Monthly Archives: November 2009

The gloomy industry outlook might suggest abject newspaper abandonment, but a report issued by Scarborough Research found 74 percent of adults in the U.S. are still reading news. Just maybe not in print form.

Though the Integrated Newspaper Audience survey, which ran from February 2008 through last March, asked respondents only if they read the newspaper in some form (online or offline), the results still provide more optimistic numbers than a report released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations last month, which found circulation had decreased 10 percent during the six-month period starting in April. But if circulation is rapidly decreasing (it declined 7 percent in the previous six-month period) despite these seemingly hopeful Scarborough figures, maybe the report is really just another indication that people would rather read their news for free.

Though the past year wreaked havoc on the newspaper industry, 28 years ago was a different story. Gannett might have reported a 28.4-percent decline in ad revenue for its third-quarter this year, but on December 16, 1981, another kind of article appeared as a special to the New York Times, buried within the front section on page 21:

The print is small, but the article has this graph:

“Leonard R. Harris, a spokesman for The Times, welcomed the new addition to the ranks of national publications, and added that the willingness of Gannett to undertake the venture was ‘evidence of the increasing strength’ of newspaper circulation and advertising.”

And next to the article is a small blurb from the United Press International announcing the launch of the Washington Times, the paper that just saw its editor resign and three of its top executives fired.

Looks like maybe the way to save newspapers is a time machine.

Though Los Angeles may not always stick to conventions, the city’s paper takes the Thanksgiving cake with this Scroogelike announcement: according to Nikki Finke of the insider-LA-entertainment blog Deadline Hollywood, sources within the Los Angeles Times said on Tuesday the paper is cutting 40 staff positions, including two well-known film critics.

But, as is Finke’s custom, she backtracked on Wednesday, writing that members of the LA Times management asserted “the 40 number is too high,” though, according to Finke’s post, management did not deny there are layoffs in store. In her updated post, Finke also added she was “told there will be a big push LA Times-wide in coming months to turn staff writers into freelance writers.”

This isn’t the first time the Times has made a sweeping layoff announcement in the past year. Last January, the paper announced plans to eliminate 300 staff positions — including 70 in the newsroom — as part of a cost-cutting measure that also included the elimination of one of the paper’s daily sections.

The Times’ decidedly anti-holiday-spirit announcement adds to the recent Los Angeles news woes. Earlier this week, the Washington Post decided to close its U.S. bureaus, including its Los Angeles bureau.

Is anyone planning to cover news in the city of angels? If it weren’t for other papers like the New York Times, Los Angeles news could be as opaque as the city during rolling power blackouts.

Yet another newspaper is considering putting its content behind a pay wall — and this one seems serious. The Providence Journal announced today it may start charging for its web content as early as next March, limiting online access to the smallest state’s largest newspaper. A team of “internal senior managers” is already looking into possible pay models, according to the Thursday Journal article. Good thing the ProJo’s online articles are still free, or newspaper readers in the Ocean State would never know they were soon to lose their biggest source of news — the announcement was buried on the paper’s Web site.

The decision comes on the heels of a series of abysmal reports for the Rhode Island paper. During the third quarter, ad revenue dropped 33.1 percent, according to figures released by the ProJo’s parent company, Dallas-based A.H. Belo Corp. And last month, the Audit Bureau of Circulations twice-annual circulation report revealed the ProJo had recorded a steep 18.8-percent drop in daily circulation and a 17.3-percent drop in Sunday circulation for the six-month period starting last April.

The paper’s publisher, Howard Sutton, said the talks were preliminary, though he suggested daily subscribers would continue to receive free online access if the paper did implement a pay-wall structure. “We don’t want to diminish the breadth and depth of our reporting, so we want to ensure a reasonable cost structure to protect the franchise,” Sutton told the Journal on Wednesday.

But Sutton’s claim rings slightly false: last March, the ProJo slashed 100 staff positions, and, during the last few years, has limited its sports coverage.

The Journal did, however, manage to scrounge together enough funds earlier this year to hire a team of visual designers to redesign its print edition. It’s just too bad no one will see the paper’s cool new appearance: one of the reasons Sutton wants to start charging for online content is because he said his readers are turning away from the print edition to the paper’s free online articles.

Today’s front page of the New York Times featured a left column story about a new trend in holiday travel: Thanksgiving vacation is now a weeklong venture. Strapped for cash, travelers booked their flights early to avoid steep airline fees. But what the Times didn’t report is that apparently, the news has taken an extended vacation, too.

