Free Republic

‘Just Out,’ the 28-year-old newsmagazine serving Portland’s LGBTQ community, is done for, according to a short announcement posted on the site. “Effective December 26, 2011, Just Out newsmagazine, serving Portland’s LGBTQ community since 1983, is no longer in business. Three years of recession have taken their toll. Please direct all inquiries to Marty Davis at marty@justout.com. Thank you for your many years of readership and support,” the statement read in its entirety. The paper had seven staffers on its masthead. According to the Washington Blade, “the demise of the most notable LGBT newspaper in the region is a significant development...

(Reuters) - Republican Jon Huntsman, who has based his 2012 campaign for the White House almost exclusively on a strong showing in New Hampshire, has been rewarded with endorsements from two newspapers in the state with an early primary election. The Keene Sentinel and the Valley News both praised the former U.S. ambassador to China in editorials on Sunday. The endorsements were another snub to Mitt Romney, a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts who has dominated most opinion polls in New Hampshire this year but whose lead has recently narrowed in the race for the Republican nomination to run for...

PARIS — The office of a French satirical magazine here was badly damaged by a firebomb early on Wednesday, the publisher said, after it published a spoof issue “guest edited” by the Prophet Muhammad to salute the victory of an Islamist party in Tunisian elections. The publication also said hackers had disrupted its Web site. The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, had announced a special issue for publication Wednesday, renamed “Charia Hebdo,” a play on the word in French for Shariah law. The magazine’s editor, Stephane Charbonnier, told Europe 1 radio that the police had called just before 5 a.m. to report...

She looks like any old bag lady scavenging for cast-offs in the rubbish as the world looks the other way. But this is no ordinary woman - she is Olga Onassis, 90, a woman linked by marriage to one of the richest dynasties in the world. She has now fallen, like her country, on desperate times. She is a regular at a church soup kitchen in the Greek capital Athens and roots around in the overflowing garbage containers of the city for clothes.

Many political candidates covet the endorsement of the Palm Beach Post. Others believe it's really not that helpful. Just how valuable is the “blessing” of Post editors? Is their endorsement necessary for victory at the polls? Apparently not. BIZPAC has done some studies and surveys over the years about the power and importance of political endorsements by the Post...

Today Tucson congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) cast her first vote since she was critically injured in a January shooting. You'll recall that in the weeks that followed, the media bemoaned the incivility -- supposedly predominantly conservative in nature -- of the political debate which had allegedly created a climate of hate. But there appears to to be no firestorm over how, just last week, Arizona Daily Star cartoonist David Fitzsimmons fantasized about President Obama sending a SEAL team to assassinate Tea Party-friendly House Republicans.

The looting of a BP service station and subsequent attacks at nearby Reservoir Park Sunday was a troublesome event that soured the normally buoyant Fourth of July weekend and raised a number of questions. Among them: Why didn't Milwaukee police connect the dots faster? And where were the parents of these young people? Surveillance video taken from the BP service station shows clear pictures of dozens of youths stealing snacks, sodas and other merchandise. Some of them may have participated later in the beatings and robberies at the park. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said Wednesday that several parents have contacted...

The sexual assault case against ex IMF boss Dominique Strauss-Khan is close to collapse, it was tonight revealed. The New York hotel maid who accused Strauss-Khan of raping her in his $3,000-a-night suite, lied to investigators, law enforcement sources told the New York Times. Despite a wealth of forensic evidence against the 62-year-old, prosecutors have dismissed a lot of what the maid said about the alleged encounter, according to the newspaper.

Citing the slower-than-expected pace of the economy recovery, Gannett Co. said it plans to lay off about 700 employees as part of a broader round of cost cuts in its U.S. newspaper division. The job reductions represent about 2% of the company's work force and will affect Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing division, which consists of about 80 daily papers. Gannett, the largest U.S. publisher by circulation, also owns USA Today, which isn't part of that unit............ Gannett, which also owns TV stations, has had several rounds of layoffs and other cuts, including furloughs, in recent years to get costs in...

