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As Washington Post staffers reached the deadline to decide whether they would take buyouts, newsroom sources confirmed that WaPo Executive editor Leonard Downie will retire no later than inauguration day, 2009. An announcement could come as early as today. Former International Tribune editor David Ignatius and post managing editor Phil Bennett are the leading inside candidates to succeed Downie, who has been paper's top editor since 1991, when he succeeded Ben Bradlee. Many of Bennett's colleagues described him as "moody," and he may have suffered from backing Susan Glasser to become the assistant managing editor for national news. Glasser was...

Lee Enterprises Inc. took a goodwill impairment charge of $772 million in a revised financial report that pushed its loss to $716.4 million, or $15.90 per share, for its second fiscal quarter ended March 30. The new figures, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing late Wednesday, revised a report in April that had indicated a loss of $4.45 million, or 10 cents a share, for the quarter. In addition to the taking the non-cash goodwill impairment charge, Lee recorded a $115.97 million charge to reduce the carrying value of amortized intangibles, and a charge of $3 million to...

Bids on the Star Tribune's five-block plot of land in downtown Minneapolis are due today, according to an offering memo obtained by the Pioneer Press. The marketing of the 12.4 acres — billed as the largest private land holding in the central business district — marks a rare opportunity for developers. It also comes at a time when the Star Tribune and its owners, Avista Capital Holdings, are dealing with declining revenue and profit, and the extra cash could come in handy. Last year, the Minnesota Vikings offered to pay $45 million for four of the five blocks in the...

Following up on vows to bring spending in line with its shrinking revenues, The Seattle Times Co. sliced the staff at its flagship newspaper by 125 employees this week. Of the total, 73 were laid off and 52 left voluntarily, with 51 accepting buyout offers, spokeswoman Corey Digiacinto said. The Times announced a month ago that, to help save $15 million, it would freeze 60 unfilled positions and lay off up to 131 employees. Voluntary departures trimmed the number of layoffs needed by more than 40 percent, Digiacinto said. Before this week's cuts, The Times had 1,845 full-time and part-time...

The McClatchy Co. figures the value of its not-quite-half stake in Blethen family-controlled Seattle Times Co. has tumbled to barely one-tenth of its worth just two years ago. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, McClatchy estimated its 49.5% stake in the publisher of The Seattle Times has a value of $12.06 million. That's a drop of more than one-third from the carrying value it assigned its Times Co. interest last December -- and represents a 88% drop from its estimated value of $102.2 million at the end of 2006. McClatchy acquired the stake in the Times Co. in its...

News Corp. has revoked its bid for Tribune Co.'s Newsday, a company spokesman said, leaving Cablevision Systems Corp. the likely victor of the auction for the Long Island daily. News Corp., which publishes the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, had bid $580 million for Newsday and already had an informal agreement to acquire the paper, but was unwilling to match the $650 million subsequently offered by Cablevision, a cable systems operator. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman also bid $580 million for the newspaper but it wasn't immediately clear whether he would submit a higher offer....

ASBURY PARK Gannett Co. Inc. on Friday said it was offering buyouts to a total of 160 workers at five of its six newspapers in the state of New Jersey, as advertising revenues decline. The buyouts were offered to employees over age 55 who have at least 15 years of service with the company, said Judi Dorsey, vice president for human resources at the Asbury Park Press, Gannett's flagship paper in the state. The 160 employees targeted were asked to respond to the offer by the end of next week. Layoffs are possible if not enough buyouts are accepted, Dorsey...

It wasn't the dinosaurs' fault the asteroid hit them. Okay, let's back up a bit. I am alluding to an hypothesis, first advanced by Luis Alvarez and son, that a large asteroid hit the earth, causing the mass die-off of dinosaur and many other species, at what we used to call "the K-T boundary" (the end of the Cretaceous geological period) about 65 million years ago. This was proposed in 1980, and given apparent confirmation by the discovery of traces of a huge impact crater in the Yucatan around 1990. It then quickly became Al-Gorey "settled science" - before being...

