gary scott

Four today

2009-11-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

1. The future's so bright, I don't need to get paid: Arianna Huffington spoke to the students at Ithaca College and told them she is absolutely positively optimistic and upbeat about the future of journalism and is, in fact, saving it. Ithacan Online

2. Time to cut: Time magazine will layoff around 12 editorial employees as part of Time Inc.'s mandate to cut 500 jobs company wide. Fortune magazine looks to be hit hardest, with 24 newsroom layoffs out of a staff of about 80. New York Post

3. Google and the media: Nieman's Zachary Seward talked to Google CEO Eric Schmitt about his love for newspapers, his definition of blog, and the coming Google Wave. Nieman Journalism Lab

4. Obama's brain: Warren Olney will interview Obama's campaign architect David Plouffe about his new book, "The Audacity to Win," and Tuesday's election results on today's "To The Point." Listen live at 12:45 p.m. Pacific here or download is later here.

Cocktails with Hilburn

2009-11-04T18:37:00.000-08:00

Robert Hilburn will be the Los Angeles Press Club's guest on Thursday, Nov. 12. Hilburn will speak about his long history with the Los Angeles Times and his new book, "Corn Flakes With John Lennon," with Times entertainment writer Geoff Boucher. The event gets underway at 7 p.m. at the Steve Allen Theater in Hollywood, 4773 Hollywood Blvd. Tickets are $15; Press Club members get in free.

"It's not your father's LA Times"

2009-11-04T15:21:00.000-08:00

Russ Stanton stopped by USC a couple of weeks ago and talked to a graduate journalism class about what's it like being editor of the Los Angeles Times. "It's like flying a 747 with three engines out," he said.

According to a student story about the visit, Stanton told the class that after he became editor he put Times journalists through an Internet boot camp and he touted the Top of the Ticket blog, the Mapping LA project and Brand X as successful innovations under his watch.

"It's not your father's LA Times," he told the students.

Stanton also answered a question about how he dealt with staff morale in the wake of numerous layoffs and buyouts. From the student report:

Executive in Residence and former Washington Editor for McClatchy Newspapers David Westphal asked how Stanton is keeping his employees' morale high despite a large number of layoffs. Stanton admitted it has been difficult, but that he makes an effort to go to lunch with someone from the staff every day in addition to sending daily notes to writers after well-reported stories. He also said he highlights the paper's strengths: foreign, entertainment and sport coverage.

"As we've been forced to get smaller, I've tried to reinforce the reasons why I love working there," he said.

Westphal wrote his own account of the visit, noting that Stanton sees the Guardian as a good model for how to handle online news and has put his faith in the e-reader to save the modern newspaper business.

Coincidentally, the LA Times has decided to partner with USC on a series of polls in the run-up to the next year's midterm elections, LA Observed reports. The Times killed its in-house polling unit last year.

Leader, News-Press get redesigned

2009-11-04T14:48:00.000-08:00

The three papers in the Times Community News chain are getting face lifts this week. The newly designed Glendale News-Press was unveiled Tuesday and the remade Burbank Leader came out today. The redesigned La Cañada Valley Sun gets it debut tomorrow.

Editor Dan Evans says readers have responded favorably to the changes. He had a column Sunday that laid out the highlights of the new layouts. An online poll ran with the column - as of this posting, 35 people said they liked the redesign, 12 people said they didn't, and 25 readers said they hadn't noticed.

Hello walls

2009-11-03T15:42:00.000-08:00

For a while now Dean Singleton has been threatening to put up pay walls at some or all of his newspapers. Today, Editor and Publisher reports that Singleton's MediaNews Group will test out a pay-for-content model on the websites of the Enterprise-Record in Chico, California and the York Daily Record in York, Pennsylvania:

"We wanted to get sites that were not metro sites for the same reason that you don't open on Broadway," said Howard Saltz, vice president for content development. "But not a site that has Web traffic so small that the change would not affect anything."

So when do they get to Broadway?

Saltz said more sites, including MediaNews Group's larger papers such as The Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News, would likely add a pay wall approach if the York and Chico efforts prove successful: "We are going to be rolling out for the next two years."

The walls will go up sometime early next year. The Singleton plan calls for putting some content behind a pay wall - maybe news features, sports and some reader-generated content - and keeping the breaking news free.

Given that most of his staffs are stretched thin, it will be interesting to see whether the pay walls lead to new hires for money-making beats.

Journalism worth fighting for

2009-11-03T10:25:00.000-08:00

A veteran editor at the Washington Post popped one his staffers in the cheek after the staffer allegedly called him a "cocksucker." The disagreement centered on an error-riddled "charticle" about "famous incidents in which key actors in history have unwittingly coughed up sensitive information to the wrong people."

