The other giant lie perpetrated by publishers is that they were bushwhacked by the Internet... For almost thirty years, the tree-killing, oil-wasting publishers knew the days were numbered for their manufacturing plants. Sure, they built Web sites, generally pretty awful. And they became excellent at portraying themselves as victims of Craigslist, Google, and the rest of the Internet. As the newspaper circulations plummeted, the advertising rates soared—what a deal for the publishers! Even better, they could fire (pick the euphemism) all of those non-revenue-producing, pesky journalists.

But at least some sacked journalists have learned from the experience, like the recently-fired Jim Spencer, formerly of the Denver Post:

I have learned a lot in the past year. I have learned that exemplary work at the Virginian-Pilot, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Press in Newport News, Virginia, and the Denver Post carries little weight where profit margins rule. I have learned that friends at other papers—even those with executive titles—are powerless to help me, because of the state of the industry. I have learned that being a columnist apparently keeps me from being hired as a reporter or feature writer, even though I was both before I took up commentary. I have learned that a six-month temporary assignment running a newsroom of sixty-three reporters and editors does not count as management experience.

(Frustrated journalists, take note—they're looking for contributors.)

Parting Thoughts [CJR]

The "moose in the room" is one of those unbearably stupid management book stories, in which a moose ends up at a dinner party or something and no one at the table has the nerves to ask why the moose is there. See, the moose represents big problems that no one wants to talk about. So you are always supposed to mention the moose in the room. Get it? The whole thing is asinine.

Of course, Sulzberger is big into management fads and business book bullshit (as we said, buffoon). And back when the Jayson Blair scandal was rocking the Times newsroom, he did this (per Seth Mnookin's Hard News):

Now, though, he thinks that was maybe a mistake.

In an infamous incident, Mr. Sulzberger showed up at a company crisis meeting holding a toy stuffed moose. It was a gimmick meant to symbolize things that people were afraid to say, but nobody was in the mood for goofy shtick.

He wouldn't repeat it. "Obviously not," he said. "The anger that came out of that meeting, it was so palpable that the moose wasn't a necessary tool, it became clear," he said. "It just wasn't. Now, it had proven necessary in other situations, but it wasn't in that one, so no.

"But look, if that's the biggest mistake I make as leader of The New York Times Co., this is a good thing."

Ha ha "the moose wasn't a necessary tool." And you should know about useless tools, Pinch! It's a testament to Pinch's unwavering ability to miss the point that he doesn't realize the Moose Incident wasn't one bad decision but rather a lovely symbol of how incredibly out of touch he is—with his own newsroom, with the state of media today, with the national mood. Former Times reporter John Darnton just published an entertaining murder mystery set at a newspaper that bears some resemblance to the Times. Here's how he paints the publisher of his fictional newspaper:

The prizes and revenue poured in. it was like standing on the bridge of an aircraft carrier and believing that you, not the ocean were actually keeping the damn thing afloat. But now, with the Internet, the blogs, MSNBC, fifteen minute news cycles, giveaway papers in the subway—Christ, you turn around for a moment and the whole damn world is different. A cliché, maybe, but it's true. Just two days ago, he asked Rosen, one of his two sons, a computer geek, to introduce him to some sites; he read a smattering of them (superficial.com, gawker.com, defamer.com) and he was aghast. Where the hell did it come from, this abiding compulsion to read about breakups and breakdowns of third-rate celebrities? To pursue them into restaurants and nightclubs as they turned bulimic or cheated on their partners or adopted African babies? And written in a spirit of such spite (he didn't know the word schadenfreude). "That's the whole point, Dad," his son had said laughing condescendingly. "You've got to be snarky."

But in this book is the seed of the actual good news for Times reporters. The paper is still a great springboard to actual media success. They've taken recently to building personalities out of their contributors. It's a break from Times tradition, and a welcome one. Does it matter whatever Warren St. John's actual salary and position at the Times are? No, not so much. What matters for Warren is how effective the paper is at promoting his book, and his brand. What is David Carr? A film vlogger...? And now addiction memoirist? He's whatever the hell he wants to be at the New York Times, which is good news for people who enjoy his writing, and good news for his Amazon ranking.

Is it good news for the Times? Who the hell knows. Pinch sure doesn't.

