POLITICO EXPOZAY: Our archnemesis Martha Stewart('s magazine, Martha Stewart Living, along with several other home decorating magazines) is involved in a scheme to "decorate" various rooms in the US State Department building. In bed with the warmongers, eh Martha? Why don't you just go over to Afghanistan and start kicking over mud huts one by one, yourself? Eh? We dare you to respond. Dare you!


Hey, that breakthrough new "iTunes for magazines" online magazine store thing that the world has been waiting for is close to happening, and Conde Nast, Hearst, and Time Inc. will all put their magazines in there, so you can buy them, on the internet. I am "going rogue" and saying that not too many people outside the magazine industry will care about this, at all.


Keith Kelly has this short week's layoff tallies, so far: 25 at Time Inc., some of whom we mentioned yesterday, and the prospect of up to 100 layoffs coming to Playboy following their deal to outsource non-editorial duties to AMI. Also, nearly 80 edit layoffs at the Toronto Star. This holiday season is shaping up to be just as merry as last year's, for the media!


The Denver Post and the Dallas Morning News are reportedly considering joining the Search Engine Media Wars and pulling their content off of Google. This would have an even more minimal impact than if News Corp. does it, so no biggie.

The Washington City Paper broke the story, and has the full internal memo on the bureau closures. Key graf:

At a time of limited resources and increased competitive pressure, it's necessary to concentrate our journalistic firepower on our central mission of covering Washington and the news, trends and ideas that shape both the region and the country's politics, policies and government.

Total economic move. The Post is smart to protect its core competency, but this is pretty...sudden. But they may look smart for it, eventually, by not sucking themselves dry covering shit WaPo readers can get elsewhere, better, if they actually want it at all. The NYT, meanwhile, recently expanded its coverage in San Francisco and Chicago, so we have a nice little dichotomy to see which strategy looks smarter a couple years from now.

A tipster tells us that three assistant managing editors have been laid off at Fortune magazine, presumably as part of the ongoing companywide Time Inc. layoffs. Mediaite confirms that the company did do a round of layoffs today. If you have more details, email us.
UPDATE: We hear five staffers were laid off at SI.com: Two associate producers, a copy editor, a producer, and a production editor, according to our tipster.


Gary Weiss got a peek at a BusinessWeek corporate post-layoff memo, in which the people not fired are referred to as "Individuals ineligible or not selected for inclusion in the restructuring program." Well. How Bloombergian.


Dave Eggers continues to save print! This time by producing a $16, 300-page "newspaper" with content "ranging from Stephen King's reporting on the World Series to explanatory graphics on subjects as diverse as the conflict in eastern Congo and how to make the perfect bowl of ramen." The whole thing sounds great. Except, of course, this six-month long niche literary project has absolutely nothing to do with newspapers or with the continued viability of print, which is dying as a mass medium, naturally, due to its obvious limitations.


From Roy Greenslade: "Twelve journalists were among 46 people murdered yesterday in the Philippines in what is thought to be the greatest loss of life by news media in a single day. Several of the victims were beheaded or mutilated in the massacre carried out by a huge force of gunmen."

Carl Kasell, the NPR newscaster known for saying things in that voice of his, is retiring from the morning newscast (but continuing to appear on Wait Wait Don't Tell Me). "The biggest change in his life may be not having to wake up at 1:05 in the morning in order to be ready for the network's 5 a.m. ET newscast." NPR has been literally trying to kill beloved newscaster Carl Kasell, all these years.


Not to get back on this subject again (please), but a tipster tells us there are still more AP layoffs going down, today: "one biz writer in nyc who was on vacation last week. two people in los angeles," our tipster says. We are hoping and assuming these are just leftovers that didn't get done last week.


James O'Shea was a Chicago Tribune editor who got pushed out as the entire company went to hell. Now he's starting up a rival Chicago news organization. But when the NYT asks him about all the BEEF he must have he says, "No, I don't have any interest in any of that." Ridiculous! On the internet, "news" is just a code word for BEEF. You will learn this soon enough, Mr. O'Shea.


What's this, one guy writing in True Slant defends the continued existence on earth and in our daily newspapers of NYT nature writer and most annoying essayist in the US of A Verlyn Klinkenborg? No. He is indefensible.

For example, the charmers at my hometown paper, the Las Vegas Review Journal, saw an increase in circulation this year by 6.6%. Which is awesome! Except: strange. Because Vegas' economy is in the toilet, having been crippled by foreclosures and joblessness. Why wouldn't these people just go online and get that shit for free? Funny you'd ask, because weekday sales dropped by 12,000 copies.

