It’s a good thing when the journalists write press releases. Today’s launch of the Chicago News Cooperative is something that we can share with you pretty much by cutting and pasting the press release. Unlike the jargon-filled missives from many companies, this is easy to read.

A few points first: The CNC is a new nonprofit reporting organization supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and comprises former Chicago Tribune journalists and other editorial staff. This is the latest foundation-sponsored news operation, a way that growing numbers of experts say could point the way to the future for financing U.S. journalism. After all, advertising isn’t working out as well as it used to, and people keep dropping their print subscriptions to read it for free online.

A report out this week from former Washington Post editor Len Downie Jr and Columbia professor Michael Schudson approaches this topic and even suggests a U.S.-style BBC to make sure that journalism doesn’t disappear just because Wall Street investors and advertisers don’t like the declining profits and circulation they’re seeing at your hometown paper.

Speaking of profits, the Times sees a profit opportunity here. It will use news from the CNC to feed its own local edition pages in Chicago, similar to what it’s doing in San Francisco. In the process, it will go up against two Chicago stalwarts, the Tribune and the Sun-Times.

One question we have: Why won’t the group disclose how much money it’s getting? Guessing it has to be disclosed somewhere sometime, either through its own tax papers or through the other donors’ filings.

Now… here’s the press release:

A group of Chicago journalists committed to public service journalism announced Thursday the formation of the Chicago News Cooperative (CNC), an organization designed to provide high quality, professionally edited news and commentary to the Chicago region on the Web, in print and over the airwaves.

CNC Editor James O’Shea, the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, said CNC’s official start coincided with the acquisition of its first customer, The New York Times. CNC journalists will provide two pages of CNC branded news and commentary to The New York Times twice a week in its Chicago editions on Friday and Sunday. The coverage is scheduled to start Nov. 20.

“At a time of declining resources in newsrooms across the nation, journalists must adapt to new technologies and devise some creative, innovative ways to fulfill our obligations, ” O’Shea said, “so we can hold our government accountable to citizens and restore to our journalism the standards desperately needed in these troubled times.”

CNC will operate a stand-alone newsroom while developing arrangements to collaborate with other media in Chicago to share resources and, over time, jointly produce content. During CNC’s start-up phase, Window to the World Communication, a long-standing, tax exempt educational organization and the parent of WTTW 11, Chicago’s public television station and a founding partner to CNC, has agreed to serve as the coop’s non-profit 501(c)3 base of operation.

In addition to providing content to The New York Times and its collaboration with WTTW, CNC is developing a Web site to be called Chicago Scoop that will provide news, commentary and investigative reporting about the city and the state. The site is expected to go live in early 2010 with regular reports from an expanded staff that will also appear on the news programs of WTTW Channel 11. CNC is in discussion with other potential partners such as WBEZ, Chicago’s award-winning public radio station, about potential journalistic collaboration.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation is a major funding source for CNC’s initial operations. MacArthur’s media grantmaking supports programs on U.S. television and radio and, increasingly, on the Web to help ensure a diversity of viewpoints and expand the availability of high-quality news and documentary programming. CNC is creating a network of additional supporters among individuals and foundations and plans to solicit membership in the cooperative as it expands its reach. The New York Times will pay CNC for its journalism as it does other news services whose work appears in the pages of the newspaper and on nytimes.com.

Besides O’Shea, James Warren, a former Tribune managing editor and television commentator, will write a regular column for CNC that will appear in the New York Times Chicago pages.

The coop’s advisory board will be chaired by Peter Osnos, founder of PublicAffairs books, who has a background in journalism, publishing and social entrepreneurship. “CNC is exactly the kind of multi-platform news gathering enterprise with multiple revenue streams that can reinvent public interest journalism,” Osnos said. “CNC now joins the lengthening list of entrepreneurial media initiatives that recognize the problems and are devising ways to solve them.”

(Photo: Reuters)

Newspapers often resemble a melting iceberg full of milling penguins when they talk about whether and how to make people pay for their news online. Newsday, the former Tribune-owned daily paper that serves New York’s Long Island, has left the iceberg. Here is the paper, in its own words:

Those who are not customers of Optimum Online or the newspaper - both owned by Bethpage-based Cablevision Systems Corp. - will have to pay a $5 weekly fee. However, nonpaying customers will have access to some of newsday.com’s information, including the home page, school closings, weather, obituaries, classified and entertainment listings. There also will be some limited access to Newsday stories.

Newsday described the move as one that would create a “pioneering Web model,” combining the newspaper’s newsgathering services with Cablevision’s electronic distribution capabilities. About 75 percent of Long Island households are Newsday home delivery or Cablevision online customers or both, according to Newsday. Optimum Online customers total 2.5 million in the New York area, the paper said.

