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NEW YORK – The New York Times is reporting that NBC has signed its late-night star Jay Leno to a contract that will keep him at the network and move him to prime time. Under the new deal, Leno, whose "Tonight" show hosting job will go to Conan O'Brien, would have a new show airing 10 p.m. Eastern every weeknight. The deal reportedly will be announced Tuesday.

Fifteen years ago, I had a stupid idea. I was the co-executive producer on ..."Cheers." NBC...was faltering: Ratings were sliding, money was tight, management was nervous ...Johnny Carson...was retiring... I was 28 then, and like all 28-year-olds, I had no idea exactly how stupid I was. So when I found myself standing next to the president of NBC ...I offered my solution to his network's crisis. "You know what you should do?" ... "You should move the 'Tonight Show' with Jay Leno to 10 p.m. Think of all the money you'd save." "That's a pretty stupid suggestion," he said to...

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (Reuters) – Cuba celebrated on Thursday the 50th anniversary of a 1959 revolution whose leader Fidel Castro transformed the island into a communist state that has survived despite decades of opposition from the United States and the collapse of its Cold War benefactors. The revolution's landmark anniversary comes at a time when the era of Fidel Castro, now 82 and in poor health, is winding down and uncertainty hangs over the future of the Cuba he built into an improbable world player admired for its social gains but criticized for its human rights record. Celebrations have...

Cuban Stalinism at 50--and the Media Lies Continue By Humberto Fontova "Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba's problems without spilling a drop of blood." Upon entering Havana on January 7, 1959, Cuba's new leader Fidel Castro broadcast that promise into a phalanx of microphones. As the jubilant crowd erupted with joy, Castro continued. “Cuban mothers let me assure you that because of me you will never have to cry." The following day, just below San Juan Hill in eastern Cuba, a bulldozer rumbled to a start, clanked into position, and started pushing dirt into...

In our favorite continuing series on the Decline and Fall of The Fourth Estate, see here, here, here, and here, there is more good news. The New York Times Co's (NYT.N) November advertising revenue fell 20 percent, the company said on Wednesday, illustrating how the financial crisis is aggravating dizzying revenue declines at U.S. newspapers. Ad revenue at the publisher's New York Times Media Group, which includes the Times newspaper, fell 21.2 percent from a year earlier because of a drop in real estate and jobs classified advertising. . . . Total company revenue fell 13.9 percent. More . ....

The king is dead. Long live the king. Victory is ours. The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news. Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). . . More . . .

As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's revolution on 1 January, most of those in power are the same people who fought alongside him half a century ago. ...But there is a new generation of communists waiting in the wings. ...The youngest, Liaena Hernandez, is just 18 years old. A petite young woman with long black hair and an engaging smile, she has been a political activist since her early teens... "Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn't just something from our history..." Her father is in the army and she...

HAVANA – In the palace of a fallen dictator, the grade-school kids in their red Communist Pioneer bandanas are getting their mandatory introduction to the glories of the revolution. Clattering from one display case to the next, they gaze wide-eyed at an antique gun, a fighter's bloodied shirt, the engine of a downed U.S. spy plane. Moving on, they stare at the yacht named Granma that carried Fidel Castro back from exile to launch his guerrilla war, and the combat boots his brother-successor wore as a ponytailed 27-year-old rebel.

The march of technology and the shrinking economy are beginning to take a toll on the traditional means of television news-gathering: the TV news crew. Under a new agreement reached this week with its labor unions, WUSA, Channel 9, will become the first station in Washington to replace its crews with one-person "multimedia journalists" who will shoot and edit news stories single-handedly.

HAVANA – Cuba on Wednesday presented a new book by Fidel Castro, who has not appeared in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 but who authorities claim spent more than 400 hours working on the manuscript. "La Paz en Colombia," or "Peace in Colombia," explores Cuba's role in attempts to end Colombia's civil war, which has raged for more than four decades. The 265-page book was presented during a Havana ceremony that Castro did not attend, though one of his sons was there, as was Ricardo Alarcon, head of the country's rubber-stamp parliament. Several rounds of peace...