Perhaps it was the very idea that words like "charticles" had entered into the vocabulary of the modern newsroom, which once prided itself on snuffing out silly jargon. Or maybe this is a case of an old dog pissed off at the rising influence, and snark, of the young pups - after all, the veteran editor, Henry Allen, is a short timer, having agreed to take a buyout. And the punched staffer, Manuel Roig-Franzia, seemed intent on poking and prodding Allen before he left, having called him a "dick" and having yanked a page from the editor's notebook, according to a detailed account of the precipitating events in the Washington City Paper.

Or maybe Allen was simply exasperated that someone would send him a story with so many errors in this late hour of his career.

Whatever it was, Post columnist Gene Weingarten is just happy to know there's enough passion left in the newsroom that someone would be willing to throw a punch.

Going big in Texas

2009-11-03T10:03:00.000-08:00

The nonprofit Texas Tribune launched today. Aggregater, blogger, investigator, data miner, pollster, bloviater - the site promises to include all the best online journalism has to offer and with a defined mission to promote civic engagement.

From the editor, Evan Smith:

In true twenty-first-century fashion, we're approaching the task of storytelling across multiple platforms: text, audio, video, blogs, databases, mobile, social. We're treating you, the reader or viewer or listener or user, as if you're the customer, and we're busily puzzling through how best to meet your various demands. Our goal is to maximize your ability to personalize your experience; as we move to day five and day ten and day thirty, we'll be adding new and innovative ways to do just that.

The top story on the site is about the use of physical restraint to control or discipline disabled students. There are also several stories about state politics and the nasty race for governor.

Closing time

2009-11-02T13:55:00.000-08:00

Freedom Communications has decided to close the East Valley Tribune in Mesa, Arizona after failing to find a buyer. The newspaper employs about 140 people and had already trimmed staff and a reduced its printing schedule to try to trim costs.

The Tribune won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting this year.

Freedom, which is the parent company of the Orange County Register, filed for bankruptcy in August.

(found via LA Biz Observed)

Union-Tribune gets facelift

2009-11-02T13:28:00.001-08:00

The San Diego Union-Tribune today unveiled its newly redesigned website. The front page is more colorful and relies on large photos and minimal text to draw readers to the day's top stories. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the link to the paper's story about the redesign to work.

It's hip to quit

2009-10-31T15:54:00.000-07:00

First, California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom dropped out. Then Afghan presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah made it known he wasn't going to run in a runoff. Now, with fewer than three days to go before Election Day, Republican congressional candidate Dede Scozzafava has quit her campaign for office.

No charges in May Day rally

2009-10-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office today said no charges will be filed against the police officers who roughed up a crowd of protesters and journalists at a 2007 May Day rally. LAT

Four in the morning

2009-10-30T09:58:00.000-07:00

1. Caught on tape: A spokesman for Attorney General Jerry Brown's office admits to surreptitiously taping conversation with reporters when questioned by the San Francisco Chronicle. Taping a phone conversation without informing the other party is illegal in California. Now the secret recordings the AG's office made could become evidence of a crime. Chronicle

2. Pep talk: After subjecting its papers to severe layoffs, Gannett company comes back with mission statement aimed at getting that old newsroom swagger back. The statement itself is pretty straightforward stuff for shrinking papers - emphasize local watchdog reporting, use online to break stories, try to get young people to read, be helpful to readers, etc. Editor and Publisher

3. Citizen shield law: The Senate version of the reporters' shield law would protect both professional and citizen journalists; the House version would cover only for the pros. AP

4. Layoff Time: Time Inc. plans to layoff or buyout about 540 employees and the news department - Time, Fortune, Money and Sports Ilustrated magazines - is expected to take the hardest hit. NY Post

Two California Congresswomen face ethics probe

2009-10-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

A House committee has recommended an investigation of the alleged ethics violations of Reps. Maxine Waters and Laura Richardson, both Democrats from California.

From Politico:

Waters intervened with the Treasury Department last year on behalf of a minority owned bank, OneUnited, in which her husband owned stock. He also served on its board.

Richardson’s case revolves around her Sacramento home, which she purchased in 2006 but lost to foreclosure. The home was sold to a third party but later reacquired by Richardson. [The Office of Congressional Ethics] looked into the foreclosure issue and whether neighbors who cleaned up Richardson’s yard made an improper gift to the congresswoman by mowing the lawn and gardening.

(found via LA Observed)

Adversarial advertorial

2009-10-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

The Torrance Daily Breeze ran an unusual advertisement on Sunday.

