Free Republic

If Davie Rossie's ramblings were simply those of one more angry liberal pundit, they'd hardly be worth a comment. But what makes his utterances noteworthy is that when Rossie isn't churning out his once-a-week column, he is editing the news for the Gannett chain. Rossie is Associate Editor of Gannett's Binghamton paper, the Press & Sun Bulletin. In today's column, 'Once There Were Giants in Television News', Rossie laments that they aren't making TV newsmen like Edgar R. Murrow any more. With what might be condemned as sexism, nay, misogyny, had it been suggested by a conservative critic, Rossie grumps...

NEW YORK The Times of Shreveport, La., announced that it's keeping controversial conservative columnist Ann Coulter. But Executive Editor Alan English didn't sound too enthusiastic about it. "I'm not so sure we'll keep Coulter's column for the long haul, but she'll remain a Sunday Times columnist for now," English wrote yesterday. "Just as you choose to read any column or story, including this one, you can choose to read her diatribes and be entertained by her rhetoric -- or not." The Times received nearly 500 e-mails after Editorial Page Editor Craig Durrett announced early last month that the paper was...

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Gannett Co.'s board has greenlighted the repurchase of up to $1 billion in additional common stock as well as an increased quarterly dividend, the company said Tuesday. McLean, Va.-based Gannett (GCI) , the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, said the stock would be repurchased either in the open market or in privately negotiated block transactions, at management's discretion. The board's move comes as Gannett said it's used up "a substantial portion" of the authorization under a $1 billion repurchase program announced April 14, 2005. The company also declared a quarterly dividend of 31 cents a share, representing a...

Advance sales for the season that begins in September are wrapping up below last year's tally... Television advertising executives are biting their nails this year as advance ad sales fall short of last year's tally... The frenzied "upfront" period, which typically accounts for about 75 percent of total prime-time ad sales... That's down about 3.4 percent from last year... "Buyers are in control," John Moore, group media director of MediaHub... "The competitive landscape is much, much different" from previous years. Networks even tried to sweeten deals this year by offering tie-ins with their online arms or product placements in the...

Tribune Co., Belo Corp. and Journal Register Co. said advertising sales continue to slump, signaling the newspaper industry's woes may extend this year. Advertising sales in June "are soft and we expect first-half advertising to be flat," Donald Grenesko, chief financial officer of Chicago-based Tribune, the second biggest U.S. newspaper publisher in revenue and owner of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, said Tuesday at the Newspaper Association of America's Mid-Year Media Review in New York... A protracted slowdown may mean increased investor pressure on publishers including Tribune, which is fending off calls from its second largest shareholder to break apart the...

Dissident group says will continue efforts for sale or breakup of company... Tribune Co. shares gained ground Tuesday, rising as the media company that's been working to revamp operations amid shareholder unrest announced the results of a Dutch tender auction. Analysts said any gains could prove short lived, however. Chicago-based Tribune Co said that about 45 million, or 15%, of its common shares were tendered and that it expects to buy the shares at a price of $32.50 each. The number of shares tendered came in 8 million short of the maximum that the company had initially authorized in the...

Beer distributor Yusef Jackson has finally added a coveted title: publisher... Son of Rainbow/PUSH Coalition leader Rev. Jesse Jackson is attempting to resuscitate Radar, a saucy New York culture magazine that folded last year. He also said he’s hungry for other media properties, including the Chicago Sun-Times, for which he was an unsuccessful suitor in 2004, and possibly properties Tribune Co. sells off as it pares $500 million in assets amid a corporate restructuring. Mr. Jackson declined to say who his co-investors are in Radar. In 2004 he sought to buy the Sun-Times with California billionaire Ron Burkle, but he...

The Tribune Co., parent of the "Orlando Sentinel," has reported a 62 percent drop in net income to $87.8 million, or 28 cents a share, from $233.4 million, or 73 cents a share, a year earlier. Chicago-based Tribune (NYSE: TRB - News) also pointed to cutbacks from national advertisers and falling circulation ...

The numbers are starting to come out for newspaper earnings. Take a wild guess. The Tribune Company lost 62 percent of their earnings. McClatchy kept earnings about the same though they lost almost 5 percent of their circulation. Media General lost 47 percent from a year ago. Gannett lost 8.3 percent. Of course, none of the papers will admit that their bias and reportage are to blame for their problems. Instead it is all the fault of Internet activities, Craigslist, the uncooperative entertainment and auto industry, and a "weak operating environment." Leave it to journalists to blame even thier financial...

