Publishing beat reporters should expect a flare-up in their carpal tunnel syndrome in the coming weeks. Here is why:

The New York Times Co will decide whether to sell The Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette by “early fall,” the Worcester daily reported on Friday, citing Times Co Chief Executive Janet Robinson. Fall this year begins on September 22, less than two weeks from today. McGraw-Hill, meanwhile, set September 15 — next Tuesday — as the deadline for bids on BusinessWeek magazine (Bloomberg apparently has reentered the bidding process too).

Here is an excerpt from the Telegram & Gazette’s story:

“The New England Media Group is in better financial shape than it was at the beginning of the year,” Ms. Robinson said at an afternoon “town hall” meeting… “Our hand is not being forced to sell. We are not in a situation where we are absolutely being forced to sell the Globe and the T&G.”

A decision on the sale is likely in the early fall, Ms. Robinson said.

“This is a very unnerving and distracting process so we’d like to move more quickly than not,” she said.

I might echo that last sentiment.

Neither deal, if any of them actually come about, would excite news editors who set the newsworthiness bar by price. BusinessWeek, it has been widely reported, could sell for a dollar (we still think this is a figurative, rather than a literal price), and bids coming in for the Globe have been around $35 million, according to news reports. A bunch of other small-money deals are lurking out there in media as well, for example, the stalking-horse bid of $5 million for the Chicago Sun-Times.

Still, these are properties with famous, or at least, recognizable names, and journalists like to write about themselves (I know whereof I speak), so expect some digital ink to start welling up sooner rather than later.

On a side note, we couldn’t help but notice that NYT CEO Robinson said what she said at a Telegram & Gazette meeting on Thursday that did not include NYT chairman and head of its controlling family, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. He did attend a meeting at the Globe earlier this week, which made us wonder whether the Telegram & Gazette wasn’t big enough to merit the presence of two Times honchos. Whatever the case, his absence was merely due to a scheduling conflict, a Times spokeswoman said.

When Massachusetts Democratic Senator John Kerry convenes a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Wednesday to discuss the fate of U.S. newspapers, don’t look for the man who controls the fate of Kerry’s hometown Boston Globe on Capitol Hill.

Arthur Sulzberger Jr, whose New York Times Co is threatening to close the Globe, will be at a press conference in New York City where online bookseller and retailer Amazon.com plans to release a new version of the Kindle electronic book reader. At least, that’s what The Wall Street Journal says. Amazon and the Times declined to talk to us about the Wednesday event or Sulzberger’s planned appearance.

Senator Kerry need not worry that he can’t question Sulzberger in person. As much as Sulzberger probably wants to limit his talking points to the Kindle, we’re in a Globe state of mind. After all, talks resume tonight over $10 million in cost cuts it wants to wrest from the Globe’s biggest union. We would be happy to ask Kerry’s questions on his behalf.

(Photo: Reuters)

The New York Times’s hyper-energetic reporter Sewell Chan fielded a question in a mediabistro.com Q&A about what it’s like working with Arthur Gregg Sulzberger on his City Room blog staff at nyt.com. Sulzberger is the son of Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and an heir apparent to the Times company.

Regardless of Sulzberger’s talent at City Room or in his previous reporting gig at The Oregonian, I’m not sure Chan had many options on how to answer the question. Here’s what he said:

Arthur Gregg Sulzberger joined the Times staff as a reporter, and he’s been working continuous news. He’s already been working with metro, and he’ll continue to work with metro. He has been absolutely impressive, gracious, smart as a whip, hardworking, full of energy, full of ideas, and has a great sense of language. His writing sparkles, and he’s a charm and a pleasure to work with.

It’s an especially good answer when Times salaries are about to get cut by 5 percent this year — part of cost-cuts to keep the paper alive — and layoffs are not off the table, at least according to the tentative agreement between the TImes management and union that we reported on Tuesday.

An investor at Thursday’s 2009 New York Times annual meeting came up with a heck of a way to save money. But first, a recap of all the serious stuff that executives brought up at the meeting (Read the whole thing on the wire):

• We will stay public.
• We will not be sold.
• There is no one solution to what ails the newspaper business.
• We’re trying everything.
• Stop asking about us closing The Boston Globe or selling it. We won’t tell you until we’re ready. (By the way, it only took the Times nearly a month to reveal what the Globe has reported for ages: It is on track to lose $85 million this year.)

Now for money-saving tips for the struggling TImes, courtesy of an investor whose name I didn’t get a chance to catch. Here’s what she said to Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr during an investor Q&A:

As to savings on newsprint, I see belabored articles taking almost full pages on obscure topics… perhaps [about] someone in the Brazilian forest I cannot do anything about. So if you’re trying to save newsprint, perhaps you could edit these things to a more reasonable size… [Then] there is the expense you incur editorially in aspects that are really not necessary. [Times food critic] Frank Bruni had to go to Texas to write about a pork restaurant which most of your readers will never go to… Cathy Horyn had to go to the Dominican Republic to interview Oscar de la Renta who is here 90 percent of the time.

