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Insider will lay off 10 percent of its team, according to a memo sent out by the company’s president on Thursday. “The economic headwinds that have hurt many of our clients and partners are also affecting us,” wrote Barbara Peng, the president of Insider, Inc. “Unfortunately, to keep our company healthy and competitive, we need to reduce the size of our team. ” Peng said those affected by the layoffs would receive an email on Thursday morning. Each person laid off will receive 13 weeks of base pay plus two weeks for every year they’ve been employed by Insider over...

On April 21, the Business and Media Institute's Dan Gainor testified before the House Judiciary Committee's Courts and Competition Policy in a hearing on "A New Age for Newspapers." As MRC's Tim Graham wrote on April 22, the hearing was spurred by the steady drumbeat of newspaper closings around the country, and calls from some Democrat lawmakers to bail out and subsidize the newspaper business. While others testified on newsprint business models and the impact of the Internet, Gainor's statement to the subcommittee highlighted liberal bias as a major factor in the industry's decline. "The concept of a journalist as...

Page 1 above the fold in yesterday's New York Times featured a photo (below) by our new acquaintance Adnan Hajj. I suspect that not all is as it appears to be in the photo, and somehow doubt that Times readers will ever learn why that might be the case.The Reuters caption reads: "A severely wounded Lebanese civilian is carried away on a stretcher at Maameltain bridge, after it was targeted by Israeli air strikes, in the north of Beirut August 4, 2006. (Adnan Hajj/Reuters)" (Thanks to reader David Butz.)

...The truth... is that this is a debacle that some in the press corps have brought down upon themselves.... Liberal editorial pages were among the loudest in demanding that a special counsel be appointed to find the leaker. And only many months later, when Ms. Miller was in the dock, did New York Times editorials finally get around to admitting that the leak might not even be a crime. Their partisan loathing for Mr. Bush caused these editors to overlook the risks even to their own reporting self-interest. They have also left the press more vulnerable than it was before....

It is the kind of TV news coverage every president covets. "Thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A.," a jubilant Iraqi-American told a camera crew in Kansas City for a segment about reaction to the fall of Baghdad. A second report told of "another success" in the Bush administration's "drive to strengthen aviation security"; the reporter called it "one of the most remarkable campaigns in aviation history." A third segment, broadcast in January, described the administration's determination to open markets for American farmers. To a viewer, each report looked like any other 90-second segment on the local news. In fact, the...

Poynteronline Posted, Oct. 28, 2003 Updated, Oct. 28, 2003 Newspaper Nicknames: The Good, the Bad and the Scatological By Chip Scanlan (more by author) I began my newspaper career at The Milford Shitizen.After several years toiling for small community newspapers, I finally hit the big time. I landed a reporting job with a major metropolitan daily, the Providence Urinal.After eight years, I moved on again — this time to sunny Florida and the staff of the St. Petersburg Pravda. Most newspapers have another identity, usually a pejorative one, in addition to the one gracing the front page nameplate.Sometimes they're an...

The president just implied 'imminent threat' Opening my e- mail after last Sunday's column, the first message I came across was from Bruce P. Batista of Avon, who accused me of "at best journalistic malpractice and at worst an outright fraud." This is typical Sunday fare for my critics, who are not shy about telling me how wrong I am and suggesting what I ought to do with my opinions. But Batista took his criticism a step further by challenging me and the editors at The Plain Dealer to a wager. He offered to donate $500 to the charity of...

As the ratings have rolled in for the first three weeks of the new television season, one question has dominated the conversations inside the industry's executive suites: what the heck is going on? Network executives are baffled by a season unlike any seen before. Returning hit shows like "Friends" and "E.R." are losing significant numbers of viewers from previous years. New shows have performed far worse than almost anyone expected, a result capped off Monday night when the Fox network started two shows that had received huge promotional pushes during the baseball playoffs, "The Next Joe Millionaire" and "Skin," and...

Now that President Bush has finally called the big media's bluff on its bad-news-only Iraq war coverage, mainstream reporters are squealing like stuck pigs. CBS John Roberts sounded particularly overwrought the other night, complaining that Bush's decision to circumvent the networks and tell the Iraq story to local TV affiliates amounted to a declaration of "war." "It was the public relations equivalent of a declaration of war aimed at the national media, President Bush claiming the American people aren't getting the truth about Iraq," Roberts announced, according to quotes picked up by the Media Research Center. The CBS'er griped that...

Yep, they're now whining because President Bush is going around them since they can't manage to tell the truth about the situation in Iraq. Poor Babies!!!! "Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003 10:23 a.m. EDT Big Media: Bush Has Declared War on Us Now that President Bush has finally called the big media's bluff on its bad-news-only Iraq war coverage, mainstream reporters are squealing like stuck pigs. CBS's John Roberts sounded particularly overwrought the other night, complaining that Bush's decision to circumvent the networks and tell the Iraq story to local TV affiliates amounted to a declaration of "war." "It was the...

It's scary to imagine Atlanta without CNNColin Campbell - StaffSunday, October 12, 2003Those mocking billboards across the street from CNN headquarters must make the people inside cringe. The signs are the work of Fox News, which doesn't just love to brag about itself (TV generally is a shameless self-promoter) but which also loves to tweak the competition. The latest billboard --- signed by "your friends at FOX News" --- says, "Come Home Connie --- CNN Needs You." The reference is to Connie Chung, the former broadcast news star who was hired by CNN to boost its ratings, then replaced with...

AN IMMINENT THREAT (TO DEMOCRATS, THAT IS)A threat to the nation is vastly exaggerated. It is claimed that the President must take draconian countermeasures against the deadly enemy immediately -- an enemy that a powerful ideological faction has had in its crosshairs for years. To build public support for action, intelligence reports are "sexed-up" to make the enemy seem stronger. Yes, there are seeming disclaimers that the threat is not "imminent" -- yet the message is crystal clear: the republic is in grave danger, and we must act before it becomes too late to act. Am I talking about Paul...

California race too close to call Tue 7 October, 2003 18:50 BST By Adam Tanner and Gina Keating LOS ANGELES (Reuters)- California's unprecedented recall election has entered its last act as voters jammed polling stations to decide unpopular Gov. Gray Davis's political future and decide whether Republican actor Arnold Schwarzenegger should begin a political career -- at the top. Lines in many places began forming at 7 a.m. PDT (3 p.m. British time) when booths opened for Californians to first decide whether to oust Democrat Davis, a charisma-free technocrat under fire for mishandling the state's economy, then pick from an...

<p>Media organizations prepared Tuesday to oppose any efforts by the Justice Department to subpoena journalists and their notes to learn who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak.</p> <p>Subpoenas could be challenged on the basis of First Amendment guarantees of freedom of the press, said Bill Felber, editor of The Manhattan (Kan.) Mercury and freedom of information chairman for the Associated Press Managing Editors. But they could also be challenged, he said, if they were too broad or if the information could be obtained in other ways.</p>