intern Matt McCann was canned for “errors of fact and judgment [that] don’t constitute acceptable journalism at the Telegraph-Journal,” according to a statement by the newspapers editor.  McCann’s transgressions included misspelling a name, getting a title wrong and incorrectly identifying the college major of New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham. That’s sloppy reporting, but the penalty seems a bit out of proportion, especially considering that Maureen Dowd and Chris Anderson have both recently admitted to plagiarism.

Writing in Columbia Journalism Review, Craig Silverman is clearly sympathetic to McCann, going so far as to quote McCann’s own professor saying that he never would have lasted in journalism if such punishments had been meted out in his day.  He also quotes a former Telegraph-Journal editor saying that the decision was more likely a political one intended to curry favor with the University than a punishment for sloppy journalism.

Miscellany

The New York Times Co. will throw in the Worcester Telegram as a pot sweetener for anyone willing to take the Boston Globe off its hands, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. The offer might increase the Globe’s appeal, since the Telegram is reportedly losing money at a far slower rate than its neighbor to the east and effectively has no competition in its local area.

The UK’s Guardian newspaper assembled a gallery of 25 front pages from around the world covering the death of Michael Jackson.  The Wall Street Journal also weighs in with the three
different stippling images of Jackson it has run over the past 29 years.

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.

David Healey lost his job at a small Maryland daily recently thanks to downsizing. He didn’t like being cut off from his community, so he started The Cecil Observer. “The response has been positive and the hits are growing,” he writes, but he adds, “The experience quickly brought me to the realization that print journalism was over except as a niche or boutique business.”

Here is a post David wrote about starting a blog and the role that blogs may come to play in the media world where information is published almost instantaneously. You can find the original entry here.

ONE of the things I’ve learned very quickly about blogging is that it truly moves at the speed of wi-fi, or at least as fast as one’s fingers can type on the keyboard.

Case in point: On Sunday evening I was thinking about posting something about the candidates who had filed for the Chesapeake City election. Because I live here in our little waterfront town, I’m always interested in who’s running. The deadline was noon Friday, and I had second-hand information about the list of names. However, my journalistic instincts were to wait and go right to the source Monday morning and call town hall before posting something for all the world to read. A good reporter would never base a news item for a print newspaper on hearsay; why should the blogosphere be any different?

Within minutes of musing on a post about the Chesapeake City candidates, my news feed indicated that someone had beat me to it. Our friends over at the Chesapeake City Mirror had posted the names of Rebecca Mann, Lee Collins, Rich Taylor and Harry Sampson as candidates for three seats on town council. (A tip of the hat to the Mirror for getting the information out there quickly and accurately.)

With so many people blogging, it’s hard to see how the print media can ever compete in terms of timely delivery of the news. However, the main challenge for citizen journalists is to make sure their posts are correct if the intent is to provide real news content. Then again, I wish I could say we never got anything wrong in the newspaper!

In the newspaper business, a “scoop” was a matter of being ahead of the competition by hours or maybe even days. In the blogosphere, a “scoop” comes down to minutes or even seconds. That’s an intensely competitive environment. Ping! That’s the sound of someone beating you to reporting the news.

Something else I learned back when I was a reporter and then acting editor at the weekly South County Courier newspaper in Middletown, Del., was that a weekly can’t compete against a daily (such as the News Journal) in delivering the really big news. But there were always important local stories that the dailies missed because the big guys didn’t go deep enough into the community. These issues made for front-page news in the Courier.

It seems to me that over time, local blogs will fill that same void — there will always be something to report on that the big guys missed. And local readers will be interested because they care about their communities.

We’re back from filing an 80,000-word manuscript for a book about using billions of dollars worth of high-tech satellite equipment to find Tupperware in the woods. Really. And not much has changed in the last 10 days.

