Free Republic

In January 2008, soon after the venerable Tribune Company was sold for $8.2 billion, Randy Michaels, a new top executive, ran into several other senior colleagues at the InterContinental Hotel next to the Tribune Tower in Chicago. Mr. Michaels, a former radio executive and disc jockey, had been handpicked by Sam Zell, a billionaire who was the new controlling shareholder, to run much of the media company’s vast collection of properties, including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, WGN America and The Chicago Cubs. After Mr. Michaels arrived, according to two people at the bar that night, he sat...

SALT LAKE CITY — The Deseret News announced today work force reductions and unveiled a plan to refocus the quality and reach of its product. "Changes in the industry have forced some newspapers to fade or even close," said Clark Gilbert, Deseret News CEO and president. "At the Deseret News, we choose to lead and innovate." Part of that leadership, he added, is the willingness to make hard choices. "Today we have announced the reduction in our print work force by 57 full-time and 28 part-time employees, which reflects just over 43 percent of our work force," Gilbert said. Gilbert...

Online news source for the digital age invites public participation Sandra Gary | San Francisco, California25 June 2010 The people behind the just-launched Bay Citizen believe they've found a way to keep old-fashioned journalism alive in the digital age. The people behind the just-launched Bay Citizen believe they've found a way to keep old-fashioned journalism alive in the digital age. As Americans increasingly turn to the Internet for their news — and advertisers follow them — newspapers and magazines are struggling to stay in business. In San Francisco, an unlikely group of partners may have found a way to keep...

At the end of April members of the White House press corps began to speak out against a perceived lack of access to the president. Now White House correspondents are facing a whole new type of access issue: Their travel budgets have fallen off, making it harder for them to keep up with the president. The number of charter flights for reporters to follow the president on trips has sharply declined in recent months, according to The New York Times. Last year the press spent a total of $18 million on such travel arrangements. Only a dozen reporters are allowed...

They could have been millionaires, many times over, in 1985 when a million dollars meant something. But 25 years ago, the majority of the Hoiles family, owner of The Orange County Register, spurned a $1 billion buyout of the Santa Ana newspaper and its parent company's other holdings. Some say the rejection was to spite Harry Hoiles, the disaffected son of company founder R.C. Hoiles. Others argue that it came from a commitment to keep the media company in the family as a platform to carry on R.C.'s lifelong crusade for libertarianism and individual freedom. Either way, those who bet...

Helen Thomas simply longs for the days when reporters and pundits could report spin, lies and opinion as fact and were never held accountable outside of page A-16 retractions. The new media’s finest moment came when in 2004 CBS’s Dan Rather attempted to influence a national election (much like his predecessor Walter Cronkite did with the Vietnam War after the Tet Offensive), but unlike then, now there is a new media filled with grassroots activists who were going to hold the old media accountable and one of those activists on the Conservative Site Free-Republic under the handle “Buckhead,” was able...

The Associated Press said Thursday its net income plunged as revenue fell nearly 10 percent last year. The news cooperative also expects a decline in revenue this year, which would be its first back-to-back drop since the Great Depression. The AP released its 2009 financial results at the not-for-profit organization's annual meeting in New York. AP executives used the forum to explain some of the ways they hope to boost revenue for the organization and its members, such as with news applications for the iPad. Net income decreased 65 percent to $8.8 million in 2009 from $25.1 million a year...

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...

With buyouts and layoffs in progress, the mood at ABC News cannot be good. It was probably not enhanced by the ratings report for the first quarter of the year showing that the network’s evening newscast, “World News,” had sunk to the lowest numbers the program has had in a first quarter since the People Meter was introduced by Nielsen in 1987. The same situation prevailed at CBS, where the “Evening News” also hit a new low for the months of January through March. The beneficiary was NBC, where “Nightly News” scored its best first-quarter numbers since 2005. Over all,...

Murdoch has decided to block the 20m online readers of The Times from accessing the paper free of charge on the internet. From June, anyone wanting to read The Times or The Sunday Times online will have to pay £1 a day or £2 a week for the privilege. Those who subscribe to the printed edition will be able to access the paper’s planned thetimes.co.uk and thesundaytimes.co.uk websites as part of their subscription. Analysts warned that The Times risks losing “almost all” of its online readers when it erects the so-called “pay walls”. Rebekah Brooks, a former editor of The...

ABC News has begun the process of eliminating 300 to 400 positions at the news division by asking employees to participate in a buyout of their services. In a move that has been rumored for weeks, and coming on the heels of layoffs at CBS News, ABC's cuts are a combination of union and non-union jobs affecting all areas of ABC News. Developing...

