A neon light shined on Skid Row

Neon Tommy, the online publication put together by USC's journalism school students, is doing a series on community health care clinics. The first story looks at the Center for Community Health in LA's Skid Row. (found via LA Observed)

Four in the morning

1. Carlotta Gall of the New York Times recounts the day photographer Joao Silva stepped on a land mine. NYT

2. The Financial Times, which is behind a paywall, writes that the Telegraph in London also plans to go behind a paywall, starting next year. Looks like the British are going first. FT

3. The New York Times will now let you set a permalink at the paragraph level. Scripting

4. Columnist and satirist Tina Dupuy is looking to get into a fight with the combative Sarah Palin. TD

Medill embraces lousy name change

The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University wants a longer, uglier name. It's fitting, given the state of communication these days - lots of vague words and neo-jargonism trying to show a sense of knowledge about an unknown future.

The new name: The Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing

Mark Oppenheimer does a good job explaining why the change is misguided:

First, what an ugly, clumsy name! What the hell is “integrated marketing” anyway? Anybody who knows probably doesn’t need to take a class in it. And if a journalism student of mine ever wrote anything as obtuse as that, I would give him or her a C, at best.

Second, we all should be a little concerned that the same schools that teach people to see through bogus claims are also the same schools teaching students how to perpetuate bogus claims. Journalism and marketing are at odds. Not always, of course. Heck, most journalism is not about exposing some hidden truth, and most marketing is not about deceiving people. But much of the time journalists and marketers are at odds: the former trying to see through spin or propaganda or advertising, the latter trying to spin, propagandize, advertise.

Steve Cooley concedes in California Attorney General's race*

Republican Steve Cooley today conceded to Democrat Kamala Harris in the race for Attorney General. On a morning conference call, Cooley's campaign consultant, Kevin Spillane, said: "At this point there is no mathematical possibility of the course being reversed." Cooley's campaign had considered conceding a day or two ago, but held out for a few more ballots to be counted. Cooley has decided against calling for a recount.

Cooley remains Los Angeles County District Attorney. His term ends in 2012.

Cooley was not on the conference call.

*Spin zone: Spillane said Cooley was initially reluctant to run for Attorney General and only did so after urging from the law enforcement community. "He is not someone who positioned himself for statewide office," Spillane said. "He is a non politician." Poor name identification, even in LA County, and an opponent who benefited from a superior Democratic turnout effort, were keys to Cooley's loss, Spillane said. "If it had been nonpartisan ... he would have won by several points."

Asked what it means for the state Republican Party, Spillane responded: "We have some very serious problems." He also said that had Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman done a few points better in her race against Democrat Jerry Brown, Cooley could have won.

“Did  he lose because he is a Republican? Ultimately, yes," Spillane concluded.

**Conjecture: The press release noting today's press conference had the day right but the date wrong - it said "Wednesday, November 23rd, 2010" sic. I wonder if they had prepared to do this yesterday?

Is Cooley's goose cooked?

If you're looking for a good read as you wait for an intimate pat down at the airport, Gene Maddaus at the LA Weekly has crunched the numbers in the still-undecided state Attorney General's race and found that Democrat Kamala Harris has an insurmountable lead over Republican Steve Cooley - barring some unforeseen problem with a large number of ballots.

Here's the relevant passage:

The county websites have more up-to-date figures in some cases than the Secretary of State. Using those numbers, we can say that Harris is leading by 49,535 votes. (2:50 update: 51,141 votes.) Given the geographic breakdown of the remaining uncounted ballots, we expect her to expand her lead by another 10,000 votes or so, ending up with a margin of six tenths of a percent (46.0-45.4).

In order to win the race, Cooley would have to win the remaining uncounted votes by a margin of 66-26. (Update at 2:50: Cooley would now have to win by 72-20.) The likelihood of that happening is extremely close to zero. One of his best counties was Orange County, and his margin there was only 60-31.

The Los Angeles Times today followed with a more circumspect story, the writing on the wall is still pretty clear. Of course, Cooley has the option of calling for a recount and challenging ballots, with unknown results (except that we'll have to wait many more weeks before a winner is declared). Cooley is holding a call with reporters today at 10:30 a.m. and we'll see what he says.

P.S. This Weekly's reporting here, with its 538.com edge, is what the paper is uniquely positioned to deliver when it comes to local politics. Hopefully we'll see more of it, although the political reporter the paper hired in June from the Las Vegas Sun, J. Patrick Coolican, recently left the Weekly to go back to the Sun.

