Shop talk at the San Bernardino Sun

Reporters have begun organizing a union effort at the San Bernardino Sun, two sources tell me. This means contacting union representatives and circulating cards for an election. I don't know how far along they've gotten, but LANG, the paper's owner, has taken notice. At least two executives talked to management at the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Sun's sister paper, about how a bad union would be. More when I hear it...

Four today

1. Four New York Times journalists are missing in Libya, including two-time Pulitzer-winner Anthony Shadid. NYT

2. Pew's State of the Media report for 2011. Pew

3. KPCC is looking for a web designer/developer. APM

4. A neo-Nazi rally is planned for March 19 in Claremont to "respond" to a pro-immigration rally at the Claremont Colleges. Daily Bulletin

LANG likes Facebook, readers not so sure (updated)

Back in October, San Bernardino Sun editor Frank Pine sent around a memo saying the nine papers that make up the Los Angeles Newspaper Group chain would be dropping their Topix commenting system for one that interfaces with Facebook accounts. One of the primary reasons for the change was to chase off trolls, who, shielded by anonymity, often veered in racist invective and personal attack - even when stories had nothing to do with race or a particular person.

The new system requires readers to be logged into Facebook and comments are by default linked to the person's page. This transparency (Facebook's privacy critics might laugh at the word) is supposed to create an environment where comments follow a socially correct etiquette, the argument goes.

The changeover happened on Friday, Dec. 3, with all nine papers publishing an online story describing the system and soliciting feedback. So far, most of the responses have been negative, with readers decrying the loss of anonymity, which they say allows for more honest viewpoints, and criticizing the papers for putting "civility" ahead of free and open debate.

A few readers warned that trolls would simply create fake Facebook accounts and return with the same aggressive madness. Some readers worried about their own privacy, saying they didn't like that comments were automatically posted to their Facebook pages. A few readers said they liked the new system and hoped it would make for more civil discussions.

Change always comes hard in the daily newspaper world. Take away a comic strip and you're likely to swamp every department with cranky phone calls - the kind of reaction news editors would love to come in response to, say, actual news. Still, there are interesting questions surrounding anonymous posts and the question of when an opinion become unacceptable as well as the thought of newspapers aligning themselves with Facebook's private profit machine to promote a kind of civility.

Below, I've rounded up a few of the comments that came in over the weekend.

From an unhappy reader in the Whittier Daily News:

I feel the lack of anonymity restricts the truth, people are more inclined to say what they think when they're not being monitored by a moderator. Sure most of the remarks were rude and bigoted, but some stated hardcore facts and relevance to the post.

A dubious Pasadena Star-News reader:

The anonymous comments were the best part of this paper. 

Compared to the Glendale News Press which requires comments to be approved, Star News had a lively conversation.

1. Why do conversations about the news need to be "civil?"

2. Thanks for defining civility for us all.

Good luck with this.

 An aggressive rejection in the LA Daily News:

I will never participate in your comments again. "Civil" means repression in this context and I will stop reading your FUCKING SWILL. 

 The San Bernardino Sun had a few positive comments, like this one:

I think the new Facebook-based comment feature for The Sun, Daily Facts, and Daily Bulletin is great. The public comment feature on too many online news outlets have been overrun by immature, offensive, and asinine comments from users protected by anonymity.

One Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reader sees a conspiracy:

The Daily Bulletin sold out! This is just a move to protect corrupt politicians and their Shady developer Godfathers. Nothing is worse than when they steal from the tax payers, name libraries after themselves and then have to hear the negative comments of the victimized public. Although alot of mud slinging whent on in the old style of posting, at least it was an open public forum that people could use to express their true sentiments and beliefes , good or bad. This new method of traceable commenting and a lack of true public input will only mean that the cancer of corruption will choke up the wheels of justice and crush the common citizen. Good luck to us all.

Four in the morning

1. The bathroom at the Santa Monica Pier is a finalist in the "America's Best Restroom" contest (and, yes, there's a blog). Cintas Corporation

2. Pomona City Hall is all about public service. A Pomona Councilwoman resigned her seat only to get reappointed to it by her colleagues, all part of a stunt to boost her public retirement pay. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin

3. Slake editor Laurie Ochoa, formerly of the LA Weekly, talks about the effort to put out a high-quality, printed literary magazine in the age of the Internet. WWLA?