Troubled Journal Register Co. warned late Friday in a regulatory filing that it probably will be in default of its loan covenant before the end of July. Journal Register (OTC: JRCO.PK) said it was in compliance with the total leveraged financial covenant in the first quarter of the year ended March 30, but it is likely to be in default in the second quarter unless business picks up in some unexpected dramatic way. "Unless there is significant improvement in the company's operating results during the second fiscal quarter or the company is successful in obtaining an additional amendment to the...

The St. Petersburg Times will be seriously redefined on May 19. That's when the paper will implement changes designed to emphasize material readers have told us they value most in the weekday paper and bring down costs. The big changes: Floridian, our daily features section, will publish just on Sundays, while our business section will merge with our B section metro news in a new section. TV listings, comics, Dear Abby, crossword puzzles and the more popular syndicated elements of our features section will move to a new section called BayLink. As always, when circumstances compel the Times to reimagine...

A continued weak advertising environment resulted in an 8% decline in first-quarter operating revenue and a 16% drop in operating cash flow for Tribune Co., parent of the Los Angeles Times, KTLA-TV Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune and other media holdings. However, because of Tribune's conversion to a tax-advantaged, employee-owned company in December, it posted a one-time, $1.86-billion income tax adjustment that resulted in net income of $1.82 billion for the quarter that ended March 31, compared with $11 million in the same 2007 period. Quarterly operating revenue was $1.11 billion, compared with $1.21 billion a year earlier, and operating...

New York Times Co. will lay off some staffers in its flagship newspaper's newsroom to meet its goal of cutting 100 positions. In a letter to the staff, published on the Poynter Institute's Web site, New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said, "While the overwhelming majority of our reductions did indeed come from volunteers, we have been forced to resort to a relatively small number of layoffs to meet our assigned goal." Mr. Keller didn't mention the number of people to be laid off and the company declined to comment. In mid-April, assistant managing editor Bill Schmidt had encouraged...

The owner of the Star Tribune has informed investors that it has written down the value of its $100 million investment in the newspaper by 75 percent to reflect deteriorating conditions since the purchase in March 2007. "In the past year, the newspaper industry has suffered greater than expected declines in circulation and advertising revenue, particularly in print classified advertising," the memo from New York's Avista Capital Partners said. "The outlook in the near to medium term remains uncertain." The write-down, taken at the end of 2007, reflects the estimated loss of value and is consistent with the falling stock...

The Lexington Herald-Leader is looking to trim its staff of 385 full-time employees by 4 percent through a voluntary buyout program. A statement released by the Herald-Leader said there is no set number of employees it hopes will take the buyout, nor has the paper released information publicly or to its staff as to what the eligibility requirements are. "…our business models are changing," a statement emailed by Herald-Leader Publisher Tim Kelly said. "We plan to continue our focus on both our print newspaper as well as Kentucky.com. At the same time, we plan to pay attention to our current...

The Star Tribune's hiring of private equity powerhouse Blackstone Group could result in a fundamental restructuring of the paper's debt, a process that may include anything from new loan terms to additional equity investors in the paper... Such a restructuring, coming only 15 months after Avista Capital Partners took possession of the Star Tribune, reflects just how rapidly the newspaper business -- and the credit markets -- have deteriorated in the past year. Across the country, in big cities and small, newspapers are struggling with declining readership and steep declines in advertising, especially lucrative real estate and automobile classifieds. McClatchy...

It's time for higher education to help save newspapers Chronicle of Higher Education That's what former Fortune staffer Lee Smith says. "The plan I have in mind would call upon the richest institutions to set aside 3 percent of their endowments to buy The New York Times. That's for a start. Additional purchases of other newspapers by other endowments should follow."

An article in the New York Post Sunday reported the Star Tribune is on the ‘brink of bankruptcy.’ The newspaper recently hired a company to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet debt obligations, the article reports. In a statement from the Star Tribune in response to the New York Post article, Chris Harte, the newspaper’s publisher said, "The facts are that the Star Tribune currently has sufficient liquidity and is current on all its debt payment obligations." Hart said while it is true that the newspaper faces declining ad revenue, they have been working aggressively to get their...

