Top Rupert Murdoch adviser Gary Ginsberg is leaving News Corp after 11 years, the company said on Monday.

It must have hit New York Times reporter Tim Arango’s e-mail inbox first (his writeup appeared about five minutes before I got the press release).

Here is what he wrote about Ginsberg, 47, the second senior executive to leave News Corp in recent months, following Chief Operating Officer Peter Chernin:

Mr. Ginsberg, a former lawyer in the Clinton White House, was hired in 1999 to be News Corporation’s director of communications. He was hired partly to refurbish the company’s image after a controversy in which Mr. Murdoch was said to have stopped publication of a book by Chris Patten, the former governor of Hong Kong, to curry favor with the Chinese government. Mr. Ginsberg’s portfolio within News Corporation expanded well beyond public relations. He gradually gained control over investor relations, marketing and corporate social responsibility. He also became an important bridge between Mr. Murdoch and Democratic politicians, particularly Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Ginsberg, Arango said, arranged a lunch between Bill Clinton and Murdoch in Harlem, and a year later with a New York Post newsroom tour. Eventually, the Post endorsed Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate in 2006 and Murdoch threw her a fundraiser at News Corp’s headquarters. (Yes, that is quite a feat to arrange for a newspaper that under Murdoch has leaned Republican more often than not.)

It’s also a feat to get a well-known Democrat to say what he said in the press release:

I will always be grateful to Rupert for the many opportunities he’s given me over the years… It was a difficult decision to leave a company that has been such a vital part of my life and I’ll miss the many talented colleagues who have helped make this such a thrilling and fascinating ride. But I’ve been thinking about leaving for a while now to pursue something new, and this seemed like the right time to do it.

Teri Everett, who spends plenty of time dealing with the horde of reporters who cover News Corp’s every move, will take over as the new communications chief. Reed Nolte will run investor relations.

Where will the mogul strike next? Doesn’t seem like he’s yearning right now for The New York Times, which is doing battle with a guild that doesn’t want to give up lifetime job guarantees of 190-odd Boston Globe staffers.

Instead, New York Post’s Peter Lauria reports, Rupert Murdoch has set his sights on building a Kindle-like device that will deliver content from News Corp publications like The Wall Street Journal, The Times of London and the NY Post. The device would also offer content from TV shows and movies that come from the News Corp stable. Murdoch sees it as a way of charging for content on the Web, rather than giving it away free as much of the publishing industry has (which, needless to say, is a big source of current troubles).

The global team assembled for this purpose consists of Murdoch himself, son James, Dow Jones CEO Les Hinton and News Corp’s new chief of digital operations, Jonathan Miller, the paper says.

Maybe Murdoch will show the struggling newspaper industry the way out of the morass. Keep an eye on:

• Someone’s going to buy Twitter one of these days. Kara Swisher lays it out. (All Things Digital)
• After two days of rumors, the big-screen Kindle is coming today. (Silicon Alley Insider)
• Journalism confabs and banquets are being canceled due to the recession. (Forbes)

Photo: Reuters

New York Post newsroom staff are grumbling about a new work rule that essentially pays them the same amount of money, but for more work.

Two sources told MediaFile that Rupert Murdoch’s daily tabloid has told reporters that their work week is now 40 hours long. That’s no big deal to most working stiffs, but that’s a change from the earlier 37-1/2 hours.

The upshot is that overtime pay, which once started as the clock struck 37-1/2, now doesn’t begin until 2-1/2 hours later. As many journalists know, it’s hard to break news on your beat unless you’re willing to put up with stories — and events — that happen at any time and don’t fit well into normal working hours. That said, journalists who don’t like this move say it amounts to a 6 percent pay cut because it’s more work for the same pay.

We’re still waiting to hear back from the Post. If you’re really ticked off, you could try quiet subversion — 30 minutes of checking Facebook each day adds up to 2-1/2 hours in one work week

(Photo: Reuters)

One has to wonder what today is like for a media chief as mogul-y as Rupert Murdoch, whose

News Corp has its hands in everything from publishing and newspapers to Internet, TV and movies. Today is the first day after News Corp President and COO Peter Chernin — who has been a critical force in News Corp’s success in movies and TV — said he was planning to leave the executive suite in June to make movies.

That leaves the 77-year-old Murdoch without his well-regarded No. 2 at a time when all media players are struggling with a dramatic advertising slowdown. That’s not good, right?

On the other hand, Chernin’s exit leaves the door open for Murdoch to personally run News Corp’s movie and TV divisions. In addition, it might open the door for Rupert Murdoch to give his son James (or perhaps Lachlan, who is not currently a part of the company) a crack at more power in the family business. For daddy Rupert, that can’t be all bad, right?

