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...

Statistics show a deep divide in opinions along racial lines regarding the killing of a black Florida teenager, Trayvon Martin, by George Zimmerman, who is of mixed ethnicity, white and Hispanic. Zimmerman has claimed self-defense, invoking the Sunshine State’s “Stand Your Ground” law which has also come under intense scrutiny in the wake of the incident. Reuters news service reported last week, 91% of blacks believe Martin was unjustly killed, while only 35% of whites concurred. Hispanics were in between at 59% according to polling numbers Reuters gathered by querying nearly 2,000 Americans. The disparity of views over Martin’s death...

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...

Unbiased my ass: Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton touted the Post’s Romney-haircut “scoop” as a “deeply reported story” that “holds up to scrutiny.” But the family of the haircut victims told ABC it was “factually inaccurate” and it shouldn’t be used as a political football. Pexton said nonsense: the Post has received “no specific complaint of inaccuracy.” Perhaps more shocking is that the Post shamelessly admits they timed this story precisely to echo on the day after President Obama’s big pro-gay announcement. They actually waited a day longer than planned to let Obama have the front page to himself...

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...

An "electronic Titanic"--as Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times called it---"an unprecedented disaster in the annals of network news, and perhaps the biggest TV scam since the Quiz Scandals." To many, NBC's Dateline fiasco seemed a freak, a bizarre departure from accepted network standards. Would any half-awake news organization have helped stage a crash test that was rigged to get a particular outcome? Or concealed from the public key elements--the hidden rockets, the over-filled tank, the loose gas cap? Or entrusted its judgment to axe-grinding "experts" who were deeply involved in litigating against the expose's target? Or, after questions...

Oprah Winfrey's cable channel struck a distribution deal with Comcast Corp., lifting the number of homes in which the network can be seen, according to people familiar with the situation. Related Video As a result of the deal, 17 million Comcast subscribers will be able to watch the network, known as OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network, up from about 14 million currently. Comcast had 22.3 million video subscribers on Dec. 31. Overall, OWN will be in 83 million homes, up from 80 million, people close to channel said. Comcast also agreed to begin paying subscriber fees for the channel at the...

It was, declared Germany's biggest-selling tabloid, "a small step for women … a big step for all German men". After 28 years and 5,000 semi-clad and sometimes completely naked women, Bild announced that it was dropping its Page One Girl. The development dominated the tabloid's front page, pushing stories on Greek debt and the farewell ceremony for Germany's disgraced president to the sidelines.

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...

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...

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,...

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...

The State Bar of Nevada is investigating the CEO of Righthaven, a company known for its prolific filing of copyright lawsuits against bloggers who allegedly infringed by reposting newspaper content, as well as two lawyers who worked there. ... a federal judge in Las Vegas has fined Righthaven $5,000 and rebuked the company for “inaccurate and likely dishonest” statements in court filings, the article continues. The judge also suggested that the company could have been involved in unauthorized practice of law.

One day after Mort Zuckerman shook up his Daily News by cutting loose the paper’s editor, the deposed leader gave a farewell address to the troops. Kevin Convey, the longtime Boston Herald editor who lasted only 18 months at the ailing News, gave a “short and sweet” farewell address, according to one insider. “It was a weird ending to a weird tenure,” said the insider. At about the same time, the incoming editor, Colin Myler, was boarding a plane in London, according to one report, to jet to his new assignment, which starts Jan. 10. “To the degree we’ve had...

The rocky, rickety boat that is the New York times has long been in peril of sinking. Now the Times staffers have sent a letter to publisher Arthur Sulzberger expressing "profound dismay" at the direction the company is headed. Huffington Post: The letter calls attention to several grievances. Last week, Times brass notified foreign citizens employed in the paper's overseas bureaus that their pensions would be frozen. In the letter, Times staffers dismayed by this decision point out to Sulzberger that some of these foreign employees, working alongside Times reporters in war zones, have "risked their lives so that we...

Newsmagazine Just Out is shutting down, according to a note on its website Monday. The publication has served Portland's gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer community since 1983. The online notice states simply that "three years of recession have taken their toll." Publisher Marty Davis confirmed the closure in an email to The Oregonian: "Just Out has closed its doors and shut down its computers." She said in a follow-up email that there are no plans to continue online. Local blogger Byron Beck broke the news on his site, linking to an 11 a.m. post on Just Out's Facebook page....

The number of jobs eliminated in the newspaper industry rose by nearly 30% in 2011 from the prior year, according to the blog that has been tracking the human toll on the industry for the last five years. Meanwhile, a separate analysis confirms what most of us already suspected: The proportion of cutbacks was higher in newsrooms than it was for the industry as a whole ... First, let’s take a look at the surprising surge of job cuts in 2011, a year that many newspaper people had hoped would be a time of relative stability after five years of...