Joseph F. Pisani, who ushered The Stamford Advocate and Greenwich Time into the digital age while wearing bow ties and surrounding himself with vintage typewriters, has left as editor of the newspapers. A replacement has not been named, and Pisani declined to comment for this story. "The nucleus of the team Joe built and worked with is still there and will continue," said John Dunster, publisher of The Advocate and Greenwich Time. "Finding a replacement for him will be important within the company but also for the communities. . . . He will be hard to replace." Dunster echoed the...

The Minneapolis Star Tribune, reeling under a heavy debt load and plummeting advertising sales, is on the brink of bankruptcy, The Post has learned. One of the nation's top dailies, "The Strib," as it is known to readers in the Twin Cities, recently hired the Wall Street powerhouse Blackstone Group to restructure its balance sheet after failing to meet its debt obligations, according to people familiar with the company. The broadsheet is unlikely to shutter its doors, but its creditors, including the banking giant Credit Suisse Group, figure to eventually end up controlling the paper. Down the road, the creditor...

The New York Times once epitomised all that was great about American newspapers; now it symbolises its industry’s deep malaise. The Grey Lady’s circulation is tumbling, down another 3.9% in the latest data from America’s Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC). Its advertising revenues are down, too (12.5% lower in March than a year earlier), as is the share price of its owner, the New York Times Company, up from its January low but still over 20% below what it was last July. On Tuesday April 29th Standard & Poor’s cut the firm’s debt rating to one notch above junk. At...

The Washington Post Co. on Friday reported a 39 percent drop in first quarter profit, hurt by an early retirement program charge at Newsweek and a continued loss of revenue from its newspapers. The Washington-based corporation said earnings fell to $38.8 million, or $4.08 per share, compared with $63.9 million, or $6.70 per share, a year earlier. The company said revenue climbed 8 percent to $1.06 billion from $985.6 million. Quarterly results included a $15.3 million, or $1.60 per share, expense related to Newsweek's early retirement program. Even excluding the costs of the retirement program, earnings fell well below the...

How bad are things in the (print) newspaper industry? Don't ask. After another jarring 3.5% decline over the past six months, print-paper circulation will drop to about 50 million this year--the lowest level since 1946 (62 years ago). That's during a period in which the US population has doubled, meaning that per-capita newspaper consumption has been cut in half. For more on this horrorshow, read the latest from the Dean of Newspaper Demise, Alan D. Mutter, at Newsosaur. Just don't do it if you've got friends or family (or money) in the industry. If your career, portfolio, or fortune isn't...

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution plans to cut its distribution area from 74 to 49 counties, a move that will eliminate 62 jobs. The cutback will pare circulation by about 2.2 percent daily and 1.9 percent Sunday, the company said Wednesday. The change takes effect June 2 and marks the second time in a little over a year that the AJC has trimmed its print distribution area to cut costs. Counties affected in the latest round are mainly in the northwest corner of the state, along the South Carolina border and northeast of the Columbus area. After the cuts, the AJC will...

A.H. Belo Corp., the newspaper pure play spun off from Dallas-based Belo Corp., reported its first quarterly result was a loss of $8.7 million, or 43 cents a share, on revenues that tumbled 8.8% to $160.2 million. Advertising revenue, including print and Internet revenue, fell 12% in the quarter compared to a year ago. The chain was particularly hard hit at its major California property, where ad revenue for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside plummeted 26%. A.H. Belo said its newspaper margin -- measured by EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) -- fell by 5 percentage points to 9%....

The Orange County Register and its affiliated publications will immediately lay off between 80 and 90 employees, or 5 percent of its workforce, because of declining advertising revenue, President and Publisher Terry Horne said today. Horne cited Orange County's sluggish economy, especially in real estate, as eroding local retail, automotive and classified advertising. The company provided no financial details. This is the third round of layoffs in a year for Orange County Register Communications, the umbrella brand for the Register newspaper, Web sites, magazines and other community publications. The company also completed a voluntary severance program to cut staff in...