Tough call for a reporter like me. Who doesn’t love traveling to interesting places and writing about them, preferably at 5,000 words a pop? Then again, if it’s all about readers first…

Meanwhile, another investor complained that the Times does not offer enough local coverage, but seems to have the budget to send reporters all around the world. “Send these people to Brooklyn! Send these people to the Bronx!” he said of Times reporters. “You will increase circulation.”

Sulzberger paused for a moment, then reminded the investor that the Times won a Pulitzer this week for local reporting. As to whether shareholders can reap the dividends of Pulitzers, that’s another story…

(Cartoon: Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr., courtesy of Paul Szep)

Why do we care about Facebook?

1. People you know and respect use it. That includes you.
2. People you know and respect who scoff at it still know what Facebook is.
3. Facebook, like Google, is popular enough to have become a verb as well as a noun.
4. If the public ever got a crack at buying shares in it, lots of people would get rich.

That’s why mass clucking ensued among the technology press when the word came out Tuesday that Chief Financial Officer Gideon Yu is splitting. The Wall Street Journal, so far as we can tell, broke the news. It said:

The departure of the 37-year-old Mr. Yu and the ensuing search for a replacement are likely to renew speculation that Facebook is stepping up plans for a public offering, despite the rocky economy. The company, which has turned down several acquisition offers in the past, has said it is hoping to go public in the next few years.

But some employees and investors, who have poured roughly $455 million into the company, according to VC Experts.com Inc., are eager for Facebook to start planning an offering and have raised questions about whether it has enough money to sustain its growth. Many others have said the company is over-valued, which — in addition to the economic downturn — hampered its efforts to fund an employee-buyback program last year.

One person familiar with the matter said Facebook’s financials are strong and the company expects revenue in 2009 to increase at least 70% from last year. (The New York Times has details on that too.)

The Journal also referred to the now famous $240 million that Microsoft invested in Facebook, giving the service a perceived value of $15 billion (see No. 4 in our list above). The problem is, the WSJ reported, Yu’s job “has grown more difficult, as Facebook has struggled to raise additional money at lower valuations.” If Facebook revenue is supposed to grow 70 percent — a giant leap — history would suggest, and nearly insist, that last year’s revenue total would have been only enough to buy a pack of Smarties.

That would make Yu’s job more difficult indeed. It must be hard to tell all your potential investors that Microsoft was going overboard on that whole $15 billion valuation thing.

Still: Don’t assume that it’s all about Yu. Kara Swisher at her Boomtown blog (like the Journal, also owned by Rupert Murdoch and his News Corp) hints at strained family relations:

In a back-to-the-future move, former Netscape CFO Peter Currie will be the key adviser to Facebook about financial matters, until a new search for a CFO is found, sources said. … But others sources at the company said Yu and Facebook CEO and Founder Mark Zuckerberg had had intensifying differences in recent weeks, over a range of issues.

One last note: The NYT story quoted Facebook spokesman (and non-family relation) Larry Yu as saying the site has no immediate plans to go public. Swisher at Boomtown said that Facebook was prepping for an eventual IPO. It sounds like the old, cold comfort behind the idea that if you wait long enough for something to happen, it will.

Keep an eye on:

• An Economist magazine theme park in London? That’s how you know it’s April Fool’s Day. What we want to know is who wrote up the brilliant description that went out in the press release Tuesday night? Oh yeah, they don’t use bylines. Also, check the theme park map. (The Economist)
• The New York Times might have a ton of problems, but its prominence in the media world and its air of rarified intellectualism make beating up on the family that runs the paper irresistible for many people. Mark Bowden at Vanity Fair earlier this week went to town on Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr in a way that would leave most people gasping for breath from the sucker punch. There is limited defense of Sulzberger online this week, but at least there’s Jack Shafer at Slate. He doesn’t quite exculpate the Sulzbergers (I wouldn’t want people saying some of these things about me), but he puts the insults in perspective. (Slate)
• So what if the real estate market is in the tank? Zillow.com, which anxious homeowners use to check to see how much equity they have lost in their homes, is letting people do that by putting its technology on newspaper websites. Is this what they mean by misery loving company? (Editor & Publisher)

(Photo: Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg; Reuters)

News Corp President and Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin’s perks after he leaves News Corp at the end of June are basic compared with some legendary golden parachutes, though they’re still worth more money than I make in a year. Or 10 years for that matter.

In addition to his Fox studios production deal, Chernin’s creature comforts include 50 hours on News Corp’s jet ($1.65 million value), corporate car ($210,000 value) and possibly personal secretary services ($1.05 million value). See the proxy statement for more details.

That might not send the image of a cost-cutting corporate culture at a time when News Corp’s stock is down 70 percent and the bottom looks further away as its most can-do executive quits. Then again, maybe Chernin’s doing the right thing, all things considered. Check out this little-noticed excerpt from Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch’s memo to employees:

Achieving our ambitions will require change and renewal. So throughout 2009, I will continue to work closely with all of our companies to make sure that we are organized and resourced in the best way to take advantage of this extraordinary point in time. We will press our advantages and invest in our great franchises. And, of course, we will keep our eyes on big prizes, some of which may arise only once in a generation. [Emphasis ours -- ed.]

