We asked last week what happened to Tribune Co.’s sense of humor after a press release about some of its lawyers was conspicuously short on slap-happiness. We’re happy to report that humor has returned in this latest release about a real estate purchase. Could Tribune be responding to our previous question, “Where’s the funny?”

CHICAGO, April 28 /PRNewswire/ — Tribune Company today announced that it has completed the purchase of real estate formerly leased from TMCT, LLC, including properties used by the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, Baltimore Sun and Hartford Courant. The transaction enables the company to eliminate $24 million in annual lease payments.

The company received an option to purchase the property for $175 million as a result of the 2006 restructuring of TMCT, LLC. The purchase is structured as a like-kind exchange, with Tribune using the proceeds from its sale of the Tribune Studios real estate in Los Angeles, announced in January, and from the sale of additional property in Stamford and Greenwich, Connecticut.

“This tax-efficient transaction gives us complete control over some very
strategic real estate assets in major markets around the country, particularly
in downtown Los Angeles,” said Stephanie Pater, Tribune’s director of real
estate. “At the same time, we eliminate our annual lease payments and save a
substantial amount of money.”

In explaining the apparent lack of humor in today’s announcement, Pater
added, “We never joke about real estate — it’s made our Chairman and CEO one
really rich dude.”

There’s the funny.

(Photo: Reuters)

Newspaper circulation: It’s rising! Well, at some papers it is. That’s according to figures that came out from the Audit Bureau of Circulations on Monday morning. Most papers, as everyone knows, are reporting falling circulation in all their editions, whether during the week or on the weekends. Still, out of the more than 500 papers that reported, there were some more positive stories to tell. Here’s a list of the top circulation gainers, according to the ABC.

The big gainer? El Diario La Prensa , in Spanish, serving a growing part of the U.S. population. The Miami Herald has published El Nuevo Herald for years. Is it time for more big-city dailies to consider a Spanish edition?

The Hollywood Reporter is joining the ranks of newspapers and magazines that are redesigning their print editions and Web sites, but the changes that the nearly 80-year-old publication is making will affect much more than the way it presents itself.

Monday’s official relaunch of one of the top trades covering the movie business also will feature more charts, more data and more of a business focus in its reporting, publisher Eric Mika told us in an interview late last week.

“The industry is the largest exporting product America has. It’s not a frivolous business,” Mika said. “None of the publications to date really represent that. … It reaches out to the finance community, the technology community, but it does not forget the core readership on Wilshire Blvd., New York City and London.”

Elizabeth Guider , editor of the Reporter, said the plan is to continue offering stories about casting and deals — what she called the “bread and butter of Hollywood” — but the new mandate in an era of cheap information is to offer readers more analytical coverage with quick turnaround. That’s a similar aim for news outlets from The Wall Street Journal to our own news service , and a familiar proposal for a way to figure out how to charge people for news when so much of it is free these days.

Speaking of free, the Reporter’s parent company, Nielsen, plans eventually to make some of that information available online for a fee.

“Once we have enough real exclusive data … that sort of area will go behind the wall,” said Mika. “What is exclusive data? Data that only we can obtain, analyze and develop.”

Here are some of the changes coming to the print edition:

• New logo
• Fewer story breaks and more clearly-defined, dedicated sections.
• Breaking news about the major companies and personalites in the film industry, as well as familiar players beginning to make their mark.

On the Web:

• The debut of four channels of THR online video - “Box Office Tally,” “News,” “Exclusive Interview,” and “Festival Dailies”.
• Expanded blog coverage, including the year-round awards season “Gold Rush” blog, legal news blog “THR, Esq.,” film industry insider blog “Risky Biz,” digital media and online video blog “Reel Pop,” and TV and pop culture blog “Past Deadline.”

(Disclaimer: Thomson Reuters and The Hollywood Reporter share content. Photo courtesy of Reuters.)

Rupert Murdoch has earned the disdain of many Wall Street Journal staffers by saying their stories often are too long , especially some of the front-page juggernauts that take their time getting started.

While the page-one woes got all the attention, it looks like he and his crew were doing some editing elsewhere in the paper as well. The Heard on the Street column, which contains all sorts of interesting analysis and tips about buzz in the financial world, seems to be nearly half its former size some days.

Friday’s feature, “Lehman Brothers Seen As Cheap Recovery Bet ” by Peter Eavis and David Reilly, measured 431 words. Compare that to the (now weirdly prescient) “A Microsoft, Yahoo Tie-Up? ” that Robert Guth and Kevin Delaney wrote for the May 3, 2006, edition, at 1,224 words.

