Free Republic

For the month of July, Site Analytics shows Free Republic as having 6,187,862 visits (1,320,954 unique visitors).MSNBC.com had 5,224,538, down 16.9% (2,002,914 unique visitors).

Even in an industry accustomed to bad news, the recent cutbacks at USA Today exposed a harsh reality: For many former readers, newspapers have become so passé that it's become hard even to give them away. Last month, the Gannett-owned publication announced it was laying off about 130 people, shifting its emphasis from its iconic print edition, and devoting more resources online. USA Today has experienced a sharp circulation drop, even among people who get the paper free -- the business travelers who make up more than half of its readership. As road warriors know, copies of USA Today have...

Earlier this week, we gave you a few staggering factoids on the state of the U.S. newspaper industry. You know, cheery stuff like how there have been roughly 35,000 newspaper job losses or buyouts since March 2007. Or how 166 newspapers have either shut down or stopped putting out a print edition since 2008. Or the fact that the U.S. print sector lost more than 24,500 jobs between September 2008 and September 2009. Good times. It's all from a new report by the World Association of Newspapers and Newspaper Publishers. The stats seem even more bananas when viewed in the...

On July 2 of last year, Politico broke a startling story: The Washington Post was planning to host off-the-record salons at which sponsors would pay to mingle with D.C. eminences and Post writers. The dinners--the first of which had been advertised in Post fliers as an “exclusive opportunity to participate in the health-care reform debate among the select few who will actually get it done”--were to take place at the home of Katharine Weymouth, the Post’s publisher. Weymouth, granddaughter of legendary Post owner Katharine Graham, had only been on the job for a year and a half. Now she was...

The advertising hits just keep on coming for TV stations, networks and programmers -- and not in a good way. Overall, broadcast television ad revenues were down 22.6% to $8.8 billion in the third quarter, versus the same time period a year ago, according to the Television Bureau of Advertising. Local TV stations slipped 28.1% to $3.1 billion, with network TV off 21.5% to $4.7 billion. The best news came with syndicated TV, which dropped a modest 7.2% to $1.0 billion. The period was particularly rough compared to the broader nine-month period in 2009 to date, per TVB. Over this...

A Harley biker is riding by the zoo in Washington, DC when he sees a little girl leaning into the lion's cage. Suddenly, the lion grabs her by the cuff of her jacket and tries to pull her inside to slaughter her, under the eyes of her screaming parents. The biker jumps off his Harley, runs to the cage and hits the lion square on the nose with a powerful punch. Whimpering from the pain the lion jumps back letting go of the girl, and the biker brings her to her terrified parents, who thank him endlessly. A reporter has...

Paper taking donations for Web content This holiday season, you have several options of where to donate your money: Salvation Army, Toys for Tots, soup kitchens. But have you considered the Miami Herald? It's not quite a charity case yet, but the paper of record in the Magic City is accepting handouts if you have any spare change. Starting today, users of the Herald's Web edition can make donations to the paper on each story. A link at the bottom of each story directs users to "Support ongoing news coverage on Miamiherald.com." Through the link, you can pay any amount...

NEW YORK, Nov 24 (Reuters) - The Washington Post (WPO.N) is closing its last U.S. bureaus outside the nation's capital as the money-losing newspaper retrenches to focus on politics and local news. "At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government," the newspaper's top editor, Marcus Brauchli, wrote in a memo to employees that was obtained by Reuters. The Post will close its bureaus in Chicago, Los...

Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) magazine division Time Inc plans another round of job cuts as advertising declines erode revenue, a source familiar with the unit said on Thursday. The job cuts at Time Inc -- which publishes Time magazine, People, Sports Illustrated and Fortune -- would be at about the same level as the division cut last year, the source said. Time Inc. cut more than 600 positions, or more than 6 percent of its workforce, in that round. The company declined to comment, though a spokesman for Fortune magazine separately said that it plans to shave the number of...

Inflation-adjusted numbers show papers are even worse off than you think Martin Peers had a smart Heard on the Street in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on the critical question of how much of the recent plunge in media companies’ fortunes has been a cyclical decline versus a secular one. It’s obviously some of both, but the mix will decide what the next five years look like for magazines and newspapers, the critical providers of original reporting in the country. Alas, I’ve crunched some numbers on the industry and they’re beyond ugly. First, some definitions. A cyclical decline is one due...

