Free Republic

BY JOHN LAIRD THE COLUMBIAN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR Tea party patrons, rejoice! Unite! Or for some of you, I suppose, to arms! Your grass-roots movement has gained such momentum as to warrant a national blue-ribbon, round-table, fact-finding, rootin' tootin' hoedown! The first National Tea Party Convention is set for Feb. 4-6 at Nashville's Gaylord Opryland Hotel & Convention Center. For details, visit the Web site www.nationalteapartyconvention.com. Hurry, and get an early discount on registration: $558.95 (excluding hotel) to show up and protest excessive spending by the government. Headline speakers will include the electrifying and eloquent Sarah Palin, a renowned expert...

VANITY Fair yesterday took some of the deepest staff cuts at Condé Nast, but Editor Graydon Carter didn't deliver the bad news himself. Although Carter was said to have been at his restaurant, The Monkey Bar, Wednesday night, he was a no show in the office yesterday because he had jetted off on a vacation yesterday morning. Vanity Fair's layoffs were said to be in the double-digit range, and hit as high as senior editors and as low as fact checkers, and were deep, in part, because Carter largely ignored the edict to chop 5 percent late last year.

The New York Times reports today that the paper will cut 8 percent of its newsroom staff, or around 100 people by the end of 2009. Currently, the New York Times employs 1,250 staff members in the news department. The media company is planning to offer buyouts to both union and non-union staff and will need to implement layoffs if they can’t get enough people to participate in the buyout offer.

The public’s assessment of the accuracy of news stories is now at its lowest level in more than two decades of Pew Research surveys, and Americans’ views of media bias and independence now match previous lows. Just 29% of Americans say that news organizations generally get the facts straight, while 63% say that news stories are often inaccurate. In the initial survey in this series about the news media’s performance in 1985, 55% said news stories were accurate while 34% said they were inaccurate. That percentage had fallen sharply by the late 1990s and has remained low over the last...

Visiting Chinese top legislator Wu Bangguo (L) shakes hands with Fidel Castro, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, in Havana on Thursday.

More than $10bn in advertising disappeared from US media markets in the first six months of this year, according to new data that show intense pressure on media owners and ad agencies as they search for other business models. Preliminary figures from Nielsen show a 15.4 per cent year-on-year decline in US advertising revenues, the largest drop for any period in the decade since the marketing and media measurement group began compiling such reports. The study showed sharp differences in the behaviour of different media and product categories, with cable television the only medium on which ad spend increased, up...

Freedom could file bankruptcy this week - source * Freedom has reached agreements with lenders - report (Recasts; adds new sourcing) PHILADELPHIA, Aug 30 (Reuters) - Freedom Communications Inc, owner of the Orange County Register newspaper, is expected to file for bankruptcy this week, a source familiar with the situation said on Sunday. Freedom, which has been majority owned for more than 70 years by the Hoiles family, has reached agreements with its lenders to restructure its debts, according to a report in the online edition of The Wall Street Journal. The lenders include JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), SunTrust and Union...

A new picture of Fidel Castro has been published in a state-run newspaper, apparently showing Cuba's ailing former leader in much better health. The photograph in Juventud Rebelde, the Communist Youth newspaper, showed Mr Castro talking to Ecuador's left-wing president, Rafael Correa. Mr Castro, 83, was dressed more smartly than in other recent photos, wearing a white shirt rather than a tracksuit. He has not been seen in public since undergoing an operation in 2006. Mr Castro stepped down and his younger brother, Raul, took over his various offices.

The recent cases of a right-to-life extremist accused of killing an abortion doctor in Kansas and an elderly white supremacist accused in the fatal shooting of a Holocaust museum guard in Washington, D.C., match warnings in the report. It concluded individuals with white supremacist views, acting as so-called lone wolves, pose the most significant domestic terrorism threat because they are difficult for law enforcement to detect before they commit crimes. Right-wing extremism is not a liberal figment of the imagination. As the DHS report and recent incidents make clear, it is a growing threat and a valid concern for federal...

