Four today

1. A little more from Dean Singleton about the MediaNews Group online strategy (Neiman Lab):

We will be moving away from giving away most of our content online. We will be redoing our online to appeal certainly to a younger audience than the print does, but we’ll have less and less newspaper-generated content and more and more information listings and user-generated content.

2. Huffington Post is ready to get down to business (fishbowlny):

Today, the online pub announced that its had added a CFO, Eric Ashman, formerly CFO at TheStreet.com. Additionally, HuffPo said ex-Elle associate publisher Samantha Fennell will be joining its sales team as executive director.

3. So what really went wrong with newspapers? (Non Sequitur)

4. The Apple netbook is coming... right? (Mediabistro)

Bringing the watchdogs inside

As James Rainey of the LA Times pointed out a few months ago, there are fewer full-time reporters covering the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (4) than there are supervisors (5); and there are almost as many former journalists (2) working for a single supervisor, Zev Yaroslavsky.

Now LA Observed reports that Yaroslavsky's staff has looked out onto the new media landscape and decided to overhaul the supervisor's website to give it a more newsy feel. The office plans to hire a part-time writer "with sharp editorial skills" to produce stories on a variety of topics that will "connect and communicate with constituents on issues that impact their lives and intersect their interests."

The opening is listed on JournalismJobs and Joel Sappell, former reporter and editor at the LA Times, is heading up the project.

Combining political savvy with journalistic talent is certainly nothing new - David Axelrod might be the best and latest example of that. But as professional journalism and impartiality diminish, we're likely to see much more of this partisan-institutional journalism filling the void. After all, they're willing to pay for it.

Mercury News workers to consider austerity contract

The union representing employees at the San Jose Mercury News has negotiated a contract that offers major concessions to save money.

The contract, which will be voted on by secret ballot on Monday, includes a 7-percent pay cut (plus another two percent next year), five days of unpaid furlough, higher health care costs and a reduction in vacation accrual. The contract also allows owner MediaNews Group to consolidate copy desk functions with the company's Bay Area News Group (BANG), which includes the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times.

From the Media Workers Guild:

As you know, it is a difficult period in the newspaper industry and the country. This contract settlement represents our best efforts at protecting workers, jobs and quality at the Mercury News. It is not something that we recommend lightly...

The folks at the SF Weekly aren't too impressed.

Activist writer wants president to read her work, Secret Service says no

The Associated Press reports:

A writer for a small Georgia newspaper who wanted to give President Barack Obama a letter was forcibly removed from a press area near Air Force One on Thursday shortly before he arrived at the airport.

Brenda Lee, who also identifies herself as a "Roman Catholic priestess" living in Anaheim, writes opinion pieces for the Georgia Informer, an African-American newspaper in Macon, Georgia. She said the letter urged Obama to take a stand against gay marriage.

Four today

1. From mugging to hugging: A century of American progress as captured in the pages (print and web) of the New York Times. Gawker

2. The software is mightier than the pen. NYT

3. Of mice and men: Mice given a human gene for language squeak differently. NYT

4. Google searches, Bing evaluates. Wired

The I-News experiment begins

Dean Singleton's "Individuated News" experiment gets underway next week in Denver, when 25 residents in the Highlands neighborhood will receive stand-alone printers that will let them publish a 12-page personalized edition of the Denver Post at home. Singleton also plans to try the system out on 60 extended-stay guests at the downtown Marriott starting in July.

Assuming all goes well in the Centennial State, Singleton's MediaNews Group will install another 300 printers in Southern California homes come August, allowing subscribers here to create i-editions of the Los Angeles Daily News.

Bill Mitchell at Poynter explains how the system works:

Consumers pay the printer's manufacturer a highly discounted price for the Internet-equipped device and they pay a modest subscription price to the local newspaper. The newspaper reimburses the consumer for ink and paper, and advertisers pay the newspaper to get their messages delivered to customers located nearby.

With the discount, the $150 printers will cost subscribers about $50, Mitchell reports.

MediaNews appears to be pinning its hopes for I-News on a "hyper-local" advertising model. Coffee shops, grocers, liquor stores and the like will be able target ads and coupons to I-edition subscribers who live only blocks away. The ads will be a bargain for local shop owners, and yet the rates will be higher than for an online ad.

Althought it seems inevitable that the i-edition, if successful, will influence how MediaNews apportions its limited newsroom resources, the more immediate effect will be on daily circulation. As the Denver Post reported back in March:

One proposal, based on how well testing in Los Angeles goes, would be to print the newspaper only three days a week. That will already be the case with the two papers in Detroit, including MediaNews Group's Detroit News, starting March 31.

"Our greatest expense is printing and delivering a newspaper," [Mark Winkler, executive vice president of sales and marketing for MediaNews Group], said. "Eliminating it four days a week would be significant."

Curiosities

Among the leads on the Washington Post's website tonight is a feature about the world's longest eyebrow:

Brian had normal eyebrows as a boy. They started to fill out in high school and exploded when he was in his 20s. Today, it looks as if two hamsters perch on his face.

Four today

1. The ex-Orange Unified School District trustee at the heart of a court battle that left First Amendment activist Richard McKee with more than $80,000 of debt has been sentenced to two years probation and fined $200 for stealing a bottle of ketchup. AP

2. Former LA Daily News editorial page writer Paul Green has died. He was 50. Daily News (h/t LA Observed)

3. The Washington press corps has started to push back against the White House's use of background briefings to talk about routine policy matters ('background' generally means a reporter agrees not to name the source). Washington Post

4. If you'd forgotten that newspaper journalism is facing a crisis, Rem Rieder is here to remind you. AJR

Bush v. Gore attorneys to challenge Prop. 8 in federal court

The two attorneys who opposed each other in the 2000 Florida recount battle between George Bush and Al Gore have joined forces to overturn California's ban on same-sex marriage. In response to today's California Supreme Court ruling upholding Proposition 8, Ted Olsen, who represented Bush, and David Boies, who represented Gore, said they'll challenge the ban in federal court. The attorneys will hold a press conference tomorrow morning at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.

Tucker's immodest proposal

Conservative pundit and bow tie aficionado Tucker Carlson plans to launch a right-leaning website, called TheDailyCaller.com, to cover the policy decisions of the Obama administration. Carlson wants to combine the advocacy-approach of Huffington Post with the pay-per-click model of Gawker to create a site that simultaneously drives the news, beats Drudge Report to the punch and upholds basic journalism standards.

From The Hill:

"We are a general-interest newspaper-format style site," Carlson told conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation on Tuesday. "There just aren't enough people covering this administration and telling the people what's going on." ...

Carlson said that the site's reporters would share in the profits based on how much traffic is drawn in by their work. He said the site would seek to "drive" the news, similar to the Drudge Report, the Huffington Post, the New York Times, and other major news outlets. (The site's motto, Carlson said, is "every seven minutes," and seeks to be "even faster than Drudge.")

Not to be

Ten days ago, Ruth Padel became the first woman in 301 years to hold the prestigious post of chair of poetry at Oxford University. Today Padel resigned after she "admitted what she had previously denied — that she had played a part in a covert effort to taint her main rival for the post with old allegations of sexual impropriety," the New York Times reports.

Her rival, Derek Walcott, stepped aside when the allegations hit. According to the Times:

...commentators in British newspapers noted the irony of hounding a distinguished literary figure on the basis of long-ago sexual transgressions when many of Britain’s greatest poets were social or political reprobates by the standards of modern-day Britain.

