Four Monday

1. The New Yorker has made more than $1.2 million on its iPad app. Apparently, some people still want to read. NYT

2. There's no future in pork bellies. NYT

3. How LA Times environmental writer Margot Roosevelt learned she was losing her job. LAO

4. Professional food journalists feeling pressure from the amateurs. Poynter

No opinion

Should newspapers cut their opinion and unsigned editorials? I'm sure op-ed editors have all sorts of thoughts on that. A flack at Fast Horse, Jorg Pierch, said it risks alienating readers who can already find plenty of opinion elsewhere. And it would save money, according to new media consultant Mark Potts. Poynter

Four Monday

1. Andrew Breitbart tells the L.A. chapter of the Republican Jewish Coalition that objectivity in journalism means surrender, and unveils plans to start a Big Jerusalem site. fishbowlLA

2. An ad in today's Miami Herald congratulations the Miami Heat, which lost the NBA championships. Miami New Times

3. AOL's Patch sites are busy, but not with muckraking stories. LAT

4. ABC's Chris Cuomo embarrasses himself as he rationalizes paying sources. Poynter

The FCC discovers local journalism is (f)ailing

A report commissioned by the FCC finds what everyone in the journalism business already knows: There is a dearth of good, in-depth local reporting. AOL-Huffington-Patch is not going to reverse the trend, either (though AOL-Huffington-Patch disagrees). From a Poynter summary of the report:

The FCC report says that newspapers and TV news networks have half the staff that they had in the 1980s and that newsrooms now stand at pre-Watergate employment levels. As a result, local news coverage is in trouble. Courts, schools, legal affairs, environment, state government and education once were priority beats. Now they lack reporters to cover them. The number of newspapers with bureaus in Washington has declined. Local news coverage of religion “is all but gone[.]”

While NPR gets good marks, local radio news coverage is following the trend of having too few people following the reports of other outlets. Again, from Poynter:

Despite the abundance of local media outlets, Waldman said, there is “a shortage of media reporting.” In Baltimore, for example, there are 53 news outlets, but a Pew study  said most of the content came from one TV station and The Baltimore Sun. “So far the news media is not filling this key need” to report news and not just repeat what others have reported, Waldman said. About 15,000 reporters have left newsrooms in the last decade in America, he said.

A return from the rapture

New duties at work have led to (an obvious) slowdown on the blog. Hopefully I'll find my rhythm again in a few weeks.Until then, here are some links to tide you over:

1. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg only eats the meat that he kills. He's taken to cutting goat and pig throats in a nod to sustainable farming. CNNMoney

2. NPR wants to know your platform preferences. NPR

3. "Long tails" in support of long tales online. Nieman Lab

4. AOL-Huffington Post announces a financial reporting team and a Canada-theme. Huffington Post (via LA Observed)

5. FishbowlLA co-editor Pandora Young said on Facebook that she got threats of legal retribution for reporting what people said about Finke. The "offending" post is here: FishbowlLA

6. Food writing, like all other forms of writing, is being changed by social media, Internet platforms, and dying newspapers. Poynter

7. You'll go broke going broke. Tribune Co. has paid $157 million to lawyers, bankers and advisers working on its bankruptcy case. WSJ

Four before the Apocalypse

1. Icahn has newz. Poynter

2. Google gives up on news print. Boston Phoenix

3. Ebersol is out at NBC. LA Times

4. Remember the time in Tora Bora when we almost got him (long before we did) Reporter in Exile

Four to break the silence

The blog has been quiet for most of the week, as my new job has required much more of my time. That said, here are some links to get you through Good Friday:

1. Yahoo! News Network helps prove once again that you don't have to best to be first. According to the number crunchers at Poynter, the online network is the top destination for news and information on the web, besting CNN by about 6 million unique hits a month. Poynter

2. Forbes surmises that the unpaid bloggers at Huffington Post provide more value to the site than Arianna Huffington wants to admit. Although they don't drive enough traffic to boost ad revenues in a significant way, they are the reason that Google treats HuffPo as a news site rather than a content farm, Forbes concludes. That means HuffPo stories get ranked alongside the New York Times and Los Angeles Times in a Google News search, rather than pushed down to the Demand Media level. And if you look at the Poynter link above, you'll see Huffington Post is sixth on the list (and partner AOL News is fourth). Forbes

