Free Republic

In a cost-cutting move, the parent company of The Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com said it will reduce the number of newsroom positions by 37 — through buyouts, it hopes — by the end of March. On Wednesday afternoon, management of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. (PMN) informed Newspaper Guild Local 10, which represents editorial, advertising and circulation employees, that it needed to cut costs because of challenging industry conditions. The move was not unexpected since PMN had announced plans last fall to create one newsroom for all its media properties as part of the relocation of its offices...

This morning, news of a new buyout offer began circulating in The Washington Post newsroom. This is the paper’s fifth round of buyouts since 2004. Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton tweeted this afternoon that the buyouts would be capped at 48 people or 8 percent of the 600-person newsroom. The Washington Post Company, which owns the Post, Slate, a community newspaper group, and an educational unit, had a dismal third quarter. Its report from that time period was filed last November (PDF). It said that newspaper revenue was down 9 percent from the same period the year before, advertising revenue shrank...

After dissing Ford in the Super Bowl advertisement for its Chevrolet pickup trucks, General Motors' head of marketing has now taken a dig at Chrysler and everyone else who makes full-size trucks in the United States. During a web chat on Monday hosted by Jalopnik.com, GM Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer Joel Ewanik responded to a question about why it singled out Ford in the ad, which featured a group of Chevrolet drivers that survived the predicted 2012 Mayan Apocalypse while their Ford-driving friend “Dave” didn’t make it. Ewanik wrote “The two big players are Ford and Chevy....

Some very humorous (if not cost-effective) ads were exhibited by General Motors during this year's Super Bowl game. GM continues to freely spend its stockpile of taxpayer supplied cash reserve as it even aired a spot touting the Chevy Volt. At a cost of $3.5 million for a 30 second spot the expense equals about 15% of the total revenues GM brought in during the entire month of January for the Volt when sales fell to a dismal level of 603. What is the reasoning behind spending so much to advertise a vehicle that sells in such small numbers...

The New York Times Company reported its Q4 earnings today, and they lost $39.7 million in 2011, or 27 cents a share, after making $107.7 million in 2010. Q4 profit is down 12.2% y/y thanks to the continuing decline of print advertising and a 67.4% decline in the About Group's operating profit, which also saw a 25.7% decrease in quarterly ad revenues y/y. The NYT also missed analysts' estimates — quarterly net income of 39 cents a share was lower than expectations of 42 cents a share. The fourth quarter income also reflects a $4.5 million payout to departed CEO...

Reminiscent of film Cool Runnings, Bruno Banani, the son of a Tongan coconut farmer, was destined to slide into the history books as Tonga's first Olympic competitor in the sport. [snip] A German underwear company was helping the 24 year-old fulfil his lifelong ambition with sponsorship due to an odd coincidence – he bore the same name as their brand. Alas, all was not as it seemed. German magazine Der Spiegel has unmasked the mischievous luger, whose catchphrase was "coconut-powered", as a hoax – his identity being the clever craftsmanship of a marketing company in Leipzig. ....... Semi, an IT...

Gannett Co. reported a 33% drop in fourth-quarter profit as persistent advertising declines at its newspapers and lower television revenues more than offset growth in the digital businesses. The McLean, Va., publisher of more than 80 daily U.S. papers, including USA Today, said ad revenue in its newspaper segment decrease 7.1% from the year-earlier quarter. Coming after an 8.5% year-over-year drop in the third quarter, the results capped a difficult second half of a year when many publishers expected advertising deterioration to level off. Executives said advertising got a boost in November from Black Friday and Cyber Monday but the...

The New York Times Company is still seeking a replacement for CEO Janet Robinson who departed last month, and Wall Street isn’t too happy, reports Bloomberg. A new leader is needed to bring up revenue, shore up profits and restore the Times Company’s dividend, Bloomberg writes. The company, which announces fourth-quarter results next week, is projected to report that its 2011 revenue was $2.33 billion, a decline from 2010 and the sixth straight year of declining sales. “The stock is kind of stuck in no-man’s land,” and the absence of a CEO is part of what’s keeping it there,” one...