Pelosi pulls a Boehner

In the 2010 midterms elections, GOP women took to tweaking their male rivals with a "man up" chant. The obvious point: Even I've got more balls than this guy.

Democrats aren't about to cede  ground on this ridiculous point. House Speaker (soon-to-be minority leader) Nancy Pelosi shows, in a similar ball-kick to House Republican minority leader (soon-to-be Speaker) John Boehner, that she can play the gender card just as well. (Via The Hill):

"You know what? He is known to cry. He cries sometimes when we’re having a debate on bills. If I cry, it’s about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics — no, I don’t cry. I would never think of crying about any loss of an office, because that’s always a possibility, and if you’re professional, then you deal with it professionally," Pelosi (D-Calif.) told the New York Times magazine.

The Twitter battle for the Right

Andrew Sullivan posted these tweets over at the Daily Dish. I've stolen them.

David Frum, for those who don't know the name, publishes the Frum Forum and is a former advisor to President George W. Bush, and a conservative reformer. Sarah Palin, I assume, needs no introduction.

Scarborough suspended*

MSNBC proves to be fair and balanced when it comes to handing out suspensions for violating its campaign contribution policy. Joe Scarborough, a former Republican congressman and host of "Morning Joe," got suspended today for unreported donations to Florida GOP candidates. It's the same violation that turned Keith Olbermann redder than normal.

*Rick Newman at US News has a solution: "MSNBC could solve its donation problem by employing ordinary journalists. They can't afford donations."

Parachini says he was fired because the court didn't like his openness

Allan Parachini was a rarity in the world of government affairs: He was helpful. That very quality appears to be the thing that did him in as PIO for the Los Angeles County court system. While accusing Parachini of leaking information to the celebrity-gossip site TMZ (which embarrasses celebrities), court officials seem to have been more concerned with Parachini's efforts to make public information available to the public (which has the potential to embarrass court officials), according to today's Los Angeles Times story.

Parachini got fired this week after eight years on the job. The Times story indicates that court officials got fed up with him after he failed to find excuses to drag his feet in turning over documents related to contracts, salaries and court spending - all of which are supposed to be public.

Freedom for sale

Freedom Communications, owner of the Orange County Register, is up for sale; the company emerged from bankruptcy just eight months ago. Freedom reportedly plans to sell itself in a chunk, rather thank breaking pieces off. So who wants to buy a medium-size media company? A merger with MediaNews Group wouldn't be out of the question...

Symbolic NPR vote fails, symbolism succeeds*

Republicans in the House of Representatives rushed their first big vote of the lame-duck session: An effort to cut funds to NPR over a recent decision to fire Juan Williams for his remarks about Muslims on the Bill O'Reilly show. The effort failed, as the New York Times reports.

Indeed, the vote was symbolic. Had Republicans really wanted to cut NPR they would have waited until January, when they will have the majority and will be able to get partisan legislation passed. Instead, GOP leaders determined that it would be better to throw some early red meat to their most conservative constituents, force Democrats to side with spending taxpayer money on the "liberal media," and avoid an early partisan fight that would paint Republicans as more interested in revenging a Fox New employee than in doing the public's business.

(Note: I am a producer at an NPR-affiliated station, KCRW, though I don't work for NPR.)

*Update: And speaking of Fox News, chairman Roger Ailes compared NPR executives to Nazis because the firing of Juan Williams brought the Holocaust to mind. Ailes later apologized, saying he was "angry" and chose the wrong word.

Here's his angry ad-lib:

“They are, of course, Nazis. They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view. They don’t even feel guilty using tax dollars to spout their propaganda. They are basically Air America with government funding to keep them alive.”

Feds probe Tribune Co. deal

The Labor Department has opened an investigation into Sam Zell's leveraged buyout of the Tribune Co., the Chicago Tribune reports.

From the story:

The U.S. Labor Department is investigating Tribune Co.'s employee stock ownership plan, as well as Lisle-based GreatBanc Trust Co., hired by Tribune Co. to serve as plan trustee and represent employee interests in the $8 billion deal, according to Tribune Co. bankruptcy filings.

Court filings show that the Internal Revenue Service also has audited the ESOP, which Zell employed in the novel transaction to shield Tribune Co. from sizeable tax obligations once it went private.