We’re talking $260 a year, if you count that at $5 per week. Some people pay less for The Wall Street Journal, I’m told. In the spirit of offering both sides of the argument, Newsday got a naysayer and a supporter. We’d write this ourselves, but Newsday did such a good job of it that we’ll share that with you too:

Jack Myers of Jack Myers Media Business Report, a Manhattan-based economic research firm, said, “In the long term, it’s a zero-sum game. Basically what you are doing is you are shutting off younger audiences from getting access and becoming fans of your content, so it strikes me as a pretty short-term protective measure that will be a great case study for the industry.”

However, John Morton, head of the Morton Research Inc., a Silver Spring, Md.-based media consulting firm, said the current model of free online content is not a “rational model.”

Most U.S. newspapers have not done well at charging for any of their news. The New York Times didn’t do so well with its TimesSelect program. Other papers, like The Wall Street Journal which has done it from the beginning, have. Still a few others, like the Arkansas Democrat Gazette, are sticking with it one way or another. And yet others may start charging soon. The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, might begin this year, their chief executive has said.

What’s at stake? Advertising is down, but not out, and it tends to perform well online because businesses know they can reach large numbers of people who read the news for free. If those people decide they don’t want to pay for news, they’ll leave their favorite news websites for another. That is the main reason that publishers have been hesitant to start charging.

I’ve yet to meet people who are shy about sharing their opinions about paying for news on the Internet. So have at it!

Twitter love was in full bloom at the Web 2.0 conference on Wednesday, with Microsoft and Google each announcing deals to partner with the microblogging service.

But marring the Twitter hoopla were no-shows from two of the event’s highest-profile speakers.

A day after Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz skipped the company’s quarterly earnings conference call (because she had “come down with something” as CFO Tim Morse explained), Bartz skipped the Web 2.0 conference, where she was scheduled to kick off Wednesday’s events with a 30-minute talk.

Web 2.0 organizer John Battelle told the crowd Bartz had come down with “a very, very, very bad flu.”

Before the day was through, Battelle delivered news of another absentee.

New York Times Chairman Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., slated to be part of a panel on the future of journalism in the online age, was also hit by the flu, Battelle said moments before the panel began. Fortunately, Martin Nisenholtz, the New York Times head of digital operations, was there to stand in as Sulzberger’s second.

With one more day to go, attendees at the event are hoping no one else gets afflicted.

If you read often enough about the supposed death of the newspaper business, you would think that the nation’s newsrooms are increasingly depopulated, barren places, with darkened offices and empty cubicles… the occasional tumbleweed blowing past. (Actually,  large stretches of Tribune Co’s New York bureau look just like that, as I saw earlier this year).

In San Francisco, Chicago and other metropolitan centers, you would be wrong. It’s true that both cities bear unfortunate marks of how rough the advertising decline, rise of the Internet and financial crisis have treated their news operations: Hearst was toying with shutting down the San Francisco Chronicle, and Chicago’s leading daily papers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, are owned by bankrupt companies. Improbably enough, both are turning into hot spots for local news competition.

The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are fighting over San Francisco, and a private equity guy has teamed up with KQED and UC Berkeley to try a nonprofit local news experiment. And now, the Times reported on Wednesday, it is targeting some other cities, including Chicago. Here is an excerpt from reporter Richard Perez-Pena’s writeup on the Times’s decoder blog:

Plans for the San Francisco edition call for adding to the paper, twice a week, two additional pages of news about northern California. At first, the added content will be produced by The Times’ own writers and editors. But eventually, the plan, as in Chicago, is to turn the production over to a local partner.

Here’s more from spokeswoman Diane McNulty, whose statement also was in the Times’s blog:

We’re in conversations with potential news providers in Chicago about adding local content to The Times. Our intent is to roll out these expanded reports in several key markets around the country with Chicago following San Francisco. The details are still being discussed. The idea is to provide additional quality local content for our readers.

Papers like the Times and Journal are trying lots of things that they hope will stem their own ad declines and keep them profitable as they face the threat of a severely diminished future. The idea is to capitalize on the problems that local papers are having by scooping up their readers and giving them a comprehensive national report along with local news. But it’s hard to see where the cost savings will come from in this Chicago case unless they find a local partner to print their papers.

Revenue-wise, perhaps any circulation bump is a good one when it comes to getting more advertising. In terms of fixing what else is wrong with the newspaper business these days, however, it doesn’t look like a game changer. The reason that so many people tout local news as a more healthy media pursuit than national is because local publishers know local audiences and advertisers the best and presumably can give them something that few others can give them. To do that, it’s good to remember that it’s LOCAL publishers who tend to enjoy that advantage.

