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McClatchy Co., one of the nation’s largest newspaper publishers, is planning to introduce online paywalls at its newspaper Web sites, according to an internal memo first obtained by Jim Romenesko. The news comes as other big publishers implement online paywalls at newspapers nationwide. McClatchy has 30 daily newspapers, including The Miami Herald, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Charlotte Observer, Kansas City Star and Sacramento Bee. In the memo to employees, McClatchy Vice President for News Anders Gyllenhaal wrote that “after more than a year of experiments and analysis on pay models, McClatchy newspapers will begin a robust test of a pay plan...

At Media Bistro earlier today, the news about the combined average total audience for the Big Three TV networks' evening news was grim enough, coming in at a combined 20.15 million (NBC, 7.52 million; ABC, 7.14 million; CBS, 5.49 million). But the news about the audience in the key 25-54 demographic was, from what I can tell, either an all-time low or darned close to it. I couldn't find an example of one that was lower in searches through previous overall audience low points covered in prior posts at NewsBusters and or my home blog. Last week and other...

Celebrate good times, liberals -- President Obama has again vaulted ahead of Mitt Romney in a national poll:   After months of aggressive campaigning on jobs and the economy, President Obama and Mitt Romney, his likely Republican challenger, are locked in a dead heat over who could fix the problem foremost on voters’ minds, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The parity on economic issues foreshadows what probably will continue to be a tough and negative campaign. Overall, voters would be split 49 percent for Obama and 46 percent for Romney if the November election were held now. On handling...

The Washington Post Co. reported its first-quarter earnings on Friday, and the news coming out of the newspaper division was mostly grim. The unit lost $22.6 million in the quarter, with revenue down 8% and revenue from print advertising specifically falling 17%. Meanwhile, the Post just reported one of the biggest circulation drops of any major newspaper with the lucrative Sunday edition selling 5.2% fewer copies and the daily edition skidding almost 10%. Oh, and newsroom leaders are so distressed about the way the business decline is affecting them, they held a secret meeting with the paper’s president, Steve Hills...

The Post just had a rough few days. It was shut out of the 2012 Pulitzer Prizes, which were announced Monday. On the same day, journalists here had to accept or reject The Post’s fifth buyout offer in nine years. The union representing newsroom workers says that at least 32 accepted, and probably more. And the prior Friday, a Post blogger, Elizabeth Flock, resigned. I think that the most noteworthy event was the resignation of Flock, a woman in her mid-20s whose job was filling The Post’s breaking news blog, called blogPost. It was designed to be about the national...

Announcement of sale of newspapers, website expected MondayBy Mike Armstrong, Inquirer Staff WriterThe sale of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com will likely be announced Monday, according to several sources. A local investor group has spent much of the last two months negotiating to acquire PMN from its hedge-fund owners in a transaction valued at $55 million to $60 million, according to multiple reports. With paperwork still to be signed, delays are always possible at the 11th hour. The buyers of Philadelphia Media Network Inc. are a group of local investors, led by George E. Norcross III, executive...

An experienced TV weatherman has sued CBS broadcasting for sex and age discrimination claiming his job applications were ignored purely because he isn't a 20-somthing and female. Hunter, who has been a weatherman for Fox5 in San Diego, sued the broadcasting giant in Los Angeles last week. However CBS claims Kyle Hunter's complaint is frivolous and based on gross misstatements of fact and say they will vigorously defend themselves in court. Hunter argues that his gender and age kept him from getting on-air weather jobs at CBS stations KCBS and KCAL despite his meteorology degree and years of experience. According...

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.

The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel? Yes, Milwaukee’s scrappy newspaper of record is taking a cue from the big boys and entering the seedy world of paid online subscriptions. Beginning tomorrow, JSOnline readers looking to enjoy the paper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning material (and/or the latest musin’-and-thinkin’ column from Jim Stingl) will have to shell out some cash for the privilege. Non-subscribers will be able to view only 20 articles a month, after which they’ll be publicly scolded for contributing to the downfall of print media and for keeping food off of Eugene Kane’s table. In a...