The nation's largest newspaper publisher is laying off another 700 employees to cope with an unrelenting advertising slump. Gannett, the owner of USA Today and more than 80 other daily U.S. newspapers, hoped to complete the cuts Tuesday. The layoffs are occurring at most Gannett newspapers but not at USA Today. The payroll reductions represent 2 percent of Gannett's 32,600 employees. The division targeted in the cutbacks employs 22,400 people at newspapers that include The Indianapolis Star and The Arizona Republic.

Most people rely on information provided by daily newspapers and television networks to be aware of current events and how those events might affect their lives. Unfortunately, many media sources have become so “politically correct” and fearful of losing advertising that they no longer serve the public, but their dwindling bottom lines. Many have heard that the Federal Reserve gave some media such as MSNBC “bail-out” money, thereby compromising their reporting. Their credibility is down the tubes. Other television is compromised with huge sums of advertising from mostly big pharma and other large multi-national companies like BP. Will they report...

Apple has quietly backed down on its "Jobs tax" rules that forced newspapers, magazines and other content providers selling iPhone and iPad subscriptions to also sell them via iTunes, with Apple getting a 30% cut. They couldn't offer subscriptions at a better price elsewhere. Now they can:

If the War Powers Act becomes moot, don’t blame Barack Obama, say the editors of the Chicago Tribune today. In order to curtail abuses of power from the executive, the legislature not only has to pass laws but also enforce them. And thus far, they’re not impressed with the Washington Way in Chi-town: Obama is on the horns of a dilemma. As a candidate, he said the president does not have the power to go to war on his own except in cases of actual or likely attack. But if he were to ask Congress to authorize the Libyan intervention,...

Did I read what Trump just told Hannity right? That he has Osama's college grades and papers? Now that would be a treasure trove, cuz I firmly believe that regardless of where Osama was born be attended college as a foreign student, lied all thru college and claimed various affiliations which he benefited from. Did I hear Trump right?

The U.S. Army has been forced to apologise over what they have deemed as 'repugnant' photographs of grinning American soldiers standing over bloodied and partially-naked Afghan bodies they had allegedly killed. The pictures were published by German news organisation Der Spiegel and were among 4,000 they have obtained. Meanwhile, commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for a public backlash and possible riots over the 'trophy' photographs, especially since it has been alleged that the Afghan civilians were unarmed and innocent. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly...

The national Newspaper Guild has upped the ante in a strike against the Huffington Post, calling on all unpaid writers to stop contributions to the website. The 26,000-member union of media workers asked all unpaid contributors on Wednesday to withhold their work in support of a strike launched earlier this year by the art publication Visual Arts Source, whose writers had previously contributed free content to the Post. "Join us in shining a light on the unprofessional and unethical practices of this company," the Guild wrote in a press release. "Just as we would ask writers to stand fast and...

For 20 years I was a front man at the BBC, anchoring news and current affairs programmes, so I reckon nobody is better placed than me to answer the question that nags at many of its viewers — is the BBC biased? In my view, ‘bias’ is too blunt a word to describe the subtleties of the pervading culture. The better word is a ‘mindset’. At the core of the BBC, in its very DNA, is a way of thinking that is firmly of the Left. By far the most popular and widely read newspapers at the BBC are The...

Former Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer on Monday gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange data on about 2,000 clients that he contends may have evaded taxes, published reports said. At a press conference in London, Elmer told reporters about 40 politicians and “pillars of society” were among the individuals he gave Assange information on, the reports said. Elmer told The Observer newspaper during the weekend that the individuals named in the data include “business people, politicians, people who have made their living in the arts and multinational conglomerates — from both sides of the Atlantic.” Elmer once headed the Cayman Islands office...