3. As the use of wireless mobile devices increases, the companies that make them want to claim a wider swath of the broadcast spectrum from television broadcasters. The lack of public debate in the process is notable. New York Times

4. The news that Oscar-winning filmmaker Tim Hetherington had died in a mortar attack in Libya came from a fellow photographer's posting on Facebook. Wired

Four in the morning

1. Utah wants to limit the pesky public from making requests for public documents. Poynter

2. Huffington Post names six new reporters, including former Yahoo-er Michael Calderon. Romenesko; Arianna Huffington says "meh" to the threat of unpaid bloggers going on strike (i.e., some people doing free work deciding not to work for free). fishbowlLA

3. Most media outlets are the worst at covering themselves - still, the New York Times ombud says it's about time the paper did some reporting on its highly anticipated paywall plan. NYT

4. For those living and voting in Los Angeles, the city will suspend parking restrictions on Election Day. City Maven (found via LA Observed)

No national consolidation plan, Singleton says

Dean Singleton, who's still the voice of MediaNews Group, put out a statement late today saying the newspaper chain has no plans for a national copy desk, despite a union letter warning of just such a proposal. He blames the union for jumping the gun, based on a casual conversation, and adds that this is why he doesn't include the guild in any planning sessions.

Romenesko also got hold of a memo sent from Dave Butler, head of MNG's California papers, that also says no national copy desk is planned, but indicates more regional clustering is probable. I'm reprinting the memos here, both taken from the Romenesko website. First Dave, then Dean:

Fellow MNG editors: 

FYI. I spoke to Dean Singleton this afternoon about the statement put out by the Guild regarding a national copy editing center. Below is his response to their press release. I would further add that we have two projects going on that fly in the face of any “national” center. We have consultant Ken Harding working with editors in Denver, Salt Lake and St. Paul to figure out ways to make local news production more efficient at each paper, and just yesterday a group from BANG went to LANG to exchange ideas on how we might streamline our regional desks. We also have some mini-regional desks around the company and may, at some point, consider more. Like most other newspaper companies, regionalization — where appropriate — seems to work well. Would we rule out doing something else? Nope. But the capital costs of one center and the challenges involved seem pretty daunting to me. Please share this information as is appropriate. 

-Dave 

******* 

Dean’s statement:
The Newspaper Guild on Friday issued a press release referring to a casual phone conversation I had with Bernie Lunser, president of the Guild, concerning the future of the newspaper industry and how newspapers can better serve their readers in print, online and on mobile products. 

Contrary to the assertions made in the release, there are no plans for “national consolidation” of MNG’s editing processes. 

While we constantly assess better ways to serve our readers in this changing and uncertain world, including the Guild in these considerations are not a part of those assessments.
The irresponsible Guild press release is a perfect example of why we don’t. 

There is no future for any of us if we continue to live in the past. Someone should tell that to the Guild. 

- Dean

Post-LANG success story

Marshall Allen, who worked at the Pasadena Star-News for several years before heading to the Las Vegas Sun, is up for a Goldsmith Prize in Investigative Journalism, which comes with a $25,000 prize. Allen co-wrote a series called "Do No Harm: Hospital Care in Las Vegas". Here's a description of the series:

After a two-year investigation, including the review of 2.9 million records, the Sun’s five-part series identifies the preventable infections and injuries taking place in Las Vegas hospitals. Allen and Richards set out to impose transparency on Las Vegas hospitals so they will be held accountable. Their findings resulted in consumers having access to quality-of-care data that will help them make smart decisions.

Also on the finalists' list is the city of Bell series done by the Los Angeles Times.

Four today

1. It's about to get more crowded on Gmail. Searchengineland (via Nieman Lab)

2. I'm a little late on this... but Times food writer Mark Bittman is making his exit. NYT

3. The NYT public editor responds to LAT environmental editor Geoff Mohan over a story that questions the latter paper's mojo. Poynter

4. The man who bought a newspaper company with other people's money, and then ended up in bankruptcy court, doesn't want to be "the media's bitch anymore". LA Observed

Four in the afternoon

1. The New York Times readies its tiered paywall for launch in February. NYT

2. Could new Google search protocol weed out Patch? OJR

3. Poynter talks Twitter/Facebook mini-narratives. Poynter

4. Convict monkey escapes from cage. AP

Four in the afternoon

1. The New York Times has named Carolyn Ryan as Metro editor. Poynter

2. The war against cliches in journalism. The Cutline

3. The city of New York will launch an internal social network to spur innovation. gov20

4. More thoughts on the downfall of Lean Dean. Ken Doctor

A traffic accident is just a text message away

Poynter has a cheerleader column up today congratulating the Orange County Register for pushing stories out on mobile devices. According to the story, roughly 25 percent of the paper's digital traffic last weekend came via mobile sources.