I'm not going to complain about the latest price increases announced by the Boston Globe, since I'm on the record as believing that newspapers can and should charge a lot more for their print editions. But does it have to be so confusing? (snip) Over at the Boston Phoenix, Adam Reilly, ponders moving to online-only, and asks whether his readers will pay the higher price. My answer: I couldn't rely solely on Boston.com, the Globe's free Web site, because its ad servers are miserably slow. It's fine for reading a few stories, but not the whole paper. (snip) In such...

The New York Times Co. said last night that it is notifying federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe, raising the possibility that New England's most storied newspaper could cease to exist within weeks. After down-to-the-wire negotiations did not produce millions of dollars in union concessions, the Times Co. said that it will file today a required 60-day notice of the planned shutdown under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification law. The move could amount to a negotiating ploy to extract further concessions from the Globe's unions, since the notice does not require the Times Co....

USA TODAY -- 2,113,725 – (-7.46%) WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,082,189 -- 0.61% NEW YORK TIMES -- 1,039,031 -- (-3.55%) L.A. TIMES -- 723,181 -- (-6.55%) WASHINGTON POST -- 665,383 -- (-1.16%) NEW YOK DAILY NEWS -- 602,857 -- (-14.26%) NEW YORK POST -- 558,140 -- (-20.55%) CHICAGO TRIBUNE -- 501,202 -- (-7.47%) HOUSTON CHRONICLE -- 425,138 -- (-13.96%) ARIZONA REPUBLIC -- 389,701 -- (-5.72%) DENVER POST (02/28/2009 to 03/31/2009) -- 371,728 -- N/A NEWSDAY -- 368,194 -- (-3.01%) DALLAS MORNING NEWS -- 331,907 -- (-9.88%) MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE -- 320,076 -- (-0.71%) CHICAGO SUN-TIMES -- 312,141 -- (-0.04%) SAN FRANCISCO...

William Dean Singleton, a newspaper publisher and chairman of the Associated Press, speaks for many of his comrades when he says online news aggregators are making him "mad as hell and we are not going to take it any more." Singleton and his colleagues threaten legal action against Web sites like Google, Drudge Report, Huffington Post and Digg -- the sites that have been linking to their newspaper stories without paying. But their righteous indignation is misplaced. Forget that these aggregators push vast amounts of traffic to their sites and readers to stories that would otherwise disappear without a trace....

Uproar over 'news story' ad on front page of LA Times April 10, 2009 WASHINGTON (AFP) – An advertisement dressed up as a news story on the front page of the Los Angeles Times has reporters at the newspaper fuming and the publisher defending the move. The advertisement, for the NBC television series "Southland," appeared on page one of the Times on Thursday. Although it was labelled "advertisement," the ad resembled a news story complete with a bold-type headline. According to the blog MediaMemo, more than 100 staffers at the newspaper signed a petition protesting the appearance of the fake...

Bank of America has sued The Columbian Publishing Co., the parent company of Vancouver's daily newspaper, to recover $15.4 million in unpaid debts and interest. The bank also seeks to foreclose on the newspaper's current headquarters through a sheriff's sale. The bank's suit, filed Monday in Clark County Superior Court, says The Columbian Publishing Co. has defaulted on $14.5 million it borrowed for working capital between 2006 and 2007. The company owes $498,419 more under a separate agreement tied to interest rate changes, according to the suit and bank spokeswoman Shirley Norton. As part of a 2006 loan, The Columbian...

~ EXCERPT ~ CHICAGO, Illinois (CNN) — The company that owns the Chicago Sun-Times and 58 other newspapers and online sites said Tuesday it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

SEATTLE - The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which has chronicled the news of the city since logs slid down its steep streets to the harbor and miners caroused in its bars before heading north to Alaska's gold fields, will print its final edition Tuesday.

NEW YORK — The New York Times [NYT] Co. has sold 21 floors of its headquarters building near New York’s Times Square. The sale to investment firm W.P. Carey & Co. is for $225 million. The newspaper had said in January that it was in talks with Carey for such a deal. Like other publishers, it has been seeking different ways for raising cash to pay off debt as sales of advertising decline. It suspended its dividend in February.

Obama will use spring summit to bring Cuba in from the coldUS companies are queuing up as the president moves to ease restrictions on travel and trade, raising hopes of warmer relations and an end to the embargo Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent The Observer, Sunday 8 March 2009 President Barack Obama is poised to offer an olive branch to Cuba in an effort to repair the US's tattered reputation in Latin America. The White House has moved to ease some travel and trade restrictions as a cautious first step towards better ties with Havana, raising hopes of an eventual...