The Post managed to tee off its readers twice this week.. It raised its single-copy price at the newsstand to $1, from 75 cents, and the company did so with no announcement, no publisher’s note, nothing online or in print that I could find. That angered readers. Remember that the No. 1 revenue stream for The Post still is print circulation — that is, the money received from home subscribers, newsstand sales and print advertising. Here’s what one phone caller left on my voice mail: “This [price increase], so far as I can tell, was unannounced. . . . I looked at...

Online advertising spending will cruise past print in the United States this year for the first time, according to a new forecast by eMarketer. Online ad spending in the U.S. grew 23% to $32.03 billion in 2011 and will grow 23.3% more to $39.5 billion in 2012, eMarketer said. That will put it above total U.S. magazine and newspaper spending, which will fall 6.1% to $36 billion this year, said the report. Print ad spending in magazines will actually tick up to $15.4 billion from $15.3 billion, according to eMarketer. Magazine and newspaper publishers themselves enjoy rising digital ad revenue,...

AppTech was the buzz of the mobile tech world Thursday as the company rolled out “ReconAge,” a mobile age recognition app for Android-powered devices. The application, which is free and available now for download from the Android Market, recognizes the approximate age of a person by making use of real time face recognition biometric systems online.Pretty nifty, indeed – especially with regard to the mobile marketing implications the app and its underlying technology deliver.“We’re changing the face of mobile marketing. AppTech is uniting brilliant minds around this idea. With the launch of ReconAge, we intend to introduce the usefulness of...

Looking to reduce costs as it continues to grapple with a changing media landscape and challenging economy, the Chicago Tribune told employees Monday it will offer an undisclosed number of voluntary buyouts in the newsroom. Gerry Kern, senior vice president and editor of the Tribune, issued a memo outlining the voluntary separation program, which will be open to all editorial staff except top departmental management. "We begin the year with a need to reduce costs as we face the continued financial pressures from a weak economy and structural changes in our industry," Kern said. "We are committed to taking action...

A Colorado teenager whose yearbook picture was rejected for being too revealing is vowing to fight the ban with her high school’s administration, but the editors of the yearbook insist it was their decision alone on the photo. The five student editors of the Durango High School yearbook in Durango, Col., told the Durango Herald they were the ones who made the call not to publish a picture of senior Sydney Spies posing in a short yellow skirt midriff and shoulder-exposing black shawl as her senior portrait. “We are an award-winning yearbook. We don’t want to diminish the quality with...

You do not see businesses wishing you a Merry Christmas very much anymore.

Here's betting that the corporate brass at Lee Enterprises up in Davenport has no idea that today is the anniversary of the founding of the Post-Dispatch. If it did, you'd think it would choose any day but today to officially file for bankruptcy. But even if the anniversary is lost on Lee Enterprises, the irony of its predicament cannot be. Lee wanted to be a big-boy media company back in 2005 when it swallowed up the larger Pulitzer Inc. (then owner of the Post-Dispatch). Now Lee is choking on all the money it borrowed to fund the acquisition and is...

A California state senator called on home improvement chain Lowe's to apologize for pulling advertising from a TV show featuring the lives of Muslim families. Lowe's pulled advertising from Discovery Channel/TLC's "All-American Muslim" after the Florida Family Assn. complained about the show, which it called "propaganda that riskily hides the Islamic agenda’s clear and present danger to American liberties and traditional values.” State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) wrote a letter Saturday to Lowe's Chief Executive Officer Robert A. Niblock in which he called the decision to pull advertising from the show "bigoted, shameful, and un-American" and "profoundly ignorant." He demanded...

