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The Denver Post is reporting that MediaNews Group, its parent company along with the Salt Lake Tribune, will not be renewing their contract with the controversial drive-by litigation group Righthaven. According to the report MediaNews Group stopped working with them “some time ago”. John Paton, who was appointed as MediaNews chief executive Wednesday, sent a message on Twitter later in the day that MediaNews had terminated its relationship with Righthaven “some time ago.” MediaNews Group’s relationship with Righthaven dealt almost exclusively with one image that of the TSA agent performing a patdown that became a symbol of the “Don’t touch...

MediaNews Group is combining most of its daily newspapers in the San Francisco Bay area to save money. The shake-up announced Tuesday will affect 13 newspapers . . .

Well, well, well. Remember back when the Associated Press threatened bloggers for quoting snippets of AP articles? Is the organization considering dipping its toes in the Righthaven waters? The Las Vegas Sun reports that Righthaven has signed up Media News as a client and has sued a blogger on behalf of the Denver Post, after the blogger apparently reposted a Denver Post column by Mike Rosen (with a link and credit). This is interesting for a few different reasons. First, it was just a few weeks ago that the Denver Post published a cryptic "reminder" about copyright that had a...

MediaNews Group Inc., which previously asked workers at its newspapers in California to take one-week unpaid leaves, is now putting employees on furlough at its papers in at least five more states. Unpaid leaves announced or agreed to Friday apply to newspapers in Texas, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In most cases, the furloughs are to be taken by the end of March. It also has frozen pensions and suspended its 401(k) fund match payments for managers and other non-union workers at the Denver daily. A MediaNews spokesman told the Associated Press on Friday that the company's employees...

Letter alleges improper payment of newsroom costs. The Denver Post violated its agreement with Rocky owner E.W. Scripps when it borrowed $13 million from their jointly owned operating agency to cover The Post's newsroom payroll, Scripps wrote in a letter to Post executives last month. "We request that this practice cease and that the Post find a way to fund its editorial payroll without resorting to this . . .," Scripps executives Rich Boehne and Mark Contreras wrote. The letter was dated Dec. 9, five days after Scripps announced it would sell the Rocky and would pursue other options, including...

SAN JOSE -- About 3,300 staffers who work at 29 daily newspapers in California run by the MediaNews Group must take an unpaid, one-week furlough in February and March as a possible alternative to layoffs, the company said Wednesday. The move, announced in an e-mail to MediaNews staffers, will affect employees at the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, which are among the California papers controlled by Denver-based MediaNews. Charles Kamen, vice president of human resources for the chain, said MediaNews was following the lead of Gannett Co., which recently told 31,000 employees at 85 daily...

A group of newspapers in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area said Thursday it will cut its staff by 10 percent but will avoid layoffs because enough workers took buyout offers. The cuts affect the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and a string of 14 other daily and weekly newspapers operated by the Bay Area News Group-East Bay. The cuts will come from every department, including the newsroom. Of the company's 1,100 workers, 107 took buyout offers, making layoffs unnecessary, according to John Armstrong, president of Bay Area News Group-East Bay. Armstrong said he told the staff the cuts would...

Editorial written by summer Whenever I start writing something I hope can be appreciated by both sides of the aisle, it seems like my hope quickly fades, because of a bad situation I can’t ignore from one side, which more often than not is the liberal side. For example, FreeRepublic.com enforces a strict policy of not allowing a news headline to be discarded; but, over at Huff Post, they literally “eat” the press. When I surfed over to Huffington Post last night, I saw a front page news headline I hadn’t seen posted anywhere else, screaming about Jeb Bush. Apparently...

The San Jose Mercury News completed a round of layoffs Tuesday that trimmed its workforce by 35 employees in one of the first big moves under its new owner, MediaNews Group. The layoffs, which began Monday night, came just after the company reached a tentative agreement on a labor contract with its largest union, the San Jose Newspaper Guild, Monday morning. The last-minute deal, which followed a 20-hour negotiating session, reduced the number of job cuts by more than half. The newspaper had originally planned to cut 69 Guild jobs as part of a cost-cutting effort brought about by declining...

SAN FRANCISCO - A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked the consolidation of advertising and distribution operations of Bay Area newspapers owned by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc. The Northern California newspapers in the McClatchy Co. and MediaNews deal include the Monterey County Herald, San Jose Mercury News and Contra Costa Times. MediaNews, which owns the Denver Post and dozens of other newspapers, also got the St. Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota under a complex deal that involves financing from Hearst Corp., owner of the San Francisco Chronicle. San Francisco real estate magnate Clint Reilly filed an antitrust lawsuit to block...

Papers face new request Temporary halt to discussions sought in court - Carolyn Said, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, November 23, 2006 Click to View A federal judge is pondering a new request by San Francisco businessman Clint Reilly to temporarily put the brakes on a complex deal among the owners of almost all the daily newspapers in the Bay Area. Reilly, a real-estate investor and former candidate for mayor, filed an antitrust suit in July against Hearst Corp., publisher of The Chronicle, and MediaNews Group, publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune, Marin Independent Journal...