The Register's well-named social media guru, Sonya Quick, said a 10-car wreck in Newport Beach was responsible for the spike. From her email to Poynter:

Three people died in the accident. The story’s many versions accounted for a large portion of our mobile traffic over the weekend. 

Social: The original story was shared 323 times on Facebook and in 26 tweets. The follow-up story was shared 148 times on Facebook and in 16 tweets. I have seen that social links are a much more significant source of referral traffic on our mobile website when compared to our full website. 

E-mail: This story is about people. Based on people being injured who were likely friends and family to many, and based on the number of social shares, I’m guessing that the story was shared via e-mail much more than an average story. 

Alert: The accident resulted in a 10-hour closure of West Coast Highway (also known as Pacific Coast Highway) on Saturday. Our newsroom sent an alert about the accident that alerted thousands of people to the article. (We have a news alert tool built into our content management system which allows us to send breaking news out to text message subscribers, @ocreggiefacebook.com/ocregister fans within seconds). Twitter followers and

Four today

1. Michael Pollan ("The Omnivore's Dilemma") and Eric Schlosser ("Fast Food Nation") will join KCRW's Evan Kleiman on February 9 at USC to talk about the way we feed ourselves. LA Weekly

2. KOCE has rebranded itself PBS SoCal and plans to expand its staff in Los Angeles as it becomes the main PBS affiliate in Southern California, taking over from the PBS divorcee KCET. Franklin Avenue (via LA Observed)

3. When ordered to turn over information about several users in connection with the federal investigation of Wikipedia, Twitter successfully challenged the court's gag order and told the subjects of the investigation what had happened. Wired

4. Media organizations need to update their codes of ethics to keep up with the times. Poynter

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...

Four in the morning

1. Twenty-eight-year old Pulitzer winner uses his prize money to establish a fund for rural reporters. IRJ

2. Las Vegas Review-Journal defends its practice of suing over alleged copyright violations. LV Sun

3. Thank god someone is finally giving corporations a chance to be heard. Forbes will run corporate/marketing/advertising blogs alongside staff blogs to make sure these afflicted get the comfort they so sorely need. AdAge

4. I guess since so many journalists have already left, Sidney Harman won't have to fire that many people at Newsweek. Poynter

Four today

1. eMeg Whitman, Republican candidate for California governor, is the 332nd richest person in the world and only one of 34 women to make the Forbes 400. Gawker

2. Getting a handle on the SEO slave-drivers in the newsroom. Nieman Journalism Lab

3. National Journal continues to beef up, hiring Patricia Wilson from Reuters as the deputy editor-in-chief. The news magazine was criticized for being too male dominated in its new hires. Poynter

4. Spot.us, the fund-raising news site, has a 10-month gig for a reporter/editor to cover "overlooked, quality-of-life issues across Los Angeles." Journalism Jobs (via LA Observed)

Miami chop house

The Miami Herald is cutting 49 employees, including seven full time and two part timers. Poynter has the memos.

How to cover a book burning

Whatever ridiculous forces put a fringe Florida pastor on our front pages and TV screens, and into the mouths of our president and top Pentagon officials, there's little doubt that Terry Jones' planned Quran burning on Sept. 11 will be covered. Indeed, the story has already taken root in the Muslim world, and the reverberations are very real.

So how should a news organization cover this publicity stunt?

The Associated Press has a memo outlining its intentions, including a policy that the news service "will not distribute images or audio that specifically show Qurans being burned, and will not provide detailed text descriptions of the burning."

 Poynter ethics leader Kelly McBride offers her take here, noting that even ugly events like this demand coverage: "[P]art of our job as journalists is to document events. When we ignore acts of hate, no one has the opportunity to react, to condemn them or to proclaim a different belief system."