Typically, 800 to 1,200 words has been the breathing room for such stories, and maybe that will return on days when the news demands. Then again…

(Photo: Reuters)

Although Marcus Brauchli’s decision to resign as the top editor at The Wall Street Journal — announced on Tuesday — did not require the approval of the paper’s editorial integrity committee, they will step in when it’s time to hire the next one. 

The committee was designed to safeguard editorial independence by approving or vetoing the hiring choices in case its new owner, News Corp’s Rupert Murdoch, attempts to use his candidate to evade a solemn promise to keep the newspaper’s editorial dignity intact. It was one of the few safeguards left behind by its previous owners, the Bancroft family, as a condition for agreeing to the Murdoch’s takeover.

How effective will the committee actually be? We asked former Dow Jones board member Christopher Bancroft on Tuesday.

“That’s a lovely fantasy,” he said. “I told the family [at the time] that it’s window dressing. It is a lovely fantasy to imagine you can have a board that will take care of editorial issues at The Wall Street Journal.”

Jeff Bercovici and Portfolio.com got a similar comment from another family member, Jane Cox MacElree:

“I’m not surprised,” says Jane Cox MacElree, who controlled 15 percent of the family’s Dow Jones shares. “This is why I was not in favor of selling the paper to that man. Words mean nothing to him, unless they’re his.”

What do you think about the committee? Five people getting $100,000 to act out a fantasy, or five guardians of truth, justice and journalism?

(Photo: Reuters)

Tribune Co under Chief Executive Sam Zell has really loosened up in the past few weeks. Just think back to the April 1 Web site “redesign,” not to mention this subsequent so-crazy-it-was-surreal press release.

It’s all part of Zell’s goal of getting folks at the debt-riddled company not to take themselves too seriously, but someone forgot to tell the lawyers. Check out excerpts from the press release issued on Wednesday:

CHICAGO, April 23, 2008-Tribune Company today announced that Don Liebentritt has been named general counsel and that David Eldersveld, the company’s senior counsel/mergers and acquisitions, has been promoted to vice president/deputy general counsel and corporate secretary. Crane Kenney, who has served as Tribune’s general counsel since 1996, will step down to devote all his time to his duties as chairman of the Chicago Cubs.

Liebentritt is a senior advisor with Equity Group Investments (EGI), a private investment firm where he served as president from 2000 to 2005. He is also an officer and director of various private affiliates of EGI. Liebentritt will be responsible for directing all of the company’s legal affairs and will assume his new duties in mid-May.

Eldersveld, who joined Tribune in 2005, has been responsible for negotiating and managing the legal aspects of acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures and other strategic investment transactions for Tribune and its business units. He will assume his new responsibilities immediately.

Where is the funny?

(Photo: Reuters)

You can say one thing for Gary Pruitt , McClatchy’s CEO and perhaps the most ardent defender of the newspaper business — he knows what we all want.

Here’s his comment from the analyst call he did today to discuss McClatchy’s first-quarter earnings :

We want to make sure we maintain our ability to generate revenue.

Who could ask for anything more?

Pruitt also showed off his lighter side in an exchange with Goldman Sachs’s Peter Appert. When the analyst said he was going to ask an unfair question, Pruitt responded, “That’s because I’m going to give you an unfair answer.”

Cue laughter, then cue crying because Appert’s question is at the heart of what most newspaper people want to know: Isn’t there a point where you can’t cut your way to profitability anymore?

Pruitt’s answer:

We feel we have no choice. Given the revenue trends, we’re simply going to have to reduce costs. We do believe that we can sustain a good record on costs throughout this year. We face increasing newsprint prices later in the year and that will work against us. But on the other hand, we are looking at further efficiencies throughout the company and we suspect that when you exclude any severance costs and the effect of newsprint pricing, we should be able to sustain a double-digit run rate on expense decline.

(Photo: Reuters)

Say what you will, but The Washington Post’s editors know how to get their stories straight before printing them. Here are the complete memos about Susan Glasser’s resignation as AME (Assistant Managing Editor) of the National section. Aside from Glasser’s use of the pronoun “I,” we would dare you to tell who wrote which.

Here’s Glasser:

A year and a half ago, I was named AME for this section, and we set off together in pursuit of an amazing set of stories, from the
earliest-starting, never-ending presidential primary camapign (sic) to the grinding war in Iraq in the twilight of the Bush era. It was a privilege and an honor to work with all of you on the tremendous coverage that ensued, all the more so because you have produced this courageous and innovative journalism at a time of great peril and handwringing over our business and our paper. And you’ve worked hard together to take on some of those challenges, whether by helping build a new political team for this most historic of elections, or taking our reporting and analysis online in important new ways or by helping taking part in a major redesign of the A section and significant reorganization of an editing system that had gone largely unchanged since the waning of the transitor (sic) radio. I’m leaving to work on a new project with [Washington Post Co CEO] Don Graham but will continue to watch what happens here with great admiration and support. Many many thanks to all of you.

