Free Republic

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which distinguished itself amid great adversity during Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, is about to enact large staff cuts and may cut back its daily print publishing schedule, according to two employees with knowledge of the plans. Newhouse Newspapers, which owns the Times-Picayune, will apparently be working off a blueprint the company used in Ann Arbor, Mich., where it reduced the frequency of the Ann Arbor News, emphasized the Web site as a primary distributor of news and in the process instituted wholesale layoffs to cut costs. A request for comment late Wednesday night from the...

The Los Angeles Times said its Sunday magazine, facing tough challenges, will cease publication. LA, Los Angeles Times Magazine will print its final issue June 3, Kathy K. Thomson, president and chief operating officer, said in an email Tuesday to employees. The magazine came out weekly until 2008, when the paper's editorial department stopped publishing it. The Los Angeles Times Media Group then put out the magazine in a monthly format. "The entire magazine industry has been faced with a very challenging environment," Thomson wrote. "We are not immune to the challenges." In 2010, U.S. News & World Report switched...

The Washington Post Company‘s dismal quarterly earnings release last week was received with something of a shrug—more of the same. But the report is worse than the reaction suggests and raises fundamental questions about the Post’s strategy, not just for the newspaper, but for the whole company. If you hadn’t heard, the Washington Post Company is basically a for-profit college/SAT-prep firm that sidelines as a cable-TV provider and newspaper publisher. The august Washington Post (I’ll italicize Post here when referring to the newspaper and won’t when referring to its parent) contributed just 15 percent to its namesake company’s revenue in...

Late last week the hallowed Washington Post announced a first-quarter operating loss of $22.6 million as print ads sank 17 percent year-over-year and online revenue dipped 7 percent, too. Weekday circulation is now under 500,000, falling almost 10 percent, while the company's onetime moneymaker, the education unit Kaplan, lost some millions as well. Journalists at the paper are well aware of the problems and last month had a dark-sounding "secret meeting" to talk things out. Adweek reports that ten of the paper's top staffers met with president and general manager Steve Hills over sandwiches to chat "about the challenges that...

I received multiple tips late Thursday about layoffs at the New York Times, including this report: More than 50 people were laid off on the corporate side. The layoffs include George Freeman, one of their well-known in-house lawyers. The worry is this is just the begginning of cuts — and that the company is putting pressure on the unions. Several of the people who were laid off were minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics. Another tipster says of Freeman: He was “one of the two go-to guys on news-department legal matters, from story vetting to fighting First Amendment cases. The...

Do you ever get the feeling that Rush and Hannity don't really care who wins, just as long as their dollars keep rolling in from us tea party saps. Besides Mark Levin, what prominent talker has gone out on a limb and endorsed true conservative candidates? Everyday we have to here Hannity interview the John McCains of the world. If he truly believed in the conservative movement, wouldn't he be out there trumpeting Richard Mourdock and Don Stenberg like Levin is? As for Rush, he is more interested in commercializing the tea party movement with his "Two if by tea"...

By now most have viewed at least one of the HHS anti-smoking commercials featuring victims of various cancers and other ailments caused - they say - by smoking and tobacco use. It's a cliche but still true: these are our tax dollars at work. Your government commissioned these ads and purchased the airtime with your cash. HHS Secretary Sebelius and her minions risk another sort of medical problem - namely, rotator cuff injuries from patting themselves on the back for foisting these grotesque, voyeuristic images on an unsuspecting, undeserving public. This isn't a tear in the eye of Iron Eyes...

I've checked with an ad agency. We can probably raise the funds we need to operate FR at our current level and at the current market price for online advertising if we run a banner ad at the top of every page and at least one rectangular ad in the above the fold body of the page and a couple rectangular ads in the sidebar. If that doesn't generate enough revenue, we can also run pop ups or pop unders and we can even run audio and video ads if need be. But of course, if we go full bore...

James Bond may no longer be ordering his signature Martini, "shaken, not stirred." Reports say Bond is switching to Heineken. Ad Age reports that Daniel Craig will reach for a Heineken rather than his trademark cocktail in a scene from the upcoming Bond movie "Skyfall," thanks to a deal Heineken USA has struck with the spy film franchise. Craig will additionally star in a commercial for the brew to run globally, created by Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam with "Skyfall" director Sam Mendes serving as a consultant. Craig will also appear as Bond on special packaging for the beer

While Media Matters for America has been eager to argue that conservative talker Rush Limbaugh’s radio show has suffered in the wake of controversial remarks he made recently on his show, the liberal attack group is not telling the whole story when it claims the program’s flagship station, WABC 770 AM in New York City, has had to broadcast dead air during commercial breaks because of the flap. Last week the Media Matters website pointed out the dead air on the station’s online “listen live” feed. But the group ignored what was aired over the broadcast airwaves, which often dramatically...

As advertisers keep joining in on the Rush Limbaugh boycott, one company only lasted a week before it went back to the conservative talk show host with its tail between its legs. But Limbaugh is not ready to forgive and forget. The Los Angeles Times reports that Sleep Train, which had advertised with Limbaugh for 25 years, asked to relaunch a "voiced endorsement" on Limbaugh's show on Thursday ... and they were turned down. The funny thing is, Sleep Train was the first advertiser to pull its ads from Limbaugh's show. After receiving a slew of angry messages for advertising...

The New York Times published an ad from the Freedom From Religion Foundation which calls for nominal and liberal Catholics to abandon the Church. The ad asks "Why are you propping up the pillars of a tyrannical and autocratic, woman-hating, sex-perverting, antediluvian Old Boys Club? " and states "No self-respecting feminist, civil libertarian or progressive should cling to the Catholic faith." [Full Text Below.] It goes without saying that the brave brave NYT would never accept and publish an ad criticizing Islam in the same way. But leaving aside the obvious cowardice and their disgraceful perfunctory anti-Catholicism, I think the...

John P. Holdren, the White House science adviser to President Barack Obama, wrote in a book he co-authored with population control advocates Paul and Anne Ehrlich that “ways must be found to control advertising” and that possible means for doing so would be banning utility companies from promoting the use of energy and prohibiting “references to size, power or sexual potency” in automobile advertising. “Advertising now functions in large part to keep the economy growing by creating demand for a wide variety of often useless, dangerous or environmentally destructive products,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

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...