HAVANA – The ouster of Cuba's two most prominent younger leaders leaves more doubt than ever about who will guide the country once the Castro brothers and their gray-haired revolutionary contemporaries are gone. President Raul Castro is 77. His hand-picked No. 2, Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, is a year his senior. And there are no obvious next-generation successors in the ranks of mostly obscure communist party officials, military officers and bureaucrats who were suddenly promoted this week in Cuba's largest leadership shake-up in decades. "This is the old guard, most of them are very traditional hard-liners," said Uva de Aragon,...

It was announced this evening that the Philadelphia "Daily News" soon would no longer publish as an independent newspaper, but instead would begin printing as a separate "edition" of the Philadelphia "Inquirer". Both papers are owned by the same parent company which announced only last week that it was filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. In doing so the company insisted that the filing was only to reduce its debt load, and that current operations were financially strong for both papers - - - maybe not.......

HAVANA – President Raul Castro abruptly removed some of Cuba's most powerful officials Monday, putting a personal stamp on the government in the biggest shakeup since he took over from his ailing brother Fidel Castro a year ago. The changes replaced some key Fidel loyalists, including the longtime foreign minister and the secretary of the Council of State, with men closer to Raul. They also reduced the enormous powers of a vice president credited with saving Cuba's economy after the fall of the Soviet Union. But analysts saw no immediate indication that the changes are related to hopes for closer...

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — As sharp revenue reductions put the future of many U.S. newspapers in doubt, one idea gaining attention is the conversion of newspapers into tax-exempt nonprofits supported by large endowments. Although viewed by many as a long shot at best, such a radical change could be a savior for the industry and its vital role in a democracy. That's why the endowment model is drawing renewed attention as newspapers impose massive layoffs, scale back home delivery and make other drastic cuts to counter plunging advertising revenue amid a recession that has compounded struggles from the migration of...

DENVER – Questions about the future of the Rocky Mountain News had become so common, the newspaper's staff put up a handwritten paper sign on the news desk that said, "We don't know." On Thursday, someone wrote over it in heavy black marker: "Now we know." Colorado's oldest newspaper, which launched in Denver in 1859, printed its last edition Friday, leaving The Denver Post as the only daily newspaper in town. Since 2001, the News has shared business operations with The Denver Post in a joint operating agreement between Scripps and The Post's owner, MediaNews Group Inc.

Breaking news on Philadelphia local TV - Philadelphia "Inquirer" and "Daily News" are filing for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy - company says papers will continue to publish, filing is to retire debt primarily -

Three Calkins Media newspapers in suburban Philadelphia will stop publishing Saturday print editions next week. The Bucks County Courier Times, The Intelligencer of Doylestown and the Burlington County Times in Willingboro, N.J., will continue to publish Saturday editions online. The newspapers announced the change Saturday. It goes into effect Feb. 7. Publisher Michael Scobey says the move is being made to control costs and provide expanded local and national news and sports coverage. Scobey says the change is a return to the traditional publishing schedule. The Saturday print editions were introduced about five years ago. He says the market no...

A photograph of Cuban leader Fidel Castro has appeared for the first time in more than two months. The office of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez released the photo on Friday, two days after they met in Havana. [Snip] The long spell without a photo of Mr. Castro had contributed to rumors he was gravely ill.

El País newspaper in Spain reported Wednesday that there were apparent movements at the Armed Forces and Interior Ministries Friday after Castro suffered a "possible'' heart attack. Another Spain-based web site, Cubaecuentro.com, reported that his condition was ‘‘irreversible."

Virtually all the predictions about the death of old media have assumed a comfortingly long time frame for the end of print—the moment when, amid a panoply of flashing lights, press conferences, and elegiac reminiscences, the newspaper presses stop rolling and news goes entirely digital. Most of these scenarios assume a gradual crossing-over, almost like the migration of dunes, as behaviors change, paradigms shift, and the digital future heaves fully into view. The thinking goes that the existing brands—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—will be the ones making that transition, challenged but still dominant as...