The swirling accelerates around the drain as MediaNews announced it has eliminated 20 more jobs from its Bay Area Newspapers. This round of cuts includes advertising production and proofreading jobs from the Contra Costa Times. Blaming a ?sudden and steep decline in home sales,? George Avalos reports that staff was told such work will be outsourced to Express KCS, ?a leading provider of offshore design and prepress?? services. Can you imagine the conversation when the folks at Fitzpatrick Chevrolet have to call Sarosh in Bangalore to correct a misprint in some Hummer?s sale price? Why stop with the ads? Maybe...

Filed under: Business, Arts & Culture MediaNews announced a plan to lay off eight newsroom employees on Monday at its ANG Newspapers chain, which includes the Oakland Tribune, Daily Review of Hayward, Argus of Fremont and Tri-Valley Herald. The company says it will lay off two photographers, a staff writer, a business writer, a graphics designer, two part-time copy editors, and a high school sports writer, according to a memo sent Wednesday to the Northern California Media Workers Guild, the union that represents ANG newsroom employees. The layoff announcement follows layoff notices by MediaNews at the San Jose Mercury News....

Filed under: Business MediaNews, the national newspaper chain that owns the Oakland Tribune and recently purchased the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News, has unveiled its proposal to cut wages for new reporters at the Merc by more than thirty percent. The offer, made in union contract negotiations, provides a stark glimpse of how MediaNews plans to manage a newspaper that its CEO Dean Singleton called earlier this year one of the “crown jewels” of the now-defunct Knight Ridder media empire. Under the MediaNews proposal, new reporters and photographers hired after the contract is signed would earn...

SAN JOSE The San Jose Mercury News plans to lay off as many as 101 employees over the next two months to cut costs and make up for declining advertising revenue, the paper said Friday. The company will eliminate 41 newsroom positions - or about 15 percent of its editorial staff - by Dec. 19, with the rest of the cuts coming from other departments including circulation, finance, marketing and human resources, said Dan Breeden, a Mercury News spokesman. The cuts, which officials say will be made mostly through layoffs, will sever about 8 percent of the paper's overall workforce....

Contra Costa Times Editor Chris Lopez was replaced Friday after more than six years at the publication, the newspaper announced. Lopez's responsibilities will be assumed by Contra Costa Times Executive Editor Kevin Keane. Keane, 48, has been an editor at MediaNews for nine years, most recently as the executive editor of ANG Newspapers. He retains oversight of MediaNews' East Bay editorial operations. "As we consolidate the operations of Contra Costa and ANG newspapers in the Bay Area, there are some positions that have become redundant, and, unfortunately for Chris, his is one of those positions," said John Armstrong, who oversees...

So now we have at least one indication of what it means to have MediaNews operate the Contra Costa Times. Even though online storage is dirt cheap, the Times now makes people pay to access archived articles less than a month old. For instance, you now have to pay for Ryan Huff’s excellent article on how campaign contributions effect Concord elections even though it was only published 9/3. That’s not right. Rather than robbing people and actually helping to coverup corruption by charging people for access to information, MediaNews might instead actually help the community it is supposed to serve...

BILL GATES 'CHARITY' FOUNDATION FINANCES NEWSPAPER PURCHASES The BILL & MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION declares its noble mission is to bring "innovations in health and learning to the global community." But the world's largest philanthropic organization also is among the organizations that collectively loaned nearly $400 million to MEDIANEWS GROUP INC. -- for the acquisition of newspapers in California and Minnesota! "I thought this foundation was all about starving kids, not starving newspapers," mocked one Seattle insider. MORE The GATES FOUNDATION loaned an unspecified amount to MEDIANEWS, along with GENERAL ELECTRIC. In April, MEDIANEWS agreed to buy four newspapers, including the...

Denver's MediaNews Group agreed to buy the San Jose Mercury News and the Contra Costa Times -- the Bay Area's second and third largest newspapers -- from McClatchy Co., the companies said today. New York's Hearst Corp., publisher of The Chronicle and SFGate, is buying the Monterey County Herald and the St. Paul Pioneer Press of Minnesota from McClatchy and will transfer ownership of those papers to MediaNews in exchange for a stake in MediaNews' operations outside the Bay Area. The deal for all four papers was valued at $1 billion -- 11.5 times the paper's earnings before interest, taxes,...

The McClatchy Co. announced an agreement to sell the Times and three other newspapers for $1 billion to MediaNews Group Inc. and Hearst Corp. Denver-based MediaNews, publisher of the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers, will purchase the Times and San Jose Mercury News. New York City-based Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, will buy the Monterey Herald and St. Paul Pioneer Press in St. Paul, Minn. Hearst has agreed to "contribute" the St. Paul Pioneer Press and Monterey Herald to MediaNews in return for an equity investment in MediaNews assets outside of the Bay Area. If the...