Lee Enterprises, publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and owner of a bunch of small U.S. daily newspapers, is learning the public relations benefits of making its executives do without.

The Davenport, Iowa-based Lee released its annual proxy filing with the U.S. government on Monday, in advance of its annual meeting. I was expecting to see the usual details buried deep within about the pay raises, bonuses and other monetary rewards that executives tend to earn even when times turn tough.

I was wrong. Here is what I found instead (the following are “named executive officers” or “NEOs,” including Chief Executive Mary Junck:

We approved the following salary adjustments for the NEOs for 2008, which became effective as of October 1, 2007:

• Ms. Junck - Increase of 3.0%, to $850,000;
• Mr. Schmidt - Increase of 3.7%, to $482,000;
• Mr. Veon - Increase of 3.1%, to $361,000;
• Mr. Mowbray - Increase of 3.1% to $335,000; and
• Mr. Kuraitis - Increase of 3.1% to $268,000.

For 2009, we have frozen NEO salaries at the levels noted above, due to difficult economic conditions affecting the Company, the publishing industry and the overall economy.

Not only that, Lee scotched its bonus plan for the executives (which could have been as much as 250 percent of base pay). And contributions to those execs’ long-term incentive plans, usually in the form of stock? Forget it. Not this year.

These decisions are unlikely to make anyone happy, but they do avoid building up a restive employee base. Lee is in trouble if it can’t negotiate new terms with its lenders — debt could overwhelm the company and potentially break it up. It’s not the kind of time when you want to be sending your top executives on junkets.

This, by the way, is something that other publishers are beginning to realize. USA Today publisher Gannett Co Inc is furloughing employees for a week during its fiscal first quarter as a way to save money.

Gannett, which said last year that it would lay off thousands of employees, is subjecting its own executives to the furlough and its chief executive is taking a voluntary pay cut in solidarity with his employees. All good PR, yes, but when Gannett said it might shut down its Tucson, Arizona daily, it managed to lose that good will: once executive Bob Dickey delivered the news, he went out to California to participate in a charity golf tournament.

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s just like vacation — except that you don’t get paid and really don’t have any choice in the matter and will likely spend the days worrying this could be a hint of (bad) things to come.

Some staffers at Gannett Co, the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, will be forced to take a week off without pay in its latest move to cut costs. Already, it has cut thousands of jobs, says this furlough will help it avoid more layoffs.

Here’s what Reuters reported:

“This means that most of our U.S. employees — including myself and all other top executives — will be furloughed for the equivalent of one week in the first quarter,” Dubow wrote.

Gannett, which publishes USA Today, the largest U.S. newspaper by circulation, is instituting the furlough after cutting thousands of employees from its payroll to deal with a severe decline in advertising revenue.

“We have made some very difficult decisions this past year, all with the goal of keeping Gannett strong and preparing for the future,” Dubow wrote. “I understand I have asked a great deal of you, and I regret adding to your burden with this program.”

With so many companies firing workers, perhaps staffers at Gannett should feel some sense of relief. But, frankly, it’s hard to feel anything but dread in the newspaper business these days. 

Keep an eye on:

• “American Idol” launched its latest run with 10 percent fewer viewers than watched last year’s season opener, ratings showed on Wednesday, despite hoopla surrounding a new judge for the hit talent contest (Reuters)
• Investors fear a change at the top of Apple will chill a product line-up struggling to come up with the next big thing (Reuters)
• AOL will rebrand its long-running sports channel as FanHouse, which is the current name of a blog/community-centric section within AOL Sports (AdWeek)

(Photo: Reuters)

It’s layoff week at Gannett — even the second N and T might be redundant.

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.

With no newspaper job to keep him busy, Hopkins chronicles nearly every event that he hears about Gannett. That includes a dose of rumor, but much of what he reports is more right than wrong.

Here is one of his latest reports:

Gannett launched what is likely the biggest mass layoff in newspaper industry history yesterday, slashing 655 jobs by early this morning, in an increasingly desperate bid to return the troubled 102-year-old publisher to prosperity. The final tally could run into the thousands.

Many more layoffs are expected today and tomorrow across the 85-daily community newspaper division, plus USA Today and the Detroit Free Press. As of 1:25 a.m. ET, only 17 papers had been accounted for, based on published accounts and Gannett Blog reader reports.

(My Gannett newsroom sources are telling me the same story.)

