Free Republic

<p>NEW YORK (AP) - The Wall Street Journal has surpassed USA Today as the top-selling daily newspaper in the United States.</p> <p>The Audit Bureau of Circulations won't be releasing its latest figures until Oct. 26, but the Journal said Wednesday that it gained about 12,000 subscribers in the April-September period, compared with a year earlier. That puts its average Monday-Friday circulation at 2.02 million.</p>

John Temple, the former editor, president and publisher of the now shuttered Rocky Mountain News, has been running a great blog about issues from the newspaper industry over the past few months. He consistently has been saying stuff that made me wonder why the Rocky Mountain News didn't seem to do the sorts of things he seemed to constantly talk about... and now he's explained why. He recently gave a talk at Google about lessons from the collapse of the Rocky Mountain News in both text and video form. It's long, but well worth watching/reading:

There are still these things called newspapers out there. Yeah, I was surprised too – I gave up hardcopy papers way back when dissent was still patriotic. But out for a Sunday lunch at one of our favorite places in lovely Manhattan Beach, I noticed the front section of the Los Angeles Times lying forlornly on a counter between the napkins and the hot sauce. Someone had left it behind. The price being right, I decided to see what I’ve been missing. The first thing I found was a long story on how the conservative movement is struggling to prove...

First Free Republic post after experiencing 9/12 euphoria.. How about we keep the momentum going? I'm prepared to cancel my subscription to the "Washington Compost" tomorrow if they choose to distort the truth. Wouldn't it be powerful to have "tens of thousands" of us send the same message to our local newspapers. Money talks.

Looks like Harry is trying to dig himself out of a hole he dug with his own mouth. Last week, just before a speech to the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, Reid told an advertising executive at the conservative Las Vegas Review-Journal, "I hope you go out of business." Well, that didn't go over well back at the newsroom. The editors went ballistic and are gunning for Reid. Apparently the blowback is hurting Dingy Harry and everybody on the left now (desperately) wants to laugh the whole thing off as a joke. Ol' Harry, he's such a card.

SAN FRANCISCO — The company that owns The Orange County Register in California and dozens of other newspapers on Tuesday became the latest publisher to seek bankruptcy protection, driven into financial despair by a staggering drop in advertising revenue.

INDIANAPOLIS -- The union representing newsroom and other employees at The Indianapolis Star has ratified a two-year contract that includes a 10 percent pay cut. The Newspaper Guild Local 34070 said its members voted 56-45 on Tuesday in favor of the contract, which runs through August 2011 and suspends all merit pay increases. The contract covers 170 editorial and building services employees. Company officials have said the pay cut is necessary because of the recession. Guild members in June voted overwhelmingly to reject a contract offer from the Gannett Co.-owned Star that called for 12 percent pay cuts. The Star...

A leading Swedish newspaper reported this week that Israeli soldiers are abducting Palestinians in order to steal their organs, a claim that prompted furious condemnation and accusations of anti-Semitic blood libel from a rival publication. "They plunder the organs of our sons," read the headline in Sweden's largest daily newspaper, the left-leaning Aftonbladet, which devoted a double spread in its cultural section to the article.

Freep this poll on the home page of the Trib website. The question is: which media person or politician do you trust the most. Palin, Rush, Biden, Obama and many others are on there. Have fun. The poll is on the right side of the page "below the fold."

    The 2012 Obama campaign message to Catholics has already been written. Here it is, conveniently laid out by the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, and its editor, Giovanni Maria Vian:   "[President Obama] is not a pro-abortion president." -- Giovanni Maria Vian, in an interview with a Vatican analyst from the Italian daily Il Riformista   "The president invited Americans of every faith and ideological conviction to 'work in common effort' to reduce the number of abortions." -- L'Osservatore Romano, on President Obama's May 13, 2009, speech at the University of Notre Dame   For President Obama's...