The court-authorized dismantling of Las Vegas copyright company Righthaven LLC appeared to be under way Thursday, with the company losing control of its website to a receiver. As noted by the Righthaven Victims website critical of Righthaven, the righthaven.com website on Thursday was no longer operational and that domain name was “parked” at domain name hoster GoDaddy.com — apparently so it can be auctioned. Records at Network Solutions, which tracks domain names, showed control of Righthaven’s website domain name was transferred Wednesday to Randazza Legal Group, which represents Righthaven creditor Wayne Hoehn. However, attorney Marc Randazza said that information...

(Background provided by Owl_Eagle) Legendary Philadelphia Daily News Sportswriter Bill Conlin retired abruptly yesterday amongst allegations of sex abuse reported by sister paper The Philadelphia Inquirer. Larry Platt is/was Conlin's editor. (Snip)I have known Bill Conlin since 1990, and before that, I knew him as a legendary voice on the page. I simply do not know how to reconcile what I've read with the man I know. I spoke to him Tuesday. He offered to retire and I immediately accepted. I knew I'd never be comfortable running his byline again. For a long time Tuesday, we struggled with how to...

Labor unrest is simmering just below the surface at the New York Times Co., and the unions appear to be gearing up for a protracted fight. Sources say that the Communications Workers of America, the parent union of the Newspaper Guild and others, has earmarked a $350,000 war chest and hired the politically connected public relations firm of BerlinRosen to advise in what seems to be shaping up as a pivotal battle among several unions. The Newspaper Guild, which claims to represent about 1,000 journalists and photographers at the flagship, and the smaller Mailers Union Local 6, with about 170...

The New York Times Company said on Monday it was in advanced talks to sell 16 regional newspapers, another indication the company was divesting itself of assets to concentrate on its core newspaper business. Halifax Media Holdings of Daytona Beach, Fla., is currently negotiating the purchase of the Times Company’s Regional Media Group, a division that includes newspapers across the country like The Sarasota Herald-Tribune in Florida; The Press Democrat in Santa Rosa, Calif.; The Star-News in Wilmington, N.C.; The Gainesville Sun, also in Florida; and The Tuscaloosa News in Alabama. Combined, the papers have a Monday-through-Friday circulation of 433,251...

It was an announcement that took many in the American media business by surprise. Janet Robinson was stepping down as CEO of the New York Times company after seven years. But why? Even the Times's own report reflected the shock. "The announcement caught many by surprise — both inside and outside the company," said the Times

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...

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...

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,...

Andy Rooney, whose prickly wit was long a mainstay of CBS News and whose homespun commentary on “60 Minutes,” delivered every week from 1978 until 2011, made him a household name, died Friday in New York City. He was 92 and lived in Manhattan, though he kept a family vacation home in Rensselaerville, N.Y., and the first home he ever purchased, in Rowayton, Conn. CBS News said in a statement that Mr. Rooney died after complications following minor surgery. In late September, CBS announced that Mr. Rooney would be making his last regular weekly appearance on “60 Minutes” on Oct....

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,...

Newspaper copyright infringement lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas was hit Wednesday with an order to pay $119,488 in attorney's fees and costs in its failed lawsuit against former federal prosecutor Thomas DiBiase. This was by far the largest fee award against Righthaven, but likely will be dwarfed by an upcoming award in Righthaven's failed suit against the Democratic Underground. Before Wednesday the largest fee award against Righthaven was for $34,045 — an amount Righthaven says it's having trouble paying or even posting a bond to cover. DiBiase has a website covering no-body murder cases, or cases where a...

Investigative reporter Susan Bradford has filed a small-claims court lawsuit in Virginia against The Huffington Post and The New York Times, alleging that the publishers plagiarized her work on the Jack Abramoff scandal in 2008. The civil suit was filed September 1 in Fairfax County, Va., a close-in suburban county near Washington, D.C. Bradford told The Daily Caller that she entered into a verbal agreement with Nico Pitney, Politics Editor of The Huffington Post, for payment of $12,000 in exchange for a series of seven articles about the scandal. She alleges that she submitted the articles and that HuffPo rejected...

<p>CBS' Andy Rooney — who announced his retirement from his regular commentator role on "60 Minutes" last month — is ailing following surgery, the network said Tuesday.</p> <p>"Andy Rooney underwent minor surgery last week and suffered serious complications," CBS News wrote in a statement. "For that reason, he remains in the hospital, but his condition is stable."</p>

A notable moment on Morning Joe today, as Joe Scarborough called out Mika Brzezinski on her double standard when it comes to criticizing politicians for their over-the-top remarks. Setting Scarborough off was Brzezinski's defense of Joe Biden's allegation that crime, including rape, would increase if Republicans don't vote for President Obama's latest tax-raising stimulus plan. Joe claimed Mika would surely condemn a Republican, such as Michelle Bachmann, employing similar fear-mongering tactics. View the video here--don't miss Mika's priceless facial expressions at end of clip!

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...

It’s an effort already rejected by one judge, but Righthaven LLC of Las Vegas is trying again to avoid paying the legal fees of defendants that defeat Righthaven in court. In court filings Saturday in Denver, Righthaven asked Senior U.S. District Judge John Kane to put six of its copyright infringement cases there on hold, rather than dismissing them on a summary judgment basis.

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...