Get ready for a Star Tribune bankruptcy filing. The newsroom's Newspaper Guild announced today they had ended negotiations with management over concessions. The Strib's owners have said that unless all Strib's unions agree to a specific list of cutbacks, they will file for bankruptcy. Says Guild co-chair Graydon Royce, "We tried to work this out and this didn't happen. All we can do is go by what they have said, and that [bankruptcy] is what they said will happen. So we'll find out." Strib publisher Chris Harte has backed away from previous, more subtle bankruptcy threats, but few expect that...

There is no Hollywood ending in sight in 2009 for the entertainment industry, which along with the rest of the nation is experiencing its worst economic slump in decades. The fallout from declining local TV ad revenue, weakening DVD sales and diminishing sources of film financing will continue to pound Los Angeles' signature industry, which employs more than 200,000 people and pumps an estimated $20 billion to $30 billion into the local economy. Many expect that will trigger further layoffs at the studios, networks, independent production outfits and other media companies on top of the thousands of job losses that...

NBC Universal is in serious negotiations to give its 10 p.m. weeknight time slot to Jay Leno, a move that would secure the popular "Tonight Show" host's place at the network after he vacates his late night perch this spring, according to three sources close to the network. An announcement could come as early as Tuesday. The move would address several major problems for the network, which is bleeding ratings and has failed to develop any new hit shows this fall, at a time when advertising revenue is plummeting. Under the proposal, NBC would only develop programming for two hours...

NEW YORK – The New York Times is reporting that NBC has signed its late-night star Jay Leno to a contract that will keep him at the network and move him to prime time. Under the new deal, Leno, whose "Tonight" show hosting job will go to Conan O'Brien, would have a new show airing 10 p.m. Eastern every weeknight. The deal reportedly will be announced Tuesday.

Fifteen years ago, I had a stupid idea. I was the co-executive producer on ..."Cheers." NBC...was faltering: Ratings were sliding, money was tight, management was nervous ...Johnny Carson...was retiring... I was 28 then, and like all 28-year-olds, I had no idea exactly how stupid I was. So when I found myself standing next to the president of NBC ...I offered my solution to his network's crisis. "You know what you should do?" ... "You should move the 'Tonight Show' with Jay Leno to 10 p.m. Think of all the money you'd save." "That's a pretty stupid suggestion," he said to...

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba (Reuters) – Cuba celebrated on Thursday the 50th anniversary of a 1959 revolution whose leader Fidel Castro transformed the island into a communist state that has survived despite decades of opposition from the United States and the collapse of its Cold War benefactors. The revolution's landmark anniversary comes at a time when the era of Fidel Castro, now 82 and in poor health, is winding down and uncertainty hangs over the future of the Cuba he built into an improbable world player admired for its social gains but criticized for its human rights record. Celebrations have...

Cuban Stalinism at 50--and the Media Lies Continue By Humberto Fontova "Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba's problems without spilling a drop of blood." Upon entering Havana on January 7, 1959, Cuba's new leader Fidel Castro broadcast that promise into a phalanx of microphones. As the jubilant crowd erupted with joy, Castro continued. “Cuban mothers let me assure you that because of me you will never have to cry." The following day, just below San Juan Hill in eastern Cuba, a bulldozer rumbled to a start, clanked into position, and started pushing dirt into...

In our favorite continuing series on the Decline and Fall of The Fourth Estate, see here, here, here, and here, there is more good news. The New York Times Co's (NYT.N) November advertising revenue fell 20 percent, the company said on Wednesday, illustrating how the financial crisis is aggravating dizzying revenue declines at U.S. newspapers. Ad revenue at the publisher's New York Times Media Group, which includes the Times newspaper, fell 21.2 percent from a year earlier because of a drop in real estate and jobs classified advertising. . . . Total company revenue fell 13.9 percent. More . ....

The king is dead. Long live the king. Victory is ours. The internet, which emerged this year as a leading source for campaign news, has now surpassed all other media except television as a main source for national and international news. Currently, 40% say they get most of their news about national and international issues from the internet, up from just 24% in September 2007. For the first time in a Pew survey, more people say they rely mostly on the internet for news than cite newspapers (35%). . . More . . .

