Richard Perez-Pena checks in with the once-high flying circ gainer New York Post. The tabloid trades money for volume as a price hike has affected its numbers.  Some at the NYP are wondering if Rupe's attention has turned fully to the WSJ and are nervous about the Journal's new metro desk. (NYT)

A new paper is born in Portugal, remarkably. (NYT)

When News Corp. takes the plunge and decides to put its newspapers' content behind a paywall, it will also pull its content from Google. (Media Week UK, not our sister)

David Brauer is amazed that Sunday's St. Paul Pioneer Press contains not one, but two front page banner ads-- a first he thinks for the industry. Good for them. Has anyone else out there done this?  (Braublog @ MinnPost)

NYT Chief Marketing Officer Denise Warren tells David Kaplan "signs that things are looking up." (Paid Content)

Jen:

However, investors nicked newspaper stocks. Every company Fitz & Jen covers in this series closed down with the exception of Media General (NYSE: MEG). It gained 36 cents (+3.9%) closing at $9.38.

Most stocks were down only a tad. Lee Enterprises was the day's biggest percentage loser with shares (NYSE: LEE) trading down 5.6% (or 19 cents) to $3.16.

The New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) was off 9 cents or (-1%) closing at $8.17. Its  peer Gannett (NYSE: GCI) was off about the same in terms of percentages, down 16 cents to $10.52.

J.P. Morgan doesn't really want to own these companies -- it's not like they relish the chance to roll up its sleeves and turnaround a troubled asset. According to the WSJ: "J.P. Morgan executives say they intended to hold their ownership positions, but instead became reluctant investors when companies were unable to repay debts."

J.P. Morgan and its peers are off the hook after five years. Banks are only allowed to hold stakes -- "debts previously contracted" -- for that amount of time  and then must sell them.

Our latest podcast is up and we are pleased to present our special and timely guest Geoff Dougherty. Dougherty is the founder of the now defunct Chi Town Daily News -- an online news start-up in Chicago that took on a non-profit structure for its business model.

Dougherty explains the trials and challenges of operating as non-profit. He's not deterred though and has started a new venture that covers Chicago politics. This time around the site is for-profit and, drum roll please ... includes print. The Chicago Current launches on Nov. 9.

Jen:

Brill emphasized that the changes would be so slight that consumers will barely notice. It's a way to appease publishers who are still skittish about putting a price tag on any content.They are loath to scare off readers turned off by having to pay. The gentle pay system is also a way not shock readers who might flee once they have to pony up.

It's a real fear. But I'm not sure that gingerly installing some kind of pay method to the point where consumers won't even notice is not going to help things. Isn't the idea to get revenue? And enough revenue to make all this worth while?

Myers wrote that Journalism Online is pitching a variety of different methods to reap revenue though some of the suggestions are troubling including charging for content --my guess is time sensitive content -- and then setting it free later. This will only train readers to game the system or go elsewhere for breaking news.

As I've said numerous times, I don't think charging consumers for online content is going to be the answer. Cut your losses newspapers. Concentrate on what's ahead like mobile apps and digital readers. Start charging for that. And I should add, Journalism Online's system can manage subscriptions across multiple channels.

The Doctor is in with 9 questions to ponder this Friday. (Content Bridges)

A group of newspapers in Illinois is asking a county circuit judge to reconsider his decision to seal search warrants in a grisly family murder. (The State Journal-Register)

Newspaper carriers in North Hampton, Mass., rally together to protest The Daily Hampshire Gazette owner's hiring of an outside distribution company. (News22 WWLP.com)

Former Editor of the Buenos Aires Herald in Argentina Robert Cox was honored by the Buenos Aires Legislature for his actions reporting on the "desaparecidos" -- the disappeared -- in the 1970s. Said Buenos Aires legislator Sergio Abreyaya: "The Herald was the only newspaper to speak out against the disappearances, and Cox's courageous defense of human rights and democracy saved many lives." (The Post and Courier)

Frat boys at the University of Arizona stole 10,000 campus newspapers to prevent an item coming to light about a woman who was allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted. (Washington City Paper)

McSweeney's presents The San Francisco Panorama. It's a broadsheet, you see.

The AP is here to help you build mobile apps. (Paid Content)

Jen:

Today, investors sent the market and the Dow up a hair past 10,000, on news that fewer workers filed jobless insurance claims and the ones that are still working are toiling harder for less. In business parlance: non-farm productivity rose. O yeah, and something about Cisco.

Anyway, newspaper stocks caught the cheer with everyone trading up. The biggest percentage gainer at 8.6% was Media General (NYSE:MEG) which topped out at $9.02 up 72 cents. Next up in line: A.H. Belo (NYSE: AHC). The street sent shares northward by 40 cents (+8.1%) to $5.32.

Investors found reason to love E.W. Scripps even though the company reported that newspaper ad revenue was down considerably in Q3 today. But hey, no debt! That's something to applaud. Shares in company trading under the NYSE ticker symbol SSP rose 49 cents (+7.7%) to $6.80.

Jen

Online advertising fell by 20% which is slightly better than in the second quarter. As usual, the drop is attributable to the fact that about half of our online advertising is tied to print classified sales. Online advertising that is independent of classified up sells, what we call pure play advertising, continued to grow impressively rising 38% during the quarter and it’s up 29% year-to-date.

