Free Republic

Digital First Media will be the next owner of The Orange County Register and The Press-Enterprise, a bankruptcy judge ruled Monday. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Mark Wallace approved a request from Freedom Communications to approve the newspaper company’s sale to Digital First Media, the second-highest bidder in last week’s newspaper auction, a deal worth around $52 million to creditors. None of the major players objected to the deal. Digital First Media, the nation’s second-largest newspaper company by circulation, won after the auction’s top bid by Chicago-based Tribune Publishing, owner of the Los Angeles Times, ran into antitrust problems. Digital First...

Opponents of Las Vegas copyright lawsuit filer Righthaven LLC appealed again Tuesday to a Colorado judge to decisively end Righthaven’s lawsuits over Denver Post material. Righthaven since March 2010 has filed 275 lawsuits alleging online infringement of Las Vegas Review-Journal and Post content. The no-warning litigation campaign, unprecedented for the newspaper industry, hit a brick wall this summer when four Nevada judges ruled Righthaven lacked standing to sue over R-J material in seven cases. Righthaven -- which has also been hit with three fair use defeats -- last filed a lawsuit on July 13. These rulings against Righthaven's standing to...

The Denver Post is reporting that MediaNews Group, its parent company along with the Salt Lake Tribune, will not be renewing their contract with the controversial drive-by litigation group Righthaven. According to the report MediaNews Group stopped working with them “some time ago”. John Paton, who was appointed as MediaNews chief executive Wednesday, sent a message on Twitter later in the day that MediaNews had terminated its relationship with Righthaven “some time ago.” MediaNews Group’s relationship with Righthaven dealt almost exclusively with one image that of the TSA agent performing a patdown that became a symbol of the “Don’t touch...

MediaNews Group Inc., which previously asked workers at its newspapers in California to take one-week unpaid leaves, is now putting employees on furlough at its papers in at least five more states. Unpaid leaves announced or agreed to Friday apply to newspapers in Texas, New Mexico, Minnesota, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. In most cases, the furloughs are to be taken by the end of March. It also has frozen pensions and suspended its 401(k) fund match payments for managers and other non-union workers at the Denver daily. A MediaNews spokesman told the Associated Press on Friday that the company's employees...

Letter alleges improper payment of newsroom costs. The Denver Post violated its agreement with Rocky owner E.W. Scripps when it borrowed $13 million from their jointly owned operating agency to cover The Post's newsroom payroll, Scripps wrote in a letter to Post executives last month. "We request that this practice cease and that the Post find a way to fund its editorial payroll without resorting to this . . .," Scripps executives Rich Boehne and Mark Contreras wrote. The letter was dated Dec. 9, five days after Scripps announced it would sell the Rocky and would pursue other options, including...

SAN JOSE -- About 3,300 staffers who work at 29 daily newspapers in California run by the MediaNews Group must take an unpaid, one-week furlough in February and March as a possible alternative to layoffs, the company said Wednesday. The move, announced in an e-mail to MediaNews staffers, will affect employees at the Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times and San Jose Mercury News, which are among the California papers controlled by Denver-based MediaNews. Charles Kamen, vice president of human resources for the chain, said MediaNews was following the lead of Gannett Co., which recently told 31,000 employees at 85 daily...