“A more gentlemanly version of the Chicago Tribune”
If anything demonstrates the stark contrast between the buttoned-up Tribune Co of yore versus the radio jockeys -led Tribune Co of now, it’s the illustration that greets readers on the Chicago Tribune web site’s error page.
If you’re expecting “a former waitress at Knockers — the place for hot racks and cold brews,” as a Sam Zell-led Tribune press release once trumpeted a new hire, you will be disappointed.
Instead, visitors are welcomed by one Colonel Tribune pictured on the left. He’s even on Facebook and describes himself as the following, ”Colonel Tribune is a man about town in Chicago. He’s also a more gentlemanly version of the Chicago Tribune.”
(Photo: Chicago Tribune)
Media, tech moguls meet in New York (You are NOT invited)
Media and technology executives are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in New York City at a conference hosted by private equity firm Quadrangle. Note the word private.
When they meet at the Plaza, they will talk about a ton of different things that their customers, their investors and other readers want to know. I have to apologize for them because they’re not letting in any riff-raff. And that includes reporters who get paid to spend all day figuring out how these people decide what kind of entertainment you want, what kind of technology you pay them for and what deals they pursue with the money that you give them when you buy their stock. This event always excludes press, but that’s no reason not to highlight what you probably are missing because of this. After all, who wants to wait for the 8-K filing?
Some press will be allowed, but it will be an assortment of celebrity journalists who will moderate panels and, according to Peter Kafka, author of “MediaMemo” at News Corp’s AllThingsD blog, will not write about the event (I’m talking about Maria Bartiromo and David Faber of CNBC, The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta, etc).
Peter wrote two posts about this, here and here. He also issued me a challenge to sneak into the conference, but horror of horrors, I’m on a deadline that I can’t shirk any longer. So consider this an invitation from me to you to go to the Plaza and catch these guys on the way in and out of the building. It’s a fun way to spend the day, and maybe you’ll learn something interesting.
Here is the agenda, courtesy of Peter Kafka. Below that is a list of speakers. Outrage breeds corrections: I have to amend the record: The list I had posted here of topics is last year’s agenda. My mistake. The list of speakers appearing THIS year still appears below.
2009 SPEAKERS EMILIO AZCÁRRAGA President, Board of Directors and CEO, Grupo Televisa DENNIS CROWLEY Co-Founder, foursquare BARRY DILLER Chairman and CEO, IAC; Chairman, Expedia, Inc. and Ticketmaster Entertainment, Inc. BRIAN DUNN CEO, Best Buy CHARLES FORMAN Founder, OMGPOP REED HASTINGS Founder, Chairman and CEO, Netflix REID HOFFMAN Executive Chairman and Founder, LinkedIn Corporation CHAD HURLEY CEO and Co-Founder, YouTube JEFF IMMELT Chairman and CEO, GE PAUL JACOBS Chairman and CEO, Qualcomm Incorporated OLLI-PEKKA KALLASVUO President and CEO, Nokia JASON KILAR CEO, Hulu LESLIE MOONVES President and CEO, CBS Corporation ANNE MULCAHY Chairman, Xerox Corporation JAMES MURDOCH Chairman and Chief Executive, Europe & Asia, News Corporation BRIAN PHILLIPS CEO and Co-Founder, Thread DAN PORTER CEO, OMGPOP BRIAN ROBERTS Chairman and CEO, Comcast Corporation PAUL SAGAN President and CEO, Akamai ERIC SCHMIDT Chairman and CEO, Google IVAN SEIDENBERG Chairman and CEO, Verizon Communications BIZ STONE Co-Founder, Twitter HOWARD STRINGER Chairman, CEO and President, Sony Corporation BEN VERWAAYEN CEO, Alcatel-Lucent DAVID ZASLAV President and CEO, Discovery Communications
MODERATORS MARC ANDREESSEN General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz KEN AULETTA Author and Writer, “Annals of Communications”, The New Yorker MARIA BARTIROMO Anchor, Closing Bell; Host & Managing Editor, Wall Street Journal Report, CNBC JAMES CITRIN Co-Leader, Board & CEO Practice, North America, Spencer Stuart DAVID FABER Anchor, Reporter, CNBC MICHAEL HUBER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group BECKY QUICK Co-Anchor, Squawk Box, CNBC GEOFFREY SANDS Director & Leader, Global Media, Entertainment & Information Practice, McKinsey & Co. JOSHUA L. STEINER Co-President and Managing Principal, Quadrangle Group GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS Anchor, This Week; Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News
Haha. I absolutely loved the tone and tenor of this write-up. Says a lot! (And oh, why did Reuters have to allow blogs and columns after I left–conspiracy!)Also loved the Michael Moore comment. Last journo left standing?;-)
Tribune365, thinking beyond newspaper circulation
Monday’s newspaper circulation numbers please no one who makes their living from selling papers. That’s evident when you look at the top 25 dailies by circulation and see that the best performance came from The Wall Street Journal, which rose less than 1 percent. Considering that advertisers use these numbers to determine where to spend their money, there is little reason to rejoice.