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Evening Post Publishing Company announced today it was freezing benefits in its defined benefit retirement plan, which is funded entirely by the company. Current employee pensions will be computed on their years of service through Dec. 31, 2008. The move was taken because of soaring costs of maintaining both the pension plan and the employee 401(k) program. The latter is not affected by the decision.

Another 75 editorial staffers were let go at the Los Angeles Times on Monday, including numerous reporters and editors involved in arts and entertainment coverage. The cuts included film critic Carina Chocano, whose departure leaves Hollywood’s hometown newspaper with one full-time film critic, Kenneth Turan. Chocano had been with the Times since 2004. Times editor Russ Stanton cited the growing economic downturn as the reason for the latest round of layoffs in a memo to the staff. The Times eliminated about 130 editorial positions in July as part of a companywide downsizing effort at its beleaguered parent company, Tribune Co....

ABC producer arrested outside Brown PalaceSue Lindsay 2 hours, 18 minutes ago A producer for ABC News was arrested today as he and a camera crew set up on the sidewalk outside the Brown Palace Hotel. Asa Eslocker was arrested for trespass, interference and failure to obey an lawful order. He was being processed from the Denver City Jail and is expected to be released on $300 bail, said his attorney Tom Kelley. Eslocker is investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News. "The Brown's...

Five years after arriving in Central Florida, El Nuevo Día Orlando, the region's only daily Spanish-language newspaper, is closing. The paper, which has a total of 50 employees, will cease operations Aug. 29., said José F. Serra, spokesperson for the Ferré-Rangel family. They own two newspapers in Puerto Rico -- El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora -- and started the Orlando operations in Sept. 2003. "Unfortunately, the losses have been consistent throughout the five years, and we came to the conclusion that we couldn't continue producing the paper," Serra said.

It's pitiful to read the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You are so pro-Obama that it is sickening. No such thing as an impartial paper.

Bridging the Abyss Why a lot of newspapers aren’t going to survive By Charles Layton Charles Layton (charlesmary@hotmail.com) is an AJR senior contributing writer. Mark Potts is a consultant, based in Washington, D.C., who hires out to newspaper Web sites, dotcoms and the like. He was a reporter and editor (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner) in the '70s and '80s, that golden age for newspapers before the Internet came along to spoil the party. Ad revenue — four-fifths of a daily paper's income — grew by double digits during many of those years. Last summer, Potts and some...

(Vancouver, WA) The Columbian Publishing Co. has made further job reductions this week as the company struggles to meet operating budgets for the first half of the year. An estimated 20 positions were included in the latest round of layoffs, said Columbian Publisher Scott Campbell. Eight newsroom employees were a part of the job cuts, six reporters, one photographer and one sports clerk/writer. "The economy - both nationally and locally - is pretty tough right now," said Campbell "It is impacting news organizations and companies in many business sectors. We have had another decline in advertising revenue over the past...

The Associated Press, one of the nation’s largest news organizations, said that it will, for the first time, attempt to define clear standards as to how much of its articles and broadcasts bloggers and Web sites can excerpt without infringing on The A.P.’s copyright. The A.P.’s effort to impose some guidelines on the free-wheeling blogosphere, where extensive quoting and even copying of entire news articles is common, may offer a prominent definition of the important but vague doctrine of “fair use,” which holds that copyright owners cannot ban others from using small bits of their works under some circumstances. For...

Cuban leader Fidel Castro blasted Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday for his criticism of the Cuban government this week, saying McCain had shown why he finished near the bottom of his class at West Point. In his latest newspaper column, Castro also attacked President George W. Bush for his speech on Wednesday announcing that U.S. citizens would be allowed to send cell phones to Cuba. "A deluge of speeches and lies they directed at Cuba," Castro said in a column published in Communist Party newspaper Granma. "How far they are from knowing Cuba and its people."