Google wants its online news site to feel more like the good old print product.

And the company is prepared to pay for it.

Google took the wraps off of Fast Flip on Monday, a slick online tool that lets readers flip through articles from newspapers and magazines as quickly and effortlessly as if they were turning the pages of a magazine.

The company said it will share advertising revenue with the 30 publishers whose content is currently available on Fast Flip, including the New York Times, the Washington Post and Newsweek.

Obsessive Google-watchers may recall that rumors of this product emerged back in June.

But the company officially released Fast Flip on Monday, making it available on Google Labs, the company’s outlet for products that are still in the testing phase.

Google is essentially hosting images of the first page of various articles from its partner publishers. A Web surfer can browse by topic or news source and scroll through fast-loading snapshots of all the relevant articles. There’s a “recommended” section that aggregates the most popular articles thanks to a new recommendation tool that Google has added (watch out Digg!).

Google is running banner ads alongside the article thumbnails, the proceeds of which will be split with publishers (though Google won’t disclose the terms of the revenue split). If a Web surfer wants to read the full article, they’re redirected to the publisher’s actual Web site.

“The publishing industry faces many challenges today, and there is no magic bullet,” said Google Distinguished Researcher Krishna Bharat in a blog post announcing Fast Flip. “However, we believe that encouraging readers to read more news is a necessary part of the solution. We think Fast Flip could be one way to help, and we’re looking to find other ways to help as well in the near future.”

It’s a fine balancing act by Google, which can continue to stand behind its argument that it helps news sites by sending traffic their way while also sharing a bit of the wealth.

But Bharat acknowledged in an interview with Reuters that various aspects of Fast Flip, including the business model, are subject to change.

Whether the current iteration will be enough to assuage some of Google’s most vocal news industry critics remains to be seen.

Missing among the list of FastFlip partners is Dow Jones, whose chief executive called Google a “digital vampire” this summer.

Verizon Wireless chief Lowell McAdam has been busy writing letters recently, mostly to U.S. lawmakers.

Yesterday’s missive had a similar intention, to explain how his company is really very warm and friendly toward consumers and competitors. The difference is its addressee — none other than Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times.

He did tear to shreds the newspaper’s opinion piece on phone companies. He accused the paper of relying on myths to make its point that regulators may want to take a look at phone company’s behavior.

But, for media-watchers at least, the good news is that he actually read a newspaper (an increasingly uncommon act) and decided the medium was important enough to reply with a good old fashioned letter to the publisher (an even more uncommon act).

Here’s a short precis of their battle of words:
NYTimes: Cites Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development to show American’s cellphone bills are higher than the average.

McAdam: Says American’s talk four times more on their cellphones than anybody Europe but their per minute cost is 10 cents cheaper on average.

NYTimes: Big U.S. operators are not afraid to use their sizeable power and are the only option in some markets.

McAdam: Cites former VP Al Gore calling wireless companies the most competitive in the globe. He says more than 94 pct have a choice of at least four operators

Interestingly, since the Times published its column on Wednesday morning, McAdam has written to US lawmakers to say he was willing to give some concessions on a fight about roaming agreements, addressing one element of the column.

(By the way, Verizon’s smaller rivals were unimpressed with the concessions, calling them “negligable.”)

Keep an eye on:

• Bumpy ride. The tech sector’s road to recovery isn’t looking so smooth (Reuters).

• At Comic-Con, 3-D glasses are a must (NY Times)

• Back-to-school marketing discovers social networking (USA Today)

(Photo: Reuters)
(Photo:Reuters)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

Verizon Planning Its Own App Store (Business Insider)
Preethi Dumpala writes: “The main idea: Verizon wants to be the company connecting its customers with apps — not necessarily its handset partners. And it wants to avoid becoming an even dumber pipe. Depending on how it’s set up, this could clash with gadget makers’ plans.”

McGraw-Hill might ‘give away’ Business Week for nominal $1 (FT)
“McGraw-Hill might reap only a nominal $1 by selling Business Week, according to people familiar with the 80-year-old financial magazine’s record of losses. The publisher has appointed Evercore, a boutique investment bank, to sell the title after deciding it was non-core to a group that owns the Standard & Poor’s rating agency and an educational publisher, two people familiar with the decision said,” writes Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Sinclair says it might consider bankruptcy (Baltimore Sun)
“The Hunt Valley-based owner of television stations, which depends heavily on automotive advertisers for revenue, said it might be obligated to pay $488.5 million of its total outstanding debt within the next 18 months. The company said it had $1.3 billion in total debt outstanding as of March 31,” writes Lorraine Mirabella.