What a bunch of garbage! An elderly Manhattan woman living on Social Security was slapped with a $100 ticket -- just for throwing away a newspaper in a city trash can. Delia Gluckin, 80, tossed the paper in a bin right outside her Inwood apartment building Saturday morning, only to be ambushed by an overzealous Department of Sanitation agent wielding a handheld computertized ticket book. "I was walking to take the subway downtown and dropped it in a trash can, and this lady in a blue uniform ran up to me," Gluckin told The Post.

The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie chart format. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave...

This past week, we learned that it was another year, another dive for newspaper circulations: 5% for dailies, and 4.5% on Sundays, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. That's not as bad as some past declines, but it's still going the wrong way. As usual, they'll blame the Internet, and reject the possibility that persistent, pervasive bias and blind adherence to politically correct reporting priorities have anything to do with the results. But as I've similarly asked before, how does one explain away the fact that the only daily paper in the nation's top 25 that has shown consistent...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Circulation is still dropping at U.S. newspapers. Figures released Monday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations show average daily circulation fell 5 percent in the April-September period, compared with the same period a year earlier. The latest decline was not as steep as the 8.7 percent drop seen in the previous reporting period, which ran from October 2009 through March of this year.

(RTTNews) - A prominent newspaper in Mexico's border city of Ciudad Juarez has published an editorial requesting guidelines on media publishing from drug cartels operating in the city after one of its employees was shot dead by suspected drug operatives last week. The unprecedented editorial carried by the El Diario de Juarez newspaper on its front page on Sunday was prompted by the killing of Luis Carlos Santiago, 21-year-old photographer working for the paper, last week. Santiago and a co-worker was shot by unidentified gunmen in Ciudad Juarez on 17 September when they were sitting inside a parked car outside a...

Philadelphia Newspapers Up For Auction Theresa McCabe 09/15/10 - 10:06 AM EDT NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The auction for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News is set for Sept. 23 after creditors missed Tuesday's deadline to complete their planned $139 million buyout. The two newspapers, run by private company Philadelphia Media, have been operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection since February 2009. In April, a combination of hedge funds including Angelo Gordon and Alden Global Capital agreed to purchase the newspapers out of bankruptcy protection. The sale was not finalized due to unresolved labor contracts with the papers' truck...

The morning of the anniversary of 9/11 the Fredericksburg Free-Lance Star newspaper promoted Islamic propaganda and Islamization among University of Mary Washington. college students.The main articles featured in the regional news section dealt with local "Ramadan" observance and female Muslim students at UMW coaxing non-Muslim female students into wearing the "Hijab."[Promotion of Islam and Islamization among college students]"The Challenge Was To Wear A Hijab and See How It Felt."One Muslim participant promoted the false Islamic teaching that the Allah of Islam is the same as the God of the Bible:"Basically, if we all believe in one God, it must be the same God".Not true."The Allah of...

Copenhagen - Police in Denmark arrested a suspected possible suicide bomber Friday following a small explosion at a hotel in central Copenhagen, media reports said. Danish daily Extra Bladet showed on its website a photo of the suspect, who had reportedly attempted to blow himself up. Police did not immediately confirm the report. No one was injured in the explosion at the Jorgensen Hotel. Police handcuffed the man after he was seen running away from the hotel and into the nearby Orstedsparken park. The park was evacuated and the surrounding streets were cordoned off as explosive experts were called in....

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." He was there to talk about the changing journalistic business model and to touch on the Times' upcoming metered paywall for online content, but it was his concession about the bleak outlook for the print edition of the paper that's become the major news. Henry Blodgett, CEO of Business Insider, predicts the repercussions of suspending the printed version...

Articles about Twitter: Since the popular social media tool Twitter debuted in March 2006 as a free, social-networking, microblogging Internet service via which users send text updates, known as tweets, Twitter has grown into a communication phenomenon. Technically speaking, Twitter is a microblogging system that is a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. It's a device agnostic message routing system with some social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web, instant message, or third party API projects, tweets can be sent via mobile texting, instant message, or the web. How does it...