4. Texas journalism is getting smaller, as Hearst makes the first moves toward consolidation at its Houston and San Antonio papers. Poynter

More moves in LANGland

Frank Pine has been named the new general manager of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Pine already served as executive editor of the Bulletin, a role he'll continue, and is executive editor of the Bulletin's sister paper, the San Bernardino Sun.

Pine replaces Peggy Del Torro, who took over as general manager of the Redlands Daily Facts.

New masthead in Redlands

The Redlands Daily Facts, which is part of Dean Singleton's LANG chain, announced a new general manager and managing editor. From the story:

Peggy del Toro was named general manager of the Facts, and Christina Brock was named managing editor.

"I'm very proud of this team," said Fred Hamilton, publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, which includes the Facts. "Peggy del Toro's broad experience in local newspapers and passion for community news is a perfect fit for Redlands. Chris Brock is incredibly talented and a native of the East Valley. I'm confident these two will achieve great things in Redlands."

Del Toro most recently served as president and general manager of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Facts' sister newspaper in Ontario. Del Toro was general manager of the Facts prior to her assignment in Ontario, where she spent most of her career.

Brock has held positions at the Bulletin and The Sun, most recently serving as business editor for both newspapers.

The national battle for local supremacy*

The Bay Area edition of the New York Times launches tomorrow. The edition consists of a few pages of content focused on San Francisco, Silicon Valley and the East Bay which will, initially, be written by the Times's 10-person Bay Area news bureau. In the long run, the paper will pick up stories from other news outlets.

From the press release:

A longer-term objective of this initiative is to work with local journalists and news organizations in a collaborative way, first in the Bay Area and then in other major markets around the country. The Times is in discussions with news organizations in the Bay Area about supplying journalism for these pages.

Zachary Seward at Nieman Journalism Lab says the Bay Area edition is the latest salvo in a quiet war between the Times and the Wall Street Journal to be the national newspaper of choice in affluent markets. Seward also points to a 2005 study shows local papers usually get more local and blue collar when the Times moves in:

It’s also worth considering how an insurgence of national newspapers affects their local counterparts. A fascinating study in 2005 found that when The New York Times increased its penetration in a market, college-educated readers abandoned their local newspapers. But at the same time, local newspapers upped their focus on local news and, at least back then, increased their circulation among readers without a college degree. That dynamic isn’t limited to print, but it’s certainly the battle being fought on my stoop.

I remember a readership study done in the city of Claremont when there were three papers covering the city that bears this out. It was 1998 or 1999 and I worked at the twice-weekly Claremont Courier, which the study showed had its highest penetration among college-educated readers - a good demographic to target in a town with five colleges. The Los Angeles Times was moving in aggressively with its own locally produced edition that wrapped around the main paper. The study showed it appealed to the same readers. I suspect many, if not most of the Courier readers subscribed to both. The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, owned by Dean Singleton's MediaNews, was bigger in the non-college educated, blue-collar areas of the city.

But, as Seward points out, local papers aren't investing and competing like they did only a few years ago. The Times closed its local bureaus. The Bulletin is a shell of its former self. The Courier continues to chug along, although it struggles to maintain its focus now that longtime publisher Martin Weinberger is out of the picture.

*Update: Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub will write for Times' Bay Area edition, LA Observed reports. He's also starting a nonprofit website to cover health care news.

Circulation down in the IE

Daily newspapers covering the Inland Empire saw significant declines in circulation over the last six months, according to the latest ABC survey. The Riverside Press-Enterprise dropped 14.6 percent, putting the Monday through Friday circulation at 140,079 and the Sunday circulation at 147,339.

The P-E, which has suffered several rounds of layoffs in recent weeks, touted a 5-percent gain in its "total audience" share, which includes online readers.

The Press-Enterprise also reported drops in circulation for its main competitors, but did not include any online-audience numbers in the story. From the P-E:

The San Bernardino Sun, owned by Media News Group, saw circulation decline 8 percent to 49,952 Monday through Friday and 3.4 percent to 55,746 on Sunday.

The Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the Media News paper in Ontario, dropped 9.1 percent to 48,954 weekdays and 10.8 percent to 52,616 on Sunday.

Redlands Daily Facts, also owned by Media News, dropped 2.5 percent to 6,916 weekdays and 2 percent to 7,012 Sundays.

I haven't seen numbers for the rest of LANG yet.

The average drop in print circulation nationwide was 7.1 percent.