A local condo association bought five pages in the middle of the main news section to deliver a long screed about a bitter power struggle for control of its board.

But that's not what made this ad unusual. It's the fact that the ad singles out for criticism the Breeze reporter who covered the story. The ad's author, Cyd Balque, president of the Scottsdale Townhouses Association, makes repeated references to the reporter, Gene Maddaus. She characterizes his work as sensationalistic and biased.

It is not unusual for someone in the middle of a public controversy to be unhappy with the coverage. It is unusual for a publisher to sell that person an expensive platform ($10,000? $15,000?) to attack the reporter. After all, Balque could have written a letter to the editor. And if the stories were incorrect in some way the paper would have run a correction. On the contrary, the editors ran an editor's note in Sunday's paper saying they stood behind the coverage.

Should the other side in the condo dispute get five pages to vent their concerns? Should other reporters worry about retribution if they take on special interests with deep pockets? What about editorial independence?

Since Maddaus is a former colleague, I'll let others decide how crazy this is. I did not speak to him about the ad because A. this isn't about him and B. I don't want to cause him any more grief.

Quieting the chatterers of doom

2009-10-29T12:31:00.000-07:00

A lot of social media advocates have already shown up for the newspaper industry's wake, and the latest circulation numbers gave them another reason to cheer/mourn. But the industry has yet to die. Except for a relatively few newspapers in troubled markets, papers continue to pull in revenues that dwarf those of even popular online news sites.

That's not to say newspapers aren't in trouble, or that revenues aren't shrinking, or that shrunken revenues haven't left newsrooms stretched too thin, crushing the morale of reporters still on the job. But, to paraphrase Dan Gross of Slate, the grave dancers need to chill the f#@k out:

So in the past six months, according to ABC, the New York Times' daily circulation fell 7.3 percent, while Sunday circulation was down 2.7 percent. Horreur! And yet, the New York Times Co. reported that in the third quarter, "circulation revenues rose 6.7 percent, mainly because of higher subscription and newsstand prices at The New York Times and The Boston Globe." In the quarter, circulation revenues were larger than advertising revenues for the first time—$175.25 million, compared with $164.5 million.
By the way, you can still make money publishing newspapers—even in a period when advertising has plummeted. Check out Gannett's third-quarter earnings report. Its newspapers pulled in more than $100 million of operating income on revenues of $1.04 billion. In the first three quarters of 2009, advertising revenues were off 31.6 percent, but circulation revenues were off less than 5 percent, even though many of Gannett's flagship papers lost subscribers.

In the last year, Gannet bled its newsrooms of journalists - not a healthy long term strategy. The New York Times announced another round of buyouts in hopes of trimming 100 newsroom jobs. Clearly this isn't a growth strategy. But the fact that an economic meltdown, a massive technology change and a multitude of self-inflicted wounds have yet to destroy newspapers is something to consider. Again from Gross:

This is the new emerging model—cutting costs, raising prices. It may still fail in the end. But we shouldn't act as if the online-only crowd has it all figured out. Every month, several million Americans pay to have newspapers and magazines delivered to their homes—a trick most online publications have yet to pull off. In fact, in some regards, print-online hybrids like newspapers and magazines have outperformed online-only publications. The Web operations of the New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal aren't exactly slouches when it comes to selling online ads. And as poorly as the stock of the New York Times has performed over the past decade, most people would have preferred owning it to the stock of Salon.com, or TheStreet.com.

Crazy, mixed up world

2009-10-29T12:10:00.001-07:00

The downturn in newspapers has been so prolonged and pervasive that Dean Singleton, once derided as "Lean Dean" for his gut-and-consolidate strategy, has become spirit raiser.

From a story that ran yesterday CJR:

And the mood of the writers rose—briefly, at least—when Dean Singleton, whose MediaNews Group owns both The Salt Lake Tribune and The Denver Post, recounted the conclusions that his top executives reached following a three-day planning session at his Colorado ranch: Instead of continuing to provide free of charge all the contents of its newspapers on their Web sites, the group’s papers would provide breaking news online for free, but reserve many of the newspapers’ in-depth and analytical stories for paid subscribers. In three to five years, he predicted, the newspaper business will be a combination of “print, online, wireless mobile and niche products.” The business “will be better than it is today, although not as good as it was yesterday.”

I think many reporters at Singleton papers would welcome such a plan, as long as it meant investing in newsrooms so that they could produce sufficient in-depth and analytical stories to justify the charge.

Local papers see circulations drop

2009-10-26T22:16:00.000-07:00

Newspapers across Southern California saw substantial drops in daily circulation over the last six months, according to the most recent Audit Bureau of Circulations report.

