Sam Zell, who continues to ruin all that remains good and honest with the beleaguered newspaper industry – a list that includes just the comics page, and those Best Buy circulars, at this point – is taking out one more strand of fishing wire and tying it around the neck of the Los Angeles Times, one of the Tribune Co.'s flagship newspapers that Zell has taken a liking for abusing. Rather than letting the editorial team there, led by editor Russ Stanton, operate the paper's Sunday magazine as it always has, Zell sneakily hired an entire new staff for the weekly LAT Magazine without telling anyone. And that staff, it turns out, is part of the business side of the newspaper, not the editorial unit. CONTINUED »
Slate's Michael Kinsley explains the ridiculous nature of publishers measuring journalists' productivity – by counting the number of column inches, or words, they produce – by using far too many words in his explanation. That Kinsley is writing for a web magazine, however, means he has to use even more words than normal to express his point, to increase the length of the browser scroll bar on his article, which is the only way to truly measure the physical length of his column, and thus, his column-inches. Also: asdfkjh asjdf ;l asdfl akda 399 f0 a0a0 a0sfd. [Slate]
It's not like Sam Zell ever promised to keep anyone around at the Los Angeles Times. He's got billions in debt he needs to keep stable, which means he's got a couple plans up his sleeve. Obvious first choice: job cuts. Except Zell calls this down-sizing "right-sizing," because, based on his calculations that the average LAT journo produces the equivalent of 51 pages a year, while competitors in Hartford and Baltimore spit out 300 pages, the current staff overload is just waste. And so all of this will bring into focus his other big task, which is evening out the editorial:advertising ratio to 1:1, which will also allow him to shrink the actual size of the paper and the number of pages printed per year. And finally, Zell has taken to addressing his thousands of employees as "partners," if only because the future of the Times, and its debt load, depend on their stock-option plan.
"Pity the poor New York Times. They are indeed doing right by their readers, if not by their stockholders. On May 6, 2008, there were 2,524 square inches of column space devoted to news. A year earlier, before the slimmer page width and heftier contents listings, the number was 2,535 square inches. Although there was about 11 percent less ad space (3,359 square inches versus 3,839 square inches), the amount of news remained the same. If we go back to the supposedly halcyon days of 1998, when the average Times reader was about as likely to get his news from the Internet as Senator Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens is today, the difference is even more pronounced. The advertising climate was, in industry parlance, kick-ass; the front section of the Times contained 5,549 square inches of ads. But despite this revenue bonanza, there was a meager 2,188 square inches of news. The (somewhat) surprising verdict: The Times of today has more news, and way less advertising." [VF]
Hint: There's a class system. [Gawker]
There will be no New York Post-Newsday News Corp. tag team to take on the Times, with Rupert Murdoch having dropped out of the bidding for Tribune Co.'s Long Island paper. Instead, Cablevision will buy 97 percent, for $650 million, of the paper, adding the rag to its massive cable biz front on Long Island.
Along with Newsday, Cablevision also picks up "related assets," including freebie paper am New York, a detail the Times surprisingly left out of its coverage. (The WSJ did not.)
So while the deal doesn't actually include Newsday's real estate, as original reports said, the two papers Cablevision picks up guarantees you're about to be inundated with ticket sales ads for Madison Square Garden, which it conveniently also owns. As well as Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks, and the New York Rangers..
Newspapers may be cash-losing endeavors, and they may be exporting jobs over to India, but they save lives! If everyone were like you and relied on the Internet to get their news for free, would there be a paperboy who was around to notice the wad of mail piling up in front of your front steps, grow curious and alert his parents, who would alert the police, who would go to your home to find you, an elderly woman, collapsed and dehydrated on your kitchen floor?
Can Jossip mascot and The Paper star Amanda Lorber just might make newspapers cool again? You know, among the kids! And isn't what's trendy among a generation of people who can't even apply for a credit card all that matters?
Sadly, you already know the answer to this question, but it's fun watching the argument get made about a little MTV reality show that's turning geeky kids supplanting their social life with newspaper copy into tween idols. CONTINUED »
The Associated Press is trying to become your cable company: Overcharging you for the services you do want by tacking on tons of unnecessary and unwanted options that you don't have a choice in refusing.
The wire service took another round of beatings over its rate hikes, announced last year, at yesterday's Capital Conference media convention, where AP prez Tom Curley's appearance was followed by a vocal group of editors expressed their discontent. Not only do they want to see about a 30 percent reduction in charges, but they're also after transparency: "Susan Goldberg, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, also cited the lack of response to editors’ concerns. 'As of even late last night, we were turned down flat,' she said. 'We do want to understand what each other is paying.'"
Added Boston Globe editor Martin Baron later on: CONTINUED »
Ripping off story ideas from other newspapers is a service to readers, not a disservice to the institution of journalism. The Cleveland Plain-Dealer argues the point after being called out for lifting a Wall Street Journal topic (violence at black funeral parlors). Reporters get ideas for articles from TV, radio, personal experience … why not the competition? But maybe if they started acknowledging where they got the idea, some of those feeling cheated would have their concerns eased. "We don't know, and really don't care, whether the idea originated with the Journal, or somewhere else. And I'm guessing you care more about our giving you a good local story than about where the idea came from. But there would have been nothing wrong with acknowledging the presence of the Journal story ('A Wall Street Journal story last week told of a Cincinnati funeral director who carries a revolver in his hearse …'), or the radio report." Huh. Maybe newspapers will start doing that with blogs.