End of the Independent

The nonprofit Washington Independent will shut down after three years of strong national reporting because of a lack of funds. From Aaron Weiner at TWI:

TWI has always relied on donations, primarily from foundations seeking to promote journalism in the public interest. Those donations began drying up long ago. I’m grateful to the American Independent News Network for keeping TWI alive long past the point when its expenses began exceeding its receipts. But it wasn’t sustainable, and today the bosses informed us they’re pulling the plug. On Dec. 1, TWI will begin mirroring the content of our network’s other national site, The American Independent. TWI’s reporters and I will look elsewhere for work.

-snip-

The crisis in the world of journalism today isn’t really about journalism — it’s about the bottom line. Reporters and editors everywhere are trying to find a way to keep their very good work alive. We thought our model had a chance. It put up a good fight.

Los Angeles controlling

As a consequence of the changes made in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy case, the Washington bureau of the Los Angeles Times will once again be controlled by the Los Angeles Times, LA Observed reports. When Sam Zell took over the paper, the huge Times bureau merged with the smaller Chicago Tribune's bureau, and much of the editorial control was handed to the Chicago bosses. In the two years since, many of the Times' most experienced reporters abandoned ship, leaving a much smaller bureau in DC to serve the Tribune chain.

Social media and the social consequences

Most people involved in social media are trying to create a social network large enough to realize a meaningful payoff. But some, like political analyst Marc Ambinder, formerly of the Atlantic, have a network that's large, engaged and sometimes brutalizing. C.W. Anderson explores the upside and downside over at Nieman Journalism Lab.

NYT digital and news divisions bonding

The New York Times is eliminating some of the walls between the digital and the print side.

PBS seems a little chicken

PBS edits out Tina Fey's most critical lines about Sarah Palin and then blames show length.

Zell to go

The news was forecast more than a year ago: Sam Zell will leave Tribune Co. once it emerges from bankruptcy proceedings. The Wall Street Journal reports that Zell told CNBC, "I think when we're done with the bankruptcy process I will turn it over to whoever the creditors decide they want to run it, and wish them a lot of good luck."

That Zell is leaving on his own volition is one way of looking at it. Another way is that the creditors are going to strip him of his financial stake in the company, which is what gave him control over Tribune, and send him on his way.

Just how many journalists are out there?

The implosion of daily newspapers, the largest employer of professional journalists, has left behind a river of unemployed bodies, the victims of layoffs, downsizing, buyouts, attrition, and whatever else got people off the shrinking payrolls.

But the expansion of non-traditional media has, even in this down economy, offered some opportunities for transition into journalism jobs of a different sort. For example, public radio and nonprofits are expanding, though at a slow pace, offering some former daily reporters and editors new homes. Online sites, from AOL's Patch to the Daily Beast, are giving writers of varying experience a chance to resettle.

The quality of journalism from the new and expanding media is mixed, but then so was the quality of many newspapers. Nonetheless, it's hard to evaluate, in the middle of a massive upheaval, whether "good" journalism will thrive - especially since there's increasingly loud disagreement about what constitutes "good" journalism.

But for those tracking the numbers, Ken Doctor has a roundup of the jobs lost and jobs gained in recent years, which might give us a little a blurry idea of where things are headed. It's still an ugly picture for anyone out of work (or at a bad paper) who's uncomfortable with opinionizing, taking a pay cut, and for whom editing down video of a community meeting is torture. But some green shoots (a godawful phrase) are appearing.

Rightsizers reward at Gannett

Gannett Blog calculates how much money top executive at Gannett would receive for each job that was cut last week (approx. 240) if they receive the same size bonus this year as they got last year.

The "World Wide Web" turns 20

Twenty years ago, a placeholder name for a revolutionary idea became the foundation for the lexicon of the Internet. On this anniversary, the New York Times explores how the World Wide Web got its name.

And here is the Nov. 12, 1990, proposal to create "...a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will."

From the proposal:

The application of a universal hypertext system, once in place, will cover many areas such as document registration, on-line help, project documentation, news schemes and so on. It would be inappropriate for us (rather than those responsible) to suggest specific areas, but experiment online help, accelerator online help, assistance for computer center operators, and the dissemination of information by central services ... are obvious candidates.

I wonder if it'll ever take off?

Newsweek swallowed by the Daily Beast

A merger between the online Daily Beast and Newsweek is expected to be announced tomorrow, according to the New York Times. The deal would put Tina Brown in charge of the print magazine and its website, and gives the Daily Beast website a print product to boost revenues.

Millionaire Sidney Harman recently bought Newsweek for $1 in exchange for taking on its debt. The magazine has lost much of its top staff in recent months.