The region's largest paper, the Los Angeles Times, lost 11.1 percent of its weekday circulation between April and September. The paper now sells an average of 657,467 papers a day during the week.

Dean Singleton's LANG papers lost circulation as well, the Times reports. Circulation at the flagship Daily News in Woodland Hills plunged 26% to 95,938. The paper has had several rounds of buyouts and layoffs and, as a result, has shifted focus away from Los Angeles to concentrate on cities in the San Fernando Valley.

The Pasadena Star-News fell 5.3 percent to 24,362. The Long Beach Press-Telegram dropped 8.2% to 71,411 and the Daily Breeze in Torrance 2.7%, giving it a circulation of 61,925*.

Singleton's Inland Empire papers - also part of LANG - experienced similar drops, the Press-Enterprise reports. Weekday circulation at the San Bernardino Sun and the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin dropped 9.4 percent and 5.5 percent, respectively. The Sun now sells an average of 47,015 papers a day during the week and the Bulletin averages 48,014. The Sun lost 6.4 percent of its Sunday circulation and the Bulletin lost 2.9 percent.

The Belo-owned Riverside Press-Enterprise experienced the biggest decline in the Inland Empire, with circulation falling 24.3 percent on weekdays for an average of 113,182 copies sold. Sunday circulation was down 23.3 percent. Contributing to the losses were several rounds of staff cuts in the last year and the paper's decision to end delivery services in parts of San Bernardino County.

Out east, weekday circulation at the Desert Sun in Palm Springs decreased 11.6 percent to 36,207 papers. The Gannett-owned paper cut staff last year and instituted furloughs this year.

The Orange County Register's weekday circulation slipped 10.1 percent to 212,293; the Register's parent company, Freedom Communications, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month.

The San Diego Union-Tribune, which suffered major staff cuts shortly after it was bought by Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity, dropped 10% to 242,705.

Nationally, newspapers lost an average of 10.6 percent of their circulation, according to ABC.

*I have yet to come across circulation numbers for the Whittier Daily News and San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

(The original post was updated with additional information.)

Falling, falling

2009-10-26T19:22:00.000-07:00

If you pay attention to such things, no doubt you've seen the ugly numbers for national newspaper circulation. Editor and Publisher calculated an average drop of 10.6 percent for the six-month period ending in September.

From E&P:

The New York Times is down 7.2% to 927,851. Sunday fell 2.6% to 1,400,302.

The Los Angeles Times reported its daily circ is off 11% to 657,467 and 6.7% on Sunday to 983,702.

Daily circ at The Washington Post fell 6.4% to 582,844 while Sunday was down 5% to 822,208.

Daily circ at the Chicago Tribune decreased 9.7% to 465,892. Sunday was down 7.1% to 803,220.

The San Francisco Chronicle lost more than a quarter of its daily circ, down 25.8% to 251,782. Sunday was off more than 22% to 306,705.

Daily at The Star-Ledger in Newark, N.J., dropped 22.2% to 246,006 and 18.5% on Sunday to 371,060.

The Boston Globe's daily circ decreased 18.4% to 264,105. Sunday lost 16.9% to 418,529.

American's newspaper, USA Today, fell 17 percent, putting it below the Wall Street Journal, which saw a light uptick of .6 percent.

Alan Mutter at Reflections of a Newsosaur provides some context:

Following an average drop of 10.6% in the last six months, daily newspaper circulation has fallen to a pre-World War II low of an estimated 39.1 million, according to an analysis of industry data released today.
The first double-digit circulation decline in history means only 12.9% of the U.S. population buys a daily newspaper.

Four in the evening

2009-10-26T19:21:00.000-07:00

1. A familiar tune: Journalism students at the Medill Innocence Project raise serious doubts about a murder conviction and now the county's new prosecutor wants to raise doubts about the journalism students' methods. Meantime, the guy who was convicted remains in prison. NYT

2. Secret signings: The U.S. Supreme Court decides that, at least for now, signatures in favor of ballot measures should be kept private. LAT

3. The bully we've been waiting for: Ron Kaye applauds L.A. City Attorney Carmen Trutanich for his shaking his fist at City Hall. Ron Kaye L.A.

4. The membership model: Talking Points Memo is exploring the idea of creating a membership section. Nieman Lab

Pasadena Gold

2009-10-22T21:28:00.001-07:00

According to Eating L.A., the November issue of Pasadena magazine - which I've heard of but never seen - will feature a piece by Pulitzer Prize-winning food critic Jonathan Gold. It's not clear if Gold, who still writes for the LA Weekly, will be a regular contributor.