Michael Deacon in The Telegraph cited Lord Byron (“womanizer”), Samuel Taylor Coleridge (“drug fiend”), John Keats (“smackhead”), Rudyard Kipling (“imperialist”), T.S. Eliot (“lines that could be construed as racist”) and Dylan Thomas (“drank like a drain, begged and stole from friends”), among others, and concluded, “Not one of them, were they alive today, could hope to land the Oxford post — they just don’t meet the exacting moral standards set by people who conduct smear campaigns.”

Gannett Blog to close up shop

Jim Hopkins of Gannett Blog said he will stop writing about the turmoil of the Gannett newspaper and put the blog in deep freeze come October. Hopkins, a former reporter and editor at USA Today, cited the psychological toll - he's headed to Ibiza:

[T]he tone of comments shifted in December -- for entirely understandable reasons. Many of Gannett's 41,500 employees came to understand what was taking place in the company. They are now fear-filled, desperate, angry -- even suicidal, on occasion. Blogging can be very stressful, of course. Now, I'm finding it may be psychologically harmful, too.

California Supreme Court upholds Prop 8

The California Supreme Court has ruled that the state's ban on same-sex marriage, passed by voters in November, will stand. Gay couples married in the period after the court legalized gay marriage and before Prop 8 was implemented will be legally recognized by the state. LAT

Four in the morning

1. Whichever way the California Supreme Court rules on the gay-marriage ban today, expect the losing side to mount legal and political challenges. AP

2. Conservatives might be itching for a fight over the choice of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, but it looks like President Obama has found a way to sidestep a nasty showdown. Mark Halperin

3. It's a long way to the top of Manaslu - and it leads right through the Death Zone. Nicholas Rice of Hermosa Beach (photo right) peaked last Tuesday. Watershed News

4. Standing up to a recalcitrant - and nuclear - North Korea is a lot harder than it looks. NYT

Prop 8 decision today

The California Supreme Court is set to announce its decision on Proposition 8, the gay marriage ban, at 10 a.m. PST today.

Obama selects Supreme

President Barack Obama today nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor, 54, to replace Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. Sotomayor would be the first Latino ever to sit on the court. and her selection would double the number of women serving. NYT, WaPo, LAT, WSJ

A sting in Banning

After office supplies and electronics started going missing at the Record Gazette in Banning, the production manager set up a sting using cameras on some of the newspaper's computers and nabbed a couple of burglars in the act. Record Gazette

What would Google name it?

Blogger and change-opportunist Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine is writing a book about how knowledge and abundance will remake all that we've known before and he wants you to help him come up with a title. (via Simon Owens on Twitter)

The Facebook death rattle

Nothing lasts for long online.

To that end, Mark Lazen at Social Media Today thinks Facebook is doomed and will die a glorious and profitable death in the coming years as its popularity and generality turn it into another calcified AOL.

Lazen writes:

Another challenge that confronts FB as the be-all and end-all of social destinations is that people like variety in their social lives. We like to go to different bars, to different restaurants, to hang out with different sets of friends, just to keep things fresh. FB is on top of the heap right now, and in the world of social apps, that's the same thing as going stale.

Are we really that finicky? Yes. But I'm not sure our real world behavior drives our online habits. Everything here is too new, too shiny to predict what will stay and what will go. We're all gorging at an endless buffet, always anxious to try a new dish and wary of anything that sits out too long.

Sam Maloof dead at 93

Woodworker and designer Sam Maloof died Thursday at his home in Alta Loma. He was 93.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Maloof, whose career began six decades ago just as the American modernism movement was becoming popular, put usefulness before artistry and turned down multimillion-dollar offers to mass-produce his original designs. He worked out of his home workshop, shaping hardwood, one part at a time, into rocking chairs, cradles and hutches that were shorn of unnecessary adornments. ...

"He was trying to make other people appreciate what it was like to live with a handcrafted object in which there was a kind of union between maker, object and owner," said Jeremy Adamson, who wrote "The Furniture of Sam Maloof," published in 2001 to coincide with a retrospective exhibition of Maloof's work at the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Renwick Gallery in Washington, D.C.

I remember Sam Maloof from my time at the Claremont Courier. We'd often do stories about him - about his work being displayed in the Smithsonian, when Caltrans moved his house (pictured above) to make way for the 210 Freeway, when his first wife died, when he remarried. He was immensely talented, gracious and always down to earth. He represent an artistic movement and ideal born in the Inland Empire that seem to have been swallowed up by a great suburban sprawl.

Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Press-Enterprise

Detention for San Diego Union-Tribune employees

The new owners of the San Diego Union-Tribune have come up with a novel way to keep employees from wooing away their coworkers to the competition.

Voice of San Diego (one of the paper's chief competitors) reports that Union-Tribune owner Platinum Equity will require all of its employees to sign a contract that bars them from recruiting fellow workers, or those who left the paper within the last six months, to work for a competing outlet.

In exchange for signing the contract, the company promises to give the employees employment.

Given the fact the company is laying off 192 staffers today, U-T employees must be thinking of moving on. But I'm not sure why the paper would want to make those who remain feel trapped by putting a virtual chain on the door.

(VofSD via Romenesko)

Nothing sells like...

Porn star Sasha Grey makes the "top stories" list on several of the LANG websites today in a review of Steven Soderbergh's new film "The Girlfriend Experience."

Grey talks about porn the way many journalists talk about news. She told the Daily News:

"There's so much free products out there that no one is going to buy adult films anymore unless you make something different, unless you make something exciting and titillating. ... I kind of want to take it back to the beginning of adult films, like a `Deep Throat.'"

Deep Throat is something we journalists nostalgic for, too...

LA cops bust on Union-Tribune

The union representing police officers in Los Angeles wants the San Diego Union-Tribune to make its editorial page more union friendly, even if it means firing the editorial writers.

Why would LA cops try to meddle with San Diego's newspaper? Because the paper's new owner, Platinum Equity of Beverly Hills, "relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems around the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies."

From the Los Angeles Times:

As [police union] League President Paul M. Weber views it, that makes the League part owner in the flagging Tribune and League officials are none to happy with the paper’s consistent position that San Diego lawmakers should cut back on salaries and benefits for public employees in order to help close gaping budget deficits.

"Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced," Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

The newspaper's editor was more than a little cool to the idea, and Platinum officials said they won't interfere with the paper's editorial decisions.

Cuts in St. Paul

MediaNews Group has sent out a demand that the St. Paul Pioneer Press slash $2.4 million from its newsroom budget, which would take a substantial chunk out of the paper's 138-person newsroom.

From MinnPost.com:

The Strib's Dan Browning, a former PiPress staffer, crunched some numbers and says St. Paul could lose up to 30 newsroom personnel — hard to imagine in a staff that's already skeletal. Would even Dean Singleton's e-edition subscribers pay for a PiPress with 20 percent fewer journalists?

However, Browning's calculation assumes surviving newsroom employees absorb no cuts. A memo from St. Paul's Newspaper Guild indicates management would rather pay everyone less: slashing wages, ending 401(k) matches, eliminating extra pay for night workers, and axing merit pay.

Gang indictments coming in LA*

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles is holding a press conference at 11 a.m. Pacific to announced what it describes as "the largest gang takedown in United States history." The charges involve racketeering, drug-trafficking and "racially motivated attacks on African Americans."