Unpaid furloughs at Gannett Co. Inc. in McLean will now include nearly 1,500 employees at its flagship USA Today. USA Today employees will be required to take one week of unpaid leave between now and July. In a memo to employees Thursday, USA Today publisher David Hunke also said an existing pay freeze, first implemented in February 2009, will be extended by at least 90 days. A USA Today spokesperson confirms the furloughs and pay freeze extension affect all 1,495 of USA Today’s employees. "National advertising revenues in general were still down from the previous year as were paid advertising...

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu isn't just one of The New York Times Co.'s creditors anymore -- he's now one of their biggest stockholders, according to a Security and Exchange Commission filing Friday. Slim exercised warrants for 15.9 million in Class A shares for a strike price of $6.3572 through his companies Inmobiliaria and GFI, raising his stake in the Times Co. to 16.3% from 6.9% at the time he was approached to loan a substantial sum to the venerable publisher. Slim got the warrants in January 2009 when he lent the Times Co. $250 million. The company said that...

Jeff Zucker was a fearless news producer and fast-rising entertainment executive who was just 41 when he became head of NBC Universal. But in the last few years, the onetime whiz kid behind the "Today" show -- he turned Katie Couric into a star -- has made several costly miscalculations that have led to a spectacular fall by the country's premier television network. Zucker's troubles were magnified this week when, with NBC facing a revolt by affiliate stations furious over their sinking ratings, he decided to move Jay Leno back to late night after less than four months. The unusual...

Today, we announced that Nielsen Business Media has reached an agreement with e5 Global Media Holdings, LLC, a new company formed jointly by Pluribus Capital Management and Guggenheim Partners, for the sale of eight brands in the Media and Entertainment Group, including Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, The Clio Awards, Backstage, Billboard, Film Journal International and The Hollywood Reporter. e5 Global Media Holdings has also agreed to acquire our Film Expo business, which includes the ShoWest, ShowEast, Cinema Expo International and CineAsia trade shows. In addition, we’ve made the decision to cease operations for Editor & Publisher and Kirkus Reviews. This move...

Remember how big the November sweeps used to be? For viewers, the memory is becoming more distant. On the last Thursday of the still-big November TV period, virtually every network show took it on the chin. Similar ratings trends also took place earlier in the week. Big shows -- such as ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," CBS' "CSI," NBC's "The Office" and Fox' "Fringe" -- all sank lower versus their respective results of a week before. Some of this could be due to a NFL Network Thursday night game between the Miami Dolphins-Carolina Panthers. That network's Thursday games have been pulling in...

When, in late September, rumors surfaced that Comcast was trying to buy NBC Universal from General Electric, Wall Street reacted with dismay. Grandiose attempts to combine media production and distribution — programming and plumbing — are nothing new in the entertainment business, but they almost always end in disappointment. Witness AOL Time Warner. So what in the world could be prompting the Comcast chief executive, Brian Roberts, to start down this accursed path? I fear that I’m to blame. A few months ago, while stalking the aisles of my local Best Buy, I gave in to techno-temptation. I bought a...

Warren Buffett, the second richest man in the world and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A), doesn't have much faith in the future of print media. In an interview on CNBC's Nov. 3 "Squawk Box," following the announcement of his purchase of Burlington Northern (NYSE:BNI), Buffett was asked to comment on the future of news media, in particular newspapers and business news by "Squawk Box" co-host Becky Quick. Buffett is optimistic on the future of business news. "Our system has just gotten started," Buffett said. "I mean, we've had a couple of hundred years of progress, but we have not exhausted...

The guillotine has begun its descent at Time Inc. Sources at the publishing company (which is part of the same conglomerate as DailyFinance parent AOL) say executives have asked for an emergency meeting with representatives of the Newspaper Guild to discuss job eliminations. A Time Inc. spokeswoman declined to comment, but John Shostrom, chairman of the company's Guild unit, said the meeting will take place "soon." He said it was Time Inc. that called the meeting. "They act, and we react," said Shostrom. "The Guild doesn't lay people off. We just fight back when they make proposals to lay people...

Time Warner Inc (NYSE:TWX - News) will eventually sell the Time Inc magazine unit and could buy holdings in its core entertainment category, Gordon Crawford, managing director of its largest shareholder, said during a presentation this week. "Time Warner just spun off their cable division, they are going to sell their print division, they are going to spin off AOL and they're just going to be Warner Brothers, HBO and the Turner Networks," said Crawford, managing director of The Capital Group. "Now, they will make acquisitions ... but they're probably going to buy just stuff in their wheel house of...