Guardian News & Media is to shrink the Guardian, axe its Film & Music supplement, and reduce its sport supplement to a two-days-a-week publication as it battles to stem pre-tax losses of more than £40m a year. It will also reduce the number of pages in the Guardian’s flagship supplement G2, under wide-ranging changes to be introduced in January. The media group, which also publishes the Observer newspaper, is briefing staff about the changes today and early next week. “As part of our digital first strategy, we have been looking in detail at how we produce our newspapers and website,...

In a move that some might see as a sign of desperation, MSNBC has shaken things up to see if they can spark their flagging ratings. Beginning Monday, October 24th, The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell will move back to its original time slot of 10 p.m., with Ed Schultz‘s The Ed Show moving up to 8:00. Schultz will become the second anchor to try and maintain the ratings left after Keith Olbermann‘s defection to Current TV.

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Someday, cultural historians will look back on the early 21st century and speculate about what killed the credibility of America’s so-called liberal-media elite. They will ask, Were the wounds self-inflicted or the product of a methodical plot? Make no mistake about it. We did this to ourselves. As a card-carrying member of the leftist media near-elite — alas, I’m not nearly rich or famous enough to be regarded as a 100% elitist — it pains me to see my brethren sinking like the sun in the west. But we have nobody to blame but ourselves. We’ve...

As part of a restructuring plan, the Statesman Co. on Tuesday laid off 53 employees, company officials said. The Statesman Co., a subsidiary of Cox Media Group, publishes the Austin American-Statesman and several smaller Central Texas newspapers, including the Bastrop Advertiser, the Westlake Picayune, the Round Rock Leader and the Pflugerville Pflag.

According to the survey, which was released Monday, 28 percent of Republicans and independents who lean towards the GOP say they support Perry as their party's presidential nominee, with Romney at 21 percent. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is at ten percent, with Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, who's making his third bid for the White House, former Godfather's Pizza CEO and radio talk show host Herman Cain, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, all at seven percent. The poll indicates that Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota is at four percent, with former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania at three...

Legacy Media's Selective Bachmann Outrage Carol Platt Liebau Posted at 12:12 PM ET, 6/26/2011 The editors of the LA Times clearly thought they had caught Michele Bachmann in some sort of hypocrisy, given her support for a smaller, less expensive federal government. Today's paper features a big story running on the front page that breathlessly reports that Rep. Bachmann and her husband have -- gasp! -- benefited from "federal aid." That's because the counseling clinic run by Mr. Bachmann has received money over the past six years "that in part came from the federal government," because a farm in which...

Listen to the pledge of allegiance that runs alongside the patriotic images, and later to the one that overlays video of previous U.S. Open winners: (VIDEO)

Pakistan Seen Readying to Cross Nuclear Threshold Pakistan's test launch last month of a new short-range ballistic missile, when added to its quickly growing arsenal of lower-power nuclear weapons, indicates the South Asian country is seriously readying to use its nuclear deterrent should war break out again with India, the Times of India reported on Sunday. Federation of American Scientists Nuclear Information Project Director Hans Kristensen said the nuclear-capable Hatf 9 missile appears to be designed to attack an invading force of Indian soldiers. "While that wouldn't threaten Indian survival in itself, it would of course mean crossing the nuclear...

The paywall introduced by The New York Times at the end of March is hurting traffic to its website, as expected, but perhaps within acceptable levels. The New York Times' share of United States page views for all newspaper websites dropped from 13% in March to 10.6% in April, its lowest share in 12 months, according to new data from ComScore. Page views from March to April declined 24.4% at The New York Times Online while slipping just 7.5% for newspaper sites as a group, according to the new ComScore numbers. Year-over-year comparisons -- comparing April 2011 to April 2010,...

For Katie Couric, the offer in 2006 to become the anchor of “CBS Evening News” came with another incentive, one she prized almost as highly, according to two of her friends: the chance to report for “60 Minutes,” the newsmagazine that for Ms. Couric stood for the kind of serious journalism she had always aspired to. Regular appearances on “60 Minutes” were written into her $15 million-a-year contract with CBS, but once she arrived at the network, she found a chilly reception from some of the staff members at the venerable program. Some of Ms. Couric’s associates said that the...