The ACLU has sued the Ann Arbor Transportation Authority and CEO Michael Ford over the agency’s refusal to accept an advertisement calling for a boycott of Israel from pro-Palestinian activist Blaine Coleman of Ann Arbor.The lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Detroit alleges AATA violated Coleman’s First Amendment right to free speech and 14th Amendment right to due process. It argues AATA’s policy is vague and overly broad. It asks the court to order AATA to display the advertisement under the same terms offered to other advertisers and to award Coleman damages, court costs and reasonable attorney fees...Coleman sent...

Sony Corp. is considering launching an Internet-based alternative to cable-TV service, people familiar with the situation said, posing the latest threat to the cable and satellite operators that dominate pay TV. The Japanese electronics and entertainment company has approached several big media companies to negotiate the rights to offer their TV channels over the Web in the U.S., the people said. Sony is proposing to beam the channels over Internet connections to Sony-made devices, including PlayStation gaming consoles, TV sets and Blu-ray players, the people said. Sony has sold about 18.1 million PlayStation 3 consoles in the U.S. alone, according...

Newsweek was jolted by three high-level departures on Monday, a sign that the merger a year ago with The Daily Beast has left the magazine deeply unsettled. The upheaval hit the challenged advertising sales unit and the newsroom, where the editing and reporting ranks are straining under Tina Brown’s high-pressure management style. The executive editor, Edward Felsenthal, who has been with Ms. Brown since The Daily Beast first went online in 2008, handed in his resignation on Monday. He was joined by Tom Weber, the managing editor who started at Newsweek in January. The publisher, Ray Chelstowski, was fired. His...

US schools sell ad space on report cards AAP November 15, 2011 9:07AM FACED with stinging budget cuts, a county school board in Colorado is selling advertising space on report cards to help make ends meet. Jefferson County Public Schools expects to make $US90,000 ($A87,000) over three years from Collegeinvest, a college savings plan, for the 5cm ads on report cards issued by its 91 primary schools. That seems like a drop in the bucket for the school board, which last year slashed its spending by $US40 million in the face of reduced state and federal government support and a...

It has been one of Newsweek’s signature ventures and a staple of American political journalism since 1984. Every presidential election season, the magazine detached a small group of reporters from their daily jobs for a year to travel with the presidential candidates and document their every internal triumph and despair — all under the condition that none of it was to be printed until after the election. Then two days after Election Day, the sum of their reporters’ work would appear in the magazine. But the ambitious undertaking, known inside the magazine simply as “the project,” is no more. Newsweek,...

In 90 seconds this advertisement says more about love and family than a regiment of pundits could ponticate about in a thousand books….

Many television viewers encounter strange, disjointed ads promoting NewAmerica3.com. The ads plead with viewers to visit the website, where the narrator promises a Nostradamus-like offering of dire prophecies for the future. What most viewers don’t know is that the man behind the ad has been found liable in the past for defrauding investors. Meet Frank Porter Stansberry. In 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a complaint against him for peddling false information to subscribers of his financial newsletter. The name of his company at the time was Pirate Investor.

Layoffs have come to the Daily News. Since this morning, staffers to be laid off have been getting called into a conference room to meet with senior vice president of human-resources Jeff Zomper. They're being told the layoffs are part of a "downsizing" operation at the paper. The layoffs aren't yet complete, (The New York Observer and the New York Post are putting the total number at 10); we've confirmed the names of a few of those who've been laid off so far. Bob Kappstatter, a 43-year veteran of the paper who just turned 68, was one of them. "It's...

According to a couple of independent newsroom sources, Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton called meetings on Wednesday to inform affected people that the design, news operations and web operations staffs would be combined into one department, along with at least some of the copy editors. The merging would take place by the end of January and lead to 10-20 layoffs, the sources say. One of the sources said there's also new talk of combining sections to save money.

Tina Brown says The Daily Beast website is on track to be profitable this year, but Lucia Moses points out that getting the combined NewsBeast into the black by early 2013 — Daily Beast backer Barry Diller insists that’s possible — will be a daunting task. “If that task takes years and Newsweek can’t find a way to regain the relevance weekly newsmagazines have lost since the explosion of news on the Internet, then Diller and Jane Harman, Sidney Harman’s widow, could reach the point where they finally decide to cut bait,” she writes. “The idea that NewsBeast could ever...

