Free Republic

They're angry at their demanding editors. They're angry about the mushrooming workload in shrinking newsrooms. They're even angry about other angry journalists. But these angry journalists are happy they can now vent their frustrations to the rest of the world, courtesy of angryjournalist.com, a sort of online complaint board allowing ink-stained wretches to gripe anonymously. Ironically, their anger is partly fueled by the Internet, which has forced newspapers and television networks to reinvent themselves with painful consequences for their staffs. There's the veterans complaining about newsrooms stretched thin by executives requiring reporters to produce stories for old and new media....

I'm sure you've all heard of the recent scandal in New York where the Governor (Eliot Spitzer, Democrat) was caught up in a call girl ring, but there was another scandal before that in which the Governor's political rival, State Senate majority leader Joe Bruno (Republican) found out that Governor Spitzer was using the State Police to spy on him: "I've been in government 31 years and I've never experienced anything like this," said Bruno. "I was stunned to learn Governor Spitzer is using the fine men and women of the New York State Police to conduct surveillance on me,"...

A usual round of media self-criticism turned into a schoolyard brawl last week, as editors, reporters and bloggers traded insults over a front-page article in The Washington Post, all at the very online water cooler where they usually get their news about the industry. The Post article, which ran on Nov. 29, was about rumors of Barack Obama’s ties to the Muslim world. snip Then things got really ugly. On Dec. 10, Chris Daly, a Boston University journalism professor, posted an entry on his blog that turned the debate over the merits of the article’s reporting into a debate over...

McClatchy November Revenue Slides 9.2 Percent As Classified Ad Spending Slows SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) -- Newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. said Thursday revenue fell 9.2 percent in November, primarily from a sharp drop in classified ads as jobs and real estate listings continue to migrate online. Assuming McClatchy owned a stable of newspapers it acquired from Knight Ridder in both periods, revenue fell 7.9 percent last month. That figure also excludes from the comparison the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which was sold in May. Advertising revenue on this pro forma basis fell 8.6 percent. Without adjustment, the decline was 9.2 percent. Classified...

IN many towns and cities, the newspaper is an endangered species. At least 300 daily papers have stopped publishing over the past 30 years. Those newspapers that have survived are struggling financially. Newspaper circulation has declined steadily for more than 10 years. Average daily circulation is down 2.6 percent in the last six months alone. Newspapers have also been hurt by significant cuts in advertising revenue, which accounts for at least 75 percent of their revenue. Their share of the advertising market has fallen every year for the past decade, while online advertising has increased greatly. At the heart of...

NEW YORK Newspaper executives have complained for years that the yardstick used to measure audience -- paid print circulation -- was unfair especially when compared to the likes of television and radio. Those media have always touted audience share to advertisers so why shouldn't newspapers? Finally after years of debate, the industry is moving towards tracking its total audience which encompasses all its products (especially online viewership) -- not just how many people plunk down some coins for the newspaper. The change will be reflected next Monday, when the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases numbers for more than 700 daily...

We don't know about you, but we're sick of having to dig for context every time a newspaper reports monthly sales--so we've put it all in a handy online spreadsheet.  We will now be analyzing monthly revenue info for The New York Times (NYT), Dow Jones (DJ), Lee Enterprises (LEE), The McClatchy Company (MNI), Gannett (GCI), and Tribune (TBC)--the latter until the Sam Zell deal closes and it disappears into invisible, private equity slash-and-burn mode. We won't bore you with the July details--you can see them for yourself--but the industry totals are below.  Also, the bottom line:  Every day we...

NEW YORK, June 15 (Reuters) - U.S. newspaper executives will meet next week in New York to wrestle with one of their biggest challenges: persuading investors to stick around. But there will be some conspicuous absences at the annual Mid-Year Media Review hosted by the Newspaper Association of America. Los Angeles Times owner Tribune Co. (TRB.N: Quote, Profile , Research) and Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones & Co. Inc. (DJ.N: Quote, Profile , Research) will skip the meeting. One is going private, the other may get bought. Shareholders at both companies lucked out after the surprise bids helped their...

June 3, 2007 -- As you can see from the chart above, Katie Couric’s first nine months at CBS aren’t exactly going as planned - in fact, she’s costing CBS an arm and a leg and a whole lot more for each viewer she hangs onto in her shrinking audience. And last week the $15 million- a-year anchor got even more expensive....."

Most people think the Nielson ratings only apply to primetime programming; however, this is a complete fallacy. Network news plays a frequently forgotten but always important roll itself. A few days ago the final May Sweep totals were announced, and let’s just say it wasn’t pretty for ‘CBS Evening News With Katie Couric.’ According to Variety, the perky anchorwoman managed an average of just 6.1 million viewers. That’s the lowest Tiffany network total since they began tracking the news in 1991! ABC’s ‘World News With Charlie Gibson’ led the way with 7.95 Million, while NBC’s ‘Nightly News With Brian Williams’...