In an effort to streamline its operations, The News & Observer Publishing Co. will offer voluntary buyout packages to some employees today. The package will be offered to 230 of the newspaper's roughly 900 employees, though a small percentage of those people are expected to accept and leave the company. Publisher Orage Quarles III said the decision to trim the company's staff came following a period of declining revenues and other factors such as the rising cost of newsprint and gas. "It's almost a perfect storm of factors," he said. "We've got to get the organization to a size that...

First in a series. NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- By now you know the story: The business of newspapers is in decline. It's a terminal decline, if you believe experts such as Jeffrey Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California at Annenberg. His research suggests traditional media in general must learn to shrink but newspapers in particular are a special case. "When an offline reader of a paper dies, he or she is not being replaced by a new reader," he said. "How much time do they have? We think they have 20...

NEW YORK Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country's largest dailies for the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday. The following circulation compares the new data to the same period a year ago. Daily circulation is the Monday-Friday average. --The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping...

McClatchy posts 1Q loss on lower revenue on weak economy; Florida, California worst hit NEW YORK (AP) -- McClatchy Co. swung to a loss in the first quarter as a weakening economy and competition from online rivals led to a 15 percent plunge in advertising revenues at its newspapers. McClatchy said Wednesday it saw the problems continuing into the second quarter, though it expected the declines to moderate. Investors dumped shares in the Sacramento, Calif.-based company, pushing them down 65 cents, or 7.3 percent, to $8.22 in afternoon trading. Earlier in the day the stock touched a new 52-week low...

Journal Communications 1st-quarter profit down sharply; year-earlier period boosted by sale MILWAUKEE (AP) -- Media company Journal Communications Inc. said Tuesday its first-quarter profit plunged 91 percent, as the year-ago period was boosted by gains from a sale. The company also saw continued publishing and broadcasting revenue declines. But results from continuing operations met Wall Street's expectations. For the period ended March 30, net income tumbled to $6.7 million, or 11 cents per share, compared with $73.3 million, or $1.05 per share, in the previous year. Income from continuing operations fell to $6.3 million, or 10 cents per share, from...

DES MOINES, Iowa Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises Inc. reported a loss for its second fiscal quarter, primarily the result of a previously announced charge related to future liability involving the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The company said Monday it lost $4.45 million, or 10 cents a share, in the quarter ended March 30. A year ago, the company reported it earned $11.9 million, or 26 cents a share. Excluding one-time charges, the company earned 8 cents a share in the second quarter compared with 19 cents a year ago. Sales declined 4.7 percent to $247.7 million for the quarter and circulation...

Gannett Co. Inc. blamed a slowing economy for fewer advertisements in its newspapers and on its television stations as it announced Monday that revenue and profits declined in the first quarter of 2008. The McLean, Va.-based media company owns the Cincinnati Enquirer and Community Press newspaper locally. Net income fell 8.9 percent to $191.8 million, or 84 cents per diluted share, from $210.6 million, or 88 cents per diluted share, in the year-ago period. Revenue declined 8.4 percent to $1.68 billion for the first quarter compared to $1.83 billion during the same quarter last year. It was the fifth straight...

Get me rewrite! BY DAVE BARRY (This classic Dave Barry column was originally published June 10, 2001.) On behalf of the newspaper industry (new, cost-cutting motto: ''All the News That''), I am announcing some changes we're making to serve you better. When I say ''serve you better,'' I mean ''increase our profits.'' We newspapers are very big on profits these days. We're a business, just like any other business, except that we employ English majors. To help you better understand our current situation, let's review the history of newspaper finances: The earliest known newspaper, published in 59 B.C. in Rome,...

When the Newseum opened last week in Washington, D.C., more than a few critics pointed out that it was a strange time to throw a party. And indeed there is a certain irony to debuting a seven-story, $450 million museum of journalism at a time of budget cuts, shrinking revenues and contracting newsrooms. Last week the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported that 2,400 full-time newspaper jobs were lost in 2007, the largest annual drop in 30 years. Meanwhile, less than one person in five believes what he reads in print, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a...