Murdoch Now Struggles Online

Rupert Murdoch was hailed as a visionary when he paid the then-bargain price of $580 million for MySpace in 2005, but now it appears that the newspaper mogul may not know that much about running an Internet community after all. MySpace just laid off 400 employees in the US and could cut another 100 internationally. That would amount to more than 15% of the company’s 3,000-employee workforce.

Crain’s New York quotes eMarketer forecasting a 15% drop in MySpace ad revenue this year, while Facebook is expected to gain 10%. MySpace is still bigger, but it’s headed in the wrong direction, with a 2% decline in visitors in April, compared to an 89% gain at Facebook. Murdoch has fired some executives and promised to rejuvenate MySpace, but the site has lost its utility to the older audience, which is flocking to Facebook. MySpace is still the preferred destination for rock bands and entertainment companies, but that doesn’t give it much cachet with the wealthier audience that Facebook is attracting.

Post Publisher Just an Ordinary Mom

Vogue has a feature on Katharine Weymouth, publisher of the Washington Post and granddaughter of the revered Katharine Graham. Nancy Hass portrays Weymouth as an unpretentious, down to earth mother of three who just happens to run one of the world’s most prominent media properties.  “She’s a mother first,” says her friend Molly Elkin, a labor lawyer.

The Post‘s new managing editor, Marcus Brauchli, calls Weymouth “an amazing listener” who isn’t afraid of criticism and who seems more at home with her people that the glitterati. She moved her office off the Post‘s executive floor and down into the advertising department, where she easily banters with her employees. Her home is a modest four-bedroom affair in Chevy Chase, where she greets visitors amid the barely controlled chaos of a living room full of toys.

Although she faces a huge task in reinvigorating a paper whose circulation has dropped 20% since its heyday, she says she has no grand plan. In fact, the piece makes out Weymouth to be a smart (Harvard magna cum laud and Stanford Law) achiever who makes it up as she goes along. Her attitude toward the Huffington Post and The Daily Beast, which both use Post content without paying: “Good for them. All’s fair, you know.”

Miscellany

The Associated Press is struggling to change its business model in light of the collapsing fortunes of the newspaper industry. The cooperative is trying to negotiate more lucrative licensing deals from major Internet news sites while cutting prices to newspapers in an effort to prop them up. The AP will reduce fees by $45 million for newspapers and broadcasters next year, or about $10 million more than the rate cut it announced in April, CEO Tom Curley said earlier this week. But that won’t stop the decline in revenue, which is expected to continue through at least next year. Curley said the AP aims to reduce its 4,100-person workforce by 10% through attrition, but that layoffs may be necessary.

After 18 months on the market, the Portland (Me.) Press Herald finally has a new owner who has promised to reinvigorate the troubled paper and restore it to profitability by the end of the year. Bangor native Richard Connor officially took the helm this week and said readers will immediately notice a thicker paper and better integration with the website. But there will be pain, with layoffs of up to 100 employees likely.  Remaining employees will get a percentage of the operation and two seats on the board. A conciliatory Guild executive said the layoffs will prevent much bigger job losses that would have occurred if the Press Herald had gone under.

The Knight Foundation is funding nine new-media projects to the tune of $5.1 million. The biggest winner is DocumentCloud, a project conceived by journalists from The New York Times and ProPublica to create a set of open standards for sharing documents. Other projects receiving support include one to help citizens use cell phones to report and distribute news, an effort to develop a media toolkit for developing mobile applications and an online space where the people can report and track errors in the media.

Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium continues to be a bright spot for the industry. Yahoo reported that five new members just joined the ad-sharing cooperative: the Orange County Register, Colorado Springs Gazette, North Jersey’s Record and Herald News and the San Diego Union-Tribune. The group’s 814 newspaper members account for 51 percent of all Sunday circulation in the US.

Newspaper Guild members at the Albany Times Union have rejected a management proposal that would have eliminated seniority considerations in layoffs and permitted outsourcing of Guild jobs. The vote was 125 to 35. No word on whether the parties will return to the bargaining table, where they have been deadlocked for nine months.