Craig Huber of Access 342 asked Mark Contreras about the potential of charging for access to newspapers. Here's what Contreras said during the Q&A portion during today's earnings call:

We’re talking about that constantly. We have had some experiences both in Knoxville, as well as Albuquerque with that question and today our point of view would be that it is not immediately clear to us that that is a path to increasing our reach in our markets and significantly increasing our revenue. We just haven’t seen consumer behavior act that way. We are experimenting. We have one of our major papers on the Kindle platform; we are going to expand that to seven more by the end of the year. So, we are going to keep our toes in many, many waters to make sure that we’re knee deep in the discussion and we’re able to take some markets and experiment, but I don’t see that today as a panacea.

A Canadian court granted the company's request to increase its DIP (debtor-in-possession) financing, something that is not sitting well with some of Abitibi's creditors.

Reports Dead Tree:

Ernst & Young Inc., the court-appointed monitor, recommended approval of the DIP financing because it believes AbitibiBowater will remain under bankruptcy protection until at least late next summer. The accounting firm told the court that AbitibiBowater, North America's largest newsprint maker, projects negative cash flow of $70 million next year.

Jen:

If anyone has been paying attention to AOL lately, the online site has been ramping up its original content, hiring an army of reporters to cover vertical subjects. Also: Like newspapers, AOL is considered a dinosaur too slow to grasp changes within the tech realm. It's compelling then to compare AOL and newspapers to see how they react to market transitions.

Here is part of what Sims wrote to whet your appetite:

A Tale of Two Strategies - AOL vs. Newspapers

Tom Peters said a great thing at a seminar I attended a couple weeks ago. “The problem is never the problem.  The response to the problem invariably ends up being the real problem.”

This puts me in mind of the state of the media industry.  In a week when Newsday announced it will begin charging for content, the managing editor of the WSJ declared that Google encourages digital disloyalty, and Bill Keller told his digital staff that learning the web side of the business was like taking a graduate level course without the undergraduate prerequisites, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong revealed that his staff of journalists has grown from 500 to 3,000 in the past 6 months.Much has been said about the newspaper industry’s financial challenges. They are not alone, as AOL has been experiencing many of the same difficulties. PC World reports that in the first quarter, AOL’s advertising revenue fell 20%, overall revenue fell 23% and operating income fell 47%.

It seems however, that AOL is going to have a very different response to those difficulties.

Let’s compare.

Check out the entire post, it's well worth the read.

Zachary Seward button holes Google Chief Eric Schmidt who says if newspapers and other content providers decide to start charging, Google is there, ready and waiting with its Checkout tool. (Nieman J Lab via Romenesko)

The latest Philadelphia Newspapers back and forth between lenders and management. (Philly Inky)

Peter Kafka on News Corp.'s earnings call: Murdoch is still sour on the Kindle, The Wall Street Journal is profitable. Barely. (All Things D)

Speaking of the WSJ, here is the Bay Area edition that debuted today. (via LA Observed)

The merry pranksters behind @FakeAPStylebook. (MediaShift)

Jen:

That is why I feel compelled to point you to Jeff Jarvis latest musings  about the future of news (yes, I'm pointing you to Jarvis!)  He writes about how entrepreneurs are the future of journalism. But also how he is rightly teaching students and other whipper snappers not only how to blog but also sell ads. Because when it comes right down to it, a news sites needs to have a steady and constant stream of revenue to survive. Points worth noting made by Jarvis (via Seeking Alpha):

This is why I wish that the capital that has gone into not-for-profit news ventures in cities across the country had gone instead into creating for-profit enterprises; so we can prove the market, so we can learn how to make news sustainable. ...

When journalists leave those towers [traditional media], their companies should invest in their futures as entrepreneurs: Set them up with blogs, sell their ads, promote them, and continue to reap the value of their experience and brands (without the cost). The Washington Post should fund the next Politico in town, not see its talent walk out the door to start it elsewhere.

We're going to let this headline say it all: Torstar 3Q Rev Falls 7% on Newspapers, Digital Decline. (WSJ)

Warren Buffett hits the "Squawk Box," says newspapers have a terrible future to look forward to. (NewsBusters)

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel proposes a new copyright law just for "old school news organizations." (Techdirt)

Newspapers are running out of rope. Need. Revenue. Soon. (WSJ)

Meet the latest member of the NYT digital team -- and she's a woman! (NYO)

Nevertheless, there was some good news for employees in the form of an enhanced 401(k) plan with matching corporate contributions -- and when was the last time a newspaper chain announced that rather than the suspension of matches? And it’s a nice show of corporate responsibility to adopt the auto-enrollment and auto-escalation of employee contributions for staffers so dim they are putting aside in less than 3% of their wages. (If Tribune is looking for a standard for the next round of layoffs, it might want to start with that lot.)

Tribune was one of the few newspaper companies with an overfunded pension plan, at least according to its last SEC annual report at the end of 2007. But keeping in line with  most every company in or out of the industry, the pension plan will be frozen with its next allocation in early 2010. Romo’s got the entire memo here.