So. About that increase in circulation. Is the mob fixing numbers in Vegas again, or what? So old-school. Here's how this works: back in April, the Audit Bureau of Circulations changed their rules to let numbers look better to people who look at circulation rates, like ad buyers (and media reporters). The standard-change was bad. Like, disingenuous. Which is how the Review-Journal went up in circulation this year.

The change happened because the price the newspaper was charging for the online replica — it costs print customers an extra 50 cents per week — hadn't been high enough to qualify as paid circulation until the ABC's April change. That let newspapers define their paying readers as anyone who spends at least a penny for a copy. Previously, a newspaper copy had to sell for at least 25 percent of the basic price to qualify as paid circulation.

Right, so, by that logic, $1 could potentially equal 100 copies, and $100 equals 10,000 copies. Here's where I'd write that that's five times the amount of copies of the LVRJ distributed in Vegas, but I can't, because we have no idea how many copies are actually distributed! Fun. How do advertisers feel about this runaround? Raging mad, right? Um, kind of. One advertiser thinks the numbers are "less credible."

You really have to do your homework now and ask newspapers about how much double counting is going on,'' said Allison Howald, U.S. director of print investment at PHD Media.

The rage doesn't come across quite like I was expecting it to.

Hopefully, "less credible" is a kind euphemism for "complete bullshit," or some advertisers are going to wake up one day and start asking questions about why the 200,000 eyes they were promised on their quarter-page actually only amounts to a third-grade arts class making paper machete hats. You'd think these sketchy practices are limited to sleazy gambling towns like Vegas, though, right? WRONG again. Wall Street Journal, you guys will be transparent, right?

Nope. WSJ spokesman Robert Christie wouldn't respond to the AP's questions for quote on the new rules, including whether or not their numbers included digital subscriptions.

Including the print side, the Journal's total circulation edged up by just 0.6 percent to 2.02 million. ''We followed the ABC's rules and methodology,'' Christie said

Right, so, newspapers: more fucked than previously statistically "proven."

I'm forgetting where I read about the guy who used to steal ATM receipts of trashcans to impress dates with his huge bank account. This reminds me of that.

The lofty rhetoric surrounding the launch of outfits like the CNC, a MacArthur Foundation-funded news organization run by former Chicago Tribune staffers, is based on the notion that genuine public-service journalism—the expensive boring stuff that results in legislation—is at risk as for-profit newspapers crater. In the words of CNC founder and former Trib editor Jim O'Shea:

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 so we can hold our government accountable to citizens and restore to our journalism the standards desperately needed in these troubled times.

Newspapers can't afford to live up to those obligations anymore, so nonprofit-funded outlets like the CNC need to step into the gap. So what sort of hard-hitting "accountability journalism" can we expect from these new creatures? The CNC has contracted with the New York Times to produce an insert for the paper's Chicago editions purporting to bring Chicago readers the sort of shoe-leather that the bankrupt Chicago Tribune can't afford to produce anymore. It debuted today, so lets have a look.

• The lead story, by former Trib reporter Dan Mihalopoulos, is precisely in line with what news alarmists say will be missing if and when we lose newspapers: Internal documents from the company that the city of Chicago sold its parking meter business to last year show that it is making boatloads of money, and that the city would have done better just to keep the meters for itself. Bravo!

Now for the rest:

• A trip to the Art Institute of Chicago, where we learn that "young people (under 30) tend to enjoy modern art."
• A 195-word story about a stay-at-home dad who tried to join a play-group for his infant son, but couldn't because it was for moms only.
• A 156-word story about the Chicago Bulls' "circus trip," an annual tour that the item doesn't really explain but has something to do with Ringling Bros. and the Bulls losing. Here's a Sun-Times blog entry on the matter, published two days ago.
• A column from Jim Warren wherein he visits a food pantry.

Some of this is perfectly useful, but is it going to save journalism? Does a recitation of the Bulls' woes count as holding "our government accountable to citizens"? Is the MacArthur Foundation fulfilling its mission of creating a "more just, verdant, and peaceful world" by subsidizing stories about dads getting barred from mommies' groups? Is this what all the fuss is about?