With all that on his mind, Murdoch also posted an apology related to a controversial cartoon the New York Post printed a few days ago, which many had labeled as racist, saying it likened President Barack Obama to an ape.

“Today I want to personally apologize to any reader who felt offended, and even insulted.”

“We all hold the readers of the New York Post in high regard and I promise you that we will seek to be more attuned to the sensitivities of our community.”

For what it’s worth, News Corp’s shares are up, so someone thinks these are good developments. What do you think?

Keep and eye on:

• Yahoo introduced several tools it says will help marketers target their ads more efficiently. (Reuters)
• Television viewing is at all-time high - the average American now watches more than 151 hours of TV a month. (LA Times)
• Thomson Reuters posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit. (Reuters)

(Photo: Reuters)

Michael Wolff, author of the recently published Rupert Murdoch tell-all, “The Man Who Owns the News,” says that the News Corp chief executive would love to buy The New York Times. The only thing standing in his way is the Ochs-Sulzberger family which controls the Times. If they’re anything like the Bancrofts, former controllers of Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal, only an insane amount of money might persuade them to let go of the prized but struggling newspaper publisher.

Or maybe Murdoch himself. Whatever the scuttlebutt is about Murdoch’s plans for the Times, he told reporters on Thursday that he’s not interested in buying it. Speaking on a conference call after the company reported dismal second-quarter results, he said it might not be good for his image:

“I’ve got no desire to be an even bigger public enemy.”

This, of course, refers to the charge leveled at him from London to New York to Hong Kong that he uses the papers and other media that he owns to advance his personal business interests.

As for newspapers themselves? He already owns a bunch, from the Journal (which was part of a $3 billion-plus writedown on Thursday’s earnings) to the New York Post ($185 million writedown Thursday) to The Times of London to The Australian. And he’s keeping them, by the sound of things:

“I’ve got great faith. If we continue the way we’re going, we may even get lucky and not have so much competition at the end of it all.”

There he goes again — trashing The New York Times. But look at it this way, why not trash it until it’s beaten down enough that the Sulzbergers are compelled to sell? After all, Murdoch only has to be right today. He can change his mind tomorrow.

(Photo: Reuters)

Don’t ask The New York Times how much its new front-page display ads cost. The paper won’t say. That didn’t stop the New York Post from asking ad buyers. Here’s the answer based on anonymous sources:

$75,000 on weekdays and $100,000 on Sundays.

Assuming that the Post counts Saturday as a weekday, and assuming no discounts or other special deals (and assuming this blog post is not written by a reporter who nearly failed at least one high school math class), this works out to $28.6 million a year: $23.4 million for 52 weeks of Monday through Saturday and $5.2 million for a year’s worth of Sundays.

Despite the TImes’s silence, the ad cost sounds about right. The Wall Street Journal charges $90,000 for its front-page ads, not counting special discounts. Other details sound similar too. Here’s the Post:

Apparently, The Times is leveraging the front page space to get advertisers to increase their ad buys.

The paper is limiting the front page to big advertisers willing to spend more on top of their existing budgets.

A new advertiser who wants access to the space has to commit to buying the ad 26 times during the year - for a total of almost $2 million, ad buyers say. The Times has previously run classifieds on the front page.

The Journal’s program is similar: limit the front-page membership to big advertisers and get them to commit. CBS’s marketing chief George Schweitzer told us that the broadcaster has committed to a number of runs throughout the year, but declined to say more than that.

The front-page ad news, which the Times announced yesterday, might have stirred up some muttering in journalism academe like it did a few years ago when the Journal started doing it because purists aren’t crazy about sacrificing prime real estate for news on the altar of dirty profit. Nowadays, folks are a little less squeamish about making the big sale, especially when considering the health of the newspaper business.

On a side note, the Post –  now a sister paper of the Journal under New York Times enemy Rupert Murdoch — story tries to have it both ways. It notes that the Times is late to the game, yet runs a caption over a picture of black-eyed Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr that says that he is “smashing the paper of record’s vaunted Chinese wall between news and advertising by peddling front-page space.”

Apparently there’s no honorable way to make a buck in journalism.