Dan Gillmor has a short, pointed piece on MediaShift pleading for an end to caterwauling over the future of journalism and praising the “messy” process that is going on.  “I’ve grown more and more certain that we will not lack for a supply of quality news and information,” provided that risk-takers are permitted to experiment and that the supply of people who want to practice quality journalism doesn’t dry up, he writes. Like Clay Shirky, Gillmor believes experimentation will ultimately lead to many smaller news operations replacing a few big ones, and that that’s not a bad thing.

Is Twitter a blessing or a curse for newsrooms?  Editors are struggling with that issue in light of a recent episode in which a New York Times reporter tweeted news of the company’s discussions with Google from a supposedly confidential meeting. The Times raised eyebrows yesterday by appointing Jennifer Preston, the former editor of its regional sections, as the paper’s first social media editor.  The job involves coordinating the newsroom’s use of social media, but it can also be seen as an effort to rein in reporters from sharing news before it’s been fully baked. Similar positions have recently been created by BusinessWeek, the Los Angeles Times and the Toronto Globe and Mail.

Journalism professor Edward Wasserman tells how Matt Drudge supposedly broke the story of President Clinton’s affair with a White House intern more than a decade ago.  In fact, Drudge didn’t break the story but rather related the fact that Newsweek was sitting on it.  The information had been leaked to Drudge by a disgruntled Newsweek staffer, making it possibly the first example of reporters using social media channels to take publishing into their own hands.

Wasserman says the real risk of Twitter is that it will incline journalists to spend more time in front of their computer screens and less time pounding their beats.  What the issue really comes down to is control.  Editors are struggling with the conflicting priorities.  On the one hand, they understand that tools like Twitter help satisfy readers’ needs for immediacy and transparency.  On the other, they have trouble accepting the idea that reporters can now take their stories directly to the public without an editor’s approval. The Wall Street Journal recently issued guidelines for appropriate uses of social media by its staff, including the requirement that reporters gain approval before “friending” confidential sources.

The Times says that Preston won’t be a Twitter cop, but the coordinating function can involve shutting down social media just as easily as enabling it.  In the end, editors will lose this battle.  Media organizations have to get used to the idea of writing their first draft of history without level of fact-checking and oversight to which they are accustomed. That’s because if they don’t do it, somebody else will.  This isn’t a comfortable idea, or even a good one, but it’s where the media world is headed.

Time-Spent-Reading Numbers Baffle

The latest Nielsen online reports about the amount of time people spend on newspaper websites has been released, and again the results are all over the map.  A sampling of the monthly time-spent-reading figures comparing April 2008 to April 2009 (percentages approximate):

• Wall Street Journal down 40%
• Chicago Tribune up 20%
• San Francisco Chronicle up 35%
• Atlanta Journal Constitution up 90%
• Seattle Times down 60%

And on and on.

Editor & Publisher tries to sort all this out.  It talks to the assistant managing editor for digital at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, whose readers spend an average of 40 minutes per month on the site. Terry Sauer tells E & P that the high numbers may be due to the placement of homepage links on individual articles, but he admits it lots of other papers do this as well.

Maybe the real issue is that time-spent-reading is a poor indicator of affinity.  With more and more people using tabbed browsers, it’s possible to leave a webpage open for hours without looking at it.  Also, heavy spikes of traffic prompted by local news events may actually drive down time-spent numbers because visitors come and leave so quickly.  Finally, a one-month snapshot in time is virtually meaningless.  Nielsen would do better to measure affinity in increments of at least six months.

Pressmen Feel the Pain

Newspaper cutbacks are falling apart on the shoulders of pressmen, the true ink-stained wretches of the industry.  Some big papers have cut back their pressroom staffs by 50% or more. Last year, the Boston Herald outsourced its print operations and cut 130 production jobs. The Boston Globe then said it would close its Billerica plant and lay off as many as 200 employees. The pressroom that printed the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and still print the Seattle Times has been whittled back from 62 to 27 employees.