The blog, TellZell.com, got a sympathy writeup in the NYT this weekend. And while it has some fire in it, it's ultimately a sad relic of the once-mighty newspaper industry. A recent post, for example, contains a bunch of farewell letters from Tribune staffers:

Perhaps I hid behind the smallness of my cog's place in the big machine here, or the fact that I worked in what is perhaps the best photo journalism department in the nation kept me from feeling too worried, but with the loss of talent over the last year or two and the seeming lack of any vision in regard to the future of true journalism (other then to hold to the cliff's edge for as long as possible), I feel that I need to say something, however insignificant it may be.

I'll add to the chorus of goodbyes with an adios y un dicho de mi abuelita: "No hay un mal que por un bien no viene."

The Times literally changed my life. I came here as a musician who occasionally wrote and I'm leaving as a guy looking for work as a writer (not that I, the son of a composer, could ever stop being a musician). I'm proud of having contributed to this paper.

SAD. It really is a quality blog, if you're into that sort of thing. Unfortunately its only chance of impacting Sam Zell is... well, there's no chance.

[TellZell.com]

"Why doesn't David Geffen provide a proper amount of backing for an online newspaper out of LA and why doesn't he hire the staff of the LA Times en masse and let them keep putting it out under a different name? That way Geffen would have the pleasure of owning LA's paper of record, the staff might have the opportunity of doing their jobs without worrying if their names are going to come out of the hat at the next round of cutbacks, forests of precious trees would be saved and no one would get their hands or light suits stained with ink while reading about current affairs."

That's kind of a great idea! And then why doesn't David Geffen buy some closed steel mills and textile factories in Ohio and pay all the workers to keep making all that steel and those textiles too? Then he can give everyone welfare. Oh wait, did we say capitalism? We meant handouts! WHAT HAPPENED TO PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?

Weymouth, in addition to coming from that famous and wealthy family, also comes from the business side of the Post, and she's already demonstrated a tendency to criticize editorial decisions like Page One stories and photo selection while also promising not to interfere with her editors and also not to be Sam Zell, who she also thinks is shrewd and not crazy. Hmm.

Her job now that she's installed a new editor will be to force the newspaper and its independent online division to get along. This will not be easy. Oh, and also she has to reverse the industry-wide trend toward plummeting ad revenue and circulation. Here is a graph about that:

Good luck Katharine Weymouth!

paidContent was founded (in a STUDIO APARTMENT) by Rafat Ali, who still publishes and edits the site. Ali used to work for former Blog Mogul Jason Calacanis! Calacanis sold his Weblogs Inc (encompassing like 100 separate blogs [admittedly only a third of which were actually regularly updated]) to AOL back in the day for (A MEASLY) $25 million. Now Ali sells his four sites for even more money! Internet success story!

"the empire struck back and laid me off. fuck the merc. fuck medianews. newspapers deserve to die. i left today with my at-at under my arm."

Flickr]

• 
  Victor Ganzi, Hearst CEO—Ganzi quit this week, in a move that came as a shock to some. Though Hearst is not doing poorly, signs are there that it may be on the decline. Ad page counts at its top magazines are creeping downwards. Ganzi may have seen the writing on the wall.



• 
  Jack Kliger, Hachette CEO—Kliger lasted nearly a decade at Hachette, but stepped down this week. He leaves a company with an unsure future—layoffs, a questionable digital strategy, and stagnant ad growth will go down as big parts of the legacy of the end of his reign.



• 
  Jane Friedman, HarperCollins CEO—Friedman was sent packing from the publishing giant earlier this month, replaced by a man more than 20 years her junior. She spent nearly 30 years at Random House before coming to HarperCollins in 1997, and had a good deal of early success. But she was done in either by corporate infighting, or poor performance.



• 
  Peter Olson, Random House CEO—the book-loving, erudite bean counter was replaced last month by Markus Dohle, a robotic numbers guy who many feel will focus on earnings at the expense of "the romantic idea of literature." Uh, yea.

It's a bad sign when these companies' core product (daily papers) is far less successful than a tangential spinoff product (magazines), but at this stage they'll take what they can get. New figures show that Sunday supplements recorded the biggest advertising gains of any sector in the entire media during the first quarter—almost a 20% increase, while newspaper advertising itself was down more than 6%.

The WSJ's new weekend magazine is on the way, and Murdoch-controlled paper is rumored to be planning as many as three more magazine titles, which makes sense when looking at the ad numbers above. The LA Times just went all the way with its Sunday magazine, turning the entire operation over to the business side of the paper and losing any pretense of editorial content. The success of that move remains to be seen, but stronger investment in weekend mags is a certainty until they prove themselves as dead as papers themselves.

Laid-off newspaper journalists, send in your applications today!