Of the six front-page articles in the national edition, only one provided a report on Tuesday’s happenings, a story about President Obama and his promise to “finish the job” in Afghanistan by sending in an additional 25,000 to 30,000 troops.

What else was on the page? Lots of trends.

“Soccer in Iraq: Another Field For Argument”
“From the Hospital Room to Bankruptcy Court”
“Seeking Deals, Holiday Fliers Get Early Start”
“Spare Change for Homeless? Cuomo Sees a Sham and Sues”
“In Reality Show to Drop Weight, Health Can Be Lost in the Frenzy”

Maybe there really was no news on Tuesday (the Los Angeles Times front page was similarly trendy, with articles about activists in N. Korea, the top U.S. intelligence officer in Afghanistan and an immigrant enclave in Minneapolis under FBI investigation). Or maybe the lack of Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving hard news reporting has something to do with the recent axing of 100 Times newsroom staff who write the stories.

Only days after the Washington Post announced plans to cut members of its web staff, the paper indicated today it also intends to shutter its New York, Chicago and Los Angeles bureaus.

It’s been a rough few months for the paper. In the third quarter, the Post reported it had increased its profit by 69 percent — largely as a result of buyouts and cost-cutting. Despite this upward swing, profit from the Post’s Web site fell 18 percent in the quarter, which may have contributed to the Nov. 20 decision to lay off web staff. Post spokesperson Kris Coratti told Politico on Friday:

“As part of the work we’re doing to turn around the business that supports our journalism, there were a small number of individual positions eliminated as a result of efficiencies we have found through our new structure and through new technology, and those have taken place both in print and online.”

Though the Post did not reveal its intention to close the three bureaus last Friday when it announced it was eliminating staff positions, the two decisions seem to be related — in an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press, Post management wrote:

To the Staff:

Today we have informed our news colleagues in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles that we are closing the offices in those cities, effective Dec. 31. The reporters in those bureaus are being offered new roles here in Washington. Regretfully, the three news aides, who have been dedicated colleagues and are friends of many here, will be let go.

At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it’s necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country’s politics, policies and government.

We will continue to cover events around the country as we have for decades, by sending reporters into the field. We have a strong tradition of bringing understanding and authority to our coverage of politics and issues that matter, wherever the stories take us. The evidence is visible daily in The Post: our deeply reported narrative series on the human consequences of the economic downturn; our insightful coverage of the healthcare debate, from the efficient hallways of the Mayo Clinic to the raucous townhalls of last August; even the ongoing coverage of the Ft. Hood shootings or the impending 2010 midterm campaigns.

Our commitment to national news of interest to our readers is undiminished, and we will maintain the level and caliber of coverage our readers expect.

Marcus Liz Raju

Closing its remaining U.S. bureaus may be more efficient for the Washington paper, but the latest casualties also leave a gaping hole for other papers to fill. That is, if they haven’t started already — The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal began printing editions in San Francisco earlier this fall, and the Times just rolled out its first Chicago edition Nov. 20 — the same day the Post began its layoffs.

The good news is the six WaPo correspondents in LA, NY and Chicago are being reassigned to Washington and are not facing layoffs yet. But, having axed member of its web staff (isn’t this the digital age of news?) and shuttered all its other U.S. bureaus (isn’t this the hyperlocal age of news?), we wonder when the Post will decide a bureau in its own city is unnecessary, too.

Appearances can be deceiving, and newspaper readers may be seeing red as previously optimistic numbers showing increasing newspaper circulation for some local dailies may not be reflecting the truth.

Though some local papers reported staggering increases in readership, these figures are inflated, according to a recent review by the Associated Press. In April, the Audit Bureau of Circulations changed the standards it used to define readership, deciding to include subscribers to electronic editions of the papers in its new figures. The new criterion allows newspapers selling print-edition-e-edition packages to count their subscribers twice. Sounds like the Internal Revenue Service’s new standard for income reporting on its Form 990, which stipulates double counting for deferred compensation. No wonder college presidents are getting so much flak. The ABC also reduced the threshold for paying subscribers — now, subscribers spending a penny for any type of edition are counted in the circulation figures.

Last month, the ABC released its latest data for newspaper circulation, reporting an abysmal 10.6-percent decline in readership over the previous April-September period. Of the 379 papers who submitted figures to the ABC, 59 reported they had at least 5,000 e-edition subscribers, according to the AP review.