Wait a minute. Didn’t he already do that with The Wall Street Journal and its parent company Dow Jones? What’s it going to be next? Michael Wolff, who wrote the Murdoch tome “The Man Who Owns the News,” published late last year, thinks that Murdoch has it bad for The New York Times. Of course, the Times’s ruling family, led by Arthur Sulzberger Jr, has said the company and its legendary paper are not for sale.

But then again, it’s a generational issue — just like the word Murdoch uses in his memo. Younger Sulzbergers can’t be that happy that the TImes suspended the dividend that some of them depend on. Could they put enough pressure on their elders to sell? Maybe they could if Murdoch decided that some of his $5 billion would be money well spent on enticing the family with a larger-than-life offer, just like the Times. He said he’s not interested in becoming more of a “public enemy” by chasing the paper, but even media moguls are allowed to change their minds.

With investors in News Corp getting more annoyed for Murdoch’s attachment to newspapers (including the New York Post where he just axed longtime gossip columnist Liz Smith), it’s easy to imagine that Chernin — News Corp’s ambassador to Wall Street — might not be able to defend one more once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

One thing’s for sure: Just thinking about this keeps a media reporter up at night.

(Photo: Murdoch on the left, Chernin on the right. Reuters)

The New York Times headline on Apple’s Macworld convention is so snappy that it almost frees me of the obligation to write this blog entry today:

Want to copy iTunes Music? Go Ahead, Apple says.

Fortunately, the Times couldn’t fit this other part into the headline, giving us something to quote:

Beginning this week, three of the four major music labels - Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group - will begin selling music through iTunes without digital rights management software, or D.R.M., which controls the copying and use of digital files. The fourth, EMI, was already doing so.

In return, Apple, whose dominance in online music sales gives it powerful leverage, agreed to a longstanding demand of the music labels and said it would move away from its insistence on pricing all individual song downloads on iTunes at 99 cents.

Instead, the majority of songs will drop to 69 cents beginning in April, while the biggest hits and newest songs will go for $1.29. Others that are moderately popular will remain at 99 cents.

The music industry thinks these moves will help sales, while people who like to share their music or play it on devices that are not iPods might stop re-mixing geek rallies with street protests.

The move was as much about competition as beneficence, as The Wall Street Journal noted:

New online-music rivals have also emerged, including Amazon.com Inc., which sells many songs at a cheaper price than iTunes and without copy protection, giving users more freedom with the songs they have purchased.

Also from the WSJ:

Starting Tuesday, Apple said iPhone 3G owners will also be able to download songs from the iTunes Store via their cellular networks instead of having to connect to a wireless Internet network. The company said the price, selection and quality of the songs would be the same as they are online.

Reuters and Bloomberg focused on the Macworld show itself, and how from a fireworks perspective, it was plain boring.

Bloomberg:

The company said last month that it won’t attend Macworld conferences anymore after this week. Apple shares often fall after its events because investors frequently want bigger announcements, said Gene Munster, an analyst at Piper Jaffray & Co. in Minneapolis. Even so, today’s presentation was “underwhelming,” he said.

“Apple made a statement that Macworld is not important and they showed it with the products they announced,” Munster said. Updated software, a new notebook and iTunes price changes are “nice, but not needle moving.”

And Reuters:

With consumers flocking to low-cost PCs like netbooks, which Apple has dismissed, many analysts hope to see some new product catalyst in the near term to bolster the company’s sales in a recession.

Of course, Reuters noted, that’s not what they got this week.

Keep an eye on

New York TImes, Part 1: Your correspondent and a bunch of others wrote about the paper’s decision to start running display advertising on the front page, with CBS getting the first slot this past Monday. So far, that’s the only one we’ve seen. Tuesday and Wednesday featured ad-free fronts. C’mon advertisers — save your favorite paper! (To be fair, The Wall Street Journal and other papers don’t ALWAYS sell their front-page ads every day)

New York Times, Part 2: Writing in the Atlantic, Michael Hirschorn posits the notion that the Times could go under — in a few months’ time. Having scared the kids, he points out how slim the odds are. It’s tempting to embrace nightmare scenarios, but let’s keep in mind that the Times could do a lot of things to preserve its core: the newspaper. (The Atlantic)

New York Times, Part 3: Many media writers can barely resist the urge to beat up on Times Co Chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr, the latest of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan to chair the company and publish the paper. There’s plenty of reasons to do so, as New York Observer’s media writer extraordinaire John Koblin points out. Still, he said that Sulzberger is sticking to the task at hand: journalism. That might help the Times ride out the storm when other newspapers founder. That, Koblin said, is why the NYO has named Sulzberger one of its “Media Mensches” of 2009. (New York Observer)

(Photo: Share your Randy Newman tunes, courtesy of Apple. Here’s Randy performing at Macworld. Reuters)