High quality global journalism requires investment. Cablevision, the cable operator servicing New York and the north-east US, reported a loss of pay-television customers but a gain in high-speed internet customers, mirroring Thursday’s results from competitor Time Warner Cable. Revenues were up 8 per cent from a year earlier at $1.67bn, but organic growth was nearly flat. Revenues from pay-television services were up despite a loss in subscribers in the past three months. Cablevision added new internet customers, generating revenues from the segment with the addition of a new broadband operator. “Broadband results, increasingly the cornerstone service for all cable operators,...

Sounds a bit bare bones to me — like he might be running for County Commissioner somewhere. Maybe that works? I don’t know. There’s also the interesting concept of running national radio ads — rather than targeting them to, say, Iowa. The theory is that raising Cain’s national name ID raises his national poll numbers. This, in turn, will generate momentum, positive press, and — most important — and boost fundraising. So far, this unconventional strategy has worked for Cain. The question is whether or not it will continue to work.

Rosie O’Donnell is not exactly the savior Oprah Winfrey’s OWN cable network was hoping for. Despite appearing on the cover of Winfrey’s O magazine and constant promotion on the Discovery Channel network, the October 10 premiere of “The Rosie Show” on OWN produced less than half a million viewers, while “Oprah’s Lifeclass” did even worse, attracting just 333,000 viewers. And both shows lost viewers the night after their premieres, with “The Rosie Show” dropping more than 36 percent, to 317,000 viewers the following Tuesday, while “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” also dropped to just 279,000 viewers. But even with the lackluster ratings, OWN...

The Peacock is looking like a bedraggled starling at the start of its first fall TV season in Comcast's nest. Three weeks in, overall viewership, according to the Nielsen Co., is up at CBS and Fox, and down less than 1 percent at ABC, vs. year-ago numbers. But at NBC, it's down 6 percent. More ominous: Despite a new entertainment boss and a large bump in spending on program development, NBC has seen the average viewership of its five new series drop a stunning 28 percent from levels achieved by last year's five new series in the first three weeks...

S&P 500 (NYSE:SPY) component Gannett Co. Inc. (NYSE:GCI) reported its results for the third quarter. Gannett is an international news and information company operating mainly in the realms of publishing, digital and broadcasting. Results: Net income for the publisher fell to $99.8 million (41 cents per share) vs. $101.4 million (42 cents per share) a year earlier. This is a decline of 1.6% from the year earlier quarter. Revenue: Fell 3.5% to $1.27 billion from the year earlier quarter. Actual vs. Wall St. Expectations: GCI reported adjusted net income of 44 cents per share. By that measure, the company fell...

The Palm Beach Post, privately held by an Atlanta family with three members on the Forbes 400 richest Americans, is laying off “more than 20″ employees today, according to a memo exclusively obtained by Gossip Extra. The Palm Beach Post In an email sent an hour ago to the entire company in West Palm Beach, Publisher Tim Burke made it clear more layoffs could come soon as the newspaper’s umbrella company, Cox Newspapers, continues to contract during the economic downturn. Today’s unexpected cuts from a staff that’s already stretched thin include four newsroom workers, including two who work mainly for...

In the midst of a deteriorating advertising climate, The New York Times plans to eliminate up to 20 newsroom positions and seek additional savings in the business units, the company said Thursday. The reductions, described by the New York Times Company as a rebalancing, were announced to employees on Thursday morning. The company will seek volunteers for buyouts in The Times newsroom, Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, said in a memo to the staff, adding that no newsroom employee would be laid off. She said there would be “fewer than 20” buyouts. The Times will also seek to cut...

