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David Weigel, the former Washington Post blogger who resigned after he “lashed out” to members of the listserv Journolist last month, will join NYU professor Jay Rosen in a live chat on Poynter today at 1 p.m.

The conversation, titled, “What’s the future of ‘objective’ journalism after David Weigel’s departure from the Post?” is particularly relevant given the recent firing of CNN Middle Eastern affairs senior editor Octavia Nasr for her poor Twitter judgement.

Sam Zell

In an interview on CNBC yesterday, Sam Zell did nothing to alleviate anxiety over the future of the print industry. The chairman and former CEO of the bankrupt Tribune Co. proposed that survival of the printed newspaper rests on the “elimination of home delivery and the replacement of it by PDF’s.”

The assertion seemed to be his own response to questions he indirectly posed during the interview about the direction of the newspaper industry. After making excuses for his company’s inability to emerge from bankruptcy — “All bankruptcy scenarios are difficult,” he said — Zell addressed the industry itself: “There’s a lot of questions because the severity of the downturn in the media business in the beginning of ’08 kind of changed the calculus and raises the whole question to any potential investor as to what’s the future, and how is the media and particularly the newspaper side of the business going to change in the future.”

Zell’s proposal revealed little hope for the industry, though this sense of resignation is hardly surprising considering the ongoing bankruptcy proceedings that have left his own newspapers (the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Hartford Courant and others) in shambles. And despite Zell’s depressing outlook, he did seem to offer an alternate delivery system: “The iPad is certainly the first real example of almost replicating a newspaper on an instrument,” he said.

Kind of like how his company “almost” emerged from bankruptcy last spring.

An article published on the Wall Street Journal’s website on Sunday (and mentioned in a Reuters report released late Sunday night) claims that Foursquare, a social networking site that allows users to share their location, is about to receive funding that will allow it to expand. According to the article, the investment deal is led by the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and could be formally announced this week.

The social networking service lets users “check in” to various venues including restaurants and other businesses in cities worldwide, providing a way to alert friends about their whereabouts. The site is frequently used in conjunction with other networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and gives users the opportunity to earn badges and prestigious titles (i.e. “Mayor”) based on the number of times they frequent establishments.

Last March, Foursquare introduced an analytical feature that allowed businesses to gain access to information about their customers. And according to a February New York Times article, the founders of the networking site are also hoping to haul in profits that could (should) result from sharing information with businesses that use the service. (N.B. the Times is one of those businesses).

But the details of this “funding” seem to be shrouded in mist: not only were the specifics of the deal kept secret, but the WSJ article about the deal itself requires interested readers to subscribe for further viewing.

Gone are the days when the government used pamphlets, newspapers, radio, and television to communicate with its constituents. At least, according to the British government. Last week, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Facebook, was invited to advise the UK government on more effective communication.

The decision to pick Zuckerberg’s brain for communication is perhaps the Coalition Government’s acknowledgment that social networking sites — Facebook, Twitter et al. — are the most successful media for disseminating information and maintaining support. Given Zuckerberg’s recent prediction that his site would reach one billion users in the next few years — “it is almost a guarantee that it will happen,” he told the Guardian last week — the UK government seems to be on the right track.

And with signs that UK papers may be intending to put up paywalls (The Times is asking its readers to register an account, indicating possible plans to charge readers for access to content in the future), networking sites look like a good alternative to traditional media communication. At least these networking sites are still free, even if they have always required users to register accounts.

Last September, President Obama told the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that he was a “big newspaper junkie” and that he would consider any Congressional bill that would aid the ailing industry. But magazines, the industry’s glossier, more time-delayed kin, got no such love — at least, not then. And after an article in Rolling Stone managed to destroy Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, magazines may never hope to receive governmental love.

According to an article in the Washington Post, officials in the McChrystal camp have accused Michael Hastings, the reporter behind the Rolling Stone article, of publishing off-the-record conversations. Though McChrystal supporters, many of whom refused to speak on the record (admittedly, pretty understandable now), are claiming that the Rolling Stone reporter did not abide by the “ground rules” set forth by the McChrystal contingency, no one has denied actually making any of the off-color remarks. Including McChrsytal. It was only at the end of the week that sources began complaining — not about the (disparaging) content, but about the (drunken) context. And as the magazine’s executive editor Eric Bates told the Post: “None of those objections were raised during the critical few days in which this became a national issue.”

Regardless of whether journalism ethics were violated, Rolling Stone reinvigorated political reporting by exposing the U.S. military and forcing McChrystal to resign in disgrace. (For “Lady Gaga Tells All,” see page 37).

According to an internal memo, there will be no salary freezes at Tribune Co. in 2010. In the letter, Tribune’s CEO and COO wrote  that the the company had generated nearly $500 million in operating cash flow in 2009, with total earnings reaching more than $600 million.

As a result, the company will not be forced to implement any sort of salary freeze, it says. But, lest employees get too excited, the letter also says this:

This does not mean that everyone will get an increase in compensation — many won’t. The current condition of the economy and our industry do not support across-the-board cost-of-living increases.

We’re encouraging our local managers to review the work of their employees, provide consistent feedback, and to highlight and reward outstanding performance. Some employees may get an increase in salary, others may be eligible for a discretionary or spot bonus, and still others may receive an increase in their target bonus. But, increases in compensation will be based on merit.

At a time when many journalists are living off their netbooks, it’s hard to complain when there is any kind of salary available. And maybe there will even be some competition in the newsroom for who can file the most stories. Or who can be coziest with these local managers.