Against that backdrop, unions representing mailers and printers at the Globe this morning agreed to concessions with the New York Times Company that chop more than $7 million in salaries and benefits.  The pressmen’s meeting was described as “angry.” Unions representing editorial staff and drivers are scheduled to vote on concessions next month.

The Joy of Bankruptcy

Editor & Publisher has an excellent piece on the wonders and dangers of bankruptcy.  The story is timely because many newspaper companies must face the music this year.  Some people think the newspaper business is losing money, but that’s actually not true.  Most major dailies still make an operating profit but their ownership is burdened with crushing debt acquired during the ill-conceived consolidation binge of a few years ago.

On the plus side, bankruptcy is a way to freeze debt payments, cancel long-term contracts and renegotiate debt, often to much lower levels.  The negatives: Less flexibility to invest in anything beyond keeping the lights on, difficulty finding suppliers and the possibility that a judge could decide that the company isn’t worth saving.

That last item is the most ominous one for the industry.  E & P notes that judges will permit a company to exit bankruptcy only if they believe that the company has a reasonable chance of surviving.  If the judge doesn’t buy that prospect, he or she can simply shut down the operation.  That hasn’t happened yet, but with organizations like Tribune Co., Sun-Times Media Group, Journal Register Co., Philadelphia Media Holdings and the Minneapolis Star Tribune already in bankruptcy and several other companies facing the prospect, the picture could take shape quickly.

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services on Friday slashed its rating on McClatchy Co. deep into junk-bond territory after the company offered to buy back $1.15 billion in debt at just 20 cents on the dollar. McClatchy is now rated a CC borrower, which is just three steps away from a default rating.

Miscellany

Jim Hopkins, who started Gannett Blog nearly two years ago, will put it in hibernation at the end of September. Hopkins says he never intended to publish the blog longer than two or three years to begin with and that his decision was hastened by the increasingly negative tone of the roughly 4,000 comments he receives each month.  The news will no doubt come as a huge relief to Gannett executives, since the blog had become a major soapbox for disgruntled employees.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch moved circulation functions to two other newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises, cutting 39 jobs in the process.

The Huntington, W.Va. Herald-Dispatch cut 15% of its workforce, or 24 positions.

Talking Points Memo, the Web startup that has drawn attention as a possible model for new journalism, unveiled a new design that looks a lot more like a newspaper. Alexander Shaw talks about the thinking behind the new look, which moves more news “above the fold.”

And Finally…

British workers in the media, publishing and entertainment industries are the heaviest drinkers, according to the Department of Health. A survey of 1,400 people by YouGov found that media people consume an average of 44 units (presumably, 1.5-ounce drinks) a week, or almost twice the recommended maximum. The finance, insurance and real estate sectors came in second at 29 units per week.

Two new entries in the almost-but-on-second-thought-no front: Google considered buying a newspaper but decided against it. Eric Schmidt tells the Financial Times that “There is a line and we’re going to stay on our side of it.  We have done well by letting content people creating great content in their own way.” He also says Google has no interest in buying The New York Times, but says David Geffen would make a great owner.”

Schmidt, whose company is often reviled as the great Satan by newspaper publishers, says that the loss of smaller papers come in particular is a tragedy. “The reporting that keeps the mayor honest is going to be gone and I don’t know what to do about that,” he says.

Without explicitly stating that newspapers should become nonprofits, Schmidt implies that the model has appeal. “Newsgathering and profitability model has always been an uncomfortable relationship,” he says. But he dismisses the idea that nonprofit is a panacea. “I don’t know how to solve the problem taking for-profit structures and transitioning them to a nonprofit world without some very generous person between,” he says. But that’s not going to be Google.