From the Times:

Newsweek, bled by an exodus of staff members, a rapidly declining readership and a flight of advertisers, is a shell of what it used to be: a member of the prestigious club of weekly magazines that helped set the tone for news coverage.

Dr. Harman’s purchase was seen as a savior for the magazine and a way to help it build back its reputation. But he has struggled to find an editor for three months, leaving the magazine effectively rudderless.

But the Daily Beast partnership not only solves a problem for Dr. Harman, it gives Mr. Diller a print publication, something he has said recently he believes his website needs in order to be profitable.

A new City Hall watchdog

The City Maven, run by former City News Service reporter Alice Walton, is up and running. The website promises to keep a watchful on Los Angeles City Hall.

Mysterious contrail just a plane

Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics told Warren Olney last night that the media can call off the missile search. The mysterious contrail that some surmised resulted from an errant or secret missile launch was mostly likely a jet liner (US Airways Flight 808 from Honolulu to Phoenix, to be precise) flying across the horizon on an unusually clear day. WWLA

Mysterious contrail has people looking for missile

A news helicopter got video of an unknown object rising over the Western horizon and leaving a long contrail behind. Some surmise this is a missile launch, either planned or accidental, while others think it's just an airplane seen from an odd angle. Military and aviation officials have yet to figure it out.

Via the LA Times:

"We are aware of the unexplained contrail reported off the coast of Southern California yesterday evening," according to a statement Tuesday from the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command, which operates the U.S. and Canadian missile warning system. "At this time, we are unable to provide specific details but we are working to determine the exact nature of this event.

"We can confirm that there is no indication of any threat to our nation and we will provide more information as it becomes available," the statement said.

Thomas Pynchon must be proud.

Hawthorne's messy politics get messier

Sandy Mazza at the Daily Breeze has followed up on a Fox 11 News report that linked the firing of Hawthorne's city manage and finance director to a 2009 incident at the Wild Goose strip club and found a more complicated political battle simmering under the surface.

The Daily Breeze report calls into question the allegation that former City Manager Jag Pathirana and former Finance Director Louis Escobar claimed to be cops when confronted by deputies at the Wild Goose, as Fox 11 reported, and whether the allegation served a basis for their being fired from the city. After the Fox 11 story aired last month, Pathirana was fired from his job as chief financial officer in Inglewood.

According to the Breeze, the Fox 11 learned of the Wild Goose incident from a report put together by a private investigator who had been hired by current Hawthorne City Manager Jim Mitsch. Mitsch refused to tell the Breeze why he hired the private investigator (perhaps it was an attempt to stop Pathirana or Escobar from suing the city) and the investigator, Edward Ortega, appears to have his own baggage. According to the Breeze story, Ortega told the city that he worked for a Big Bear-based firm that no longer employed him; and the firm's owner called Ortega unethical.

A law firm representing municipal employees sent a letter to city leaders telling them they needed to stop Ortega from conducting interview, the Breeze reports:

"Mr. Edward Ortega has represented himself to be an agent of the city, has used city resources and spaces to conduct his interrogations, and has told employees that his interrogations are being directed by the city," a May 14 letter from the firm states. "The handling of this entire matter was highly improper." 

All of this seems to stem from a regime change at City Hall, with the old guard reluctant to move on and the new guard happy to tap city resources to push them out. Hopefully more stories are coming to clarify what's behind this nasty squabble and exactly how it benefits the residents of Hawthorne.

Video shows brutal attack on Russian journalist

Life News, an online Russian news service, has posted a video that shows two men savagely beating journalist Oleg Kashin. The New York Times posted a link to the video in a story about the still unsolved crime.

Russian journalist gets beaten

From the Los Angeles Times:

A crusading Russian reporter was in a coma Saturday after two masked men savagely beat him with metal rods, an attack that drew the immediate condemnation not only of his fellow journalists but of President Dmitry Medvedev

-snip-

Mikhail Fedotov, the secretary of the Russian Journalists Union, pointed to the bludgeoning of Kashin's hands as particularly sinister.

"What's so utterly disgusting about the case is that the attackers did their utmost if not to kill Kashin but to maim him gravely enough to prevent him from ever being physically able to write again," Fedotov said.

Fedotov said Kashin's beating was the fifth attack on Russian journalists in just the past 30 days, adding to a climate of intimidation in a country that has seen growing protests over limits on personal liberties.