Keep an eye on

• CBS and Time Warner reach fresh broadcast deal. Now you can keep letting your brain atrophy on television. (Reuters)
• Washington Post No. 2 newsman Phil Bennett resigns, goes to work on a project about the future of news elsewhere in the Post (They must have this project around for everyone they oust. Remember Susan Glasser). That keeps the paycheck coming until he gets his next job. This happens right after post.com Web chief Jim Brady splits after chafing under a new layer of management and frustration because of ongoing print-vs-Web issues. Meanwhile, new Post editor and former Wall Street Journal top editor Marcus Brauchli might bring in former colleague Raju Narisetti, late of India’s Mint business daily. Next week on 90210! (Wall Street Journal)
• If you think that newspapers slept through technology changes in the past 50 years, you would be WRONG. Jack Shafer explains why, and does it a lot better than I’ve managed to do over countless barroom conversations with all my friends who hate newspapers. (Slate)

(Photo: “Spiderman” Alain Robert got free front-page advertising on the New York Times. Not in the paper but on the building. We recommend a different advertising strategy that won’t get you arrested. 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)

When Rupert Murdoch said the other day that he wasn’t investing in newspapers anymore, we assumed that he was being ironic, especially as it came in the same telephone conference call with News Corp analysts and reporters in which he said that he thought his agreement to buy Newsday from Tribune Co was all but sewn up .

That goes to show you what they say about assuming things.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday , and we subsequently confirmed , that News Corp isn’t going to chase Newsday after all. Instead, it’s pulling its $580 million bid, paving the way for Cablevision to likely take over its fellow Long Island media outlet. New York Daily News owner Mortimer Zuckerman is in the race still as far as we know, but it’s hard to see how Tribune will take his $580 million bid when Cablevision has a $70 million sweetener on top of that.

Why? Apparently the economics were unjustifiable. What could that mean? The short list: Tribune’s quarterly financial results, which came out late Friday, show the company continuing to lose advertising revenue at its newspapers; media ownership laws might make it tough for Murdoch to take the paper yet keep his New York-area television broadcast licenses; and finally, a bid higher than $650 million is already a higher valuation for a newspaper than most sensible financial folks see as feasible.

That didn’t seem to bother Murdoch before. Here’s what he said on the News Corp earnings call (reproduced from our earlier blog entry ):

No, I don’t think Cablevision will prevail. Just be patient for a couple of days (inaudible). We’re certainly not in the business of getting into an auction here …

We’re hoping to wrap it up within the next week. And I don’t mean the end of next week, I mean within the next seven days … It takes two to agree. But we’re at a pretty advanced stage. I’ll just leave it at that at the moment.

Here’s what he subsequently said at the Time 100 dinner later that week, according to the New York Observer (whose owner Jared Kushner also was interested in bidding, though a source close to Kushner Properties told us recently that he has no idea what he wants to do about a bid right now — we’re guessing nothing):

“Yeah, I might have gone a little too far saying it was a certainty,” he told The Observer. “I was telling the truth, but you don’t know until …”

Until Saturday.

Who says the newspaper business is doomed? Circulation and advertising may be in the dumps, sure, but judging from the bidders lining up to buy Newsday there are plenty of moguls still keen on newspapers.

The latest development: The Wall Street Journal reports that Cablevision is planning to bid as much as $650 million for the Long Island daily, which likely catapults it ahead of other bidders like News Corp, which owns the New York Post, and Mortimer Zuckerman, who owns the Daily News.

Cablevision’s bid could come within two days, the report said, adding that it was unclear whether whether Cablevision is working with New York Observer owner Jared Kushner in its offer. Beyond Cablevision’s cable assets, it owns the New York Knicks, the New York Rangers, Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall.

The New York Times offered a different view. It, too, said Cablevision is preparing a bid, but it reported that the owners of the New York Observer have dropped out of the race.

Cablevision? Zuckerman? New York Observer? News Corp? What’s going on here?

These are smart, successful media companies and executives, so they must know something. Indeed, the New York Times reported that people briefed on its finances says that Newsday last year generated more than $80 million in income and about $500 million in revenue.

And it is, after all, the key paper in a relatively affluent area.

But get this: The New York Times also reports that some executives at companies interested in Newsday “learned over the last month that its printing, trucking and subscription operations were more troubled and inefficient than they knew. Paradoxically, that has persuaded them that the paper was worth more than they initially thought.”

Go figure.

Keep an eye on:

• With time running out a self-imposed deadline in contract talks with actors, major Hollywood studios say the two sides remained far from a deal and that excessive union demands are to blame (Reuters)
• Comcast Corp, the largest U.S. cable operator, on Thursday posted a fall in first-quarter net profit as it lost basic video subscribers because of fierce competition from phone and satellite companies (Reuters)
• Microsoft indicated a willingness to up its bid for Yahoo to $33 per share, but Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has also appeared ready to walk away from the deal altogether if need be, the Wall Street Journal reports , quoting people with knowledge of the situation. It reported that Microsoft’s board met Wednesday without reaching a decision.
• Talk at the 2008 leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies centered on politics and the economy (The New York Times)

(Photo: Reuters)