For those who prefer their news fair and balanced instead of imbalanced and biased, the demise of the Big 3 networks’ evening newscasts can’t come quickly enough. Though their imminent end seems unlikely (see the reasons at the end of this post), the latest May sweep results strongly indicate that their march towards irrelevance may be completed sooner than originally thought. All the happy talk at evening news sweep winner ABC should not obscure the fact that over 6% fewer Americans watched the evening newscasts during the May 2007 sweep than did during the May 2006 sweep, and that...

According to the scoreboard, CNN's Paula Zahn attracted just 378,000 total viewers on Wednesday, shedding more than 300,000 viewers from her 7pm lead-in. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann more than doubled Zahn. Bill O'Reilly had eight times as many viewers. Nancy Grace also came out ahead. Zahn hasn't managed to deliver more than 400,000 viewers since last week. On Monday, she averaged 386,000 (and 163,000 in the demo). On Tuesday, she averaged 399,000 (and 123,000 in the demo). Now she's down to 378,000. Is this Zahn's worst performance ever?

What a difference an election makes. No one issued a memo or formal declaratory judgment, but guess what? It's now okay to meet with lobbyists again on Capitol Hill. They still can't buy a staffer a peanut butter sandwich and a Dr. Pepper, but K Street representatives have morphed from crooks to counselors, from the "culture of corruption" incarnate to strategic "stakeholders." Yes, influence peddlers are back in vogue in this city, at least according to the media.     Let's be clear. No seismic shift in the actual work of these advocates occurred in the past few months, but the press...

Lost amid the hoopla over the declining viewership for Katie Couric’s newscast has been a perhaps even more surprising development: The nightly news at her old network isn’t doing so well, either. A week after Couric’s “CBS Evening News” dipped to its worst viewership ever, NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams” matched its worst viewership among adults 25-54 in at least the past 20 years, since Nielsen began using people meters in 1987. “Nightly” averaged 2.18 million 25-54s last week, the week ended May 13. The newscast also saw its total viewers average slide to its lowest point in months,...

There's been a lot of talk about how badly CBS is doing with its high priced ($15 million a year) Katie Couric as anchor of the "CBS Evening News." Back in 1976, ABC News made a big splash into the ratings tank by hiring (at the then unheard of $1 million a year) Barbara Walters to co-anchor its evening news with Harry Reasoner. Like Couric, Walters was then co-anchor of NBC's "Today" show where she had built up a reputation as an aggressive, go-getter and in the minds of some, a prima donna b***h. As a teenager, I remembered Walters...

FAS-FAX Preview: Circ Numbers To Take Another Big Hit By Jennifer Saba Published: April 25, 2007 12:30 PM ET NEW YORK Anyone thinking the declines in circulation should ease when the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases its spring numbers on Monday will be disappointed. According to industry sources, overall daily circulation for the six months ending March 2007 is expected to sink approximately 2.5% while Sunday will drop around 3.0%. Yet again, major metro papers are bearing the brunt of the responsibility for the declines. Papers that are showing daily drops of 5% or more, according to circulation sources, include:...

NEW YORK Potentially sacked with $13 billion in debt on top of weak Q1 results the Tribune Co. is planning a new wave of job cuts, sources told the Chicago Tribune. According to Michael Oneal at the Chicago Tribune, 100 positions at his paper could be targeted for buyouts. It's not known how many cuts Tribune plans to make company-wide. If not enough people step forward to take the packages, Tribune could result to layoffs. On Thursday, Tribune reported a net loss of $15.6 million in Q1. Operating cash flow fell to $238 million from $271 million compared to the...

The Los Angeles Times is expected to announce a plan Monday to cut slightly more than 5% of its workforce, or about 150 jobs, as profits at the newspaper and its Chicago-based parent company, continued to slide in the first quarter. Executives at the paper said they expect most of the cuts--including nearly 70 positions in The Times' newsroom--to come through voluntary buyouts. After the reductions, the newspaper will have a total of about 2,625 employees. Its news staff will drop to about 870, from 940. Job reductions have been widely anticipated since last fall, when Publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson...

NEW YORK In what’s becoming a regular refrain, third quarter earning results are expected to be disappointing with few if any surprises, said a new report from Goldman Sachs. Even after chopping estimates for five newspaper companies, analyst Peter Appert wrote, "we expect further downward pressure on estimates coming out of 3Q results." They forecast a 6% average year-over-year decline in the industry’s 3Q earnings per share. The note waves off investors who might be attracted to the newspaper group’s low valuations and the financial restructuring of several companies. Goldman stamped the sector with an “underweight” rating. Analysts loweredtheir estimate...

he editor of The Los Angeles Times appears to be in a showdown with the paper’s owner, the Tribune Company, over job cuts in the newsroom. In a highly unusual move, Dean P. Baquet, who was named editor last year, was quoted yesterday in his own newspaper as saying he was defying the paper’s corporate parent in Chicago and would not make the cuts it requested. The paper’s publisher, Jeffrey M. Johnson, said he agreed with Mr. Baquet. “Newspapers can’t cut their way into the future,” he told the paper. The number of jobs at stake is unclear but the...