NEW YORK – Al-Qaida is preparing to launch its first online propaganda newspaper in English, a move that could broaden the terror group's reach inside the U.S. Counterterrorism officials and terror analysts say the newspaper, called Inspire, will be run by al-Qaida's branch in Yemen. That's the same group that's linked to the failed Christmas Day bombing of a U.S.-bound airliner.

The Montana Standard, Butte, Montana, has declared the U.S. Flag dead.

The merged Honolulu Star-Advertiser debuts June 7, with nearly 400 people losing their jobs in the process, according to the publisher of the combined newspaper. The last day that both The Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin will publish separately will be Sunday, June 6... The Star-Bulletin purchased The Advertiser from the Gannett Co. and Francis said he expects to hire about half of the Advertiser's 580 employees, meaning about 290 Advertiser workers will lose their jobs in the merger. The Advertiser, one of Gannett’s larger newspapers with a daily circulation of about 130,000, was founded in 1856 and purchased...

R.E.M.'s info-ad, "AZ1070" to appear in the Phoenix New Times on April 29

The spring Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) Fas-Fax report was released in the middle of earnings season. And so the many newspapers reporting that ad revenue was still falling, but at a slower pace, were mostly also posting circ numbers that continue to slide but not accelerate.

The Chronicle said Monday that remaking its business model by charging more for the newspaper has, as expected, produced a sharp drop in circulation even as it has improved the paper's bottom line. For the six months ending in March, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported Monday that The Chronicle's daily circulation declined 22.7 percent, from 312,118 to 241,330, the largest decline among the nation's top 25 newspapers. Weekday circulation nationwide went down 8.7 percent, and 6.5 percent on Sundays. [Snip] The top U.S. newspapers by average weekday and Sunday circulation from October 2009 through March. The percentage changes are...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Thursday, March 18, 2010 Chicago Resident David Coleman Headley Pleads Guilty to Role in India and Denmark Terrorism Conspiracies Admits Conducting Surveillance for Lashkar e Tayyiba in Planning 2008 Mumbai Attacks David Coleman Headley, a U.S. citizen of partial Pakistani descent, pleaded guilty today to a dozen federal terrorism charges, admitting that he participated in planning the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, as well as later planning to attack a Danish newspaper. In pleading guilty to all 12 counts that were brought against him in December and were...

Catholic Bishops Launch Newspaper Ads Attacking Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill Washington, DC -- The nation's Catholic bishops have launched a slew of newspaper ads criticizing the pro-abortion Senate health care bill. Their renewed effort to defeat the legislation and its abortion funding and promotion comes as dissident Catholic groups are confusing House members into supporting the bill. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat6143.html

(Summary: Parents need help defending their children against the ideology and incompetence so common in public schools. But US newspapers hardly bother to explain education to their readers. When kids aren't learning, you can bet there is a scandal to investigate. Where's investigative journalism when we need it?) The big question: "When are you people going to start covering education?" My local newspaper hardly seems aware that there is this very exciting, controversial and dramatic topic crying out for smart, helpful coverage. I bet it''s the same way in most American cities. How about yours?? Every education story in my...

I'm not entirely sure which topic got more buzz yesterday: the introduction of Apple's iPad or President Obama's State of the Union address. Either way, it was pretty clear which one's buzz will last longer: the iPad. Everyone's talking about the tablet computer designed to compete with the Kindle. Abilene Christian University's student newspaper, the Optimist, hoping to capitalize on the buzz, will be the first student publication to publish using the iPad, the Optimist reports. The gadget will be available in 60 days, and a team of faculty and student researchers is planning for the Optimist to be ready...

In late October, Newsday, the Long Island daily that the Dolans bought for $650 million, put its web site, newsday.com, behind a pay wall. The paper was one of the first non-business newspapers to take the plunge by putting up a pay wall, so in media circles it has been followed with interest. Could its fate be a sign of what others, including The New York Times, might expect? So, three months later, how many people have signed up to pay $5 a week, or $260 a year, to get unfettered access to newsday.com? The answer: 35 people. As in...

