Politico: USA Today to Expand Regional Reporting: Will It Cover USA?

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Chicago, Boston, Las Vegas and Miami will get more exposure in Gannett Co.-owned flagship USA Today as the daily intends to bolster its regional coverage of breaking news and enterprise stories, Politico reported this week.

USA Today reporter Alan Gomez already has his marching orders for 2014 as he will relocate to Miami where he also will be the daily's correspondent for Latin America and South America, according to the Politico article.  USA Today has endured a turbulent 2013, doubling its newsstand price, waffling about erecting a paywall and thinning its newsroom herd through voluntary retirements (see "TUOL" posts 9/26/13 & 3/13/13).

USA Today, a hotel chain fave because it slips so easily under guest room doors, is further increasing its brand as Gannett plans in the coming year to insert a condensed version of the daily into 35 smaller dailies in its newspaper empire, with a goal toward ultimately appearing in all 81 of its print properties, according to Politico.

Ingwerson Takes the Helm of Christian Science Monitor Next Month

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After 14 years as managing editor of The Christian Science Monitor, Marshall Ingwerson will become editor next month, the Associated Press reported today.

John Yemma, a former Boston Globe and Dallas Morning News reporter who has been the Monitor's editor since 2008, is stepping down to concentrate on writing, the AP article stated.  Before becoming managing editor of the 105-year-old Monitor, which became digital-only in April 2009, Ingwerson was, at various times,  the paper's correspondent in Moscow, Miami, Washington and Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Register Daily Newspaper to Debut in 2014

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A seven-day daily newspaper focused on Los Angeles local news, the Los Angeles Register, will debut in 2014, the Orange County Register ("OCR") reported yesterday.

Owner Aaron Kushner, whose 2100 Trust LLC purchased Freedom Communications Inc. in July 2012, boosted the OCR staff by 200, to provide local LA coverage  to challenge The Los Angeles Times. The OCR article said the Register also plans to unveil LA-area community weeklies next year.

Report: NY Observer Redesign Smokes Salmon-Colored Paper Stock

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Advertisers are currently getting a peek at the redesigned The New Observer weekly newspaper that is supposed to hit newsstands in February 2014, but Capitalnewyork.com this week spilled the beans that the new Observer will jettison its distinctive salmon-colored paper.

The Observer, which each Wednesday covers Gotham City's media, politics, publishing, entertainment, real estate and cultural scene, also will debut a new logo and return to a tabloid format that it boasted in 2006, before returning to a broadsheet format two years ago, according to the Capitalnewyork article.  The Observer, which has been around since 1987, is also expected to add "arts" and "style" sub-sections in its new design format.

It remains to be seen whether the paper's upscale readership rebels at the changeover from salmon to white paper by swimming upstream to another publication. Maybe white type on a Beluga caviar-black paper might appease readers.

Two Prominent New England Dailies on the Block

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Autumn in New England and the leaves--and daily newspapers--continue to fall.

If you have oodles of cash on hand and a slight masochistic streak, you might contact Stevens, a privately held independent financial services firm, and put in a bid for The Providence Journal, which the Rhode Island Public Radio Website (www.ripr.org) reports is for sale.

ProJo's owner, Dallas-based A.H. Belo, which doled out $1.5 billion in 1997 to purchase the Providence daily and its associated tv stations, is looking to unload ProJo, so that it can focus its attention on its core market in Big D, according to the RIPR post.

Meanwhile, last week John Henry, gazillionaire owner of the Boston Red Sox and Boston Globe, told staffers at the Worcester Telegram & Gazette--New England's third-largest daily--that he was looking for an interested local party to purchase the T & G, which was part of Henry's  $70 million Globe acquisition from the New York Times (see "TUOL" post 8/6/13).  The Times paid $296 million for the T & G in 2000, which it folded into its New England Media Group, along with the Globe.

Couldn't have been too comforting for Worcester editorial staffers to read Henry's October 27 letter in the Globe titled "Why I Bought the Globe" that failed to even mention his T& G acquisition. No potential buyers have stepped forward, though Gatehouse Media, Inc., freshly emerged from a structured Chapter 11 bankruptcy, is rumored to be interested.