Last week, Apple unveiled the iPad, sparking talks that the device could be the answer for – or the death of – old media. But it looks like the New York Times might be thinking of other ways to get its content on small screens.

The Times is offering $100 off a Samsung Go netbook with a one-year subscription to the Times Reader 2.0, a “next-generation news reader.”

Given the extreme plug Apple gave the Times at the iPad launch (see the live  blog update posted at 1:50 p.m.), the Samsung promotion seems slightly nefarious.

Or maybe it’s part of the Times’ plan to stay cozy with Apple. The Reader only provides the last seven days of Times news whereas the iPad – at least according to reports that Apple CEO Steve Jobs is in talks with the Times to offer a new way to stream content to the iPad’s e-reader – would provide live, fluid (arguably more appealing) news. Bonus: the Reader  program doesn’t require internet access.

But why the Times would want to partner with a netbook when it already has obvious support from the iPad is a mystery. Though not as much a mystery as why anyone would want to read week-old stagnant pages of a newspaper on a  screen that’s as lilliputian as the keyboard attached to it.

Editor & Publisher
Hopi Tutuveni (Ariz.)
Kirkus Reviews
Tri-County News (Junction City, Ore.)
West Lane News (Veneta, Ore.)

Last week, the 320-page McSweeney’s Panorama hit the streets, bookstores and hipstery apartments in San Francisco to much fanfare among newsy folk and literary types. The one-time-only product sold out its initial run immediately, which seems to augur well for the newspaper industry — until you do the math:

The Panorama‘s 23,000 issues cost just under $200,000 to print, including $80,000 for editorial expenses. (Yes, printing costs are exorbitant.) Subtract about $40,000 to pay the 218 contributors a below-market price for their work, lop off another $15,000 for illustrations, and you’re left with maybe $25,000 to feed, clothe and house seven full-time staffers for nine months.

Eggers pinky-sweared his project would demonstrate that “if you rework the newspaper model a bit, it can not only survive, but actually thrive.” But if this is the 360-degree view of print journalism afforded by the Panorama, the skies sure look cloudy.

It’s been a rough year for the economy and an even rougher year for Philadelphia papers. The most recent unemployment rates hover around 10 percent, and Philadelphia Newspapers, the group that owns the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News, filed for bankruptcy in February, leading to a string of legal battles that most recently resulted in a trip to the U.S. Court of Appeals. But in one of the most unlikely places during one of the most unlikely times, something strange happened. On Tuesday, people were reading a new newspaper on the streets of this nearly newspaper-less city.

The 16-page One Step Away, produced entirely by homeless residents, launched yesterday and sells for $1, with 25 cents going towards covering printing costs. The rest goes directly to the vendors, who are from two Philadelphia homeless shelters.

Though the launch seems to buck almost every trend, it also sheds light on an interesting sector of the newspaper industry: one that is doing well. Homeless papers nationwide (it’s unclear, but officials quoted in the AP article about the launch estimate there are “more than two dozen street newspapers in cities across North America), are thriving. Street Sense, a homeless paper in Washington, D.C., reported record circulation of over 30,000 issues per month this year and an 18-percent increase in donations. And in Nashville, the Contributor printed a record 7,000 issues in November. Two years ago, the Contributor was selling 1,000 copies per month (also for $1).

This upward swing in readership could be a result of the tepid financial climate and its effect on homelessness — according to the 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment Report released last July, there were about 700,000 people living on the streets at any point during the year. But maybe it shouldn’t take losing a home to realize that newspapers can still make a community.

Last March, the Providence Journal laid off 74 staff members to meet cost-cutting demands from its Dallas-based parent company, A.H Belo Corp. This was the fourth round of workforce cutbacks in six months to hit Rhode Island’s largest newspaper — 22 staff members took voluntary buyouts the previous September, 31 employees were laid off in October and 20 part-timers and supervisors were laid off in December.

At the time, Howard Sutton, president, chairman, publisher and CEO of the Journal Co. told his paper, “It’s always difficult to reduce your staffing levels through [layoffs], but it’s necessary to ensure the future of the franchise. We remain committed to our mission of being the premier news and information provider for the state of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts.”

On Monday night, LedeObserver went to the Journal newsroom and found a lifeless collection of empty desks, dark computer screens and a lone Web producer.

This, the producer said, is what happens when 12 percent of a newspaper’s staff is given the pink slip, the main server is outsourced to another state and the printing press loses one third of its own employees to cutbacks:

The paper goes to bed between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. because the few advertisers who still invest in the paper want it distributed by a certain time the next morning to maximize the advertisements’ effects. Any news occurring after 11 p.m. goes online-only and many of the late sports games never make it into the print edition of the paper (during this year’s baseball playoffs, this angered the Red Sox fans who wanted to read about their team in the Journal — though with a reported 18.8-percent drop in circulation for the newspaper in the last six-month period, how many fans this actually angered is unclear). And when the back end of the Web site acts up, which the producer said it does frequently, he must call the Dallas company that operates the server before he is redirected to an office in Colorado whose staff members usually don’t know how to help. There is no security officer at the front desk. And no elevator operator.

But the Web producer said it isn’t all bad news. The Journal recently hired someone who writes new code for the Web site and three new copy editors because the six it had before wasn’t enough to meet the 11 p.m. filing deadline. And even if it’s always two-thirds empty and palpably Eeyorish, the newsroom can still get hectic, he said.

Even so, it wasn’t hard to hear the death rattle, especially when the only other noise was the sound of the sports reporters playing catch.