The problem is that yes, newspapers underwrite important, expensive journalism that in many cases falls through the cracks in the pageview-obsessed, run-and-gun environment of online publishing. But that's perhaps five percent of what the average paper does. Maybe ten or fifteen. But it's a fraction. The rest of it is rewriting press releases, spouting opinions, reviewing things, and telling people what's on television and when—things the internet is exceptionally good at. CNC has loudly proclaimed that it is going to take up the slack and "restore" journalism's "true values," but, to judge by its first outing, all it's doing is creating a mini-newspaper—one solid story surrounded by a bunch of fluff that you could get anywhere. That's not to say that there's anything wrong with fluff, it's just that no one is raising alarms about the lack of quality writing about art museums and sports and opinions about poor people as newspapers decline.

If the idea of nonprofit journalism and innovative ways of paying for and distributing important reporting is going to succeed, it's going to have to actually produce important reporting. And if former newspapermen are going to lay claim to journalism's future by launching projects aimed at restoring its values, they ought to come up with something better than one good muni story.

UPDATE: Jim Schachter, editor of digital initiatives for the Times, writes in to make a good point that we hadn't considered—the Times asked CNC to provide a mix of serious and fluffy stories. So it was the Times, and not CNC, that wanted the mini-newspaper. We still don't understand why the MacArthur Foundation has to step in to help pay for the fluff the Times is asking for, or where that fluff fits into the CNC's journalism-saving rhetoric. But good point nonetheless:

Perhaps your dart is a bit misaimed. We asked the Chicago News Cooperative to give us a mix of content, because we're trying to come up with a formula for adding local news to The Times that prompts people to keep their subscriptions or start one if they're not buying our paper now. The tough story at the center of today's report, about the parking meter deal, is representative of what CNC means to be about. And, to be fair, so is Jim Warren's humane and pointed column.

I'm expecting to see a lot more afflicting of the comfortable and comforting of the afflicted from Jim O'Shea and his crew over the coming months.

A "long-standing editorial feud" between a left-wing German paper and the right-wing paper Bild has culminated in the left-wing paper commissioning a huge artwork on the side of a building showing "Bild boss Kai Diekmann spreading his legs as his mighty manhood stretches across five storeys before the tip turns into a rearing cobra." If this isn't an idea that would suit Col Allan, we don't know what is. [Sexxxy pics]


A high school paper outside of Chicago wanted to publish some stories about students smokin and drinkin' and makin' babies, so the school spiked the issue, and now it's national news. The takeaway here is that the only thing dumber than school papers (I served on two!) is the reaction of school administrators to school papers.


Chris Roush has the latest updates on who's staying and who's going at BusinessWeek.


TVNewser says that Good Morning America staffers are wondering whether potential new GMA host George Stephanopoulos has the morning chops to pull of the big fluff interviews that would go along with job. Or will he be worried that it will undermine his fancy (alleged) "credibility" on his Sunday show? Let's be honest: With that hair, George Stephanopoulos was made for fluff. Also he is not a "journalist," so who cares?

We have two separate (unconfirmed) staff change rumors today, from tipsters. First, at SI:

At the ever-shrinking Sports Illustrated, the magazine's #2, exec ed. Mike Bevans, has privately announced that he'll be among the staffers taking a buyout. This marks the second Time Inc. purge in a row that M.E. Terry [McDonell]. has lost his aide de camp: last year it was David Bauer.

Second, we hear that the New York Post has replaced veteran police reporter Phil Messing with relative rookie Kirsten Fleming. Indeed, Messing's byline does not show up in a search since last month. Out tipster says, "The fear, of course, is that the writing is on the wall for Phil who is one of the more reliable and experienced police reporters in the city. He's old school. But the Post is rumored to be wanting to get rid of 10 to 15 reporters so everyone over there is worrying that their heads are on the chopping block." If you know more, email us.
UPDATE: Actually, another search for just Messing's last name turns up lots of recent bylines, so he's still hard at work, for now.


Oh Anthony Kennedy went on and on about how his office's demand to pre-approve his quotes in a school paper was misunderstood, but now the WSJ says he did the same thing once at GWU. Whatever. Just don't outlaw abortion.


There used to be a dozen analysts covering newspaper companies for Wall Street. How many are there now? Not so many! Now it's just Rick Edmonds, a dude who works for Poynter, trying to figure out how bad the newspaper apocalypse is. "My conservative estimate is that there is $1.6 billion newspapers used to spend annually on reporting and editing that they don't anymore." Journalism! Related: An incredible graph about magazines, and the money they are no longer making.


BusinessWeek media reporter Jon Fine (a good reporter!), currently on a months-long round-the-world vacation with his wealthy wife Laurel Touby, announces on Twitter that new BW owners Bloomberg have laid him off. One thing he can take solace in: His months-long, round-the-world vacation.