When he announced a recent 5 percent pay cut for staff and change in severance payments, St. Petersburg Times chairman and CEO Paul Tash said the cost-cutting “will likely include further job reductions,” and now it has. In a memo to staff, executive editor Neil Brown acknowledged that layoffs at the Poynter-owned paper had started. “The economy affords us no guarantees,” Brown wrote, “but we hope to wrap up these staffing decisions by the middle of October.” We’ve been told about eight people who were laid off, but have confirmed only three. The full memo follows. From Neil Brown to...

Ed Padgett knows a thing or two about printing newspapers. For the last 39 years, he has been working as a pressman at the Los Angeles Times. In the near future, he could be out of a job. "[The management is] expecting a really bad fourth quarter. The senior vice president told us we’ve got three years more of printing the hard copy Times before they shut it down. Our plant manager says five years," he told The Frying Pan. A LAT spokeswoman said that there were no plans to cease publication of the print product, but you would not...

DreamWorks Animation, the company behind successful movie franchises like “Madagascar” and “Shrek,” said it had completed a deal to pump its films and television specials through Netflix, replacing a less lucrative pact with HBO. The Netflix accord, which analysts estimate is worth $30 million per picture to DreamWorks over an unspecified period of years, is billed by the companies as the first time a major Hollywood supplier has chosen Web streaming over pay television. It is also a bet by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the animation studio’s chief executive, that consumers in the near future will not distinguish between the two. “We...

Viacom employees have been hit with a round of layoffs, Adweek has learned. Pink slips were handed down Thursday afternoon. A Viacom spokesperson confirmed the cuts, and said that the downsizing primarily took place within the media conglomerate’s music group, which includes MTV, VH1, CMT, and Logo. A number of departments within the music group were affected, including digital, consumer marketing, and on-air promotions. Outside of the music group, cuts were made in affiliate marketing, an area that supports BET Networks and Viacom Media Networks, which counts Comedy Central and Nickelodeon among its holdings. The downsizing took place the same...

Have you ever been primed? I mean has anyone ever deliberately influenced your subconscious mind and altered your perception of reality without your knowing it? Whole Foods Market, and others, are doing it to you right now.

Of UN Palestine Vote, Israel, Islamic Jihad Hamas Advertising in New York By Joel Leyden Israel News Agency New York --- September 17, 2011 .... After having been absent from the US for 25 years, having worked and lived in Israel, this Marco Polo has returned to a nation which for the most part has grown fat. It's Jewish community has become almost totally insensitive to the prospects of a war destroying Israel in the coming weeks. Yes, many in the Jewish community know about an upcoming vote in the UN to establish a state of Palestine. What they are...

The combined newsstand sales of 68 major American magazines declined by nearly half from 2001-2011, a MediaPost analysis of Audit Bureau of Circulations data revealed. According to ABC FAS-FAX circulation reports, this group of leading weekly and monthly magazines saw total average newsstand sales plunge from 22,019,953 in the six-month period ending June 2001 to 11,562,028 in the six-month period ending June 2011 -- a 47.5% decline over the course of the decade. Total newsstand sales have gradually collapsed over the last 10 years, accelerating in recent years in response to broader economic pressures. Newsstand sales have declined steadily, dropping...

NEW YORK, Sep 12, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- America's favorite advertising icons and slogans from many of the world's biggest brands will go head-to-head to determine this year's inductees to The Madison Avenue Advertising Walk of Fame, held during Advertising Week 2011 in New York City, October 3-7. Voters across the nation are encouraged to vote for their favorite icon and slogan on BuzzFeed at http://www.buzzfeed.com/adwalkoffame . Voting begins today and closes Friday, September 30th at midnight ET. The winners will be inducted into the Walk of Fame during the Advertising Week on October 4th and will gain a permanent...

Pay for full-time employees at the St. Petersburg Times will be cut by five percent until January 2012 under a new cost-savings plan implemented by the newspaper starting Monday. Staffers will be given five additional days off, with pay, during the five-month period, distinguishing this move from compulsory furloughs used by some other media outlets. The change will save about $1-million over the next five months in payroll costs. The company also will reduce its maximum severance payment from 40 weeks to 26 weeks, starting Oct. 1. The newspaper’s cost-saving plan will also likely include further job reductions, though officials...