*Update: The Associated Press reports that 150 members of the predominantly Latino Varrio Hawaiian Gardens street gang have been indicted.

Angeles Crest reopens at Vincent Gap

Caltrans has finally completed $10.5 million in repairs to a portion of the Angeles Crest Highway, making it possible to reopen a section of the road between La Canada Flintridge and Wrightwood. Unfortunately, Williamson Rock remains closed to climbers.

Four in the evening

1. The Associated Press, normally quick to report on downsizing at newspapers, quietly thins its own ranks. Editor & Publisher

2. Forget the content, you've gotta get your search words and link pages in order if you want to be popular. Knight Digital Media

3. Google makes Bill Keller's frenemies list. NYO

4. Newspaper vs. the Internet, the cartoon. Slate

Daily News to shutter Valencia printing plant

The Los Angeles Daily News announced in February that it would close its printing and distribution facility in Valencia and outsource the work to Southwest Offset Printing in Gardena. Layoff notices went out to all press, production and office staff and, according to paperwork filed with the state, those notices come due on Friday, when as many as 185 employees will lose their jobs.

The meaning of rejection

Tuesday's statewide election results are significant - but significant how? What exactly did the California voters reject? Taxes? Spending? The system? Schwarzenegger? Legislation by ballot? All of the above?

The spin teams are out today trying to answer those questions for us, but it remains uncertain which arguments will win out. As Dan Schnur of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC told the Sacramento Bee: "These measures will end up being a $25 million Rorschach test ... Everybody will end up seeing in the results what they want to."

There's no shortage of interesting analysis - in between the predictable sniping from the right and the left. Michael Finnegan at the Los Angeles Times has a smart piece about the dysfunctional relationship between voters and Sacramento. Anthony York at Capitol Weekly thinks the election might mean an end to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's postpone-the-pain brand of governing. Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine argue that Californians must embrace institutional changes before they'll find fiscal stability. Joe Mathews of the New America Foundation proposes more elections to eliminate the need for these high-stakes gambles.

Election results

The five statewide propositions, Props 1A-1E, that would have dealt with the budget went down in flames. Not a single one of them cracked 40 percent support. Proposition 1F, the mostly symbolic pay freeze for lawmakers in bad budget years, won with almost three-quarters of voters supporting it.

Carmen Trutanich won the race for Los Angeles City Attorney, beating Jack Weiss 55.7 percent to 44.3 percent. Trutanich took the early lead and never relinquished it.

Barring a Republican miracle, Board of Equalization member Judy Chu will be heading to Congress to replace Labor Secretary Hilda Solis. Chu, a Democrat, won the primary battle for the 32nd Congressional District with 31.9 percent of the vote. State Sen. Gil Cedillo came in second with 23.4 percent and Emanuel Pleitez proved to be a factor with 13.5 percent. Chu will go on to battle Republican Betty Tom Chu in a July 14 runoff, which Judy Chu is expected to win easily.

The race to replace Weiss in LA's 5th City Council district may be too close to call. Paul Koretz is ahead of David Vahedi 50.5 percent to 49.5 percent, but the difference represents only 335 votes.

(Not quite the) election results

Early count: In the 32nd Congressional District race, Board of Equalization member Judy Chu charged is dominating with just under 10 percent of the precincts reporting. She has a 42 percent of the total to state Sen. Gil Cedillo's 17 percent. Absentee votes must have gone for her heavily.

As for the statewide propositions: All of them are losing, as expected - except for Proposition 1F, as expected. 1F would freeze legislators' salaries in deficit years.

Updated 8:26 p.m.: Carmen Trutanich has a slight lead over Jack Weiss in the race for LA City Attorney. It's 52-48 with about 12 percent of the precincts reporting.

Updated 8:31 p.m.: SGVN is posting updates on the 32nd Congressional District race here.

Updated 8:43 p.m.: In the contest for LA's 5th City Council district, Paul Koretz has a 6 point lead over David Vahedi with about 10 percent of the precincts counted.

Updated 8:49 p.m.: In other news, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic sent out a tweet saying the California Supreme Court could rule on Proposition 8 - the gay-marriage ban - tomorrow.

Updated 9:56 p.m.: Although ballot counting continues slowly, there has been little movement on the statewide propositions (1A-1E) - they are all losing by wide margins. Meantime, Proposition 1F, which voters see as punitive against lawmakers, is winning easily.

Updated 10:13 p.m.: California voters have resoundingly rejected all five budget propositions (1A-1E) on the ballot, leaving the state government with a $21.3 billion hole to fill. Will recall efforts against the Republican lawmakers who voted for the last budget deal make it easier for Democrats to peel off votes for the next one? Will the state seek federal loan guarantees to keep California's credit line from freezing up? Are Californians ready to revolt - and who would lead the charge?

Update 10:25 p.m.: In the 32nd Congressional District race, Sen. Gil Cedillo has closed the gap on Judy Chu, though he still has a ways to go to catch up. With 31 percent of the precincts now counted, Cedillo has 21 percent of the vote and Chu 32. If Chu holds on, she's almost certain to win the the July 14 runoff against the top Republican vote getter.

Update 10:41 p.m.: Judy Chu 35 - Gil Cedillo 23, with 46 percent of precincts reporting.

Updated 10:46 p.m.: LA City Attorney's race: Carmen Trutanich 52.5 - Jack Weiss 47.5, with 30 percent of precincts reporting.

Updated 11:02 p.m.: Judy Chu 33 - Gil Cedillo 25, with 65 percent of precincts.

Updated 11:04 p.m.: Trutanich 54- Weiss 46, with 43 percent of precincts.

Updated 11:05 p.m.: Going to bed.

Election results Tweets

Secretary of State Debra Bowen is going to be tweeting statewide election results at CASOSvote.

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder is tweeting at lacountyrrcc.

Antelope Valley Press could face class-action lawsuit

A San Diego law firm is putting together a class-action lawsuit against Antelope Valley Newspapers Inc., owner of the Antelope Valley Press, alleging employees were forced to work through meal and rest breaks. On its website, Emge & Associates says it has filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. The firm appears to be looking for potential class members.

Four in the evening

1. Let Warren Olney and the LA Times' Evan Halper walk you through the finer points of Propositions 1A-1F (starts about 35 minutes in). KCRW

2. The Seattle PostGlobe, run by journalists from the shuttered Seattle Post-Intelligencer, enters its second month of operations - and is asking for donations to make it to its third. Seattle PostGlobe

3. Tell your boss with confidence that daydreaming makes you smarter. The Frontal Cortex

4. Only nine days left to bid on the Huffington Post internship - $15,500 is still the going price. charitybuzz

Singleton interviewed

MediaNews Group owner Dean Singleton on Friday answered a few questions from Michael Roberts at Westword about newspapers and financial turmoil in the industry. For one thing, Singleton said too much of the media coverage concerning papers has been of the sky-is-falling variety, and doesn't fully take into account the unprecedented nature of the economic downturn:

I'm still very confident that the newspaper industry will not only survive but will thrive over time. In a bit of a different model, but it still will. And I think the print newspaper will thrive over time. The problems of newspapers, in my view, are very mis-covered by media analysts today. They don't understand the difference between a severe economic downturn, the most severe we've seen in my lifetime, and structural change. There are both going on. There's structural change going on, and it has been for several years, and that will change our business model. But the majority of the revenue declines we're seeing in 2009 are plain, old economic downturn.

