The largest U.S. newspaper publisher and owner of USA Today, the nation’s biggest-selling daily paper, is slashing payroll just in time for the holidays. We read about layoffs everywhere these days, but if you want to see the slow-motion car crash version of how Gannett is doing it, look to Gannett Blog, run by former company reporter Jim Hopkins. [Click for MORE]
Newspaper and newspaper groups are likely to default on their debt and go out of business next year -- leaving "several cities" with no daily newspaper at all, Fitch Ratings says in a report on media released Wednesday.
Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell, in a recent Conde Nast Portfolio.com interview, lamented the layers of work involved in putting out a newspaper.
"If this gentleman over here is a reporter and he calls in and says, 'I've got a story and you want to put it up on the Web,' he talks to one copywriter, they put it all together, it's on the Web in 10 minutes," Mr. Zell said. "But if that same story with the same facts is going in the newspaper, then it goes to the copywriter, the section editor, the page editor, I mean, it goes to everybody. OK? And you wonder why the newspapers can't financially compete."
Well, we'd like to fill in some holes in Mr. Zell's conception of news publishing. [Click for MORE]
"There was a day when a newspaper put 'Winner of Pulitzer Prize' on the front page, and people flocked to read the Pulitzer Prize story," says Sam Zell. "Unfortunately, I'm not sure that that's the case today ... I think that if the goal is a Pulitzer, it's in the wrong place. In other words, we're not in the business of, in effect, underwriting writers for the future. We're a business that, in effect, has a bottom line. So as far as we're concerned, I think Pulitzers are terrific, but Pulitzers should be the cream on the top of the coffee. They shouldn't be the grounds." [Click for MORE]
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In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian's phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer's terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.
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