Al Qaeda prefers print

The Al Qaeda terrorist network has launched a new English-language magazine called "Inspire" that includes such varied content as "The Cartoon Crusade," "From Usama to Obama," and "Open Source Jihad." There's also a how-to section that promises to show readers how to "make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom." Marc Ambinder has some pages posted here.

A new Times on Monday*

Los Angeles Times subscribers will find a smaller, narrower newspaper starting Monday. The changes include the elimination of the Monday business section, an inch cut to the paper's width and earlier print deadlines. To compensate for the last, the paper will launch LATExtra, which is supposed to catch late-breaking stories that don't make the regular edition.

*Some of the changes won't take effect until tomorrow, according to LA Observed.

What's up with the Times' OC printing plant?

Some of the press workers at the Los Angeles Times think the paper will shutter its Orange County printing plant in the coming months. A report on Ed Padgett's blog has fueled the speculation, which seems to be based largely on insider rumor. I'll update if I see anything concrete one way or the other.

Outside the bubble

Many more people spend much more time time reading a physical newspaper than reading the news on a paper's website, CJR reports:

For those of us of a certain small-but-growing subset—the blogging, commenting, techno-savvy, early-adopting, extreme-news consumers—it’s sometimes easy to forget that most people don’t live like we do. They don’t use RSS. They don’t Twitter. They don’t read twenty blogs a day. They (some 100 million or so) still actually pick up the newspaper and read it.

In a rough estimate of online versus print reading, CJR found:

Of the top five newspaper websites the average reading time online is 12.1 percent to print’s 87.9 percent. That widens to 8 percent online, 92 percent print when considering that more than one person reads each print copy.

The disparity illustrates why most publishers haven't heeded calls to junk the presses in favor of an online only presence. Such advice only makes sense if one doesn't own a press and wants to see the playing field leveled.

These numbers also show us why most of the advertising dollars still flow to print.

The quick survey does not, however, provide any details about whether online readership is increasing - and at what pace. Nor does it give us a sense of how many people have left print and online newspaper sites for alternative sources.

Will newspapers hit the print button?

Maybe newspapers subscribers really will embrace the concept of becoming their own "editor and publisher" and will gladly print out their customized newspaper at home via a special printer given/sold to them by the local paper (the MediaNews concept).

But that seems about as likely to succeed as a McDonald's franchise that offered to deliver to your home a special microwave and the raw ingredients to make a Big Mac. Customers may like to hear "have it your way," but they also want to be sure the burger they get tastes and looks like a Big Mac and they still want someone else to prepare it for them.

(Yes, I'm comparing customized newspapers to fast food. It seems an appropriate metaphor.)

But what if the newspaper had a massive digital printer that would allow it to customize a paper for subscribers, a paper that would still be delivered to the subscribers doorstep - potentially several times a day - and would still have all the dependable markings and layout of the paper they subscribed to?

The Dutch firm Océ has unveiled a printer that could make this possible. As Martin Langeveld at Nieman points out, this would require an investment by executives who want reporters to buy their own pens and notebooks at a time when conventional wisdom-makers are calling print a dinosaur. It's possible a few of the big companies - NYT, WSJ, WaPo - will give it a try at their local papers and then we'll see if it holds any promise.

Stop the press talk

Back on Dec. 5 I'd mentioned that several newspapers, including some in the LANG chain, were rumored to be in discussions with the Tribune Co. to have their papers printed at the Los Angeles Times printing press. Several people inside LANG have asked for updates on the talks, hoping that any savings made on the production side might preclude further newsroom cuts. But long-time Times pressman Ed Padgett says Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy filing probably put an end to the plan:

The men and women in Operations at the newspapers had one last hope before the ax fell, producing other newspapers within the walls of the Los Angeles Times, that hope quickly dissipated with the Tribune Company filing bankruptcy on December 8th, 2008.

The plan had the Los Angeles Times signing contracts to produce The Wall Street Journal and Barron’s after the union contract was signed, which all changed after the bankruptcy filing. The bankruptcy court allowed the Chicago Tribune to produce the Wall Street Journal, which gave everyone hope we too would be granted the same permission.

Other newspapers knocking on the door of the Los Angeles Times were the Korean Times, The New York Times, The Orange County Register, and the Dean Singleton newspapers such as the San Gabriel Valley Tribune.

Padgett goes on to say that the Times might outsource its own production to Transcontinental, "a Canadian Company that will soon take over all production from the San Francisco Chronicle in May of this year."

Print-on-TV action

Gene Maddaus at the Daily Breeze continues his watchdogging of local television news with a story yesterday that Fox 11 got it wrong when they reported City Councilwoman Janice Hahn provided city funds to active gang members:

"But a review of the Fox 11 News story found major flaws that undermine its central allegations. Most notably, records and interviews show that the gang intervention workers identified in the report have not received city funding."

Indeed, that would seem a major flaw, given that the central allegation made by Fox was that Hahn provided "city funds to active gang members under the auspices of gang intervention programs."

This is not the first time Maddaus has questioned the reporting of a television news station. In 2006, he wrote a column for the Pasadena Star-News about KTLA "Morning News" anchors receiving free rooms, along with free wine and chocolate, in exchange for giving air time to the Ritz-Carlton, Huntington Hotel in Pasadena. Turns out shilling violates certain ethical standards, even for TV. Maddaus won several awards for his work.

Incidentally, the Ritz is now the Langham, and the KTLA "Morning News" is now the KTLA "Morning Show."