The AP highlights local papers such as The Detroit News that have reduced their home delivery to three days a week and are offering e-editions instead. Other papers are inadvertently boosting their numbers by aggressively promoting e-editions at reduced fare, according to the AP article. The story also has a whole section on the Las Vegas Review-Journal, which posted a 6.6-percent circulation increase, mostly because the paper can now count all subscribers to their 50-cent e-edition in their readership numbers. Apparently, the 10.6-percent readership decline wasn’t depressing enough — the AP had to make sure everyone knew it could have been worse. We know you just experienced a rampant round of layoffs, but come on, AP, leave us some hope!

Despite the revelation, there is an upside to these new ABC standards: papers can now enthusiastically report increased circulation because no one is reading print.

The government bailouts have started. Last week, New Hampshire became the first state to grant a line of credit to one of its newspapers, the Claremont Eagle-Times, beating states like Wisconsin, who have proposed similar plans to save print. And in September, President Barack Obama told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Toledo Blade that he would “be happy” to look at possible legislation that would help the struggling industry. Could New Hampshire provide a microcosmic study of government bailouts?

New Hampshire’s Executive Council has generously allotted 75 percent of a $250,000 line of credit to the lucky, no-longer-independent paper. The decision, not surprisingly, has ignited debate — how can a paper stay objective if it’s receiving direct funding from the government they are supposed to be watching over?

This isn’t the first time New Hampshire newspaper readers have tasted some journalistic hope. In August, the Eagle-Times folded, only to be replaced immediately by another paper, the Compass. And then the Sample News Group, a Pennsylvania family-owned publishing company submitted a bid for the paper, rehiring 20 of the 62 laid-off paper employees in the process.

Despite the state support, the publisher, George “Scoop” Sample, said he and the paper’s other owners plans to head to the bank again soon to try to get rid of any government involvement in his paper. And he stressed that, “no one, not the state, not anyone, gets special treatment in our newsroom.”

Too bad. The paper’s reporters were really hoping for back rubs and pedicures now that the Eagle-Times has embraced total emasculation.

Who knew that student newspapers were in just as much trouble as the big guys? First it was the Daltonian, the Manhattan high school paper that was censored by the nation’s highest court of law, and now it’s a sleepy Connecticut town’s Jesuit college paper. The Mirror, Fairfield University’s “nationally recognized independent student newspaper,” according to the paper’s Web site, is facing their own First Amendment crisis.

On Oct. 1, the paper published a column about one-night stands. It was essentially a field guide for how to pull one off and look cool while doing it. Some tips to get to “pleasure town” in style include: 1) Avoid calling your “swan” by the wrong name, 2) Watch out for needy “stage-five clingers” and, lest the writer come off as too meat-headed, 3) “Don’t be a fool and wrap your tool.”

The problem is that the newspaper’s editorial decision irked the Catholic university’s administrators responsible for providing the “independent” paper with $30,000 a year. Apparently, calling women “hood rats” is offensive, and some have had the gall to complain! Fairfield administrators have called for the Mirror’s editors to appear before a student conduct board.

The Mirror has apologized for the column, and its editor-in-chief, Thomas Cleary, justified the paper’s decision to run the column, which he said he initially thought was “satirical enough” that people wouldn’t take it too seriously.

But there may be a silver lining — Cleary conceded, “I think we’ve realized how much of an effect the columns have on people on campus.” And with readership plummeting nationwide, that’s not such a bad thing.

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

That was Associate Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy delivering the majority opinion in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, a First Amendment case from 2002 that struck down certain broad stipulations of a child pornography law that prevented the publishing of a book advocating nudism. Kennedy, a Reagan appointee, is a noted supporter of free speech and has repeatedly supported individuals’ rights over attempts by the government to silence freedom of expression.

Tell that to the editors of the Daltonian, the student newspaper of the Dalton School in Manhattan. Kennedy paid the school a visit on Oct. 28, and the Daltonian naturally covered the speech. But Kennedy, who has defended the right to burn the flag, is apparently concerned that a bunch of high schoolers will tarnish his own image.

The associate justice insisted that he review the article before publication, and his staff submitted “a couple of minor tweaks” to his quotes, according to an A1 story in the New York Times. The editors of the Daltonian declined to comment to the Times — maybe because a scary man in dark robes told them not to?

Kennedy should have been more careful in his newspaper editing debut, but then again, ethics aren’t really an issue when you serve for life.