Susan

Here’s Executive Editor Len Downie Jr and Managing Editor Phil Bennett:

After a year and a half as AME/National, Susan Glasser will be taking on an assignment working for Don Graham.

Susan has been a leader in spurring innovation in the national news report, especially in our political coverage, where she has introduced new forms of journalism and has helped make The Post a national leader in online coverage of the presidential campaign. She has been a prime mover of changes to make the A-section more dynamic and better organized.

As in her prior roles as Outlook editor, enterprise reporter and editor, and foreign correspondent, Susan has worked tirelessly to promote quality journalism in The Washington Post.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Bill Hamilton will direct the National staff while we select Susan’s replacement.

The capper may come from The New York Times , which probably doesn’t mind taking the time to spend a few paragraphs detailing its rivals’ woes instead of its own.

The Washington Post announced Tuesday that Susan B. Glasser, considered an up-and-coming star at the paper, had been removed from her job as an assistant managing editor in charge of national news. According to several people at The Post, it did so because of complaints and poor morale among Ms. Glasser’s subordinates.

For details of the shuffle, check out the City Paper’s tongue-in-cheek mea culpa on its earlier coverage of Glasser. It’s irony wrapped inside a mystery inside a sort-of correction.

Glasser was cast as a visionary with the brains to remake a paper in great need of fresh energy and ideas. Though this miserable piece of journalism discussed Glasser’s sharp-elbowed ways, it essentially sided with the view of the Post leadership-namely, that such is the price of progress. The money quote belonged to Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Glasser’s deputy, who said, “Do we need to be shaken up a bit? Yeah, we do. The old sort of fat, happy, complacent days are over. We’re losing subscribers.”

That sentiment compromised the longevity of the story, which was marred by misplaced emphasis. Yes, Glasser is a smart newswoman, but she’s really distinguishing herself with bad management. Washington City Paper should have listened more closely to the various sources who cast her as a train wreck.

All in all, it’s the most ink we’ve seen spent on one top editor. Well, almost.

Tribune Co earned the scorn of its smoking employees when it decided to charge them $100 more than their non-smoking brethren for health insurance. That was before Sam Zell took over, however. Here’s the memo that went out to employees today.

Since the closing of the going-private transaction last December, we’ve been reviewing policies and practices across the company, including Tribune’s healthcare benefits. While well-intentioned, we think the tobacco-use fee implemented by the previous management team is inconsistent with the new culture we’re developing-we’d rather you use your own judgment when it comes to tobacco use, not impose ours upon you.

This policy was a part of open enrollment last fall and took effect January 1, 2008. I’m pleased to tell you that we’re eliminating this fee effective April 28th.

· If you successfully participated in the smoking cessation program, have quit and been reimbursed for all fees, then congratulations are in order. Quitting is one of the hardest things you’ll ever do.

· If you’re still being charged the fee, it will stop and Tribune will reimburse you 100 percent for the fees you have paid. This reimbursement will occur in late May.

Tribune will continue to offer the smoking cessation program free of charge to all employees and their covered dependents age 18 and older.

The spousal medical fee, implemented at the same time, will remain in place. We believe that if an employee’s spouse has access to coverage through his/her employer, that employer has the primary responsibility to bear the cost of coverage. Our obligation is to take care of our own employees, first and foremost.

If you have questions about the tobacco use fee, contact the Tribune Benefits Service Center at 800/872-2222.

Thanks.

Gerry

Like Sam said, it’s your company , so light up.

(Photo: Reuters)

New York Times Co Chairman and Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. managed to deflect major shareholder insurrection this year by agreeing to offer two board seats to a dissident investor’s rival slate, where one presumes they might be somewhat more placid than when they were banging on the walls of the Gray Lady. Now it looks like he might be working the same charm on disaffected puzzlers.

At Tuesday’s annual shareholder meeting, one woman who said she was an investor in the company asked why the Times didn’t run a Sudoku puzzle. Such a move, she explained to Sulzberger as he stood before his audience at the lectern, would no doubt be a big boon for circulation.

Here’s Sulzberger’s response:

I know it’s something we’ve looked at but I cannot answer the question as to why we haven’t done it yet. Our puzzle is one of the great puzzles of the world and it continues to be a huge draw for us. But I will certainly make your thoughts known to the puzzle people.

If nothing else, he’s more than assured us that his puzzle people will never be considered “synergies,” and if they were, they could probably hide out in the Sunday acrostic all day long.

And on an endnote, perhaps if the shareholder checked nytimes.com, she might find all manner of Sudoku.

(Photo: Reuters, ‘Father of Sudoku’ Maki Kaji)