The Gannett Company, owner of the nation’s largest newspaper chain, will go through another round of layoffs soon, with an announcement possible in the next few days, executives said Tuesday. The company’s United States and British newspaper divisions eliminated more than 10,000 jobs in 2007 and 2008, including about 2,000 layoffs last fall, and Gannett executives have said repeatedly that they expect more downsizing, including layoffs. The company, which also owns a chain of television stations and Internet ventures, ended last year with 41,500 employees, including 35,800 in its newspaper divisions. On Gannett Blog, a former Gannett editor who closely...

We hear Platinum Equity has been doing some serious tire kicking at the bankrupt Sun-Times Media Group, which is not only ready but eager to deal. Platinum Equity is a Beverly Hills-based private-equity company that, in its own words, finds itself "typically working with 'strategic sellers' that seek to shed a non-core asset in order to refocus their business operations." The STMG is willing to shed everything -- in one swoop or in bits and pieces. This March Platinum Equity bought the formerly prosperous, influential San Diego Union-Tribune -- for what online newspaper analyst Ken Doctor said was reportedly a...

Washington Paper Hires Right-Leaning Pundits, Reporters to Take on the 'Nanny State' For the first few years of George W. Bush’s presidency, Mark Tapscott was a journalist without a newsroom, shouting from the sidelines about his industry’s swift decline. Tapscott ran the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Media and Public Policy, and trained reporters in the use technology for research and crunching numbers. When he considered how few conservatives, libertarians, or real skeptics of federal power were working in newsrooms, he saw a problem that was making the growth of government possible. “The [Freedom of Information Act],” wrote Tapscott in a...

Suppose someone pulled the plug and a couple of million people didn't care. That may be what the TV industry is discovering nearly a week after the U.S. broadcast industry converted from analog to digital broadcasting. Days after their analog TV signals went dark, 2.2% of U.S. households still haven't bothered to hook up to digital reception, according to estimates released Wednesday by Nielsen Co. Even more troubling, the estimates are based on households in Nielsen's national and local TV ratings panels, which means that more than 2% of Nielsen's panel is reporting zero TV usage in the days following...

Linked at Drudge: EVENING NEWS RACE WEEK OF JUNE 1, 2009 NBC 7,960,000 ABC 7,150,000 CBS 5,180,000* *Lowest Total Viewer delivery since NIELSEN records kept

The Clarke Courier was a small newspaper for a small place. Its circulation was but 2,240, but in a county of just 14,000 people, that meant that if you wanted to know what was going on in Clarke, you had better check the Courier. No more. The Courier last week became Virginia's first paid circulation newspaper to die in the epidemic of closings, layoffs and cutbacks that are part of the dismantling of the American news infrastructure. It won't be the last. More than 10,000 journalism jobs have disappeared from U.S. newspapers so far this year, a pittance compared to...

HEY GLOBE readers, can you spare some time? Discuss COMMENTS (110) Tell me. What does this newspaper mean to you? As you've no doubt noticed, we've become one of the biggest stories in town. The New York Times is threatening to close the place down unless it gets $20 million in concessions from the Globe unions. We're suffering from a double whammy: A bad recession and a self-defeating business model. Troubled times have sent advertising revenues plummeting. Meanwhile, we're selling the paper with one hand and giving it away on Boston.com with the other. That's never made any sense -...

U.S. Bill seeks to rescue faltering newspapers

He's right. I have a growing category of stories on The War on Guns I call "Authorized Journalists." I use it to illustrate pervasive media bias and ignorance when it comes to reporting on guns and gun rights-related stories. I then use that to stick it to mainstream reporters and columnists attacking bloggers as unreliable and blaming us for dinosaur media failing to adapt to a changing environment. My message is basically this: You guys blew the trust you were given. If we did not have alternative media, stories would go unreported, under-reported, misrepresented and outright fabricated. You were supposed...

With print revenue down and online revenue growing, newspaper executives are anticipating the day when big city dailies and national papers will abandon their print versions. That day has arrived in Madison, Wis. On Saturday, The Capital Times, the city’s fabled 90-year-old daily newspaper founded in response to the jingoist fervor of World War I, stopped printing to devote itself to publishing its daily report on the Web. (The staff will also produce two print products: a free weekly entertainment guide inserted in the crosstown paper, The Wisconsin State Journal, and a news weekly that will be distributed with the...