There’s a 10-minute video at the link above. If you think Schmidt is some kind of business velociraptor, watch the vid.  He has a Ph.D. in engineering, is thoughtful and contemplative and is also flat-out brilliant.

Also in the might-have-been category, the Washington Post‘s two managing editors told visitors to an online chat last night that the Post considered expanding its distribution base into Baltimore, where the Sun is hemorrhaging, but decided against it. “The best and most cost effective way to get us in Baltimore is either online or through a Kindle subscription,” they wrote as one. “We have indeed evaluated whether it makes economic sense for us to sell subscriptions in the Baltimore area and determined that the math doesn’t work in our favor.”

Miscellany

That’s all she wrote for the Tucson Citizen. A last-ditch attempt attempt by the Arizona attorney general to save the newspaper failed when U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins said the AG had failed to show that violations of antitrust laws or of the Newspaper Preservation Act had occurred. Quoting verbatim: “While regrettable that the Citizen‘s illustrious legacy must come to end, it can not be said at this time, the decision to close the Citizen involves an anti-trust violation. The Court can not say at this point in time that there is a violation of the Newspaper Preservation Act,” wrote the judge, who definitely should hire one of the Citizen‘s laid-off copy editors.

The Federal Trade Commission will hold a series of workshops entitled “Can News Media Survive the Internet Age? Competition, Consumer Protection, and First Amendment Perspectives” beginning on September 15. From the release: “The workshops will consider a wide range of issues, including possible business and non-profit models for news organizations, the role of targeted behavioral and other online advertising, whether additional, limited antitrust exemptions may be necessary under these unique circumstances, and the implications of online news for both copyright protection and the availability of broadband access.”

The Associated Press is offering a novel buyout program: employees get $500 for every year of service but their pension benefits are increased to 14% to 16% above that which they would normally receive. The plan is clearly aimed at older employees. Applicants must be at least 55 years of age with at least 10 years of AP service and the combination must add up to 75.

Latest layoffs totals, from Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts blog:
Salt Lake Tribune: 3
Raleigh News & Observer: 31
Durham, N.C. Herald-Sun: 7
Detroit Newspaper Partnership: 150
Baton Rouge Advocate: 49
Honolulu Advertiser: 15

And Finally…

From the Columbia Journalism Review: “Stephen Colbert weighed in on future of journalism right now, taking a side in the debate over the role of print: ‘Newspapers are an important part of our lives, not to read, of course, but, when you’re moving you can’t wrap your dishes in a blog.'”

David Geffen

Will The New York Times Co. go under?  Don’t bet on it, says Fortune magazine.  Sure, the Times has significant business challenges, and it’s actively looking for ideas to rescue its business, but there is no shortage of investor interest in the Old Gray Lady. Hollywood mogul David Geffen reportedly made an unsuccessful play to buy the 19% stake in the Times held by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners recently, Fortune says. Google also seriously considered investing in the Times before deciding against the move.  Meanwhile, the controlling Sulzberger family publicly says they’re not interested in selling.

The Times has a lot of problems on the business end, but its brand equity is the envy of the industry.  The problem is, at current run rates, the company will be insolvent in two years.  Rather than going under, it’s more likely that the Times will be picked up by one or more wealthy investors who are already knocking at the door or will radically change its business model.

Newsweek reports that Geffen’s overture was made with the intention of converting the Times to a nonprofit institution under a structure similar to that created by the late Nelson Poynter, whose nonprofit Poynter Institute runs the St. Petersburg Times.  That paper has suffered along with everyone else, but its nonprofit status gives it some wiggle room to absorb losses, and it’s increasingly attracting attention for the quality of its work, including two Pulitzer prizes last month.

Inside the Times, there’s a working group studying the options for radical transformation.  If all options are indeed on the table, then the Times could be looking at a much smaller and more focused editorial model. Thomson Reuters CEO Tom Glocer got some attention last month by suggesting that the Times could get by with a staff of as few as 60 reporters by cutting back on nonessential coverage and partnering for the rest.  That idea isn’t likely to be popular at a paper known for its vast resources, but the Times could set a standard for the industry by reshaping its self around a partnership model.