There must be some nostalgia at CBS News for the good old days, when the network was roundly hated and people at the political extremes longed to see it fail. Now that it is failing (it is a laggard in the ratings), nobody seems to care. Gone are the conservatives, who wanted to buy the network to sanitize it and rout out alleged liberal journalists. Also gone are the political lefties, who believed that CBS was the captive of its advertisers. In media, to be hated is an affirmation that you are succeeding. At The Radio & Television Correspondents’ Association...

The Star-Telegram will eliminate 15 jobs through a restructuring of management at the newspaper, Publisher Gary Wortel announced Thursday. Wortel said eight of the jobs will be in the newsroom, with the rest coming from reductions in marketing, operations, circulation and advertising. The changes affect less than 1.5 percent of the Star-Telegram’s staff. The move comes as the newspaper industry struggles with a continued slide in circulation and advertising. Last year, the industry cut 16,900 positions, or nearly 5 percent of total employees, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Newspapers like the New York Times, Seattle Times, San Francisco...

Torstar Corp. (TSX:TS.B) is cutting 160 jobs, including the entire Internet production staff at its flagship Toronto Star daily, in a restructuring prompted by continuing weakness in the newspaper industry. The publisher said Thursday the restructuring involves "a combination of voluntary and involuntary staff reductions" and that the company will take a $21-million charge as part of the process, but expects to save $12 million annually in labour costs. Most of the job cuts, taken through severage packages, were already expected, but the Internet layoffs came as a surprise, said Maureen Dawson, an official with the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co (NYSE:NYT - News) posted a quarterly loss on Thursday as the struggling U.S. economy put further pressure on already weak advertising at the company's newspapers. The publisher posted a first-quarter net loss of $335,000, or breakeven on a per-share basis. A year ago, it reported net income of $23.9 million, or 17 cents per share, and income from continuing operations of 14 cents per share. Its results this year included a 7-cent-per-share charge to write down assets and a 3-cent-per-share gain for a tax adjustment. Excluding special items, earnings per share...

WASHINGTON A recent dispute between numerous newspaper editors and the Associated Press over rate structures and other practices erupted again Wednesday morning during a heated session of the Capital Conference media convention here. Following an appearance by AP President and CEO Tom Curley, who discussed the controversial new rate structure and overall AP economic issues, several editors spoke up in opposition to the plan, claiming it unfairly charges member papers and includes too many services they do not want. “I think you vastly underestimate the resentment and anger in this room,” Editor David Shribman of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette told Curley...

WASHINGTON Among the gossip and trends swirling at the Capital Conference/combined media convention here is the reality that more and more editors are wishing they could get out of the newsroom earlier in their careers. During hallway chats and bar stool gatherings, in between the sessions at the Washington Convention Center, several editors said the state of the industry – with more cuts, more responsibility for Web, and an unknown future -- has more of their colleagues talking about wanting to hang it up well before retirement age. “That discussion is going on among a lot of people,” said Chris...

The New York Times announced that it's all but a done deal that the paper will have to layoff staffers in the newsroom. The drop-dead deadline is fast approaching for the staffers in The New York Times newsroom to raise their hand and volunteer for a buyout. An internal memo from the paper's assistant managing editor, Bill Schmidt, just went out and said that "we expect" that the buyout numbers aren't looking good and that for the first time the paper will be forced to cut the newsroom through layoffs. "While layoffs have become all too common across our industry,...

The Modesto Bee offered voluntary buyouts Monday to more than 100 employees, citing fundamental changes in the news industry. "We are managing through a challenging business environment and changing business model," President and Publisher Margaret Randazzo said. About one-quarter of The Bee's 455 employees were offered buyout packages. Not all who apply will be approved, Randazzo said, and only a limited number of buyouts will be accepted from each division. Randazzo said the buyouts were offered to employees in every division, except for ad sales representatives and reporters. The buyout packages include up to 26 weeks of pay depending on...