Asked about a recent memo saying MediaNews might charge for some online content, Singleton said, in part:

If we begin to wean our locally produced content off our free sites, then I think we can drive people to pay for some of that content. It's not going to be a panacea. But we can't continue to give all of our content away for free on the web and expect people to buy it in print and in E-editions. ...

When we look at why people quit buying the newspaper, it's overwhelmingly because "I can get it for free online." So what we need to do is to continue having a very vibrant free site that's full of user-generated copy and information about where to eat and shows that are available and other things. But we need it not to include all of our locally produced news. And that's kind of where we're trying to go.

Given Singleton's stake in newspapers nationally, and especially here in California, the entire interview (here) well worth reading.

Final pitch for the 32nd

The 12-way race to replace Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in the 32nd Congressional District comes to a close tomorrow*. Los Angeles Times reporter Jean Merl looks at the role endorsements might play for the two heavyweights in the contest - Board of Equalization member Judy Chu and state Sen. Gil Cedillo - given the expected low-voter turnout. Rebecca Kimitch at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune checks out the campaigns' ground games heading into the final weekend.

*If no one wins a majority of the vote tomorrow there will be a runoff in July between the top vote getters in each party. Given the partisan makeup of the district, the top Democrat is expected to win easily.

Four in the morning

1. Scribd is a new service that lets authors publish online - and set their own price - and lets readers peruse books a chapter or two at at time. LAT

2. What can California's political leaders learn from baseball - besides having a better lineup? Arbitration, the hardball way. Calbuzz

3. A judge has ordered the Alton Telegraph to reveal the identities of two people who posted anonymous comments about a murder investigation on the paper's website. St. Louis Post-Dispatch

4. The misconduct that led a trial judge to dismiss charges against Sen. Ted Stevens - namely, the prosecution's failure to turn over key pieces of evidence to the defense - is becoming more common in the American justice system. WaPo

Shaky*

A 5.0-magnitude 4.7-magnitude earthquake hit at 8:39 p.m. about a mile from Inglewood.

The USGS reports a 3.1-magnitude aftershock at about 8:45.

Facebook is lit up.

*Updated: Dan Abendschein at the Pasadena Star-News profiled a Caltech researcher who's trying to determine which tall building in Los Angeles County are at risk of collapse in a major earthquake.

Dowd admits lifting line

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd appears to have been pinched for plagiarism. After being accused of stealing a passage from a post on Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo, Dowd told Huffington Post that she "inadvertently lifted" a line of text and used it in her weekend column. But TPM's thejoshuablog isn't ready to let her off the hook.

The service industry

As newsroom budgets suffer blow after blow, it seems logical to conclude that shrinking revenues are partly a result of shrinking demand for the product newsrooms provide - namely, the news. And isn't it logical then to consider altering the product to stoke demand?

But there's a reason that response feels so wrong. It's because newsrooms are not creating a product - not in the traditional sense. They're providing a service, much in the way doctors and teachers do. If education were a product to be sold, none of us would know a thing about algebra. When doctors "give them what they want" people end up addicted to Oxycontin.

Edward Wasserman at Washington and Lee University helps explain why the temptation to spice up the news to match the consumers' appetite is bad for the news and the consumer:

...for journalists the hitch has always been that news, if done honestly, is routinely unwelcome and, more to the point, that it isn't just another consumer product. It's kind of civic good.

Sure, it must be bought, but if success were measured solely by marketability journalists could safely ignore vast areas of coverage that help keep leaders honest and the public conscious of significant realities.

Hence, the paradox: If all you do is give the public what it thinks it wants, you aren't doing your job. But if you ignore those wishes, you won't have a job. ...

I've long argued that news is best understood not as a consumer product, but as a professional service. People buy a paper or go to website not to consume a good, but to renew a relationship with an informant they trust.

That's not to say readers don't want to be amused or don't like reading the comics and hearing about celebrity bust-ups or money-saving recipes. And they aren't passive receptacles: They'll make vigorous use of new media feedback channels to dispute, correct, redirect and enrich the news they get.

But what this suggests is that ultimately, people look to journalists for a special service -- keeping them on top of what they need to know. They can't say exactly what that is, any more than journalists know in the morning what they'll report that day. But they trust the news source to tell them.

Four in the afternoon

1. The El Monte police officer being investigated for kicking a suspect owns a line of clothing that trades on prison and gang slang. PSN

2. PBS wants to end the practice of broadcasting religions services on PBS affiliate stations. WaPo

3. New York Times economic reporter Edmund Andrews writes about his personal mortgage meltdown. NYT

4. Google, the Washington Post and the New York Times are making nice - and maybe profits. Neiman Lab

Vu Nguyen, 34

Daily Breeze education reporter Vu Nguyen, who suffered cardiac arrest a week ago while playing soccer with friends, died Friday after doctors removed him from life support. His wife and family were by his side. From the Daily Breeze:

Doctors at Kaiser Permanete Medical Center in Harbor City determined that after a week in a coma, the 34-year-old Long Beach man's brain had stopped functioning.

His wife, Heather Hua, and parents, Chuyen and Ngoc Thuy Nguyen, and brother, Viet Nguyen, made the decision about 10 p.m. He died a short time later.

"I love him so much and being his wife and being a part of his life brought me so much happiness," his wife said. "And I thank him for sharing his life with me, even though it was brief."

Twitter prank stirs online pot

Despite what you might have read on Twitter today, the California Supreme Court has not overturned Proposition 8, the state's ban on gay marriage.

According to Gawker, someone recycled a Los Angeles Times story from May 2008, when the Supreme Court overturned an earlier ban on gay marriage, and packaged it as new news. Of course, Prop 8 was passed in reaction to the ruling reported on in the May 2008 story.

That fact didn't stop the misinformation flame from spreading. Gawker reports:

But Twitter doesn't sweat the details! Thousands of users "re-Tweeted" it or whatever, and before you know it, the Los Angeles Times' own fucking Twitter feed was sending the gay marriage news out to its 19,700-plus followers.

The Times has since Tweeted that the earlier Tweet was not new news. FishbowlLA also issued a correction on its website.

Arizona's oldest paper to fold

The Tucson Citizen will print its final edition on Saturday, as it becomes the latest metropolitan newspaper to shut down operations. The Citizen will transition to an online-only publication, but the site will consist of opinion only. Gannett has yet to set up a budget for the project.

From the Citizen:

[Gannett vice president of news Kate] Marymont delivered the news to a staff that has been on hold since March 17, when Gannett said the planned March 21 closing would be postponed due to negotiations with buyers.

She said the Citizen's 60 employees would know by the end of the day if they would be laid off, kept on as a short term transition team or be hired long term.

Stephen Hadland, CEO of the Santa Monica Media Company, which publishes the Culver City Observer, reportedly offered half a million dollars for the Citizen, but was told the he'd have to come up with at least $800,000 and agree to publish a printed edition at least three times a week. Hadland said he has asked the Arizona Attorney General to file a temporary restraining order to keep the paper being published "pending a court order requiring the sale."

Four in the morning

1. The inaugural edition of the Santa Clarita Valley Independent is out today. SCV Talk columnist Jeff Wilson takes note:

It’s been a long time since I felt excitement over a newspaper.

