Free Republic

Journal Sentinel Inc. said today it is offering employee buyouts in the hope of reducing its work force by 35 to 50 people. The company said if not enough employees take the offer, an "involuntary program" will be considered. Elizabeth Brenner, president and chief operating officer of the publishing group of Journal Communications (JRN) Inc., said the employee reductions are necessary because of falling revenue. In recent years, the Journal Sentinel and other newspapers have been losing revenue to Internet-based advertising. She said gains in online advertising at the newspaper aren't strong enough yet to replace traditional advertising revenue. "It...

NEW YORK -- The New York Times plans to cut 1,050 jobs and shrink the size of its pages in 2008, making them one-and-a-half inches narrower, the newspaper reported in today's edition. ADVERTISEMENT The job cuts include 800 positions at a New Jersey printing plant whose workload will shift to another in New York City, the article said, estimating the moves would save $42 million per year. The reduction in the size of its pages would mean a loss of 11 percent of the space devoted to news, but the newspaper plans to add pages to make up for about...

Washington - "For God's sake, are you blind?," a woman shouts at the head of the federal emergency management agency (FEMA), Michael Brown. "You're patting each other on the back, while people here are dying." The woman is not a victim of Hurricane Katrina. She is a reporter with US television network MSNBC "Katrinagate" is the term being used by the media to describe the biggest challenge facing the political establishment in the US since the Watergate affair in the 1970s toppled Richard Nixon. Not for decades has there been such merciless questioning of the president and his administration by...

Newsweek Drops Issue, Cites Poor Ad Sales Due to low ad pages during late summer, Newsweek is trimming the number of issues it publishes by one, opting for a double issue dated Aug. 29-Sept. 5, Mediaweek reports. Through July 19, Newsweek's ad pages have fallen 15.6 percent this year, to 970. It's not alone. A lack of spending in the technology and automotive sectors has hurt the whole newsweekly category with ad pages falling 10.5 percent, to 6,332 through July 19.

Kenneth Tomlinson's crusade to purify public broadcasting is Nixon Redux. It's also Reagan Redux and Gingrich Redux. Snip All this reads like chapters from the Nixon attack plan against public TV and radio snip. If it weren't so damaging, the hard right's obsession with public broadcasting would be merely pathetic snip Yet instead of just sucking up their annoyance with something few people see or hear, conservatives pump their pulse rates into triple digits and bleat about being the poor victims of liberal media bias.