Why do liberal eiltes portray Barack Obama as a genius despite his inability to talk without a teleprompter, but seek to portray intelligent conservatives as not intelligent? CLICK HERE to see how Barack Obama stumbles around in his many gaffes. So why don't these mistakes earn Obama the ridicule of the immature, mocking Left? CLICK HERE to compare Barack Obama with his Vice President JOE BIDEN from Delaware. Which Gaffe machine is the greatest? And why do the liberal news media ignore the embarassing moments of liberals?

The Washington Post apologized Wednesday for publishing two articles in March that "contained substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper." "This is the most serious kind of matter for a news organization," executive editor Marcus Brauchli said in a statement to The Cutline. "Taking information without attribution is unethical and not in keeping with The Post's standards of journalism. There are no mitigating circumstances for plagiarism." The Post, in the apology, doesn't name the reporter or link to the articles in question. But from the paper's own description of the articles, published shortly...

The rapid growth of smartphones and electronic tablets is making the internet favourite for people seeking news, a report released today said. News consumption online increased 17 per cent last year from the year before, the project said in its eighth annual State of the News Media survey. Meanwhile, US local, network and cable television news, newspapers, radio and magazines all lost audience last year, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a research organisation that evaluates and studies the performance of the press. The rapid growth of electronic tablets, such as the iPad, is one of the reasons...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Washington Post Co. says its fourth-quarter net income declined 3 percent, as revenue was flat. The company said Wednesday that net income totaled $79 million, or $9.42 per share. That's down from $81.7 million, or $8.71 per share, in the same period a year earlier. The company had more shares outstanding in the quarter a year ago, increasing per-share results.

MSNBC says it's ending contract with Keith Olbermann; last broadcast of 'Countdown' tonight

Sarah Palin issued a statement yesterday condemning the "reprehensible" response to Saturday's shooting in Tucson by some members of the media. "Within hours of a tragedy unfolding," she wrote, "journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn." Some have keyed on the use of the expression "blood libel" as inapt. The term usually refers to the centuries-old accusation that Jews use the blood of gentile children in making matzos for Passover. The appearance of the blood libel is often the prelude to massacres or other...

You've heard of Detroit's travails. Ben Schmitt lived them. Now he and his family are starting over in Pittsburgh, his hometown. EXCERPT I agreed, as a union member, to take a one-week paid furlough and knew more salary cuts were on the horizon as our contract came to a close. The staff agreed to 6.5 percent pay cuts in October. During my furlough in April, I interviewed for a marketing position in Pittsburgh. After a second interview in May, I was hired. I called the mortgage company. I explained the situation, said the apparent magic word, "Detroit," as my address....

"CBS News aired a fake cover of former President George W. Bush's memoir over the weekend, after a staffer apparently got duped by a hoax image floating around the Internet...The title of the Bush book read: "Desision Points ... How I Managed to Go Eight Years Without Making One Good Decision." Save for the title and subtitle, the cover image looked similar to that of the real book, "Decision Points."

The first WikiLeaks moment occurred on Jan. 17, 1998. It was then that Matt Drudge reported that Bill Clinton had had an affair with a White House intern. The story, though, was not Drudge's. It was Michael Isikoff's. His employer, Newsweek, had delayed publication. Drudge went with it - which is to say that he reported that Newsweek had the story. It took another four days for the so-called mainstream media to catch up - a story in The Post confirmed it all. How late! How pitiful!... What the Clinton scandal and the WikiLeaks disclosures have in common is a...

...In an interview/piece about the new hate crime statistics and the fact that gays are the most likely to be targeted in hate crimes of ANY minority, Dan Savage said the following, to a CNN anchor: "There are no 'two sides' to the issue of LGBT rights. Right now one side is really using dehumanizing rhetoric. The Southern Poverty Law Center labels these groups as hate groups and yet the leaders of these groups, people like Tony Perkins, are welcomed onto networks like CNN to espouse hate directed at gays and lesbians. And similarly hateful people who are targeting Jews...

In early July, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation placed its two London-based “quality” dailies, the Times and Sunday Times, behind a paywall, charging £1 for 24 hours access, or £2 a week (after an introductory £1 for the first month.*) At the same time, News Corp also forbad the UK’s Audit Bureau of Circulations from reporting site traffic*, so that no meaningful measure of the paywall’s effect was available. That situation has now been partially reversed, with News reporting some of its own numbers: they claim 105,000 total transactions for digital content between July and October.* (Several people have wrongly reported...