Baltimore Sun: Retooling or Shutting Down?

The Politico writes of the “Dark Day at Baltimore Sun“ in a piece that reads like an epitaph. The Sun‘s newsroom staff has been cut back from a high of 420 people to just 140. The paper recently closed its bureau covering Annapolis, the state capitol. Two columnists recently sent to cover an Orioles game were laid off before the ninth inning. Coverage of Washington has been outsourced to pool reporters from parent Tribune Co.

Executives say it’s all part of the process of retooling the Sun into an Internet-ready machine. “”If you’re looking to transform yourself, you really better stop looking at yourself as a newspaper company rather than as a digital media company,” says Monty Cook, the paper’s new editor. He said the Sun continues to devote itself to “watchdog journalism,” but admits that “the days of the six-part series are gone.” That’s probably true. The investigative team at the paper, which once numbered four reporters, is down to one person.

Editors See Brighter Future

The Associated Press Managing Editors survey finds a wellspring of optimism about the likelihood that newspapers will return to profitability. Just 17% of the editors surveyed said they believed the industry would go extinct while 60% said they’ll be profitable again. However, respondents overwhelmingly said they are having a harder time delivering quality information to their readers, which is not surprising giving the nearly 20,000 job cuts in the industry over the last 18 months.

Editors continue to be caught in a cost-cutting cycle that limits their ability to think outside the box. Fifty-seven percent said they didn’t have enough money to innovate and 31% said their people don’t have the skills to change with the times. Nearly 40% said they are devoting more space to “hyper-local” news, which is surprisingly low given the trends in reader news consumption. Nearly three in four said they’re sticking it out because they believe in “the mission of journalism.”

Most chilling quote: “”Our newspaper’s biggest revenue source today is foreclosure notices,” said Clifford Buchan, editor of the Minnesota-based weekly Forest Lake Times.

Miscellany

Investor John W. Rogers Jr. says it’s time to buy Gannett Co. Yes, media stocks are beaten down, says Rogers, who’s chairman and CEO of Chicago-based Ariel Investments, but “when a company with strong franchises like Gannett sells for one times trailing earnings and three times expected 2010 earnings, I step up and swing.” Rogers says newspaper companies are highly vulnerable to trends in cyclical markets like automobiles and real estate.  Once those sectors recover, though, growth should return.

It isn’t over yet for the Tucson Citizen.  A federal judge is expected to rule today on whether the Citizen, which formally closed down on Saturday, must resume publication. Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard argued that Gannett Co. and Lee Enterprises violated antitrust laws by closing down the weaker of the two players in a joint operating agreement between the Citizen and the Arizona Daily Star in order to wring more money out of the surviving property.  A core shutdown staff of eight people remains at the Citizen, and it’s unclear how many staffers could be recalled to restart the paper if the judge so orders.

The Ann Arbor News will publish its last issue on July 23.  The paper announced plans to shut down back in March, but we didn’t know a precise date until now. An online version will continue to pump out news 24X7.

At least 14 news ombudsmen have lost their jobs in the past year, writes Andrew Alexander, who holds that title at the Washington Post.  Among the reasons: ombudsmen are considered less essential to the editorial function than reporters and a new crop of bloggers is now filling some of the watchdog role.  However, ombudsmen may be more important than ever, Alexander writes, noting that he is on track to receive more than 50,000 reader messages this year. “They want an informed judgment from a professional journalist who has been empowered by management to directly confront reporters and editors with unpleasant questions.” Kevin Klose, the new dean of the J-school at the University of Maryland, has suggested that a consortium approach could provide the same reader-advocacy function for less money.

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

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

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

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

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

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

First issue of the Arizona Citizen, 1870

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

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

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

Failed Rescue Attempt

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

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

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

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

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