An interesting phenomenon has been occuring in various newspaper "Letters to the Editor" pages. A woman with the same name has had letters published in no fewer than 9 newspapers praising Obama while using various city and location residences. Now it's one thing if the person(s) name was something like John Brown, Steve Smith, Amy Jones or any other number of common name combination. However the name being used is Ellie Light. This may seem like much about nothing except for one small thing. The only Ellie Light that FReepers were able to locate by Lexis-Nexis or internet searches were...

A new study by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism says that when it comes to reporting new news, old media wins hands down over new media. From Journalism.org Where does the news come from in today’s changing media? Who really reports the news that most people get about their communities? What role do new media, blogs and specialty news sites now play? How, in other words, does the modern news “ecosystem” of a large American city work? And if newspapers were to die—to the extent that we can infer from the current landscape—what would that imply...

(Reuters) – Tribune Co's Los Angeles Times said it would close its printing operations in Orange County, California, resulting in about 80 layoffs, as part of cost-cutting measures.

The newspaper business has taken a severe beating in the last few years as they watched readers defect to the internet but Politico showed that a combining print and online news can be profitable. From PaidContent.org The juggernaut called Politico keeps on rolling, nevermind the recession, thank you. And some changes in company structure may hint at what could come next for it. The site and print paper, started in January 2007 by Allbritton Communications (ACC), has in two years grown to be a $20 million operation, according to paidContent figures, and finish calendar 2009 with operating profits of about...

The news is about to get more expensive for readers of the Chicago Tribune in print, as the newsstand price goes to $1 later this month. The 25-cent increase, set to take effect on Jan. 18, will make the newspaper “priced according to its marketplace value,” according to a statement issued by Tony Hunter, publisher, president and CEO of the Chicago Tribune. The increase does not affect home delivery subscriptions or the Sunday edition. The price hike makes the Tribune one of the more expensive metro dailies in the country. The Chicago Sun-Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times —...

Man Kills Self Before Shooting Wife and Daughter Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash,Expert Says No crap, really? Ya think? Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers Now that's taking things a bit far!

Liza Northrop Beale, the general manager of The Almanac, a weekly newspaper in Washington, Pa. died Saturday of complications related to the H1N1 virus. She was 49 and lived in Peters Township which is suburban Pittsburgh.

The New York Times Talks Tough By MarketWatchDec. 8, 2009, 4:24 p.m. EST NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Stop kicking sand at the New York Times Co. already. It's hard to know what to make of the Times sometimes. The publisher boasts the best-known name in media, and yet has often had lots of trouble maximizing the glitter over the years. The Times' problem seems to be indecisiveness. The company understands that the momentum in the media world nowadays seems to be swinging toward charging individuals for content online. Advertising spending continues to be dicey, and media firms must find revenue...

Jonathan Slevin, acting publisher and president of the Washington Times, outlined a new plan for the beleaguered newspaper and spoke of "significant staff reductions" at a meeting this afternoon. Staff are receiving notices at the meeting, but it's unclear who will be laid off at this time. However, management is putting the number at around 40 percent, according to sources. A release went out after the meeting began that outlines some of the changes taking place in the first quarter of 2010. The news operation, according to the release, will focus on what it considers core strengths—“exclusive reporting and in-depth...

Barack Obama's "Organizing for America" has put the call out for people to Email their local papers and write a letter to the editor. They have created a VERY easy and fast way to write all your local papers with just a few key strokes. PLEASE take a minute to do this today and jump behind enemy lines to help kill the bill. Here's what we need to do : Go to : http://my.democrats.org/page/speakout/posthouseLTE 1. Put in your Zip code. You will be redirected to a page where you enter all your address information. 2. Check all the boxes for...

MORE editorial cartoons with a decidedly conservative message.