Tribune Co’s two largest papers, the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, both posted steep declines on Monday, but the company is urging advertisers to look beyond numbers that it considers less relevant than they were before the Internet. Instead, it wants them to look at how many people they can reach through Tribune’s diverse lineup of papers, websites and television stations.
To make this easier, Tribune has started “Tribune365,” a “multichannel sales solutions group providing customized marketing programs to advertisers looking to reach consumers across a variety of media platforms.” (More on what this means — in English — below.)
“We want to change the conversation around both how we sell and how people perceive newspapers.” Print circulation,” said Vincent Casanova, Tribune’s senior vp of publishing operations “just doesn’t tell the whole story… The objective is to change the conversation from a narrow look at topline circulation results to a broader discussion of the power of newspaper advertising and how to deliver results.”
For Tribune365, that means no longer selling ads to national buyers through a bunch of different sales teams that sell different kinds of ads for this or that part of a paper or this or that part of a website or TV station.
Tribune365 President Don Meek cited a recent ad campaign for big-box retailer Target, which set up one of a 16,000 square-foot “pop-up store” in Chicago (Those are the temporary stores that spring up in cities for a few days at a time, sell a bunch of stuff, and move on):
“We were able to put together an integrated program on WGN, WGN-TV, the Chicago Tribune, RedEye, Hoy… The only thing we couldn’t deliver was the outdoor bus shelter advertising on Michigan Avenue. Not only were we able to provide real estate and promotional support, it was also a fully integrated ad program. They said it was one of the most popular programs that they ever did.”
It’s about time. Tribune365 makes tremendous sense. “Audience aggregation” has become the name of the game, which should now mean aggregating audience across multiple media (er, um, “platforms”). A wise move.
Los Angeles Times staffers fear more layoffs coming
We feel like we’ve read this bad news before. Our sources tell us that they are expecting another round of layoffs in the Los Angeles Times newsroom. They said that people thought a few dozen editorial staffers could get their walking papers this week, though someone else close to the paper whom we spoke cautioned that amount was too extreme.
The paper hasn’t scheduled any meetings or circulated any memos, the sources said. In other words, all this could change. A Times spokeswoman declined to comment.
The blog Laobserved.com, which follows the Times closely, reported that at least one reporter, Tina Daunt, has posted on her Facebook page that she has been canned. “More expected through the day,” the blog also reported.
The LA Times is part of Tribune Co, the bankrupt, Chicago-based newspaper publisher and television broadcaster that also owns the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Times are tough at Tribune’s newspapers, as well as other papers around the nation.
USA Today and many other papers are set to report big declines in circulation next Monday (though some of that is actually a good thing, which we’ll explain in a subsequent blog post), and publishers such as Gannett Co Inc and McClatchy have been making their quarterly numbers only because of big cost cut — of which layoffs are a major part. The New York TImes, which has the largest newspaper editorial staff in the nation, said on Monday that it will slice 100 jobs through buyouts and maybe layoffs from its newsroom. The Charlotte Observer, a McClatchy paper, is offering buyouts too.
– Additional reporting, writing, nattering by Robert MacMillan in New York.
(Photo: Reuters)
The New York Times tries local news, far away
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.