Matter of fact, I don’t remember the last time I felt that way about a newspaper, or more accurately, about the state of the newspaper industry. For years now we’ve gotten used to newspapers downsizing, laying off, even closing all around us, and it’s been downright depressing.

But not today. Today we got a brand new newspaper, and how many communities in America can say that?

(h/t LA Observed)

2. Census data show a huge decline in Mexican immigration into the United States. New York Times

3. Budgets woes are rattling cages across the state (SJMN). Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to lay off 5,000 workers from the state rolls (SacBee), LAUSD teachers protest over pink slips outside district headquarters (LA Times) and Calbuzz lines up buyers for the coming California state fire sale (Calbuzz).

4. Nieman Lab takes a look at newspaper advertising 2.0 at the New York Times. Neiman Lab

Daily Breeze reporter on life support

Daily Breeze education reporter Vu Nguyen, 34, suffered cardiac arrest while playing soccer with his friends over the weekend. He is in a coma and is not expected to survive: From the Daily Breeze:

Nguyen kicked two goals while playing a soccer game with friends Sunday in a Santa Monica park, and collapsed as he ran with his arms outstretched like an airplane down the field.

Friends tried to revive him and summoned paramedics from a nearby fire station. Nguyen, who had shown no signs of ill health, suffered irreversible brain damage. ...

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, on Feb. 20, 1975, Nguyen was 2 months old when his father, attack pilot Chuyen Nguyen, and mother, Ngoc Thuy Nguyen, were among the first refugees to escape and come to the United States.

Raised in Garden Grove, Nguyen decided early on he wanted to be a reporter. An editor at Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove, he went to work as a reporter for the Seattle Times, Orange County Register, Nguoi Viet 2 in Westminster, and The Associated Press in Springfield, Ill.

Information warehouse

The Economist takes a turn analyzing the decline of newspapers and speculating about what comes next. The British magazine argues that newspapers, as a news delivery system, are going through an evolution something like what happened to retail outlets - from mom & pop, to city department stores, to national chains, to Wal-Martization. Alongside the information warehouses, there are the boutique aggregator sites, specializing in specialized content and providing a higher level of curating, as editorial content control is now called.

From the Economist:

The main victim of this trend is not so much the newspaper (although it is certainly declining) as the conventional news package. Open almost any leading metropolitan newspaper, or look at its website, and you will find the same things. There will be a mixture of local, national, international, business and sports news. There will be weather forecasts. There will be display and classified advertisements. There will be leaders, letters from readers, and probably a crossword.

This package, which was emulated first by broadcasters and then by internet pioneers such as AOL.com and MSN.com, works rather like an old-fashioned department store. It provides a fair selection of useful information of dependable quality in a single place. And the fate of the news package is similar to that of the department store. Some customers have been lured away by discount chains; others have been drawn to boutiques.

The Wal-Marts of the news world are online portals like Yahoo! and Google News, which collect tens of thousands of stories. Some are licensed from wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press. But most consist simply of a headline, a sentence and a link to a newspaper or television website where the full story can be read. The aggregators make money by funnelling readers past advertisements, which may be tailored to their presumed interests. They are cheap to run: Google News does not even employ an editor.

If the model is true, then we'd be seeing depressed wages (check), cheaper production values (check), increased outsourcing (check), less local control despite calls for more (check), a push to lower quality and standards (check), and mass consolidation, bankruptcies and layoffs (check, check, check).

Four in the morning

1. The LA Press Club announced award finalists today. If you're the LA Weekly, KPCC or your name is Amy Alkon, chances are you're going to walk away with a plaque. Arianna Huffington of Huffington Post, Robyn Dixon of the Los Angeles Times and Rick Orlov of the Daily News will receive special awards. LAPC

2. Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Lakewood, had a baby. LAT

3. "No one manipulates the press like David Geffen," writes Mark Lacter at LA Biz Observed. *New York Post story calls talks between Geffen and the New York Times "guff".

4. Evan George of the Los Angeles Daily Journal dug through public records and found that a state program set up to reimburse patients who were wrongly dumped by their private health insurers has been largely ineffective. The story is behind a paywall, but here's an excerpt:

A year after Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration unveiled a series of landmark legal settlements intended to relieve thousands of Californians who had their health insurance revoked, only a fraction of patients have taken part in the program, and just four are known to have received any kind of payment from their insurer, a Daily Journal investigation has found.

Overall, just 5 percent of patients wanted or were aware of the state's plan and took part in it, records show. Many of those who lost their insurance racked up crippling debt for medical costs when their policies were rescinded.

-snip-

A Department of Managed Health Care spokeswoman defended the program this month, saying it had won new health coverage for 177 Californians who otherwise would have stayed uninsured. "We were able to provide that for them in a quick way where they wouldn't have to go through a lengthy court battle," spokeswoman Lynne Randolph said.

Asked why medical bills have not been addressed, Randolph blamed the delay on private lawyers and the Los Angeles city attorney, whose ongoing lawsuits have interfered with the state's settlement notices.

Is the auto mall going extinct?*

Two of the most prized possessions for a California city are a big box store and an auto dealership. Many a redevelopment-agency loan was made to first attract and then keep these revenue generators in town.

But the economic downturn has sucked the life out of many big box stores, and sent a few into bankruptcy. But worse for cities is the loss of dealerships, which generate the sales tax needed to keep city services going. So the news out today that ailing GM and bankrupt Chrysler will eliminate hundreds more dealerships is staggering.

Chrysler told a bankruptcy court it plans to close 789 dealerships nationwide; GM is expected to close as many as 2,600. Already California has lost 145 dealerships and it's not clear exactly how many more will go. The LA Times reports:

Throughout the state, local governments are struggling to keep their auto dealerships alive, because most have become reliant on the big-ticket sellers to provide a steady stream of sales tax income.

Since Proposition 13 limited California property taxes in 1978, many cities have encouraged the construction of malls and other retail uses that bring in sales taxes to fund the municipal budget.

Car dealerships are now among the biggest generators of tax revenue.

*Update: Three San Fernando Valley dealerships are on the chopping block, the Daily News reports.

North Korea to try jailed journalists

North Korean officials said today that Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling will be put on trial June 4. The two journalists are accused of entering the country illegally and with "hostile intent." Reuters

A different kind of pay wall

Wanted: Aspiring journalist. Requirements: Talent, doggedness and $13,000 for a donation.

Huffington Post, which already doesn't pay its writers, is auctioning off an "eye opening" internship in New York or Washington. So far the top bid is $13,000. From Silicon Alley Insider:

The auction's beneficiary, The Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, seems exceptionally worthy. But are unemployed media wannabes really this worthless?

If the top bidder lives in Connecticut, the winner even has to pay sales tax on the internship.

If anyone was going to auction off an internship, though, it would be Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post, which features tons of content generated free by bloggers and celebrities just happy to have a platform. HuffPo did recently start a fund to employ some laid-off investigative reporters, but the company thrives primarily on "citizen" journalism and news that other outlets spend money reporting.

The bidding is in $2,500 increments, so you only need to scrape together $15,500 to get in the job. Hurry up! Only 14 days left!