And while we knew that Gannett was going to cut deeply, he is keeping score at more than 80 papers, thanks to a legion of newsroom sources that dwarfs that of nearly every other reporter who covers the business.

A sample from Wednesday morning, all from anonymous posters:

The Tennessean has started layoffs today (Tuesday), a day earlier than they had told us. So far in the newsroom today we’ve lost two managers and a copy editor.

Fort Myers in progress; so far two copy editors and a designer.

Pensacola News Journal has finished up. At least five has been laid off, including the business editor who was called in from her maternity leave. Classy.

See the layoff ticker, which Hopkins updates often. Also check the documents that he posted on his website that purport to show Gannett papers’ double-digit profit margins as the company wields the axe.

UPDATE: Even Scotland is not immune,

Gannett is hardly the only publisher hacking away at payroll. Conde Nast, Time Inc and the Associated Press all are up to the same thing. The Financial Times, which not long ago was touting how good the financial crisis was for the paper, is offering buyouts and shorter work weeks. It also is freezing salaries for folks who make more than $50,000 a year.

Keep an eye on:

Yahoo: How does former AOL boss Jonathan Miller fit into the picture? Rupert Murdoch’s New York papers offer completely different stories, allowing you to believe one while scoffing at the other. The Wall Street Journal says Miller is trying to raise as much as $30 billion to buy Yahoo. The New York Post says Miller is trying to raise money for Velocity Interactive Group, the investment fund that he runs with former Fox Interactive Media chief Ross Levinsohn. We’ll only briefly remark on how funny it is that an investment firm is trying to raise money from investors.

Google: The party is officially over, according to The Wall Street Journal. Side projects involving grand visions for absent-minded professors appear to be “out.” Making money appears to be “in.” (The Wall Street Journal)

MySpace: Rupert Murdoch’s online social network is letting members use their mobile phones and devices to watch videos posted to their MySpace homepages. That does NOT include the Apple iPhone — yet. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Sumner Redstone is selling low — way low. Here’s The Wall Street Journal with the news:

In an effort to help resolve his debt problems, Sumner Redstone has sold his controlling stake in videogame company Midway Games Inc to a private investor.

Mr. Redstone’s holding company, National Amusements Inc., is expected to announce Monday that it sold its 87% stake in Midway to investor Mark Thomas, a move that represents a significant loss on the media mogul’s investment but secures a hefty tax benefit as he negotiates other asset sales.

Redstone has been discussing selling all sorts of assets, including movie theaters and his holding in slot machine company WMS Industries, the Journal said.

What next? Redstone already said he wouldn’t sell any more shares in Viacom and CBS to cover his debts. But the Journal says the Redstone family is discussing securing their outstanding debt ($1.6 billion) with their remaining assets. Let’s watch those stocks…

Keep an eye on

• It’s Reuters Media Summit week in New York City, when we get a bunch of executives in a room and get them to tell us about how they’re negotiating the downturn. There will even be TV. (Reuters)
• Call it dumb luck. We knew USA Today was going to cut 20 jobs in its newsroom, but one of our reporters on holiday shopping coverage found a business-side person at Gannett’s and the nation’s biggest paper who said there are going to be cuts on her side too. A Gannett spokeswoman confirmed that this will happen, but a spokeswoman for the paper wasn’t available to tell us how many will go.
• Nearly everyone has written about Michael Wolff’s new Rupert Murdoch book. Here’s a quick link rundown. Janet Maslin’s review in The New York Times is quite interesting. For the others, there’s us, Bloomberg, the Financial Times, MarketWatch, The Independent and The Age.

Former Gannett investigative journalist Jim Hopkins has made a new career out of bird-dogging his own company at Gannett Blog (no affiliation to the company), attracting tons of information about buyouts and layoffs, not to mention the usual office gossip that permeates any big company. No one quite follows Gannett like Hopkins, even when he spent the summer in Ibiza. (Talk about priorities!)

The problem? Here he is in his own words:

I’m now starting the time clock on an experiment illustrating the brutal economics of online journalism. Based on the long odds, I’ll probably fail — pushing Gannett Blog closer to its demise, and showing on a micro level why Gannett’s survival is so threatened.

I’m looking for ways to earn about $24,000 a year from several sources to supplement my income, now that USA Today’s severance checks are ending. A logical place to start: this blog, which in the past year has become a leading source of news and networking for more than 10,000 GCI employees and other readers each month.