Is the media industry in turmoil? Clearly it is, with publishers fighting declines in circulation and advertising revenue, combined with competition from digital-native entities such as blog networks and the “democracy of distribution” that comes from social-media tools like Twitter and Facebook. Journalism itself is even said to be in jeopardy, or at least the journalism we are used to. So what’s to be done? Some are recommending journalists be licensed by some kind of official body, so we can get “real” journalism from professionals — but these kinds of solutions would create even worse problems than the ones they...

The Dallas Morning News laid off a reported 38 employees on Tuesday as the paper's parent company, A.H. Belo Corp., contends with a continued decline in advertising revenues at its newspapers. The layoffs ran the spectrum of jobs at the Morning News, including editors, reporters, photographers and designers. James M. Moroney III, executive vice president of A. H. Belo Corp. and publisher and CEO of the Morning News, said in an email that the company is battling a revenue problem that plagues the entire newspaper industry. In his email, Moroney did not confirm how many employees were let go. "No...

Newspaper companies are resetting their advertising expectations after a discouraging first half of the year, a shift that could spur a return to more of the job cuts and other belt-tightening moves that spread through the industry in 2008 and 2009. A spate of publishers in recent weeks reported that newspaper advertising revenue in the second quarter declined at rates in the mid- to high-single digits because of persistent weakness in print, and executives said they expect similar trends in the third quarter. "Right now, I'd have a hard time presenting a plan with revenues flattening out," one newspaper executive...

Nivea Apologizes For Ad Some See As Racist Demand to 're-civilize yourself' sparks flurry of negative comments By Mark R. Bryant 8/19/2011 Nivea USA, maker of skin care products, boosted its profile this week, but not in a civilized way. An ad in Esquire magazine showed a clean-cut black man ready to heave a dark-skinned head with long locks and an unkempt beard, with the words, “Re-civilize yourself.” Reactions fanned across the Web, with accusations ranging from racism and ignorance to we’re-reading-too-much-into-this. “Are you suggesting that Black men are uncivilized to begin with? There is too much history rooted in...

(CBS News) Things are apparently changing at Burger King -- and the king himself is reportedly taking the fall. According to USA Today. the fast-food chain is de-throning its "king" character as it gives its menu more fresh, healthy options. So -- no more commercials featuring that frozen smile. The newspaper calls Burger King's plan "the first of many steps to reinvent itself over the next year," making its advertising target Mom rather than teens, and stressing healthy items on its menu, including some new ones.

Cincinnati Enquirer parent Gannett Co. Inc. has signed a letter of intent under which the Columbus Dispatch will print a much smaller version of the newspaper. The move, if finalized, will result in the closure of the company's local printing operations by the fourth quarter of 2012. In a statement, the company said the new format would be 10 1/2 inches by 14 1/2 inches. The paper is now 11 inches by 22 1/2 inches. "We are committed to serving the greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky communities – and providing consumers with the best news and information anywhere, anytime. We...

A Times pressroom is being further downsized “in response to the decline in revenue and page counts.” Ten union pressroom employees will be laid off at the end of August. The LAT pressroom has been hit hard by layoffs in the past. Last year the paper closed their Orange County printing facility as a cost-cutting measure. There are currently about 127 pressroom employees at the one remaining printing facility The full email from management is included after the jump. The email below was found at the union blog Save Our Trade. Ronnie Pineda GCC-IBT Local #140N As we have previously...

Widely circulated photos of Cathay Pacific crew members apparently engaged in a sex act have postponed the launch of an airline ad campaign, according to the New York Times. The slogan: "meet the team who go the extra mile to make you feel special." The second installment of the international ad campaign focusing on the company's employees was due to launch next month but will be postponed until October 1, the Times reported. "The original timing doesn't suit us," an airline spokesman told the newspaper. The airline announced Friday that the two are no longer employees of the airline.