(h/t Bloggasm)

Compromised in Washington State

Alan Mutter scolds the publishers of Washington State newspapers for accepting $8 million in tax breaks from the government they're supposed to be holding accountable - not to mention the fact that the state faces $8 billion shortfall. Mutter writes:

In lobbying aggressively for the tax break, the publishers sacrificed their moral authority to challenge favoritism, fiscal imprudence and self-dealing on the part of the state government and the dozens of political figures who supported the measure. ...

:: Will the paper fairly cover upcoming political campaigns involving the politicians who supported the tax break?

:: Will future political endorsements be tilted in favor of the politicians who helped the newspapers?

Mutter estimates that no more than 15 reporter jobs would be saved if every dime went to paper payrolls.

Civil charges likely for Mozilo

The Wall Street Journal confirms today that Securities and Exchange Commission staff will recommend civil fraud charges be filed against Angelo Mozilo, co-founder of Countrywide Financial Corp., for actions related to the company subprime lending practices.

Gabe Friedman of the Los Angeles Daily Journal first reported back in March that SEC staff was pursuing civil charges against Mozilo and at least two other company executives.

Goodbye, Daily News; farewell, Union-Tribune

Former Daily News editor Ron Kaye remembers without an ounce of fondness the man who fired him, Ed Moss. Yesterday Moss announced he was resigning his post as publisher of the Daily News and president of LANG to take over as publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Kaye writes:

Sending Moss to fix a struggling paper is like sending a mortician to treat an ailing patient. He will do the only thing he knows how to do: Cut, and cut, and cut some more: When he's done with his handiwork, the U-T will be ready for embalming and burial much like the Daily News is. ...

In his 23 months at the Daily News, the editorial staff -- already reduced by half in previous years -- was slashed by two-thirds. There's now only nine news reporters and a staff of barely 40 to produce the paper which has shrunk to the point most days that it gives new meaning to the idea of a fast-read newspaper.

Almost every department of the paper from circulation to sales has been eliminated or gutted to the point of dysfunction. ...

My heart goes out to my colleagues still at the Daily News every time I pick up the paper and see what Moss' leadership has done to it. Somehow I hope it will be different in San Diego but I doubt it.

*The Union-Tribune has published a short bio on Ed Moss.

Hamilton named LANG president

The Los Angeles Newspaper Group has promoted Fred Hamilton to become president of the nine-newspaper chain. Hamilton had served as president and publisher of LANG's Inland Division. He replaces Ed Moss, who resigned to become publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune.

In addition, Liz Gaier, who served for a time as publisher of the Daily Breeze, will take over as interim publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News.

The company memo follows:

Los Angeles Newspaper Group (LANG) today announced the promotion of Fred Hamilton to President. Hamilton, previously President and Publisher of the Inland Division of LANG, replaces Ed Moss, who resigned to become Publisher of the San Diego Union Tribune. Hamilton brings more than 25 years of experience in the newspaper industry to this position, having previously served as publisher of several newspapers in the Western United Sates prior to joining the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

“Ed Moss did a terrific job for us as head of LANG, and we are sorry to see him go,” said Steve Rossi, President and CEO of California Newspapers Partnership, of which LANG is a part. “However, we are fortunate that Fred Hamilton is ideally suited and prepared for the top Position in LANG.”

In addition, Liz Gaier, MediaNews Group’s Senior Vice President of Business Development, was named interim Publisher of the Los Angeles Daily News. In addition to her corporate experience, Liz has considerable experience in newspaper operations, including a recent assignment as Publisher of the Torrance Daily Breeze.

*Update: The Union-Tribune gathers Moss.

MediaNews memo outlines new online strategy*

MediaNews Group execs Dean Singleton and Jody Lodovic sent out a memo Friday that says the chain will end the practice of giving readers free access to its newspaper websites. They leave it up in the air whether readers will have to pay a subscription fee or simply register to gain access.

The plan also calls for overhauling the chain's websites so that they look less like the print edition and provide more regional and youth-oriented content - which seems to be an extension of the consolidation that's already occurred within LANG, BANG, etc.

Here's the problem as Singleton and Lodovic see it:

First, we continue to do an injustice to our print subscribers and create perceptions that our content has no value by putting all of our print content online for free. Not only does this erode our print circulation, it devalues the core of our business - the great local journalism we (and only we) produce on a daily basis. Second, our interactive revenue growth has slowed because it has been too closely tied to our print classified business, which has suffered with the advent of Craigslist and other free online classified opportunities. Finally, we are not significantly extending the reach of our audience, as our online products too closely resemble the newspaper, and thus fail to meaningfully reach the next generation of readers.

Here's what they propose to do about it:

We will begin to move away from putting all of our newspaper content online for free. Instead, we will explore a variety of premium offerings that apply real value to our print content. We are not trying to invent new premium products, but instead tell our existing print readers that what they are buying has real value, and to our online audience (who don't buy the print edition), that if you want access to all online content, you are going to have to register, and/or pay. If a non-subscriber wants the newspaper content in its entirety online, they will be directed to some sort of registration or pay vehicle (and if they are a print subscriber, they will have full access at no charge).

-snip-

We will begin differentiating our sites from the newspaper and focus on strategies designed to reach younger audiences and extend our reach. The websites, newspaper.com as we call them now, will become a different product. This new site, which we have been calling news.com, will be a regional news site that is actively managed to present breaking news. It will continue to draw a content from the newspaper (but probably in a more abbreviated form), but will also have user-generated content, community involvement and third party content.

Click here to read the full memo.

*In somewhat related news, the Los Angeles Daily News is inviting readers to follow the paper on Twitter.

The electronic Times

The New York Times has added a couple new ways to read the paper online.

The first is Times Wire, which provides real-time updates of everything posted to the website. To keep readers from getting overwhelmed, the feed has a "your news" option that lets them include only those sections they want to hear from.

The Times has also launched Times Reader 2.0, a subscription service that's built on Adobe Air to create a more newspaper-ish experience when reading online. Dan Kennedy at Media Nation had this to say:

Times Reader really does offer a superior online reading experience. You're more likely actually to read the paper rather than just skip around. And it's a lot cheaper (we get the Sunday print edition delivered, so there's no extra charge for us) — not to mention more environmentally friendly — than the print edition.

Kennedy also said this:

But free is free. In addition, the Times Web edition is a livelier place, with more ads (perhaps that will change as Times Reader gains in acceptance), blogs and other extra content. In addition, if you're a blogger and you want to post something you see in Times Reader, you have to leave, access the Web edition and find the story again in order to grab the URL.

The Times Reader costs $3.45 a week.

There's more on the Times e-reader R&D shop at the Nieman Lab.

(h/ts LA Observed and Media Nation)

Another industry gets nervous

Cable and satellite television providers are beginning to worry about the rise of online TV sites, with Hulu leading the way. From the Los Angeles Times:

Hulu illustrates the quandary that media executives face as they weigh the potential of the Internet against their dependable, old-line businesses. If the television industry does not find a way to preserve its two pillars of revenue -- advertising and subscription fees -- the consequences could be dire. Analysts point to the rapid deterioration of newspapers, which traded paying print subscribers for the expectation of big bucks from online advertising that have not materialized.

Hulu counted 42 million viewers in March and Disney just decided to start putting shows on the site.

