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A "vigilant" and "brave" Vallejo citizen who happens to be a trained mixed martial artist detained a man police say deliberately started a brush fire Saturday before officers arrived and arrested him. Alex Bello said his natural instincts kicked in when he saw a man use a flare to ignite the blaze behind his Vallejo apartment complex. "It was a personal fire right behind my house, so it was something that needed to be done," Bello said in an exclusive interview Tuesday with NBC Bay Area. Police said the suspect drove to the area near Admiral Callaghan Lane Turner Parkway...

Dallas-based newspaper company A.H. Belo Corporation, which owns The Dallas Morning News, will cut more than 80 employees in addition to the 413 who will leave through a recent voluntary severance offer, the company said Thursday. About 50 of the involuntary job losses will occur at The News, with about 30 coming at The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif., and an unspecified number at The Providence Journal in Rhode Island. The company anticipates completing the cuts in mid- to late October. Of the 413 employees taking the voluntary buyout, 270 came from The News. snip

A.H. Belo Corp., the newspaper pure play spun off from Dallas-based Belo Corp., reported its first quarterly result was a loss of $8.7 million, or 43 cents a share, on revenues that tumbled 8.8% to $160.2 million. Advertising revenue, including print and Internet revenue, fell 12% in the quarter compared to a year ago. The chain was particularly hard hit at its major California property, where ad revenue for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside plummeted 26%. A.H. Belo said its newspaper margin -- measured by EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) -- fell by 5 percentage points to 9%....

Dallas-based Belo Corp. said yesterday that it will take a non-cash charge of about $370 million in the fourth quarter after completing its annual testing of goodwill and other tangible assets using standard accounting procedures. The writedowns are related to the valuations of assets at The Providence Journal, The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., and to a lesser extent, WHAS-TV, in Louisville, which represents about $22 million of the total charge. Belo said there is no tax effect applied to the impairment charge and the company estimates the earnings-per-share impact to be about $3.60 per share. The impairment charges were taken...

The Dallas Morning News, which in April stopped distributing newspapers to most areas beyond a 200-mile radius, will probably cut its circulation area again next year, the head of parent Belo Corp. said Tuesday. "Further refinements to The Morning News' distribution areas will occur in the first half of 2007, reducing the circulation perimeter to 100 miles in certain areas," Belo chairman, president and chief executive Robert W. Decherd said at a Credit Suisse Group media and telecommunications investment conference in New York. Mr. Decherd said that changes in Belo's circulation practices at The News and its other three daily...

NEW YORK Consolidated revenue at Belo jumped 9.8% in October on huge gains in its Television Group. The Newspaper Group reported that total revenue declined 5.4% in October compared to the same period last year. Advertising revenue fell 6.6%. At The Dallas Morning News, total revenue was down 4.3%. Ad revenue dropped 6.3%. Retail revenue inched up 0.5% on gains in the auto and real estate categories. General ad revenue decreased 9% due to weakness in the financial and auto categories. Classified revenue plummeted 13%. All three categories, auto, help wanted, and real estate declined. Part-run advertising grew 15% mostly...

NEW YORK Belo reported today that consolidated revenue for August grew 3.2% compared to the same period last year. Revenue at the company's newspaper group fell 1.2%. "As in July, advertising revenues in August were strong in Belo's television group while newspaper group advertising revenues were blow our original projections," said Robert Decherd, Belo's chairman, president, and CEO, in a statement. "Given the uneven nature recently of retail and national advertising that is impacting the newspaper industry and other media, it is unlikely that Belo's newspaper group will meet the third quarter revenue guidance we provided in our second quarter...

NEW YORK The Dallas Morning News said today that 111 newsroom employees have accepted buyouts. "The number of confirmed acceptances meets our strategic newsroom realignment goals, and we have a very deep and capable team of about 450 professionals to continue producing a newspaper of distinction," Jim Moroney, publisher of the paper, said in a statement. "As we empower reporters and photographers to further apply methods in new media to communicate stories, our emphasis will remain squarely on excellence in every regard." Executives had targeted 85 positions in the newsroom or 17% of staff with a voluntary buyout. The severance...

It will be a big story at The Dallas Morning News, but you won’t find it on the front page. On Thursday, the paper is expected to announce that more than 100 of 580 newsroom staff members have accepted severance packages, shrinking the size of the newsroom by roughly 20 percent. It is not yet official that all the buyout applications will be accepted, but Robert W. Mong Jr., the editor, said that managers would try to accommodate everyone who had applied. As a result, what was once a newspaper with national reach, one that broke the story of the...

NEW YORK Belo reported today that consolidated revenue increased 1.1% in July compared to the same period last year. Growth at the television group offset declines at the newspaper group. For the newspaper group, total revenue dropped 4.2%. Advertising revenue slipped 7%. Online advertising, which is included in total advertising, advanced 36%. "The newspaper advertising environment has been more challenging with results across the industry fluctuating from month to month," Robert Decherd, Belo's chairman, president and CEO, said in a statement. "June was a relatively strong revenue month for Belo's newspapers; however, while we expected July to be the softest...

Published: August 10, 2006 10:55 AM ET NEW YORK The Dallas Morning News said this morning its cutting 85 jobs in the newsroom or about 17% in preparation for a major restructuring. The paper currently counts 500 employees in editorial including interactive. Executives are offering voluntary buyout packages to all employees however, if not enough apply, management could resort laying people off. "As the newspaper industry adapts to fundamental changes, the Dallas Morning News is shifting resources to meet evolving reader and consumer needs," Jim Moroney, publisher of the paper, said in a statement. "Continual change is the new constant...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- The Dallas Morning News, a unit of the Belo Corp. (BLC) , said Monday it is planning a voluntary severance program for newsroom employees. Program details and timing are still under consideration, the company said. The newspaper said it will announce program specifics when they are finalized. End of Story

Belo vows to cooperate as a grand jury looks into overstatement case Dallas County prosecutors are investigating whether criminal charges should be brought in connection with last year's disclosure of inflated circulation at The Dallas Morning News. Belo Corp., owner of The News, said Thursday that it received a subpoena this week from the Dallas County district attorney's office. The subpoena seeks "documents related to the previously announced circulation overstatement" at the newspaper, Belo said in a statement announcing its first-quarter earnings.

DALLAS — Nearly 300 criminals and immigration violators have been caught in the U.S. since January, when the government began high-tech finger scanning and photographing of foreigners at airports and seaports, according to the Department of Homeland Security (search). But now that this technology is being used, local business leaders worry that the security program, called U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology System (search) or US-VISITS, is killing business. The program, designed to keep terrorists out of the country, has become the new way for foreigners to prove they are who they say they are at land ports in...

Just how deep is the newspaper circulation scandal of 2004? Combined with other substantial circulation losses, how damaging will it be to the bread and butter of advertising revenues for 2004, for 2005 and by extension in years to come? Is it yet another sign of the gradual but inexorable decline of the industry and the medium in which many of us practice journalism? These will be top-of-mind questions as the curtain rises Monday on a pair of annual Media Week conferences in New York. The meeting provides a platform for executives of publicly-traded newspaper companies to present their results...