Minority Broadcasters Seek Federal Aid (WSJ)
Fawn Johnson writes: “A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries. ”Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species,” the letter said. “Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets.”

In other news:

• Earnings Preview: A tough 2Q expected for Gannett (AP)
• New York Times to sell NYC radio station (Reuters)
• CHART OF THE DAY: Users Spent A Billion Hours On Facebook In June (BI)

Here are some of the day’s top stories in the media industry:

TV Networks Fight Drug-Ad Measure (WSJ)
“Advertising costs are deductible to any company as a business expense. The plan being considered by Rep. Rangel’s Ways and Means committee would eliminate the deduction with respect to prescription drug advertising,” writes Martin Vaughan.

Big media seek 21st century business models (Reuters)
“Media moguls at this week’s Sun Valley conference have spent as much time discussing how to reconfigure business models disrupted by the Web as they have worrying about the weak economy,” reports Yinka Adegoke.

Zucker Says Marketplace Has Reached Bottom (B&C)
Ben Grossman writes: “NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker said Thursday that while the overall marketplace is still challenged, he thinks it may have bottomed out. ‘It’s still quite uncertain and we don’t really see the full recovery we are all hoping for,’ he said.  ’It’s still tough out there, but I think we have seen a bottom.’”

The Financial Times and New York Times make further syndication deals (Editors Weblog)
“Both the Financial Times and the New York Times have announced their international syndications will include additional countries. The FT has confirmed content sharing arrangements with publications based in Turkey, France, and South Korea,” writes Christie Silk.

NBC Reveals Displeasure as U.S.O.C. Unveils Plan (NYT)
Richard Sandomir writes: “The head of NBC Sports said Thursday that he broke off talks in April about combining the Olympic channel that it partly owns with the one being planned by the United States Olympic Committee.”

AP Works Toward Universal Online News Format (Mediapost)
Gavin O’Malley writes: “The Associated Press, along with fellow non-profit The Media Standards Trust, on Friday unveiled a digital news “microformat” to effectively encapsulate the content and key meta-data of every news story online.”

In other news:

• Detroit Free Press exempt from latest round of Gannett layoffs (Crain’s)
• AOL: More Layoffs Inevitable (Business Insider)

German publisher Axel Springer plans to launch an international weekly edition of its flagship daily, Die Welt, in a 48-page tabloid format starting February 2010. Springer is still mulling distribution options but the paper will likely be available from airlines.

Die Welt is a conservative daily founded in 1946 by British occupying forces after the Second World War and acquired by Axel Springer in 1953. It has around 690,000 readers.

The thinking at Springer Verlag is that Die Welt could fill a void for non-German readers who are interested in news from continental Europe, while attracting lucrative new advertising customers.

That’s an interesting idea, considering the current dismal state of newspapers and remembering past attempts of others to attract English readers.

In April 2000, the F.A.Z. launched an English edition as a supplement in the International Herald Tribune - in what the New York Times called an opening up of “the first-class coverage of one of Germany’s best newspapers to the English speaking audience”.  That project was a first in German publishing.

But just two years later, F.A.Z. was forced to reduce it to a weekly edition and eventually had to close the project down altogether as money grew tight. 

Der Spiegel’s foray into the Anglophone world never got past special English editions on single topic issues despite dreams of an “English Spiegel”. However, it has been successful with its English website. 

So, Springer’s loss making Welt aims to prevail where the country’s most reputable newspaper and the country’s leading news magazine failed.

Good luck and let’s remember this: Die Welt tried to address English speaking readers before. In October 1999, its Berlin section had one page in English and in April in the following year, an English page was added to its national edition. 

It never did catch on.

On Tuesday, a panel hosted by Reuters and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers discussed the state of the media industry and the challenges it faces from consumers demanding information in new and different ways.

How could the industry transform its newsrooms to thrive in this culture?

Chrystia Freeland of the Financial Times said the key discipline was to constantly ask what the reader actually wants and not what is technologically possible. “This is going to be different for everyone,” Freeland told the crowd, which included Thomson Reuters Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger.

For the full discussion, watch the video below.

The panel included
Chrystia Freeland, US managing editor, Financial Times

Larry Ingrassia, business editor, The New York Times

Sree Sreenivasan, dean of student affairs & new media professor, Columbia Journalism School

Laurel Touby, founder & CEO, Mediabistro.com

Moderated by
Betty Wong, global managing editor, Reuters