Fact-based voting

The May 19 election is fast approaching and the ballot propositions (1A-1F) aren't getting any easier to understand. Mark Paul, a senior scholar at the New America Foundation, has put together a video that provides some context on the budget troubles that the proposition aims to solve - or, in Paul's words, "kick ... down the road." (h/t Calbuzz)

Sanchez out at the Daily News*

The Los Angeles Daily News has fired LAUSD/education reporter George Sanchez. His last day was Friday. Here's a note from union rep Vicki Di Paolo:

Yes, George Sanchez, steward and bargaining team member, has been laid off from the Daily News. The cited reason was economic need, George was the least senior of two LAUSD reporters. Friday was George's last day of work.

Daily News Editor Carolina Garcia hired Sanchez last fall to replace education reporter Naush Boghossian, who left the paper for a PR job last May.

Reporter Connie Llanos will continue to cover education for Daily News.

*Updated: I've heard from a couple people that management was looking to eliminate someone from the Metro desk and that Sanchez volunteered to take the bullet. With his departure, the desk is down to 9 reporters, plus columnist Dennis McCarthy.

Saberi freed*

An Iranian appeals court today freed American journalist Roxana Saberi and suspended the 8-year sentence imposed by a lower court after convicting her on charges of espionage.

*Update: Alan Mutter offered this sobering reminder:

As we celebrate the liberation of journalist Roxana Saberi from prison in Iran, don’t forget that two other innocent American newswomen are being held on similarly trumped-up charges in North Korea.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, two correspondents for San Francisco-based Current TV, have been detained in North Korea since March 17, when they were arrested while filming a story at the border between China and North Korea.

Anti-anti-SLAPP legislation in Sacramento

The California Legislature might not be able to fix our multi billion-dollar budget deficit, but a bill authored by Sen. Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, would prevent courts from imposing debilitating penalties in good-government cases such as the one that saddled open-government activists Rich McKee and CalAware with tens of thousands of dollars of debt.

The legislation would bar government agencies from seeking repayment of attorney fees under the state's anti-SLAPP law when they are sued to produce public documents or to comply with public meeting requirements. Anti-SLAPP allows defendants to collect attorney fees when a court decides a case is without merit.

McKee and CalAware joined a lawsuit brought against Orange Unified School District for alleged violations of public meeting law. They lost the case and the court awarded the district more than $80,000 in attorney fees.

The view from above

It often takes awhile for the facts on the ground to filter up to the top. Take, for instance, the decrepit state of newspapers. If you've worked for a paper in, say, the MediaNews Group chain, you've known for several years now that we we're facing an emergency. Just this weekend, two of the most well-known columnists in the industry were compelled to finally panic - eloquently, of course.

Maureen Dowd (who'd written about the industry's decadence last month) used "Star Trek" as a trope to illustrate the troubles for newspapers. Frank Rich's Sunday column got more directly to the point, under the cheery title: "The American Press on Suicide Watch."

Indeed, Rich grabbed hold of what seems to me to be the central argument against placing our faith in technology to create Journalism 2.0 - namely, that there is no widget to get us around the strictures of capitalism. As Rich writes:

What can’t be reinvented is the wheel of commerce. Just because information wants to be free on the Internet doesn’t mean it can always be free. Web advertising will never be profitable enough to support ambitious news gathering. If a public that thinks nothing of spending money on texting or pornography doesn’t foot the bill for such reportage, it won’t happen.

(Of course, not everyone thinks professional journalism need continue. I'm too cranky right now to address that silliness.)

Rich and others look to the past and see a precedence for for-profit journalism:

It’s all a matter of priorities. Not long ago, we laughed at the idea of pay TV. Free television was considered an inalienable American right (as long as it was paid for by advertisers). Then cable and satellite became the national standard.

True. But journalism isn't cable or satellite, it's a few channels on a cable or satellite system. Already people pay a subscription of sorts to have Internet access, but the system doesn't kick anything down to the content providers.

Rich goes off the rails, however, when he casually asserts that some journalism (read, the local stuff papers like the New York Times don't cover) will be taken care of by "voluntary 'citizen journalists' with time on their hands, integrity and a Web site."

That kind of inverted pyramid - big paper journalism continuing to get funds while the local and regional stuff gets taken care of for free - cannot be sustained. Where does Rich think journalists will gain the "technical expertise" to ferret out "what is happening behind closed doors at corrupt, hard-to-penetrate institutions in Washington or Wall Street" if not at smaller newspapers/news organizations? And what about the closed doors at City Hall or the school district? Are they suddenly easier to open? Are the standards for ferreting out the corruption outside of Washington and New York not as important?

If we're going down, we're going down together. Locking yourself in the captain's quarters won't save you when the ship begins to sink.

Rolling Stone shrinks

Rolling Stone Mexico is kaput.

Chronicle layoffs

The San Francisco Chronicle fired 20 people from the newsroom on Thursday (one person took the bullet for someone else by agreeing to take a buyout). Brock Keeling at sfist has a list of names.

Who's coming to dinner*

The White House Correspondents Dinner is tomorrow and the invitations have already gone out. If you think you have to be a White House Correspondent to attend, think again.

Fox News has Todd Palin. The Houston Chronicle has Alberto Gonzalez. CNN has Ashton Kutcher and Janet Napolitano. Sully Sullenberger chose to dine with the New York Daily News and George Lucas chose Fortune. ABC News has David Axelrod and Meghan McCain, among others, and the NBC News tables will include Samuel L. Jackson, William H. Macy, and Mike Myers.

Read the complete list of invitees to tomorrow's White House Correspondents Dinner here.

*Updated: Frank Davies at the Mercury News had a story about the tarting up of the correspondents dinner:

"It used to be a rock star at this dinner was the White House chief of staff, not Steve Tyler of Aerosmith," said Carol Joynt, a former TV producer who chronicles Washington society.

She has attended two dozen dinners and seen them evolve from low-key events where reporters chatted up government sources to a series of "circus acts," with strange juxtapositions of power and fluff. "It's become just a mashed-up free-for-all," Joynt said.

MediaNews plunked down $4,000 for a table. The guest of honor was Carol Williams, White House director of media affairs.

Crystal balls are notoriously unreliable

Thinking you know the future is a risky bet, but somehow some journalism-2.0 types feel emboldened by recent cutbacks and circulation drops to confidently predict the end of an entire industry - to the point that they dismiss the idea of an alternative outcome. Here's a recent example from Scott Rosenberg:

The good news was that the event, titled “What Comes After Newspapers?,” really didn’t waste a lot of time asking, “How do we save newspapers?” but largely accepted that their day is ending. You might think this is obvious, but too many of these gatherings today are still stuck in rescue mode.

Newspapers might die off. Then again, they might not. If you're invested in their extinction, then I guess I can understand the psychology of planning their wake. If you just want people to take the threat of extinction more seriously - or to take alternative ways of presenting news more seriously - there are better arguments to make. Best of all, show us the plan that takes us beyond newspapers and avoid the argument altogether.

California investigated*

The Center for Investigative Reporting announced plans to create a California-focused investigative journalism project, using $2.4 million in grant funds from two foundations. Louis Freedburg, founder of the California Media Collaborative, will lead the project. From the press release:

Targeting regional and statewide journalism offers a solution to the crisis in journalism. The project will serve as a watchdog for government and powerful institutions, fulfilling the core mandate of CIR. It will partner with existing news organizations, journalism schools and other institutions to develop innovative ways to inform and engage Californians on issues that affect them in their communities and in their daily lives.

The release also includes a link to a "job descriptions" page.