Ha, the fake Onion News Network has hired yet another real TV journalist, Suzanne Sena of Fox News (joke). Laugh now; they could totally get Lou Dobbs, if they tried.


Keith Kelly says the bulk of Time Inc's editorial layoffs could come next week—as many as 90 at the company's biggest magazines, to make up for the non-outpouring of buyout volunteers. So next week should be as sunny as this week, in media land!


A new study "finds that 74% of adults — nearly 171 million — in the United States read a newspaper in print or online during the past week." This is presented as a positive sign for newspapers. Left unsaid is the fact that 68% of those readers were reading "Family Circus."


Popular hero NY1 newsman Pat Kiernan informs us of this breaking trivia-related development:

For almost two years now, fans of World Series of Pop Culture have been asking me "when is the show coming back?" Since VH1 has set its priorities elsewhere, the short term answer is "I don't know." I'll keep trying.

In the meantime, my love of Pop Culture trivia can be suppressed no longer. Each weekday at 11:30 am ET I'll tweet a question at @patkiernan. I'll post it on the website at the same time at www.patspapers.com/trivia

It's tough to run a true trivia competition online because everybody can just Google the answers. But for those who respond with the correct answer I'll award a prize at random from time to time. Mostly it's just about writing some fun questions and creating a place for WSOPC fans to gather.

He tells us this week's prize is a $25 gift certificate and adds, "I'm taking the first 10 responses in the "Comments" section and choosing one at random, hoping to take away the incentive to obsessively press refresh and then google the answer." Don't fuck around with Pat Kiernan's contest rules.


Also in layoff news: We've been updating our AP Layoff List throughout the day, and tips keep coming in. Check it again if you haven't lately, it's long. And we hear BusinessWeek staffers are finding out about their own layoffs right now. Email us with info.

Way to win reader trust, Post-Dispatch!



The employee's comment was just one word: "Pussy." It was a stupid response to a stupid blog post, entitled "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" The joke was a groaner, to be sure. And one that was annoyingly re-posted once after administrators deleted it. But the comment posed no threat to anyone or anything other than perhaps good taste. So it's bizarre how far the author of the post to which it was attached went next: The author, , Kurt Greenbaum,looked at the IP address on the comment, associated it with a local school, called the school and forwarded them all data on the commenter.

Then, Greenbaum later wrote, the guy got busted:

The school's IT director took a shine to the challenge... he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

Score one for Greenbaum! Now St. Louis-ians won't dumbly assume they can speak anonymously to the local paper, or that newspaper staffers, of all people, might have some sympathy for the soon-to-be unemployed. And we can't imagine anyone else hurling the word "Pussy" at Kurt Greenbaum again. Because this is clealry a guy with a thick skin.

(Pic from Greenbaum's Flickr)

[via Read-Write Web]

That's bad news not only for News Corp. chairman Murdoch but also for all the other old media barons hoping online paywalls will save their bacon. Even those who will pay can't decide if they want to buy individual articles via micropayments, subscribe to print-online bundles or subscribe to just the website:

Then there's the anecdotal evidence collected by Ad Age's Simon Dumenco, who surfed the comments section of Murdoch's websites and found that most of his own readers thought his paywall would fail. Some were downright mean, like Times of London reader Robin Stack: "It will reduce your wealth and influence; please do it."

So, in order to have any hope of weaning consumers off free content, the likes of Murdoch will have to offer a diverse array of payment plans and work like hell to change the thinking of the vast majority of his existing audience. For moguls used to exploiting their readers' and viewers' basest instincts, that sounds like an awful lot of persuading.

John Koblin reports that Andrew Rossi, the filmmaker associate producer behind Control Room (which was excellent), is now working on a documentary about the NYT's media desk. Hardworking multimedia jackanape Brian Stelter describes some of the action footage that is already accumulating in the filmmaker's archive:

"He watches me edit, watches me write, watches me write emails, watches me tweet, watches me do interviews," said Mr. Stelter. "There are some days that are going to be more exciting."

Well. It's, ah...more interesting than our average work day, at least. So...put it on your viewing schedule!

Richard Miniter, the editorial page editor of the Moonie Washington Times, is suing the paper for "being forced to attend a Unification Church mass wedding," and also because he says they made him work while he was sick, even though, according to TPM, "During a health scare earlier this year, Miniter was brought out of the newsroom on a stretcher." Who would have expected this at the Moonie Washington Times, of all places?


The (unprofitable) New York Daily News is investing $150 million in a new printing press . Buyers of print ads in the Daily News love it; everyone else thinks it is stupid.