In early July, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation placed its two London-based “quality” dailies, the Times and Sunday Times, behind a paywall, charging £1 for 24 hours access, or £2 a week (after an introductory £1 for the first month.*) At the same time, News Corp also forbad the UK’s Audit Bureau of Circulations from reporting site traffic*, so that no meaningful measure of the paywall’s effect was available. That situation has now been partially reversed, with News reporting some of its own numbers: they claim 105,000 total transactions for digital content between July and October.* (Several people have wrongly reported...

U.S. cable TV operators lost 741,000 basic video customers in the third quarter, research firm SNL Kagan reported Wednesday. That’s the single largest quarterly drop for cable since SNL Kagan began compiling data for the segment in 1980. Cable’s share of the multichannel pay television market continues to slide, dipping to 60.3% from 62.9% in Q3 2009. Gains in telecom and satellite TV services were not enough to offset the loss of cable subscribers, so the overall multichannel pay-TV market lost 119,000 customers last quarter.

Sun-Times Media Holdings LLC is shutting down 11 Sun weekly newspapers to reduce costs, eliminating most of the free publications in its chain, CEO Jeremy Halbreich said. The papers being eliminated are in Geneva, Bolingbrook, Homer Glen, Lisle, Glen Ellyn, Plainfield, Wheaton, Downers Grove, Batavia, Fox Valley and the southwest suburban Lincoln-Way area. They will shut down in late December. Chicago-based Sun-Times Media, which also publishes the Chicago Sun-Times and owns a chain of 39 weekly Pioneer Press suburban papers, may close some offices in connection with the step, but savings will mostly derive from not printing and distributing the...

Local News Website Says You Need To Pay To Read Its Stories, Says It's Collecting Visitor IPs To Sue from the that'll-go-over-well dept Well, here's a fun one. Apparently, there's a local news site known as The North Country Gazette (don't click that just yet...) covering parts of upstate New York via a blog format. Rather than putting in place an actual technical paywall, the site has apparently decided to go with a paywall-by-threat model. If you visit a story on the site, it tells you that you're only allowed to view one page for free, and then they expect...

am ashamed to admit that there is one thing the contemporary mainstream media does well. Having spent years studying politics, history, and language, I find it amazing that media is able to convince people to believe conflicting narratives. The creation and perpetuation of these contradictory beliefs cannot be possible without a media structure, as well as an educational structure, that discourages, and too often scorns, analytical thinking. In George Orwell’s novel “1984″, he described this as doublethink which is the power to hold two completely contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accept both of them.

Thursday September 30, 2010 Poll Finds Record Majority of Americans Distrust Mainstream Media By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., September 30, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new Gallup poll shows that a record majority of Americans have little to no trust in mainstream media to report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.” Nearly half cited “liberal bias” in the media, which ranked only slightly higher than the U.S. Congress in public confidence levels.Gallup reports that 57 percent of those polled for their annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, said their “confidence and trust” in mass media – newspapers, television, and...

PRESIDENT OBAMA: "The president’s overall job approval rating is 45 percent, with 47 percent disapproving. On the economy, his rating is worse, with 41 percent approving and 51 percent disapproving." GOVERNOR PALIN: "The poll found that the ...public has an increasingly negative opinion of Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, with nearly half now holding an unfavorable view of her." I realize that people can do funny things with words, but aren't these essentially the same numbers? Also -- funny note -- the poll is, according to the description, a sample of "voters," but 1...

While speaking at a conference in London, chairman and publisher of The New York Times Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. made a major statement about the future of his publication: "We will stop printing The New York Times sometime in the future, date TBD."

As part of the deep cuts announced this week at ABC News, the network plans to close all of its physical bureaus around the country except Washington and halve the number of its domestic correspondents. ABC News President David Westin confirmed in an interview Friday that the network's ranks of bureau correspondents, which currently number several dozen, would be cut in half and be replaced with "digital" journalists who would be expected to shoot and edit their own stories.