Tribune: Slow train coming
Bankrupt publisher and TV broadcaster Tribune Co filed for bankruptcy last December, and it’s looking increasingly like next December might be the first time we see what the new company will look like. Here is what the company’s Chicago Tribune newspaper reported Tuesday morning:
The parent company of the Chicago Tribune is scheduled to deliver a plan Aug. 4 but wants to extend that deadline to Nov. 30.
Citing the complex nature of the case, Tribune said in a filing it needs more time to build consensus around a plan. It also said the outcome of the pending sale of the Chicago Cubs could have a “material impact” on the plan.
A spokesman called the request “routine.”
This would be the second time that Tribune gets an extension, if the bankruptcy court judge approves it. Our question for you: Will it be the last? We’re talking about $13 billion in debt, not exactly a foreclosed house. What do you think?
Keep an eye on
- Media companies! They’re not dead! If you don’t believe us, read it here too. (Dow Jones Newswires)
- Freshly departed NBC executive Ben Silverman discovers he really is a rogue outsider after all — and everyone knows it. (The Hollywood Reporter)
- Here is why most people who say they can arrange a viral marketing campaign usually can’t. (The Wall Street Journal)
Baltimore Sun fires reporters during baseball game
The headline says it all, and adds a nasty twist to this week’s purge at The Sun in Baltimore. Here’s part of The Guardian’s report on how the Tribune-owned Sun did the deed:
The group, consisting of three writers and a photographer, were told the news as they reported back from a game between the Baltimore Orioles and the Los Angeles Angels in a move that was documented by a fellow reporter online.
“Tough times in the newspaper biz,” wrote the OC Register’s Bill Plunkett as an aside during his inning-by-inning update from the game. “Two writers for the Baltimore Sun in the press box here got the news – by phone, during the game – that they had been laid off in the latest round of cost-cutting. Stay classy, Baltimore Sun management.”
Plunkett subsequently updated his comments, adding that another reporter and a photographer had also been axed in the same way.
Here’s the original blog post that Plunkett wrote.
Meanwhile, I’ll ask one indelicate question:
I’ve never been a sportwriter (with two or three notably poor exceptions in my 15 years in journalism), but… how many reporters does a newspaper need at a minimum to cover a baseball game? (The Wall Street Journal discovered last month: not as many as we have) It’s the same question I had when I discovered that The Boston Globe — which could learn whether it will live or die by tonight — has five science reporters. I like it when the job market I work in has lots of places for me to do what I do, but… five science reporters?
Baltimore readers turn away from the Sun because of their unprofessionalism. If the Sun had any intelligence, they would get rid of Mike Preston.
Tribune Co papers hit where it hurts, Baltimore Sun slashed
Tribune Co keeps the layoffs coming at its newspapers as the media company moves through the bankruptcy court process.
The Sun: Over in Baltimore, we heard from a source that 21 editors — including most of the metro editing staff and two top editorial editors — were herded into offices and told they had to exit the building immediately. Editor & Publisher confirms this report and says more cuts might be coming as soon as today. Perhaps there’s a strategy in there, but it’s hard to tell what it is when most big-city dailies have abandoned their ambitious overseas reporting goals, saying their real value to the community is their local reporting franchise. UPDATE: Looks like at least 40 more people are getting laid off as we speak, according to two sources I just spoke to at 3pm eastern.
And another UPDATE: A Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild memo says a whopping 27 percent of the Sun’s staff is getting laid off.
Excerpt from the memo:
“Tribune, through careless management practices, has saddled itself under $13 billion in debt and now Baltimore is paying a price,” said Cet Parks, Executive Director of the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild. “Tribune is siphoning good jobs from Baltimore and sending work that talented editors, reporters, photographers, copy editors and designers have done here to its home base in Chicago. That is not right.”
Tribune plans to lay off the 40 newsroom employees by May 27. Targeted employees, who include four columnists, photographers, critics and copy editors, received hand delivered letters Wednesday afternoon signed by Monty Cook, senior vice president and editor. Also, in the last two weeks The Sun has laid off seven employees in other departments including advertising and customer service.
Chicago Tribune: The paper said last week that it would cut 11 percent of its newsroom staff. Today’s edition of the Gorkana business journalist career moves e-mail shows that, among others, the Tribune is losing Joshua Boak, financial exchanges and energy reporter. We don’t know if it’s because of the layoffs or if he’s just leaving, but either way, it’s a heck of a time to lose the exchanges beat reporter at one of the hometown papers of the world’s largest futures exchanges.