Free-speech bankruptcy bailout plan

Earlier this week, the Sacramento Bee editorialized against a troubling court ruling that has left a free-speech group and its former president, Richard McKee, saddled with $86,000 in legal bills and weakened California's free-speech protections.

The ruling, which the Bee called "Orwellian" and the state Supreme Court refused to review, essentially took a law designed to stop government agencies from using the courts to silence their critics and turned it into a tool government agencies could use to silence their critics.

Here's what McKee had to say about the bizarro ruling in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin:

After prosecuting 14 other Public Records Act and Brown Act cases, McKee said he had never heard of the district using the right to free speech as a way to win a case.

The school district can take tapes of meetings and "chop it up, eliminate pieces, because of their right to free speech," McKee said. "Can you imagine how nice it is to control the information to the public? It's so ridiculous you don't know where to start."

The Bee has called for legislative reform to cure this ill, and McKee said that's exactly what he and Terry Francke of Californians Aware plan to do.

"We've kicked some ideas around and believe it could be as simple as changing the anti-SLAPP statute to preclude it from being used in a Brown Act case," McKee told me in an email. The Brown Act protects free speech at local government meetings and the anti-SLAPP law is the one designed to keep the same agencies from silencing critics by dragging them into an expensive lawsuit.

McKee and Francke are looking for a state lawmaker willing to carry the legislation.

Meantime, Francke has made a plea for financial help, since McKee has had to foot most of the $86,000 bill himself. I have already pledged to do my part, which involves subsidizing one of his favorite hobbies at the pub of his choosing.

A call for nonprofits

Michael Rappaport, formerly of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, argues that nonprofits are needed to fill the widening gaps in local news coverage.

No imagination

A group advocating the separation between church and state has sued the city of Rancho Cucamonga, claiming a top city official coerced a private billboard company to take down and destroy a sign that read "Imagine No Religion."

The Freedom From Religion Foundation filed the lawsuit after a Nov. 20 story in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin quoted city Redevelopment Director Linda Daniels as saying, "We contacted the sign company and asked if there was a way to get it removed."

A traitor in our race?

Former Inland Valley Daily Bulletin political cartoonist Gordon Campbell gives his take on Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama with a cartoon that pictures Benedict Arnold in black face. The cartoon is entitled "Benedict Powell...Race Patriot." Not surprisingly, the cartoon has gotten Campbell some attention.

Campbell, who was one of the victims of the March layoffs in LANG, had this to say about his decision to tie Powell and Arnold together in the wake of the endorsement:

"The only reasonable explanation for such a public political "about-face" in the midst of this important election is that Colin Powell, perhaps understandably, wishes to see someone who looks like himself in the White House," Campbell said.

"It's my opinion that General Powell has based his endorsement of Barack Obama on the color of his skin, not his qualifications, his experience or the content of his character."

Comings and goings

Ben Demers left the San Bernardino Sun for the Glendale News-Press in May. Now I'm told Demers has left the Glendale News-Press to become the city editor of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, the San Bernardino Sun's sister paper.

Good luck to Ben.

*Correction: I mistakenly posted that Demers was going to become CE of the Sun. That, of course, gave Sun City Editor George Watson a bit of a fright. My apologies. The above post has since been corrected.

For more recent updates, click here

The axe is swinging in the San Gabriel Valley *(Update), **(Update II)

At least one reporter I know at the Pasadena Star-News got a phone call this morning from the main offices at the San Gabriel Tribune in what appears to be the first confirmed layoff at the three papers that make up the San Gabriel Valley News Group (Star-News, Tribune and Whittier Daily News).

I don't know how many people will lose their jobs today, but this is already uglier than I'd imagined.

A source tells me the neighboring San Bernardino County Sun and Inland Valley Daily Bulletin might also be paring back their already skeleton crew newsrooms. I'll try to get a tally later today if I can.

This follows on the heels of major cuts at the Los Angeles Daily News, Daily Breeze and Long Beach Press-Telegram.

All of the papers are part of Dean Singleton's MediaNews empire.

*At least one other reporter and the long-time librarian at the San Gabriel Valley Tribune got pink slipped this morning. That brings the running total to three.

**The tally is up to four at the San Gabriel Valley papers and may hold there. Two reporters were let go, along with a librarian and a receptionist. I haven't heard any updates from the San Bernardino County papers, although a top editor was reportedly making the rounds earlier today... Just as I posted this, I was told a photographer at the Bulletin was "downsized."