Newspapers won awards. WaPo won more than NYT. Heck, even Bob Dylan picked one up. [E&P]
If most university students studying film criticism can't even name a single working movie critic, are we really overestimating the importance of their jobs? Young people might cruise through Entertainment Weekly to see what's at the cineplex this weekend, but they aren't noting the bylines. WORSE: They aren't even reading cinema blogs!
The death toll is ringing, writes Variety's Anne Thompson, and we're on the verge of displacing nearly all thumbs-uppers and thumbs-downers. Netflix recommendations are stand-ins for respected voices of cultural reason. And with newspapers practically running on fumes, or so their publishers would have you believe, the first jobs to get axed are in the arts-culture sections. CONTINUED »
Are newspapers wasting precious cash employing bloggers? Of some 360 newspapers studied by Ball State University, 42 of which produced blogs, a singular conclusions was drawn: "While much has been written about blogs' potential to save democracy and revive journalism, this picture of newspapers' blog posts does little to support that notion."
That is: Blogs have failed us! CONTINUED »
Nine point four percent. That's the newspaper industry's plunge in ad revenue in 2007, the biggest drop in dollars since 1950, when the Newspaper Association of America began tracking such data. By comparison, online ad revenue spends jumped an estimated (PDF) 24 percent in 2007, though that does include all Internet media.
Reading the paper online instead of reading it in print might be good for your ink-smudged fingers, but when it comes to the environment, killing a few trees instead of powering up your PC is preferred — if you believe this convoluted explanation. [Slate]
If you're the publisher of a mid-size newspaper and you use AP copy, you're in a bit of Catch-22. Having field reporters all over the world is too expensive, but using the wire service's words might soon be out of your price range, too.
In 2009, the AP will unveil a new pricing model that, by the AP's own estimation, will cost the wire service $6 million to $7 million in revenue.
According to AP president Tom Curley, under the new structure, "about 80% [of stories] would get a cutback, 10% will remain the same and 10% would go up."
Which seems great for newspapers that subscribe to the AP, but editors from the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and San Diego Union-Tribune, to name a few, see it differently, and have written a letter in protest:
As editors of American newspapers, all of us are managing through difficult times. We are sharply cutting expenses, paring the size of our publications, and reducing staff. We are doing what we must, no matter how difficult.
However, year after year we are confronted with high charges for Associated Press services. Rates for the basic service were stabilized in 2007. Yet rates for supplemental services continue to rise. Also, AP invoices lack detail on how rates are calculated, and our budget-cutting efforts are stymied by onerous cancellation policies.
The AP board is meeting later in the week and plan on discussing this letter, but there's no plan on actually changing anything.
If the AP will, in fact, lose money on this revenue model, it's suspicious they're also ramping up their celebrity coverage. (Or is it that cheap to repurpose TMZ.com posts?)
The wire service is also expanding its campaign coverage with a new multimedia project called "The Measure of a Nation," which will issue a 2,600-word item among its first offerings.
Previous efforts to move beyond simple wire copy, like "asap," its lowercase-named service aimed at younger readers, failed miserably.
As for newspapers, there's always the sometimes-accurate Reuters. Or if things get really desperate, as it looks like they are, papers can go Huffington Post style and get semi-famous people to rant gratis.
"While ombudsmen do not describe their newsroom relationships as particularly chummy, most say that reporters understand the public editor's role and are good sports about being critiqued. 'It's a professional relationship,' the Washington Post's Deborah Howell says. 'They don't have to like me, as long as they respect me.'"
Because, as Howell puts it, "You don't have any friends on this job." And we completely agree! The relationship between ombudsman and his/her fellow staffers is so inherently awkward that, fundamentally, it's all about mutual respect.
Or, in the case of New York Times' public editor Clark Hoyt, begrudging acceptance.
• Joke's over. South Carolinian democrats stubbornly refuse to allow a comedian to run for the leader of the free world as a publicity stunt.
• Tennis truly is nothing like Hollywood. Example: Martina Hingis tests positive for cocaine; she retires in disgrace. Lindsay Lohan goes to rehab for cocaine use; she comes back with a ProActiv sponsorship and a shiny new movie deal.
• 60 Minutes proves way more effective at apprehending criminals than To Catch A Predator.
• Jacob the Jeweler is sent to prison, thereby depriving hardworking celebrities of their much-needed bling. Meanwhile, being incarcerated hasn't stopped Jacob from launching his own $80 vodka, called "Bocaj" (his name spelled backwards). Which we think it truly "C-i-t-o-i-d-i."
Like many other journalists, I would define news as all the important, surprising, tragic or weird events that have happened here and overseas on a particular day. News is not just things that matter to me. News is information gathered, written, photographed and edited by professional journalists who strive for what I see as the impossible, but still honorable, goal of objectivity and who are motivated by the old-fashioned concept of "public interest"…News is not black and white and "read all over" any more, but I still believe in newspapers and in newspaper journalism. These pages you are holding contain more than news and features. They are an inky artefact, a monument to the efforts of a trade, a profession, a type, whose time, I fear, is passing.
–Excerpted from veteran journo Rachel Buchanan's piece in TheAge.com
Furthering a story we took five minutes to work on last week, the Los Angeles Times opines about Google News' new comments feature, where "authenticated" people mentioned in news articles get a chance to publicly respond. Argue the editors: "The feature implies that the stories aggregated by Google News are incomplete — possibly because of limited space, but also possibly because of bias, neglect or ignorance. News organizations have their flaws, and the added comments on Google may demonstrate that. [...] Google, however, won't help readers separate the factual wheat from the public-relations chaff — a reminder that Google may strive to be the world's index, but it's not journalism."
So publicists have started embedding themselves into Google News' supposedly unbiased coverage. What's next, publicists cheating their clients' way to the top of search engine results? Oh, wait.
Editorial Director