My experiment opens a window on the reality of today’s journalism finance: Can this blog generate enough revenue to support its continued publication? We’re going to find out! Relying on two revenue streams — ads, and a voluntary subscription fee — I’ll share embarrassing details of how much I earn in the months ahead. Starting today, you’ve got front-row seats to the launch of a 51-year-old journalist’s second career.

This is an imperfect test. There are no immediate negative consequences if you don’t patronize my advertisers or pay for a subscription. I’m committed to editing this blog through Dec. 31.

But, I’m afraid all bets are off if I don’t find sufficient income potential here by year’s end. That might sound harsh, but it’s true. At some point, I gotta start making money again. That could mean work that allows less time for Gannett blogging.

Hopkins suggests a voluntary subscription fee that amounts to $20 a year, and is populating the site with Google ads now too. He sounds hopeful, but not all that hopeful, about his chances. We’re guessing that the Gannett Foundation isn’t going to give him any grants.

(Photo: Reuters)

Friday’s press release from McClatchy Corp about its new vice president for strategic initiatives includes a quote from interactive media VP Christian Hendricks that caught my eye:

It’s clear there’s a tremendous opportunity to provide local readers with a richer online experience by creating niche and vertical websites that combine our local experience and content with national brands and content… We are confident advertisers will also benefit greatly from better targeted advertising opportunities and increased traffic in topic-specific content areas on these sites.

By now you’ve realized that it was “niche and vertical websites” that got me all excited. Normally I find ways to translate that kind of jargon into English, but not this time.

It must have been nearly two years ago that former Wall Street Journal Publisher Gordon Crovitz started talking about “verticals” — websites and other vehicles that present news geared toward a narrowed audience as a way of attracting advertising dollars because the advertiser would know that a bunch of lawyers, say, would read the law vertical that a news organization creates. The New York Times is trying something similar with its business news section, and Gannett is doing this with “mom” websites.

And now, apparently, so is McClatchy. Newspaper publishers tend to pick up each others’ catchphrases about what they’re doing to save themselves as advertising revenue dries up, and they often try to shape the story of their fortunes in similar ways until they’re forced to retreat and find a new way to explain how they will survive. Until now, however, I hadn’t heard any of them aside from the Journal and the Times use the term “vertical.”

What about all you newspaper employees and consultants out there? Is “vertical” the new buzzword among U.S. local newspaper publishers? Will verticals help save the business? Or is this latest word born horizontal?

Now this should be one good duel.

The New York Times is reporting that T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer a mobile phone powered by Google’s Android software. And it will go on sale… soon!

Talk about anticipation. This is right up there with Apple’s introduction of the new iPhone, which, of course, is only appropriate since the two high-end phones will directly compete with one another in an Olympic-worthy battle. 

From the New York Times:

The phone will be made by HTC, one of the largest makers of mobile phones in the world, and is expected to go on sale in the United States before Christmas, perhaps as early as October.

The high-end phone is expected to match many of the capabilities of Apple’s iPhone and  other so-called smartphones that run software from Palm, Research in Motion, Microsoft and Nokia to access the Internet and perform computerlike functions.

The report says that the phone will have a touch screen that slides out to offer a five-row keyboard. It also says that one person who has seen the HTC phone confirms that it matched the one in a recent video on YouTube.

And here’s an early review from Silicon Alley Insider:

Someone who’s actually seen the gadget — similar, if not identical to the one in the photo — tells us that both the hardware (from handset-maker HTC) and Google’s Android software suffer from a similar problem: They’re technically powerful but not as elegant as Apple’s iPhone and OS X.

Specifically, the phone — apparently a hot item to show off in Google’s cafeterias these days — is big and bulky, and not as sleek as the iPhone. And Android, while extremely powerful, has a less-elegant, less-user-friendly interface than the iPhone (AAPL)

Does this mean it won’t sell well? Of course not. There’s a lot more variables, like device and contract pricing, software and services, etc. that will help determine its commercial success.

Keep an eye on:

• Gannett Co Inc plans to eliminate 1,000 positions from its local newspapers around the U.S. because of declining advertising and circulation revenue (Reuters)
• After the Olympic Games, the naming rights to China’s “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium go up for sale (WSJ.com)
• The release date for the sixth Harry Potter movie, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince,” was pushed back July 2009 from its original slot in November 2008 (Reuters) 
• U.S. video game sales rose 28 percent in July from a year earlier, boosted by continued strong demand for Nintendo’s Wii console (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)