*Correction: Perhaps due to wishful thinking, I'd mistakenly typed "$2.4 billion in grant funds." It's $2.4 million.

Four at night

1. Peter Y. Sussman at Huffington Post calls for a little perspective when it comes to the citizen-journalism project:

By all means, let's keep the citizens in citizen journalism. Let any interested reader find the raw data from hundreds of localities if they wish. But the measure of our success should be the perspective and understanding we provided for our readers, not how much data was accumulated by how many people or how much of it reverberated elsewhere in the national news echo chamber.

Huffington Post

2. Ken Doctor at Content Bridges considers the algorithms of the new Google News:

As print shrinks, Google will replace its daily functionality, its daily utility -- and it's been on that road for awhile -- with Google News, v2. It sounds like Google News, v1 meets Google IG meets AdWords for news, a new algorithm that knows us better than we know ourselves. Importantly ... Google is recognizing how fundamentally lazy we all are. In effect, we're taken to be the corpulent creatures in Wall E. Google seems to be saying: you don't have to do anything, we'll be your new paperboy.

Content Bridges

3. Jason Pontin at Technology Review proposes ways to save print journalism - starting with an assessment of print journalism's true value:

The comparative advantage of mainstream media is not the ownership of presses, but the collaboration of professionals. The creation of good journalism is a tremendously laborious process, requiring an infrastructure more expensive than any press. The illustration and design of stories has an infrastructure, too. Developing an audience that will attract particular advertisers requires another infrastructure. Selling advertising requires yet another. These structures, which allow publications to reach large, coherent audiences, can exist only within complex organizations, mostly businesses.

Technology Review via Newspaper Death Watch

4. Rob Fishman at Huffington Post reports on the words war between David Carr of the New York Times and Michael Wolff of Newser, and analyzes where they're getting their ammunition:

It's hip for bloggers to bite the hand that feeds them, and Wolff's got some oral fixation. It's not good enough for him to kick the Boston Globe or Seattle Post-Intelligencer while they're down; he needs to cite their own articles while he's doing it. We all have a personal stake in The New York Times, but for Wolff it's more than that, it's his bread and butter. Without the news, he's just an -er.

Huffington Post

Gawkward

Ryan Tate at Gawker didn't like it what David Simon ("David Simon: Dead-Wrong Dinosaur") had to say about bloggers and citizen journalists at yesterday's Senate hearing. Specifically, he didn't like Simon saying bloggers and citizens journalists aren't filling the role of professional journalists when it comes to covering government institutions.

To hell with that, Tate writes, because while he covered restaurants and hotels in the East Bay he met a few bloggers in Oakland who covered meetings with deep, obsessive concern:

...as a newspaper reporter who spent a few years covering a town much like Baltimore — Oakland, California — I often found that bloggers were the only other writers in the room at certain city council committee meetings and at certain community events. They tended to be the sort of persistently-involved residents newspapermen often refer to as "gadflies" — deeply, obsessively concerned about issues large and infinitesimal in the communities where they lived...

Collectively, these bloggers are doing just what Simon suggests: attending meetings, developing sources and holding government accountable every day.

They may be doing fine, important work, but they're not doing just what Simon suggests. If they devote themselves to a beat and follow certain standards (like not getting deeply, obsessively involved in the issues they cover), then, they'll be doing what Simon suggests. If they fan out across the country and cover big towns and small (not just Baltimore and Oakland), submit their work to editorial oversight and to strive for accuracy, fairness and accountability, they'll be doing what Simon suggests. And if they do, it's likely they'll want to get paid for the work.

Tate singles out the work of Echa Schneider, who blogs at ABetterOakland.com, and points to a column in the San Francisco Chronicle as proof of her bona fides. She, however, seems less inclined to see herself as a replacement for professional journalism. From the Chronicle column:

When I called her Wednesday, [Schneider] reluctantly accepted a compliment as the city's No. 1 blog site, then complained about Oakland's lack of news coverage...

Massive layoffs at the Union-Tribune

It was expected that Platinum Equity would make job cuts a centerpiece of its restructuring plan at the San Diego Union-Tribune and today we learn their magnitude. Beverly Hills-based Platinum, which completed its purchase of the paper three days ago, announced that it would slash 192 positions between now and July 6.

The layoffs represent about 18 percent of the total workforce and will cut across all departments - there is no breakdown for how many newsroom staffers will be lost. About 850 employees will remain once the layoffs are completed.

The Union-Tribune story about the cuts notes that the paper just won a fourth Pulitzer Prize this year, for editorial cartoonist Steve Breen.

(Union-Tribune via Romenesko)

Journalism on the Hill

Here are a short outtakes from yesterday's Senate committee hearing on the future of journalism. David Simon defends the job, Arianna Huffington says its no longer sustainable, economically speaking, and Google says it will send even more people to news websites. Salon

50 > 13

The big story today for the L.A. Dodgers was supposed to be that the club had set the Major League record for consecutive home-game wins (13-0) at the start of a season, beating the previous record of 12 consecutive wins set by the 1911 Detroit Tigers.

But the Los Angeles Times just broke the news that star player Manny Ramirez will be suspended for 50 games after testing positive for performance enhancing drugs.

I guess 13 really is an unlucky number.

*Update: Ramirez blamed the positive test on a medication prescribed to him by a doctor.

Globe shutdown averted, Senate hearing goes on

The unions representing workers at the Boston Globe have agreed to steep wage and benefit cuts and that should keep the New York Times Co. from shutting down the Boston newspaper anytime soon.

Meantime, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry has scheduled a hearing for today at 11:30 a.m. PST to discuss the future of journalism in light of the turmoil at the Globe and elsewhere. As has become obligatory, the panel will include a representative from Google and Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington.

Also slated to speak are David Simon, creator of "The Wire" and former Baltimore Sun reporter; Steve Coll, president of the New America Foundation and former managing editor of the Washington Post; Dallas Morning News Publisher James Moroney, and Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Four in the morning

1. The New York Times Co. decided yesterday to withdraw its threat to shutter the Boston Globe in 60 days after the company won concessions from six of the seven unions representing Globe workers. WSJ

2. Platinum Equity of Beverly Hills has completed its purchase of the San Diego Union-Tribune and has appointed Paul Bridwell, "an experienced turnaround specialist," to restructure the newspaper. U-T

3. The Los Angeles Times also hires people. Shane Goldmacher, the 25-year-old political blogger behind the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert, will move to the Times Sacramento bureau in June. Capitol Alert via LA Observed

4. Even The Onion is having financial trouble. fishbowlLA

Trying to recall

Richard Mountjoy and nine others have launched a recall campaign against Assemblyman Anthony Adams, R-Claremont, the Sacramento Bee reports. Mountjoy, who's served in the Assembly ('78-'95) and state Senate ('95-'00) and whose son, Dennis, served in the Assembly, said he'll run for the seat if Adams is knocked out of office.

The internecine battle is rooted in Adams' vote for a budget bill in February that included taxes. Former GOP chairman Mike Schroeder and Atlas PAC head Lee Lowery, both of Orange County, are said to be the real power behind the campaign. Here's how Adams responded:

"The petition you hold is the creation of two very wealthy Orange County men who care less about our community and more about their own political ambitions. They want us to pay $900,000 in our hard earned tax dollars to pay for another election and their partisan political games...because Adams stood with taxpayers and working families and against their reckless agenda."

(That's Mountjoy up top, Adams below)