New York Times Looking to Unload Papers 'en Mass.'

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The Gray Lady apparently is weary of  long-distance relationships, as Reuters, AdWeek and others are reporting that The New York Times wants to sell The Boston Globe and The Worcester Telegram & Gazette.

The Times has enlisted the aid of Evercore Partners to advise on the sale of the properties in its New England Media Group, which include the Globe, Telegram & Gazette, the two dailies' Web sites and GlobeDirect, a direct mail marketing company.

Newspaper industry analysts expect the Times to take a bath in the deal. One analyst, according to Reuters, thought the purchase price for the Globe, New England's largest daily newspaper, might be in the $150 million range, a far cry from the $1.1 billion the Times paid to acquire the broadsheet in 1993.

The Times' Media Decoder Blog reported that the Times rejected a $35 million offer to sell the Globe in 2009, the AdWeek article stated.  The 360 or so souls in the Globe newsroom are understandably antsy, while media prognosticators are reveling in the parlor game of identifying the Globe's suitors.  Times CEO/President Mark Thompson said the Times wants to concentrate on its own brand and journalism as explanation for why his paper wants to end what at times has been a trying marriage.

The Globe is "TUOL"'s local newspaper, and the devoted staff, which currently is exasperated by increasingly late delivery of the paper, expects a local buyer to step to the forefront, rather than an out-of-state entrepreneur or media conglomerate.

Poor Time Inc.: Media Conglomerate Trims Workforce by 6%

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Vowing to "transform our company into one that is leaner, more nimble and more innately multi-platform," Time, Inc. CEO Laura Lang this week announced the media giant was pink-slipping 6 percent of its global workforce, or roughly 480 of its 8,000 employees.

According to online accounts by Bloomberg News and AdWeek, Time, Inc., the largest U.S. magazine publisher, suffered a 6.2 percent drop in sales over the first three quarters of 2012, compared to a year earlier, to $2.47 billion. Lang took the helm of Time, Inc. last year after a successful stint at the Digitas digital ad agency.

Declining newsstand sales of magazine titles, such as People and Fortune, had the industry and Time, Inc. employees fretting about looming layoffs (see "TUOL" post 1/11/13). The media company endured significant layoffs in 2008 and 2009 as well (see "TUOL" post 10/30/09).

Slate Lays Off Senior Staffers in Face of Financial Woes

Image via WikipediaWashington Post Co.-owned Webzine Slate.com has hit a financial rough patch that has caused it to cut loose contractors and four full-time staffers, including long-time media writer Jack Shafer and "Chatterbox" columnist Timothy Noah, AdWeek reports.

With Slate's 2011 2Q earnings down 13 percent compared to last year, the Webzine dropped media reporting maven Shafer, an original member of Editor Michael Kinsley's team that debuted Slate in 1996. The 59-year-old Kalamazoo, Michigan, native is the principal reason the devoted "TUOL" staff has visited Slate.com over the years.

Shafer and Noah will continue to contribute to the site. The "small reduction in full-time staff," according to Slate Editor David Plotz, also includes foreign editor June Thomas and associate editor Juliet Lapidos.

Philly Papers to Hawk Digital Version/Android Combo

Image by Getty Images via @daylifePhiladelphia Media Network ("PMN"), owner of The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, plans to sell discounted Android tablets on which digital versions of the dailies already will be built in, according to an article in AdWeek.

Beginning in late August, 2,000 tablets will be pedaled that boast icons of digital replicas of the dailies and separate applications for the papers' online versions. No price has been set, the AdWeek article noted, but the tablets housing the newspapers' content is expected to be offered for half-off their combined retail price. The dailies would receive all the revenues and data that will reflect consumer use of digital newspaper content.

PMN purchased the dailies from Philadelphia Media Holdings out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

And the Winner Is...No One

Image via WikipediaPulitzer Prizes were awarded yesterday, and for the first time since the honors were bestowed, there was no winner in the breaking local news category, AdWeek reports.

The Chicago Tribune, The Tennessean, and, jointly, The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald all vied for the $10,000 award accompanying the Pulitzer Prize, but came up short. The breaking local news category was created by the Pulitzer committee in 1955, and this year marks the first time no winner was chosen. 

A number of editors purportedly don't compete in the category because they don't believe their coverage area has experienced enough of a disaster to snag the award.  "TUOL" suggests they cover the state of the newspaper industry if they want to cover a disaster.