CHICAGO Media General Inc.'s Florida Communications Group, parent of The Tampa Tribune and WFLA-TV, said Monday it is offering voluntary buyouts to about half of its 1,326 employees. Group President John Schueler said in an announcement on the Tribune's TBO.com Web site that the buyouts are a way to cut costs significantly in the difficult economic climate of Tampa Bay. Media General, in its latest financial report, said much of the chain's difficulties can be traced to its Tampa Bay media properties. The region, and all of Florida, has been hurt badly by a housing collapse that has spread pain...

CHICAGO U.S. daily newspapers shrank their newsrooms by 2,400 journalists in the past year, a 4.4% workforce decrease that's the biggest year-over-year cut in ranks since the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) began conducting its annual census 30 years ago. ASNE said 52,600 people work full-time in daily newspaper newsrooms -- a number that has not been that low since 1984. Among those leaving dailies in the past year were a net of nearly 300 fewer journalists of color than worked in newsrooms this time last year, ASNE found in the census released Sunday. Because of the wave of...

PORTLAND The Portland Newspaper Guild says it is exploring a potential bid for the Blethen Maine Newspapers, which are being offered for sale by the Seattle Times Co. The union said it has retained a consulting firm to advise employees about putting together a deal for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram, the Kennebec Journal in Augusta, the Morning Sentinel in Waterville and MaineToday.com. ''The Newspaper Guild welcomes any ownership alternative that continues to recognize the importance of union representation of its work force,'' the union said. ''The guild also believes that an employee-ownership model backed by community investors would...

Just passing along what I was told this morning from a possibly good source — no confirmation, no independent reporting, no warranty implied. But my contact travels in the right circles to have picked up the scent and reports hearing from "three excellent sources (all with first hand information)" that David Geffen is in talks with Sam Zell to buy the Los Angeles Times from Tribune. The talks are serious enough, my source hears, that the moguls may have been close to a deal last week. For what it's worth.

The largest union of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News is suing the newspapers' owner for merging two employee pension plans without its consent, charging that one plan is severely underfunded and would endanger the health of the second pension. A court hearing was to be held Wednesday in the case of The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia against Philadelphia Newspapers LLC, a unit of Philadelphia Media Holdings. U.S. District Court Judge Berle M. Schiller has granted a temporary restraining order. The judge said that while the pensions have merged, the funds haven't been commingled. The lawsuit, filed last week,...

First of a series: Publisher Frank Blethen sought to conquer the Eastside but helped turn the suburbs into a daily newspaper desert. By Knute Berger, Mossback Posted on April 8, 2008, Printed on April 9, 2008 http://www.crosscut.com/mossback/13238/ Editor's note: This is the first of a series of articles on the financial crisis facing The Seattle Times. What was that famous quote about the Romans? "They made a desert and called it peace." It came to mind when I read that The Seattle Times was closing its suburban bureaus, including its once substantial Eastside operation in Bellevue. In a story about...

Hiller to LAT: Recession, baby Kevin Roderick • Bio • Email In one of his occasional long messages to the staff, Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller says "we are smack in the middle of a recession on top of the dramatic changes the newspaper business is going through." For the whole first quarter, advertising revenue was down double-digits from last year, and our cash flow is down even more. The results for March alone were even more severe, with revenue and cash flow declines dropping to levels not seen for decades." Emphasis mine. So the Times continues to do...

Topic: Memos Sent to Romenesko Date/Time: 4/8/2008 12:26:17 PM Title: Miami Herald buyouts memos Posted By: Jim Romenesko Memo from Miami Herald editor Anders Gyllenhaal Date: Tue, 8 Apr 2008 12:12:37 -0400 This is to follow up the email that just went out from David Landsberg on the company's buyout plans. I wanted to summarize the newsroom's portion of this and outline a series of meetings we’ll have today. This is part of the reality of our business at the moment, and it cannot help but be an unsettling day. Our hope is to explain the plan clearly to both...