The Lid Is Off: Mile High City Daily Names Marijuana Editor

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Print journalism aficionados who complain newspapers have gone to pot may be onto something--The Denver Post last week named Ricardo Baca to head its marijuana coverage, Politico reported.

Baca, a 12-year Post vet and the daily's former entertainment and music critic, will cover cannabis, along with an as-yet hired freelance pot critic and freelance pot columnist (I.F. Stoner?), according to the Politico post.  Colorado voters in November 2012, passed Amendment 64 that legalized recreational marijuana use for those 21 and older, prompting the Post to augment its coverage and weed out editorial staffers in search of the right journalist to helm its doobie beat.

The Politico article notes that the Post's human resources department said the daily still prohibits workers in the newsroom from reeking of marijuana or ingesting the wacky tabacky in the newsroom itself. A sound editorial move to shore up its marijuana reporting, but "TUOL" can't help but wonder if the Denver Post is comfortable going from a daily paper to a rolling paper?

SF Chronicle Food Section Fold-In: Recipe for Disaster?

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Reports in foodie-centric San Francisco that the award-winning Food section of the Hearst-Corp.-owned San Francisco Chronicle may be folded into a lifestyle section is stirring controversy, according to a report in yesterday's New York Times.

Chronicle Publisher Jeffrey Johnson would not comment in the Times article on reports that the Food section would combine with content from the Home section and be part of a lifestyle section tentatively called Artisan.  The Chronicle, a multiple winner of the James Beard Foundation award for stellar food coverage and perhaps the only daily that sells its own honey and maintains a roof garden and test kitchen in a building separate from the newsroom HQ, may be forced into the move--reportedly, by Feb. 2014-- by declining readership and dwindling ad page revenues.

Newspapers once provided food for thought, but among Chronicle readers, the thoughts are about food.

No Joking--The Onion Going All-Digital

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After its print edition rolls out in Chicago, Milwaukee and Providence on December 12, satirical  Chicago-based newspaper The Onion will only publish online, the Associated Press reported yesterday.

Founded by two Univ. of Wisconsin students in 1988, The Onion is shedding its skin for an all-digital format because of shriveling print advertising revenue.  The faux-newspaper has ventured into the broadcasting realm recently, with The Onion News Network cable program and the Onion News Empire video pilot that it is developing with Amazon, according to the AP article.

Xtra! Xtra! Weep All About It: Newspaper Industry to Lose $1b in Ad Revenue in 2013

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The newspaper industry will lose $1 billion in advertising revenue by the time the sun sets on 2013, according to a press release by Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper owner.

As reported by The Huffington Post and Poynter.org web sites, the industry expects to earn $1.18 billion less in ad revenues this year compared to 2012 numbers. Ad revenues are off 5.9 percent at Gannett, which owns flagship national daily USA Today and 81 other newspapers.

The Newspaper Association of American reports seven consecutive years of declining print advertising in the newspaper industry.

(Not Divine) Providence Journal Staffers Accept Buyouts; Layoffs Loom

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A dozen Guild members of the Providence Journal are taking the money and running, but the voluntary buyouts by four newsroom staffers and eight advertising dept. employees are not expected to spare the daily further layoffs, WPRI-TV's blog (www.wpri.com) reported.

Among editorial staffers who took the buyout are a religion writer, an investigative/legal reporter and syndicated columnist Froma Harrop, according to WPRI-TV. Declining circulation and Second Quarter ad revenues, which were off 14 percent compared to a year ago, likely means pending newsroom layoffs. Management last month told the Guild they were looking to eliminate 30 jobs.

Over a three-year period from 2008 to 2011, more than 240 jobs were lost at the Journal.

News Blogger Lauding Energy Co. 'Juiced' by Utility

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Community-owned nonprofit utility CPS Energy can do no wrong in the eyes of Robert Rivard.

In the past year alone, Rivard, one-time news editor of the San Antonio Express-News, creator of the Rivard Report news site and principal of the Arsenal Group public relations consulting firm, has written a dozen articles singing the praise of CPS Energy and its CEO, even as the latter drew flak for alleged expense account indiscretions and the energy provider sparked controversy over a solar power project.