[WWD]

Without providing specifics about how it might be accomplished, Schmidt said DoubleClick's system for serving up online display ads could generate "significant" revenue online for newspapers.

Still, he acknowledged the boost probably won't be enough to restore the hefty profit margins that newspaper publishers historically have enjoyed from print advertising.

It's sad to see the people who killed print have these regrets so publicly. They probably wake up in a cold sweat after terrifying dreams of bloody broadsheets calling their names—"you killllled meeee!" But seriously, it's too late, Eric. Not only is this ad thing a slap in the face, but Google has a nasty habit of aggregating and indexing lots and lots of newspaper content without paying anyone. So give it up and embrace your role! You are become death, destroyer of print! You made $16.6 billion in revenue last year!

At least Craig bought the newspaper industry a little going-away present. This empty talk is just sad.

Google CEO: "Moral Imperative" To Help Newspapers [HuffPo]

[LAT Publisher David] Hiller declined to discuss specific plans for the magazine, but said Annie Gilbar, a former editor of InStyle and L.A. Style magazines and a onetime host on the Home Shopping Network, was "the leading candidate" to be named the top editor. Gilbar is also an author of several advice books, including "Wedding Sanity Savers."

She's also the author of The Penny Whistle Christmas Party Book and The Penny Whistle Party Planner. So at least the magazine's funeral party should be decent.

[LAT]

[UPDATE: The Home Shopping Network HSN PR machine writes in: "Please update your files to note that our proper name is HSN, not Home Shopping Network and since HSN is not an abbreviation, even the first reference to our company should be HSN. Thank you for helping us to maintain consistency with regard to our name and brand." My pleasure!]

Carroll, who is spending about $2.5 million on the launch, says he is targeting a largely untapped demographic—one with "$500-$600 billion in spending power," he says. "From Disney to Wall Street to the Bronx, this [magazine] is going to be about the business of hip-hop."

"It's going to be [like] the Billboard of Hip-Hop," Carroll continues. "It's a void that needed to be filled."

Two things: Billboard isn't doing so hot itself right now. And it has all the music industry to sell to. And isn't this idea about, oh, ten years too late? If this magazine had launched in 1998, it would have been poised to ride the cultural and economic wave that swept hip hop music into a prime position in American pop culture. Now, it's just prepared to swallow $2.5 million of the publisher's money.

Also: I love creative methods of calculation that can produce results like the one that says Hip Hop Business Journal is sneaking into an untapped $500 billion market. Truly imaginative accounting.

I wish this magazine luck. But Queen Latifah on the premiere cover? If they make it through the year, it will be a testament only to the power of C.R.E.A.M.

[Folio]

"I can say that your correspondent is off the mark on the substance, the drivers, the mood, and the implications. We're all pretty excited about the new direction, me included.

"I would only observe that we have a large and loyal readership in the New York suburbs, a bigger one than in the five boroughs. But those people mostly aren't reading the Times for detailed local coverage of suburban New Jersey and Connecticut. And such stories will not be what keeps Metro thriving and relevant in an era when the Times is a national and global platform.

"I know people like to dance on our grave out there, but this is a good and positive thing, not a cheap metaphor for decline."

Conversations on why on Earth the Washington Post felt the need to explain what a "wingman" is in 2006. And also why so many girls are total sluts these days (she got a book out of that one, so she's not sweating this). Sad. Who will chronicle the terrible sexual habits of the youth at the Post now? We were so looking forward to learning the true meaning of a Facebook Poke, some time in 2010. [WP]

"Prepress staff at papers in Sussex and Wiltshire, who design ads and check editorial pages before they are sent to the printers, have been told their positions are at risk. Newsquest Sussex, publisher of Brighton's Argus newspaper, announced that 21 jobs will go as work is outsourced to a third-party supplier, Express KCS, an American company with operations in India. Staff were told of the move last week and there is now a four-week consultation period before the notice of termination of contracts."

Tune in tonight to watch Lou Dobbs bleed from his eyeballs. [Guardian]

"[T]he Voice is now FIFTH in terms of ad sales amongst the entire chain," the insider tells us. "We used to be first, and now we are FIFTH. Kansas City['s The Pitch] does better than the Voice in ad sales. The [New Times] has proven over and over and over that when they go into anything other than secondary markets, they fail because they apply their boneheaded editorial strategy to the big papers, ignoring what actually worked for those cities. That's why San Francisco was their biggest money loser, because they didn't seem to get that no one wanted their cookie cutter philosophy in such an individualist town."