Hey, Lou Dobbs is very interested in Bill O'Reilly's offer of a "semi-regular contributor" position on O'Reilly's show. Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs, together, on the same show. That would be something. Something evil.


Ah, here's a fourth item on this day of layoffs and only layoffs, as far as media "news" is concerned: Samir "Mr. Magazine" Husni has named Hearst's Food Network Magazines as the Most Notable Launch of 2009. Americans can no longer tolerate any aspect of their daily reality that is unconnected to television. What an apocalyptic future we all face. Thanks, "Mr. Magazine."

Murdoch was on a panel with Indian mogul Ratan Tata and Mexican billionaire and future New York Times owner Carlos Slim. The question that elicited Murdoch's bizarre reference to New York Gov. David Paterson was clearly directed at Fox News: "How do we bring more civil discourse to the discussion, and stop appealing to the populists on the right and the left?"

One way would be to not pay people millions of dollars to pursue bizarre conspiracy theories and call the first black president a racist—but that's not the Murdoch way! No, Murdoch's slurred, barely coherent answer blamed politicians, including Paterson, who, it's important to note, is "blind, and can't read braille, and doesn't know what's going on." And therefore is responsible for the lack of civil discourse in our political conversation. Class act. Good thing Murdoch has leftie liaison Gary Ginsberg at hand to smooth this over for him.

We're just going to throw this out there: Rupert Murdoch is not well. This senseless gaffe, on top of his strange and uncomprehending assertion last week that Barack Obama is indeed a racist just like Glenn Beck said and that no one at Fox News has ever compared Obama to Stalin when they obviously do on a nearly nightly basis, make him seem strange and muddled. He's getting old, and it's showing.

The conference had another highlight—Slim's defensive and belittling discussion of his minority stake in the New York Times. Asked why he loaned a quarter of a billion dollars to the struggling paper, Slim responded with a casual, "Why not?" before nearly interrupting the panel's moderator to point out that on top of a 14% interest rate, he'd received warrants in the deal. Asked to elaborate on the value of media investments, Slim started with, "I think the New York Times will pay. It was credit, with a high yield, and warrants." How reassuring. Slim did offer a perfunctory defense of the Times as a business, calling it one of the best newspapers in the world. Then he offered to lend money to the Wall Street Journal at 12%, two points better than he gave to the Times.

Ha, New Yorker media man Ken Auletta moderated some panel about "The Future of Funny," which of course sounds the opposite of funny, but it turned out to be funny mostly because of Judd Apatow mocking Ken Auletta's questions. Be warned: Anything about funny things should be funny or it will be made funny at the expense of the least funny person. And that person will inevitably be you.


Houston Chronicle reporter Moises Mendoza: "I'm not on death row. Stop with the e-mails, the dirty looks and the questions. I'm not Moises Sandoval Mendoza. I'm a different Moises Mendoza - a law-abiding one." Yea right, Mendoza. Google don't lie.


About half of cheap-ass Americans say they're willing to pay for online news content, and those who would pay said they're only willing to pay an average of $3 a month. This means that half of America will soon stop reading newspapers online, and the other half will pay just enough to ensure newspapers go broke.


"Is Playboy's Print Future In Jeopardy?" Yes.

CNN was so sick of Lou Dobbs, it gave him an $8 million severance package to leave, The Post has learned.

They don't teach you that move in J-school.

Rohde's remark suggests that other press blackouts, like the one enforced for seven month by the New York Times as it tried to negotiate Rohde's release, are currently in place regarding abducted reporters.

Please remember—I'm not disclosing any names tonight—but there are still journalists, local and foreign, and many average Pakistanis and Afghans still being held prisoner tonight in the tribal areas. This problem has not been solved. We were extraordinarily lucky to escape. Others will not be.

One of those reporters, the Norwegian documentarian Paal Refsdal, was released yesterday after being kidnapped a week ago by Taliban fighters near the border with Pakistan. A Pakistani newspaper reported Refsdal's kidnapping on Monday, but no western media organizations followed suit until he was released. The Rohde blackout was hardly the first: Canadian journalist Melissa Fung spent a month in captivity while western media remained silent about the story at the request of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The irony of Rohde's appeal for us to keep those unnamed journalists in our thoughts is that, by withholding their names, he appears to be both endorsing and exposing a noble conspiracy to prevent us from thinking about them or knowing that they exist.

Rohde's full remarks, which presented a thoroughly depressing portrait of the fanaticism we face in Afghanistan and Pakistan, can be seen here.