Unfortunately, according to an Express-News article this week, Rivard neglected to mention in his paeans to CPS that the utility paid his Arsenal Group $41,000 last year to assess its public relations strategy and critique its communications department. Not to mention (as Rivard subsequently did) that CPS hired his spouse, a former Business Wire Veep, earlier this year to be its director of integrated communications.

The Express-News article reported that Rivard conceded that it was an oversight not to make a disclosure in the Rivard Report articles that CPS Energy was sweetening his personal pot through their professional relationship.  On the subject of conflicts of interest,"TUOL" can't top the late New York Times columnist and executive editor, A.M. Rosenthal, who once said that personally, he didn't care if  "[y]ou f--- an elephant, so long as you don't cover the circus."

"TUOL" hopes Mr. Rivard finds some utility in Rosenthal's observation.

USA Today Ponders Paywall as Newsstand Price Set to Double

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USA Today President and Publisher Larry Kramer today clarified his comments that appeared in the New York Post that the national newspaper was considering erecting a paywall to charge online readers, telling Poynter.org that  "no plan exists" for the Gannett Co.-owned flagship daily to charge digital readers.

Paywalls already are in place at national dailies, The New York Times and Wall St. Journal, not to mention Gannett's 80 other daily newspapers (see "TUOL" post 2/23/12). With a combined digital and print readership of 1,674,306 that makes it the nation's third largest newspaper, USA Today suffered a 12 percent drop-off in circulation revenue during the Second Quarter of 2013, according to the Post article.

USA Today is days away from doubling its single-copy price to $2 from $1, the first price hike in six years. The increase, necessitated by sagging circulation and ad revenues, is prompting Gannett to remove many of its iconic white, tv-shaped newspaper boxes. Rather than expect faithful followers to jingle as they walk down the street with a pocketful of quarters, Gannett instead has hammered out deals with Starbucks and the Duane Reade pharmacy chain to serve as outlets where the daily may be purchased.

In an attempt to inject new life into the brand, a section including articles from the Life, Money and News sections of USA Today will begin to appear in Gannett-owned dailies in Indianapolis, Appleton (Wis.), Fort Myers and Rochester. Gannett has dubbed the experiment Project Butterfly for reasons unclear to "TUOL," except perhaps that the insect and the paper weigh about the same nowadays and both are more likely to face a gaining net than net gains.

News Corp. Sheds Newspapers

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The Dow Jones Local Media Group ("DJLMG"), owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, has unloaded several local newspapers to private equity manager Fortress Investment Group, LLC, GateHouse Media, Inc.'s majority owner, Bloomberg News reported today.

GateHouse Media will manage the acquired publications, which include the Cape Cod Times and The (New Bedford) Standard Times from TUOL's home turf, as well as the Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald and Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings. In all, DJLMG boasts 33 publications, including eight dailies. According to Bloomberg, Barrons, SmartMoney.com, AllThingsD., MarketWatch and The Wall St. Journal are the remaining properties of DJLMG following the transaction, financial terms of which were not revealed.

SouthComm Pulls the Plug on Nashville's The City Paper

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A 13-year-old free Nashville news weekly will disappear after its Aug. 9 edition because of sagging advertising revenues, the publication's owner told staffers today.

SouthComm CEO Chris Ferrell said some staffers of The City Paper would be laid off, while others would be absorbed by the  chain's other papers, Nashville Scene and Nashville Post. The City Paper began as a weekday daily in 2000 and was acquired by SouthComm in 2008.

Ga. Newspaper Chain Dumps Photography Dept.

Southern Community Newspapers, Inc. ("SCNI"), a five-daily, two-weekly newspaper chain, has eliminated its photography department, Poynter.org reports.

Following the ignoble lead of the Chicago Sun-Times (see "TUOL" post 5/30/13), which recently dumped its entire staff of 28 photographers, SCNI boss Michael Gebhart decreed: "Journalists need to write, shoot video, post on the Internet and edit."  Three photographers were pink-slipped by SCNI and a fourth was shifted to a company videographer position.