Cooks Source got pwned

"Cooks Source steals your wallet then helps you look for it!"
"Cooks Source thought the walkie-talkies were a nice touch in the re-release of E.T."

These are two of hundreds of snark bombs (some funnier than others) lodged at Cooks Source's former Facebook page after the food magazine's publisher, Judith Griggs, told a food blogger that she could lift an entire recipe and republish it for free because "everything on the Internet is in the public domain," the Los Angeles Times reports.

Here's a little more background from the Times story:

Food blogger Monica Gaudio found out that Cooks Source published a piece that she wrote about apple pie, but did not get her permission to do so. Gaudio contacted the publication, half expecting it to be some kind of unfortunate mix-up, and asked for a nominal sum of money as compensation. That's when Griggs -- or someone using her e-mail address -- responded, blasting Gaudio for even raising the issue: "... honestly Monica, the web is considered 'public domain' and you should be happy we just didn't 'lift' your whole article and put someone else's name on it!"

It gets worse. The e-mail continues that not only would Gaudio not be getting paid, but that Gaudio should have paid her for the editing work she had to put into the piece.

This didn't sit well with bloggers and others, who hijacked the Facebook page today. As of this moment, the Cooks Source page has 4,223 "likes" - the overwhelming majority dislike Cooks Source.

Olbermann suspended*

MSNBC has suspended Keith Olbermann indefinitely for donating to three Democratic candidates (two Arizona liberals and Democrat Jack Conway, who was running for Senate in Kentucky). The donations violated NBC ethics guidelines for the station's journalists and came, in at least one case, right after one of the candidates appeared on Olbermann's show.

MSNBC, led by Olbermann, is striving (in a leaning-forward fashion) to be the anti-Fox of op-ed TV. Fox's parent company, News Corp, gave money directly to Republicans. Which leads me to wonder: Can you hold hosts or entire companies to the standards of good journalism when they're not practicing good journalism?

*More: Jamies Poniewozik at Time magazine says the donation merely reminds people that the liberal talk show host is liberal. True - to a point. The donations were given to guests, meaning Olbermann used the soap box provided by MSNBC to boost hand-picked candidates. That's clearly a problem for MSNBC.

I also disagree with Poniewozik's opinion that journalists should let their partisan bias fly. Impartial journalism isn't about some belief in "objectivity," or a deluded belief that near-objectivity can be attained; it's applying a rigorous method to how you gather and dispense information. Boosting political candidates conflicts with this method. Following the method, however, is voluntary. Unless you work for a company that says it will suspend you if you don't. (And, yes, I think it is somewhat hypocritical for MSNBC to apply such standards given what it's become.)

Japanese like newspapers

The six largest newspapers, by circulation, are in Japan. USA Today, America's most widely circulated paper, is 13th on the list.

Belo employees to get bonuses

On news that the company turned a $4.6 million profit in the third quarter, A.H. Belo's board of directors has authorized a one-time bonus for its newspaper employees, including those who work at the Press-Enterprise in Riverside. In a memo from CEO Robert Dechard, employees are told they'll received a bonus of between 1.5 percent and 3 percent of their base salary.

Here's the memo:

LANG has phone and Internet troubles

Not good news on Election Day. LANG's nine newspapers reportedly have been suffering intermittent phone and Internet service outages today.

Jim Newton back at Los Angeles Times

Former Times editorial page editor Jim Newton will return to the paper as an op-ed columnist. Here's the message:

We’re pleased to announce that Jim Newton is returning full-time to the Los Angeles Times after finishing a biography of Dwight D. Eisenhower, to author a new op-ed column on local government that will launch in early December.

Jim brings to the job not only his formidable writing and reporting skills but also his deep knowledge of the workings of Southern California government. He has served the paper as editor of the Editorial Pages, California government and politics editors and city/county bureau chief. He was also one of the paper’s most acclaimed reporters over two decades, covering the 1992 riots (and their aftermath), the 1994 earthquake (and the reconstruction), the Los Angeles Police Department, the trial of O.J. Simpson and the administration of Mayor Richard Riordan.

A graduate of Dartmouth College, Jim began his career as clerk to James Reston of the New York Times. He has been with the Los Angeles Times since 1989.

Newton stepped down in September, 2009.

The public airwaves, public radio and the public good

In response to the Juan Willaims dust-up, Steve Coll, head of the New America Foundation, argues that NPR should get more funding from the government, not less, and the money should come from the commercial broadcasters that profit from use of the public airwaves.