Four in the evening

2009-10-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

1. Inflating balloon boy: The Heene family in Colorado seem to be getting the attention they craved as the media continues to cover the boy who wasn't in the balloon. Denver Post

2. Around the bases: Michael Massing takes on Howard Kurtz for taking on the Obama administration for taking on Fox. CJR

3. Poor information diet: Howard Weaver warns us about the troubling trend of "infobesity". Etaoin Shrdlu

4. Words, words, words (dot com): A software engineer leaves the New York Times to build the "dictionary of the future." NYO

A new kind of deadline

2009-10-22T18:45:00.000-07:00

The folks at the San Gabriel Valley Newspaper Group are serious about their time cards. Here's a memo sent yesterday to editorial employees:

Time cards are due tomorrow at 5:00 pm. If I do not receive your time cards, you will receive written warning in your files and disciplinary action up to and including termination will begin.

The 'loyal reader' metric

2009-10-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

As news organizations discover better ways to measure online traffic, the focus of publishing could shift away from serving a mass audience to maintaining a loyal one. As a result, this could simultaneously liberate newsrooms from the pressure to generate hits at all costs and provide a more valuable metric with which to sell advertising.

Knight Digital Media talked with Slate editor David Plotz about what this could mean for content. Here's an excerpt (emphasis theirs):

“Until now we’ve been selling to the mass audience. Now once you have this ability to target you can really target your core audience… This creates strong incentive to create durable journalism,” Plotz said. “That one curious reader is worth 50 times the value of the drive-by reader. The person who makes a commitment to your brand, if you’re a quality brand….. if you can get those readers, a smaller set of readers, who come to you three or five or 10 times a week, you don’t have to go after that huge other set of readers.”

So forget celebrity and outrage stories. For Slate, this focus means a commitment to long form journalism such as a recent series on the American dental crisis, which Plotz estimates was read by 400,000 people. Slate has started a “Fresca Fellowship” that requires each reporter and editor to spend a month each year on a long form journalism project. Advertisers have begun to sponsor specific projects and they are paying for themselves, he said.

“Advertisers want to be around some ambitious project more than they want to be around some snarky political column,” Plotz said.

The approach won't work for every publication - and some publications won't want to do it since they equate influence with hits. But the "loyal readers" approach is familiar to journalism magazines and small- and medium-size newspapers, so it shouldn't require them to become niche publications to be successful.

New York Times taps discarded talent

2009-10-22T12:08:00.000-07:00

The New York Times began publishing its California Bay Area pages last week and now the paper has announced it will partner with a few former Chicago Tribune alumni to produce a local Chicago edition starting next month.

From the Times:

James O’Shea, the former editor of The Los Angeles Times and managing editor of The Tribune, will serve as editor of the new Chicago News Cooperative, and James Warren, another former managing editor of The Tribune, will write a regular column for the service. Peter Osnos, another well-known journalist and founder of PublicAffairs books, is the chairman of its advisory board, and one of the board members is Ann Marie Lipinski, former editor of The Tribune.

As the Times rolls out these local editions (which are really pages of content devoted to regional coverage), one has to wonder if the paper has plans for Los Angeles? I suspect USC's journalism school and the founders of The Journalism Shop - a collaboration of former Los Angeles Times staffers - have perked up their ears.

A California pick me up

2009-10-22T11:21:00.000-07:00

For the last year, California has been portrayed as a broken state. Fast-growing debt, high unemployment, irreconcilable demands for more services and lower taxes, an intractable budget, and an impotent state government. Waterless, traffic jammed and on fire. Time magazine's Michael Grunwald suggests that only those who have it so good could whine so loudly:

Ignore the California whinery. It's still a dream state. In fact, the pioneering megastate that gave us microchips, freeways, blue jeans, tax revolts, extreme sports, energy efficiency, health clubs, Google searches, Craigslist, iPhones and the Hollywood vision of success is still the cutting edge of the American future — economically, environmentally, demographically, culturally and maybe politically. It's the greenest and most diverse state, the most globalized in general and most Asia-oriented in particular at a time when the world is heading in all those directions. It's also an unparalleled engine of innovation, the mecca of high tech, biotech and now clean tech. In 2008, California's wipeout economy attracted more venture capital than the rest of the nation combined. Somehow its supposedly hostile business climate has nurtured Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Facebook, Twitter, Disney, Cisco, Intel, eBay, YouTube, MySpace, the Gap and countless other companies that drive the way we live. ...

"In the depths of the breakdown, you can see the next narrative," says Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution's metropolitan-policy program. "It's California. The next economy is already in place there, and it's amazing."

The complete article is here.