With the entire newspaper industry reeling in the face of shrinking circulation and declining advertising, a depressing trend is developing (something darkroom photogs are no longer doing) that does a disservice to news consumers. Short-sighted newspaper executives are paying short shrift to the storytelling skills photojournalists bring to the table, and it won't be long before the ripple effects are felt in other news media and in journalism schools.

                                                                                      

UPDATE: Tribune Co. Breaks Off Newspaper Holdings into Separate Entity

Just a week after it added 19 tv stations from Local TV, LLC to its stable of broadcast outlets (see "TUOL" post 7/1/13), the Tribune Co. today announced the creation of Tribune Publishing Co. ["TPC"] (catchy name), a company created to hold its revenue-bleeding newspapers, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The Times, along with The Hartford Courant, flagship Chicago Tribune and three other dailies will be the sole holdings of TPC in a move that will have no tax ramifications for Trib Co. shareholders. The transfer may take a year to finalize, according to the Times article, and the Trib Co. will retain all broadcasting & Internet outlets, along with real estate holdings and all other assets.

The publishing arm of Trib. Co. last year generated 64 percent of the media conglomerate's operating revenue, but has suffered drastic cuts in ad revenues and circulation. The six newspapers may still be sold off (see "TUOL" post 6/11/13), though the Trib Co. has been dragging its feet, having not yet allowed prospective suitors to peek at the newspapers' financials.

Tribune Publishing Co. has yet to announce who will oversee its operations or how its finances will be structured, according to the Times article.

Look Out Belo: Gannett Buys TV Giant in Philosophical Shift From Print to Broadcasting

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McLean, Virginia-based media conglomerate Gannett Co., the nation's largest owner of newspapers, seeing the writing on the wall, is acquiring Dallas-based Belo Corp.,which will make Gannett the fourth-largest owner of network television outlets, according to reports by Reuters and Gannett flagship newspaper, USA Today.

The sale is slated for completion by the end of the year, pending antitrust approval, FCC blessings and the ok of two-thirds of Belo's shareholders, the latter of which is a fait accompli, as Belo's directors and executive officers, holders of 42 percent of outstanding shares, already have given the deal their thumbs up.

Gannett, which counts USA Today,  the Detroit Free Press and The (Louisville) Courier-Journal among its stable of 82 newspapers, will nearly double its television holdings to 43 stations with the addition of Belo's 20 stations, nine of which are in the country's largest markets. Gannett expects to reach almost one-third of U.S. households with the acquisition.

As the newspaper industry continues to take on water with declining circulation and shrinking ad revenues, Gannett, which draws most of its revenue from print, is seeking a makeover. Once finalized, the transaction will enable Gannett to derive almost two-thirds of its pre-tax, pre-interest earnings from its combined digital and broadcast segments.

Belo Corp. previously saw the light in 2008 when it severed its broadcasting holdings, which range from KVUE-TV in Austin and KGW-TV in Portland, Ore., to KMOV-TV in St. Louis, from its newspaper assets, which were spun off into the publicly traded A.H. Belo Corp.

Directors of both companies unanimously approved the $2.2 billion deal, which involves Gannett forking over $1.5 billion in cash and assuming $715 million in debt from Belo.

Can't Tell Tribune Co. Suitors Without a Scorecard

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As former denizens of Chicago, the devoted staff of "TUOL" keeps close tabs on the embattled Tribune Co., blogging when the media conglomerate unveiled plans to unload its newspaper holdings (see "TUOL" post 2/27/13) and when the company emerged from a bloody four-year Chapter 11 bankruptcy (see "TUOL" post 1/2/13).

Therefore, "TUOL" is grateful to the Orange County Register ("OCR") for its update today about the would-be suitors for the Trib Co.'s metro dailies, including the flagship Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant. Industry analysts expect the conglomerate to divest itself of its revenue-starved print properties by the end of the year, so that it can focus on its broadcasting component. The company has enlisted investment bankers Evercore Partners and JP MorganChase to sniff out would-be buyers and assess the available options.

The OCR article is most interested in the fate of the Los Angeles Times, the nation's fourth-largest newspaper with a combined print and digital readership of more than 653,000, and counts among its courters, OCR's owner, Freedom Communications CEO Aaron Kushner, whose 2100 Trust investment arm snatched up the OCR in 2012.