I still enjoy reading the newspaper with a cup of srong coffee in the morning—apparently generation X does not.
Chili, Baltimore
Did *anyone* like the Los Angeles Times ads?
You have to hand it to Sam Zell and his band of outsiders at bankrupt media company Tribune Co. They are going to remake the newspaper business if it kills them.
The gang got broiled for a front-page ad that the Los Angeles Times ran last week that looked like an article. After that outcry, the Tribune-owned paper did it again, this time with another an ad supplement for Paramount’s movie, “The Soloist.” That one includes an interview with Steve Lopez, the Times columnist who wrote the book that became the movie. The ad also ran under the LA Times’s own banner.
As it turns out, nearly everyone who cares enough to talk about these ads in public despises them. You could have said that LA Times employees were just kvetching when they circulated a petition voicing their opposition to the ads — broke down and dispirited by bankruptcy, and repeated waves of layoffs, they stuck to the old line that there needs to be a distinction between ads and editorial copy for various ethical reasons.
Now we can add LA Times Executive Editor John Arthur to the mix. Here’s The Wrap:
Arthur, who was on vacation last week, said he was blindsided by the ad… The editor said it was initially envisioned to go down the right side of the front page, usually the space reserved for the paper’s lead story. “I’d been told an ad like that was coming, and before my trip I’d complained about it,” he said. “But I was told it was not imminent, that an ad of this shape was weeks or months away — May or June was mentioned to me.”
Arthur was also critical of a four-page advertising supplement about the upcoming Paramount movie “The Soloist,” which was published on Sunday under the signature Los Angeles Times banner. … “I thought the type font that was used in the words ‘The Soloist’ at the top was uncomfortably close to the font we use in section fronts,” Arthur said, adding that he did not know that the supplement was coming either. Lopez could not be reached for comment.
But Lynne Segall, vice president for entertainment advertising at the paper, retorted in an email to TheWrap: “Russ Stanton, his boss, the editor of the paper, approved both advertorial units. The ad department in this company is not in a position nor would we ever be allowed to go out in the market to sell units like this without editorial vetting and giving us permission first.”
Good Riddince…the news on both coast..Ny Times and LA Times deserve to simply die…They made their pact with the left to become mimics for every wack job left idea…so..they reap what they sow. Hope they Both Fold.
L.A. Times staffers fume over front-page ad
The decision by the Los Angeles Times to run a front-page ad that looks like a news story has raised eyebrows in media circles. LAT staffers, meanwhile, are raising their pitchforks.
Horrified by what they see as a deceptive blurring of the line between paid advertising and news stories, some 100 employees at the paper have signed a petition to Publisher Eddy Hartenstein “strenuously” objecting.
“This place already had horrible morale problems with decimating layoffs, but now to have our publisher whore out the front page is more than we can stand,” one editorial staff member told Reuters. “It blurs the line between paid content and content that our reporters are producing.”
The ad, which runs down the left column of the front page, is for the new NBC police drama “Southland.” It’s topped with the headline: ”Southland’s Rookie Hero,” followed by the sub-head “A ride-along on an officer’s first day.”
The ad is surrounded by a black border and has the NBC logo and word “advertisement” above it, but resembles a news story. Along the bottom of the front page is a more conventional, banner-style ad for the show, announcing that it premieres tonight.
“The NBC ad may have provided some quick cash, but it has caused incalculable damage to this institution,” the petition reads. “This action violates a 128-year pact with our readers that the front page is reserved for the most meainingful stories of the day. Place a fake news article on A-1 makes a mockery of our integrity and journalistic standards.”
Newspapers are pushing the boundaries between advertising and editorial content as they struggle to compete in the Internet age. Many used to run front page ads way back at the beginning of the 20th century, and some, like The Wall Street Journal, are trying it again.
Wow. Next thing you know, they’ll be running ads in MAD Magazine. Most ‘straight’ newspaper stories are slightly edited PR pieces recieved from various advocates anyway – at least this PR piece has an impossible to miss disclaimer at the top of it.
Bob