From Coll's column in the Washington Post:

The episode matters in part because NPR's place in American journalism and society is changing. Its growing audience of 30 million listeners - attracted by the network's worldwide reporting, lengthy interviews and deep analysis - increasingly constitutes a distinctive and influential commons, comparable to the audience served by the news divisions of major broadcast networks during the 1960s and 1970s.

Altogether, the public broadcasting system - NPR; its quasi-rival on radio, American Public Media; the Public Broadcasting Service on television; and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which provides them funding approved by Congress - reaches 98 percent of the American population. The system has achieved this penetration despite being comparatively starved of government-mandated investment. The United States spends about $1.40 per capita, or $420 million a year, on public and nonprofit media through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Britain spends about $87 per capita, according to an analysis by the advocacy and policy group Free Press. Canada, one of the most miserly industrialized democracies in this area, spends about $27 per capita.

Wall extensions at the Daily Journal*, **

The Los Angeles/San Francisco Daily Journal is a model for niche trade publications that want to make money off subscriptions. The legal newspapers is profitable and has a captive audience of judges, lawyers, lobbyists and politicians who want and need to follow the legal industry and its players. A subscription costs a bit more than $700 a year, and the owners have little if any interest in letting cracks appear in the pay wall.

Indeed, as LA Observed learned today, in a memo from Daily Journal editor David Houston, the paper is re-enforcing its walls to make content even more exclusive. From the memo:

I hope you have had a chance to check out our updated website. We're still ironing out kinks so let me know if you see anything funky.

Subscribers are no longer able to email a story. We are also no longer sending out a daily headlines email. If you get calls about this refer them to me.

As a former writer at the Daily Journal and now a producer at a public radio show that often turns to reporters as guests, I can attest to the fact that the pay wall keeps a lot of good work out of the general public's eye. Whether these strict policies are needed to keep the paper in the black, I cannot say, but I've always wondered why the paper doesn't offer a summary of articles to ensure its good work gets noticed.

*The redesigned website seems to emphasize profiles, with news updates on the right (with news about subscriptions leading today's stories). Here's a screen grab:

**Noted: The screen grab shows the website as non-subscribers see it. Only those paying the money can see the layout that includes actual headlines and article summaries. I'm told they continue to get prominent play inside the walls.

Blogs about newspaper companies

Nieman Journalism Lab lauds Jim Hopkins at Gannett Blog for keeping a watchful eye on what is the largest newspaper chain in the United States and for offering other Gannett observers a virtual water cooler to gather 'round.

From the write-up (which notes he took a sanity break for several months last year):

And so, on Dec. 9, Hopkins resumed publication. Mindful of his yearning for a return to traditional journalism, this time he stuck to straight news, without the contentious tone of its earlier period. By setting a different tone on the news side, he felt that he could “dial down the volume of the anger” in the comments, and he has largely succeeded in this goal.

He has more actively monitored the comments, entering the threads himself to keep it focused, correct misinformation and prevent flame wars. “When people try to pick a fight, I don’t engage them. it’s tempting sometimes, but I think once, twice, and three times.” His personal life stays out of the blog these days. (You can find him on Facebook for that angle.)

-snip-

An innovation on Gannett Blog, inspired by the fact that comments were getting more pageviews than anything else on the blog, is the open-ended “realtime comments” post that’s always at the top of the page. It simply says, “Can’t find the right spot for your comment? Post it here, in this open forum.” Hopkins refreshes that post once a week; it often garners more than 100 comments — far more than his typical posts do.

 The report has links to other blog watchdogs, including Lee Watch, the anti-McClatchy McClatchy Watch and guild-run MediaNews Monitor. Don't forget LA Observed, which isn't a watchdog blog per se, but keeps a watchful eye on the Los Angeles Times and its parent, Tribune Co.

National Enquirer bankrupcty proves even gossip doesn't pay*

The owner of the National Enquirer plans to file a pre-packaged bankruptcy in two weeks to shed debt and reorganize management. The process sounds similar to what MediaNews Group did  earlier this year to unload about $765 million worth of debt.

From AP:

American Media said it will file a prepackaged plan, which the company said should allow it to emerge from bankruptcy less than 60 days after the filing. The company said 80% of bondholders support a plan that calls for them forgiving debt in exchange for ownership.

The company, which also publishes Men's Fitness, Shape and Star magazines, said all its operations will continue as usual, and the reorganization won't affect its business or its staff.

* Update: Oh, and in case you don't care about gossip mags, American Media also publishes Playboy.