Thus far, the most controversial possible suitors are David Koch and Charles Koch, a/k/a the Koch Brothers, holders of sixth place on the 2013 Forbes Magazine billionaires list, arch-conservative major funders of Tea Party and Libertarian political groups and tormenters of small, furry mammals (that may not be true). The Koch duo has not specifically mentioned the Tribune Co. stable of dailies, but has been widely quoted in the media as being expressly interested in jumping into the newspaper biz. An L.A. Weekly story in March, according to the OCR piece, linked the Kochs to the LA Times, which has helped to mobilize unions, liberal activists and others to protest such a move and to seek online contributions to purchase the Times before the Kochs can.

Another conservative boogeyman in the eyes of liberals everywhere, Rupert Murdoch, executive chair of News Corp., no doubt would like to add Tribune Co.-owned dailies to his trophy collection that includes The Wall St. Journal, Times of London and New York Post, but may run afoul of FCC cross-ownership rules in his quest.

The OCR article notes a local Los Angeles moneyed trio, known as the "3Bs," who at the very least, would like to snatch the LA Times, if not all the Tribune Co. dailies. The group consists of former LA deputy mayor Austin Beutner, Ron Burkle and Eli Broad.  Although his initial interest appears to have waned, the OCR piece includes among the potential suitors Douglas Manchester, owner of the U-T San Diego.

Were the Tribune Co. newspapers to be sold individually, possible buyers mentioned include billionaire Warren Buffett, who is building up newspaper holdings (see "TUOL" posts 2/26/13, 5/17/12) and may wish to add the (Allentown, Penn.) Morning Call. Also, the OCR suggests Chicago Sun-Times owner Wrapport, Ltd., might be interested in acquiring the rival Chicago Tribune, but "TUOL" believes that is off-base, particularly because the Sun-Times has its corporate hands full paying its printing bills to the Tribune (see "TUOL" post 4/2/13).

In the end, it's all a parlor game, akin to political pundits who already have Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio facing off in the 2016 presidential election, but the staff of "TUOL" will continue to monitor the fate of the Chicago Tribune, which, though hardly beloved, is at least familiar.

Report Predicts 4 More Years of Newspapers Hemorrhaging Ad Revenues

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The good news is that digital versions of newspapers are beginning to attract more readers. The bad news, according to the annual PricewaterhouseCooper's Global Entertainment and Media Outlook report ("GEMO") released this week, is that newspapers' revenues overall will continue to plunge through at least 2017.

According to an Ad Age article about the report, even in the face of climbing circulation figures, declining advertising at a compound annual rate of 4.2 percent means overall newspaper revenues are forecast to drop at a combined annual growth rate of 2.9 percent between 2013-2017.

The Ad Age piece cites Newspaper Association of America 2012 figures showing newspaper Web sites attracted more than 100 million unique visitors. The GEMO report predicts a 9.7 percent compound annual growth rate in digital advertising over the next four years that, unfortunately, will largely be negated by a 7.8 percent compound annual drop-off in print edition ads.

Digital newspaper ads are expected to generate $5.5 billion in revenues by 2017, compared to $12.8 billion in print ads, according to the GEMO study.

UPDATE: WaPo Paywall Rollout Begins Next Week

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The Washington Post Co. today announced it will begin a several-week-long phase-in of a metered paywall for its online edition next Wednesday.

Online visitors will have access to 20 free articles before being offered options ranging from $9.99 a month for desktop and mobile access to digital content to a $14.99 Digital Premium package that offers access to WaPo's custom apps.  The daily has been slow to join the 300 plus newspapers nationwide in putting up a paywall (see "TUOL" post 12/7/12), and still doesn't have its heart really in it, based on the liberal giveaways.

Not only will home delivery customers of the paper edition have complimentary access to WaPo's digital offerings, but also students, teachers, military personnel, government employees and school administrators will have unlimited free access to the online version while in their respective workplace and school. Moreover, the daily's home page, section front pages, classified ads and videos will be free to all visitors.

Presently, the Post has a first-year, $3.16 a month Sunday-only digital subscription available that increases to $7.40 a month after the trial period.