NEW YORK Craig Durrett, editorial page editor of the Shreveport (La.) Times, revealed in a column in his paper that he is considering dropping Ann Coulter as a columnist, and in fact, has "come close" before. It's a matter of style, not ideology, he explained, and if she got the boot he would replace her with another conservative columnist. "My opinion: She is more about entertainment and self-promotion, understanding that shock and outrage translate into publicity that feeds into her quest for media airtime and column space," he wrote. "Her comments about several women who were made widows on Sept....

by Mark Finkelstein July 3, 2006 Readers of these columns might have noticed that I occasionally include at the foot the fact that I live in 'the liberal haven of Ithaca, NY.' To give you a flavor for what I'm talking about, consider the today's op-ed page in my hometown daily, the Ithaca Journal. The Journal is a Gannett newspaper. That's the chain [lead by USA Today] that, as I've documented, allows to edit the news someone who believes calling VP Cheney 'Satan' makes for the best commencement speech ever. Back to this morning's Journal. There are two op-eds, by...

by Mark Finkelstein June 24, 2006 If Dave Rossie were simply a columnist, one might dismiss his sophomoric liberal rants as, well, sophomoric liberal rants. But what is disturbing is that when he's not pounding out his latest condemnation of all things Republican, the Gannett chain has seen fit to give Rossie the power to edit news at one of its papers, the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. Rossie's latest opus concerns commencement addresses. After knocking administration officials for speaking at military institutions, and singling out VP Cheney for "defending the practice of spying on Americans via illegal wire taps," Rossie...

ITHACA NY—According to Gannett news, there’s no question that recent presidents have appointed “radical right-wing judges” to the bench.In the Monday (June 19) issue of the Ithaca Journal, reporter Raymond Drumsta wrote that Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D) appeared at a local event and “railed about issues such as … radical right-wing judges appointed by recent presidents and America's prison population.”At no point in the article did Drumsta, or his editor,see fit to note that this was a matter of opinion. Instead, the story reported the characterization of the judges as if it were fact.In addition to his work for Gannett,...

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) - Gannett Co. said on Wednesday its second-quarter earnings could be in line with Wall Street expectations, but that fluctuations in a weakened advertising market could cause the total to be slightly lower than anticipated. Net income at the largest U.S. newspaper publisher (GCI) could come in at $1.31 a share, in line with the average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson First Call, said Gracia Martore, the company's chief financial officer, during a presentation at the annual Newspaper Association of America Mid-Year Review conference in New York. However, Martore, said, "depending on business conditions for the...

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- Gannett Co. (GCI) said it generated $650.7 million in revenue for the four weeks ended May 28, up 2% on a pro forma basis from the same period in 2005. The increase came from the McLean, Va.-based media company's broadcasting division and from local advertising demand at its domestic community newspapers, as circulation revenue as well as daily and Sunday net paid circulation all fell compared to May 2005. If adjusted to keep the British pound's exchange rate constant on a year-over-year basis, Gannett's total pro forma operating revenue would have been 2.3% higher for the month....

Also, Web-based newspaper ad spending jumps 35% By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch Last Update: 4:22 PM ET Jun 2, 2006 CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Ratings for newspaper publishers Gannett Co. and Tribune Co. were cut Friday to equal weight from overweight by Morgan Stanley analyst Lisa Monaco, who said she doesn't see anything in the near term that could lift the stocks' value. Monaco also lowered her advertising-revenue forecasts for the newspaper industry in reaction to what she called "greater than previously expected secular pressures from the Internet," as well as the adverse effects of consolidation among advertisers. She now sees...

How arrogant corporate tools like E.J. Mitchell are destroying your local newspaper—and why Gannett is laughing all the way to the bank by Willy Stern Mr. Craig A. Dubow President and Chief Executive Office Gannett Co. Inc. 7950 Jones Branch Drive McLean, VA 22107 Dear Mr. Dubow: Maybe he would be reluctant to admit it, but if David Halberstam were to graduate from Harvard today, he probably wouldn’t trek down to Nashville to toil at The Tennessean—as he once did—but instead would be thinking about Yale Law School, McKinsey & Co. or Goldman Sachs. Mr. Dubow, journalism today has ceased...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- BellSouth Corp. (BLS) has sent a letter to USA Today and the newspaper's parent company, Gannett Co. (GCI) , demanding the retraction of a story which said the phone company shared its customers calling records with a federal spy agency, according to a Thursday report in the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. The letter demanded that the newspaper retract the "faults and unsubstantiated statements" in the May 11 article, which said BellSouth and some of its rivals shared bulk calling data with the National Security Agency, the Journal said. The story ignited a firestorm...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Gannett Co. (GCI GCI) on Friday said its total pro forma revenue for April fell 1.3% to $721.7 million from $731.4 million in the same period a year earlier. The McLean, Va., newspaper publisher said higher ad demand at its broadcasting segment and revenue gains at its domestic newspapers were offset by significantly softer ad demand at its properties in the United Kingdom. Pro forma newspaper advertising revenues fell 2% in April vs. a year ago, on a 1.5% decline in run of press volume and a 7.1% drop in preprint distribution, Gannett said. Pro forma...

by Mark Finkelstein April 23, 2006 On the public-access TV show I host, 'Right Angle', the topic this past week was immigration. A Cornell campus radical expressed the view that not only should our borders be completely open, but that we shouldn't screen immigrants for criminal history or even . . . for being known Al-Qaeda members. Now, if the radical making these sophomoric suggestions isn't quite a sophomore - he's in fact a grad student - perhaps some slack can be cut him as he continues to live, largely divorced from reality, within the liberal cocoon of the ivy-league...