As Cuba prepares to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fidel Castro's revolution on 1 January, most of those in power are the same people who fought alongside him half a century ago. ...But there is a new generation of communists waiting in the wings. ...The youngest, Liaena Hernandez, is just 18 years old. A petite young woman with long black hair and an engaging smile, she has been a political activist since her early teens... "Having young Cubans in parliament shows that the revolution continues. It isn't just something from our history..." Her father is in the army and she...

HAVANA – In the palace of a fallen dictator, the grade-school kids in their red Communist Pioneer bandanas are getting their mandatory introduction to the glories of the revolution. Clattering from one display case to the next, they gaze wide-eyed at an antique gun, a fighter's bloodied shirt, the engine of a downed U.S. spy plane. Moving on, they stare at the yacht named Granma that carried Fidel Castro back from exile to launch his guerrilla war, and the combat boots his brother-successor wore as a ponytailed 27-year-old rebel.

The march of technology and the shrinking economy are beginning to take a toll on the traditional means of television news-gathering: the TV news crew. Under a new agreement reached this week with its labor unions, WUSA, Channel 9, will become the first station in Washington to replace its crews with one-person "multimedia journalists" who will shoot and edit news stories single-handedly.

HAVANA – Cuba on Wednesday presented a new book by Fidel Castro, who has not appeared in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July 2006 but who authorities claim spent more than 400 hours working on the manuscript. "La Paz en Colombia," or "Peace in Colombia," explores Cuba's role in attempts to end Colombia's civil war, which has raged for more than four decades. The 265-page book was presented during a Havana ceremony that Castro did not attend, though one of his sons was there, as was Ricardo Alarcon, head of the country's rubber-stamp parliament. Several rounds of peace...

Price: $7.68 Last 0.59-7.04% Today’s Change 8.27 Today’s Open $8.29 Day High $7.79 Day Low $7.68 Volume 717,036

Evening Post Publishing Company announced today it was freezing benefits in its defined benefit retirement plan, which is funded entirely by the company. Current employee pensions will be computed on their years of service through Dec. 31, 2008. The move was taken because of soaring costs of maintaining both the pension plan and the employee 401(k) program. The latter is not affected by the decision.

Another 75 editorial staffers were let go at the Los Angeles Times on Monday, including numerous reporters and editors involved in arts and entertainment coverage. The cuts included film critic Carina Chocano, whose departure leaves Hollywood’s hometown newspaper with one full-time film critic, Kenneth Turan. Chocano had been with the Times since 2004. Times editor Russ Stanton cited the growing economic downturn as the reason for the latest round of layoffs in a memo to the staff. The Times eliminated about 130 editorial positions in July as part of a companywide downsizing effort at its beleaguered parent company, Tribune Co....

ABC producer arrested outside Brown PalaceSue Lindsay 2 hours, 18 minutes ago A producer for ABC News was arrested today as he and a camera crew set up on the sidewalk outside the Brown Palace Hotel. Asa Eslocker was arrested for trespass, interference and failure to obey an lawful order. He was being processed from the Denver City Jail and is expected to be released on $300 bail, said his attorney Tom Kelley. Eslocker is investigating the role of corporate lobbyists and wealthy donors at the convention for a series of Money Trail reports on ABC World News. "The Brown's...

Five years after arriving in Central Florida, El Nuevo Día Orlando, the region's only daily Spanish-language newspaper, is closing. The paper, which has a total of 50 employees, will cease operations Aug. 29., said José F. Serra, spokesperson for the Ferré-Rangel family. They own two newspapers in Puerto Rico -- El Nuevo Día and Primera Hora -- and started the Orlando operations in Sept. 2003. "Unfortunately, the losses have been consistent throughout the five years, and we came to the conclusion that we couldn't continue producing the paper," Serra said.

It's pitiful to read the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. You are so pro-Obama that it is sickening. No such thing as an impartial paper.

Bridging the Abyss Why a lot of newspapers aren’t going to survive By Charles Layton Charles Layton (charlesmary@hotmail.com) is an AJR senior contributing writer. Mark Potts is a consultant, based in Washington, D.C., who hires out to newspaper Web sites, dotcoms and the like. He was a reporter and editor (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner) in the '70s and '80s, that golden age for newspapers before the Internet came along to spoil the party. Ad revenue — four-fifths of a daily paper's income — grew by double digits during many of those years. Last summer, Potts and some...