SALT LAKE CITY — The Deseret News announced today work force reductions and unveiled a plan to refocus the quality and reach of its product. "Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate." Part of that leadership, he added, is the willingness to make hard choices. "Today we have announced the reduction in our print work force by 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees, which reflects just over 43 percent of our work force," Gilbert said. Gilbert...

JOHN DICKERSON, Slate: “Sarah Palin has special medicine. That’s about the only clear conclusion to be drawn from Tuesday’s primary results. She backed five candidates in Arizona, Florida and Alaska and they all won. The rest of the results from the evening defied easy matching. . . Palin now has more support for a favorite story line of hers: The pundits and so-called experts said things were going to go one way but she had faith; she knew the real deal. This is part of her larger pitch: that she understands something fundamental about conservative voters. That, in turn, is...

Bob Schieffer on Sunday blamed the internet for the growing number of Americans that think Barack Obama is a Muslim. Namelessly referring to last week's Pew Research Center poll finding that eighteen percent now believe this, the "Face the Nation" host concluded Sunday's program saying that "in the internet age, ignorance travels as rapidly as great ideas."

Utah's journalism and political communities have been buzzing the last couple weeks with rumors of an impending implosion of the Deseret News. Let me concisely repeat the rumors: * In the next few weeks, a significant part of the DNews staff will be laid off. * What remains will leave the Deseret News building in the heart of downtown to be resettled with KSL in the Triad Center. * The DNews will no longer publish daily, but three days or so a week (it would, of course, continue to exist online with Mormon Times). The staff at the DNews is...

BERKELEY, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- I'm a little more conservative than most tech writers when it comes to hot trends that may not be hot nor be trends. I freely admit to some skepticism when e-readers made their debut highlighted by both the Sony Corp. book reader and the Kindle from Amazon.com Inc. The trend was confirmed by Apple Inc.'s iPad, but I need to be more adept at spotting the trend when it is beginning and in the wild. I missed the signals, twice. You look to the public-at-large to spot trends, not to pundits. Two examples come to mind....

Wonder if they would have mentioned his religion if he were a Muslim? I'll give you three guesses and the first two don't count.

Technically it’s a dollar plus an agreement to assume their huge financial liabilities, but if you throw me an opportunity for a headline that sweet, I’m going to take it every time. Hopefully, in a few years and with a few trillion more tacked onto the national debt, the U.S. can get a deal like this from China. According to several people who have been briefed on the process, Mr. Harman’s bid appealed to Mr. Graham and the Post Company because Mr. Harman has said he would retain a significant number of the magazine’s 325 employees. The financial details of...

Prince will release his new album, "20Ten," as a free giveaway with various European newspapers and magazines. In the U.K., Prince has signed up with tabloid newspaper the Daily Mirror and its associated Scottish title the Daily Record for the CD giveaway. More than 2.5 million copies will be distributed on July 10 with the newspapers. The deal will also include Prince's first British newspaper interview in more than a decade and competitions for European concert tickets. The German edition of Rolling Stone has announced that its August issue, to be published July 22, will include a new Prince album,...

There’s basically zero popular support for several already unlikely initiatives the FTC is looking into in order to support the “reinvention of journalism.” Rasmussen Reports polled 1,000 people on whether they would support proposals—like a tax on consumer electronics to help news organizations or a taxpayer-funded program to support young journalists through AmeriCorps—and the answer was a decisive no. A monthly tax on cell phone bills? 90 percent no! A tax on consumer electronic devices? 84 percent no! The young reporter program? 70 percent no! A White House commission to help save journalism jobs? 55 percent no! (Via MediaPost) Most...

The Honolulu Star-Bulletin and The Honolulu Advertiser have competed to chronicle Hawaii for more than a century. That rivalry ends Sunday when the Advertiser, Hawaii's largest newspaper, publishes its last edition. It's being bought out and combined with its smaller rival. More than 400 reporters, pressmen and other workers are losing their jobs. The 154-year-old Advertiser is the latest casualty of the recession and the upheaval that the Internet has unleashed on the traditional media industry. The new owner plans to launch the Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Monday. Honolulu now joins Denver and Seattle as cities served by only one daily...