Google drops idea to buy newspaper By Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson in New York and Chrystia Freeland in London Published: May 20 2009 22:00 | Last updated: May 20 2009 23:30 Google has considered buying a newspaper or using its charitable arm to support news businesses seeking non-profit status, but is now unlikely to pursue either option, Eric Schmidt, chairman and chief executive, told the Financial Times. His comments, in an interview with FT.com, will cool speculation that the deep-pocketed search engine operator might save franchises such as the New York Times that are struggling with debts and declining advertising revenue. Google...

That's just low. Here's the winner of a local dog look-alike contest... Now that you mention it...

The Boston Globe’s largest union emerged from marathon talks early this morning declaring that it had made concessions to avert a shutdown of the newspaper and was working toward a new deadline Sunday in talks with the New York Times Co. “We have met their needs. The Globe is not shutting down,” said Boston Newspaper Guild President Dan Totten after ending talks for the night around 1 a.m. The Times had set midnight as the deadline for all of its unions to meet a goal of $20 million in cuts or face closure of the 137-year-old newspaper. Totten said the...

The Denver Post announced Thursday that it will stop delivering print copies to the Western Slope, including Grand Junction and farther reaches of Colorado ... Print subscribers will be switched to online subscriptions

The Baltimore Sun has laid off 61 people in its newsroom, about a quarter of its editorial staff, including veteran editors and managers, columnists, photographers and designers. Maryland's largest newspaper laid off managerial employees at the end of the day Tuesday, and notified union-represented employees Wednesday afternoon... Tribune is operating under bankruptcy protection. Real estate mogul Sam Zell took on a $13 billion debt load when he purchased the company in 2007

NEW YORK (Reuters) – If there's one thing that the U.S. public is not giving newspapers, it's their support. Paid weekday newspaper circulation in the six-month period that ended March 31 fell 7 percent to 34.4 million, compared with the same period last year, according to new figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). That decline, which tracked 395 daily newspapers that had five-day-a-week circulation in both periods, accelerated from last year's decline of 3.6 percent. Sunday circulation at 557 papers fell more than 5 percent to 42.1 million. Last year, circulation fell 4.6 percent. The declines may...

USA TODAY -- 2,113,725 – (-7.46%) WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,082,189 -- 0.61% NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,039,031 -- (-3.55%) L.A. TIMES -- 723,181 -- (-6.55%) WASHINGTON POST -- 665,383 -- (-1.16%) NEW YOK DAILY NEWS -- 602,857 -- (-14.26%) NEW YORK POST -- 558,140 -- (-20.55%) CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 501,202 -- (-7.47%) HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 425,138 -- (-13.96%) ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 389,701 -- (-5.72%) DENVER POST (02/28/2009 to 03/31/2009) -- 371,728 -- N/A NEWSDAY -- 368,194 -- (-3.01%) DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 331,907 -- (-9.88%) MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE -- 320,076 -- (-0.71%) CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 312,141 -- (-0.04%) SAN FRANCISCO...

As The New York Times Co. tries to bask in the glory of having bagged five Pulitzers, the company is facing a cash crunch that could put it on the path toward insolvency. According to its first-quarter earnings report, the Times said it had cash and cash equivalents totaling $294 million. However, $260 million of that is earmarked to pay off debt that matures in March 2010, effectively leaving the company with $34 million.

Gannett Co., the largest newspaper publisher in the U.S., reported a 60 percent decline in first-quarter profit Thursday and said the decline in its advertising revenue is accelerating. Gannett, which publishes USA Today ... ad revenue shrunk by 33.5 percent. USA Today's total number of paid ad pages in the quarter fell to 527, from 826 a year ago.

Now the bow-tied bumkissers are telling us we “need” the Globe. Maybe, but only for comic relief. The Globe is the “SNL” of newspapers, a yuk on every page. Let’s go straight to the list, a very partial list, of Globe blunders. - March 2003: Since-indicted Boston City Councilor Chuck Turner holds a news conference at City Hall, complete with a blowup of a still he claims shows an American soldier raping an Iraqi woman. The video capture turns out to be from a Hungarian porn movie. Alone among the media, the ever-gullible Globe runs the XXX-rated photo over three...