California Alt-Paper Springs for Nuptials
When East Bay Express Marketing Director Terry Furry hit on the idea of celebrating California's legalization of gay marriage by hosting the weddings of gay and lesbian couples, the Emeryville-based alternative weekly had low-key affairs in mind.
Covering 5-Ring Circus
Despite global protests and calls for a boycott of this summer's Olympics in Beijing, newspaper editors are moving ahead with their coverage plans and treating the Games much like any other major sporting event. But the coverage itself will look slightly different from that in years past, with newsroom cutbacks affecting the number of staffers being sent to cover the competitions.
Higher Ad-to-Edit Ratio Not a Good Thing?
Microsoft's Steve Ballmer can blithely predict that print will be dead in 10 years, but any newspaper operator knows ink on paper is still the lifeline of the industry. Online revenue will not even begin to seriously make up for the revenue shortfall of print for another five or six years down the road, and perhaps not even then.
It's Heds and Feds in First Newseum Exhibit
The Newseum's first major changing exhibition focuses on some of the biggest cases — and evidence — from the FBI, with historical items that range from the Unabomber's cabin to the electric chair in which convicted Lindbergh baby kidnapper Bruno Hauptmann was executed.
Bottom Line Suffers 'Gas Attack'
Being a statewide newspaper is usually a plus for The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City, drawing plenty of news, readers, and revenue. But since gas prices passed $4 per gallon and are likely heading for $5, the cost of serving the entire 70,000 square-mile state is also rising.
How Web Commenters Become 'Ghost Writers'
For the most part, newspaper editors are programmed to screen content. This training, however, can bump up against the goals of online media, particularly in allowing readers the ability to post comments on a site. "If you want to hear what the people have to say, you can't get too concerned with what they are saying," says Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix, the news community site that counts McClatchy, Tribune, and Gannett as investors.
How Reporter Put this Story to Bed
"There's a lot of power in simple ideas," says Denver Post features writer Douglas Brown. He credits his wife, Annie, for the idea (and of course, the shared follow-through) chronicled in Brown's new book, Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned on Their Sex Lives for 101 Days (No Excuses!). Given the topic, Brown spoke to E&P via phone from the newspaper's lobby: "With the newsroom wide open, I don't feel comfortable blabbing about this there."
Newspapers Trounce Google News
Google appears unstoppable in just about every context except for this one: In May, Nielsen Online's current events and global news destination top 30 list shows that two newspaper companies and one newspaper beat Google News in users. (The data is based on U.S.-based home and work use.)
Readers Go Before Parole Board
At the Rockford (Ill.) Register-Star, online readers can do more than just follow the parole efforts of some of the area's most notorious convicted killers. They can also have a say in whether these criminals should go free.
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10 That Do It Right
Our annual "10 That Do It Right" feature, now in its eighth year, has never been about the 10 best newspapers. It focuses instead on how some are performing in one particular aspect — from marketing to online video — that merits consideration and maybe even emulation by their peers. And, boy, do newspapers get that idea.
10 Right: Carlsbad (N.M.) Current-Argus
For all the advanced newsgathering, editing, printing, and packaging technology newspapers have implemented over the years, the actual task of getting the paper into readers' hands usually comes down to finding a guy with a valid driver's license and a car that's a half-step in class above a beater.
10 Right: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, once employee-owned and now part of a publicly traded corporation, is not immune from industry woes — including staff losses in the newsroom. Late last year, 55 people exited the paper in a buyout program that included about two dozen journalists.
10 Right: Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch
In their fervor to go local, local, local, and do it now, now, now, some metro dailies have confused longtime readers by suddenly banishing from the front page stories about Iraq or the presidential campaign, and replacing them with spreads about a controversy among parents at an elementary school or the heartwarming story of a stranger's kidney donation to a sick child.
10 Right: Las Vegas Review-Journal
Yahoo and maybe even Wal-Mart's new free-classifieds experiment might turn out to be the savior of newspapers' increasingly enfeebled help-wanted advertising, turbo-charging their reach and aggregating so many eyeballs as to make papers indispensable again.
10 Right: USA Today
America's many business travelers — an ever-changing horde that fills planes, hotel lobbies, and convention centers and then moves on as new arrivals take their place — constitute a virtual big city in the sky and ground. And USA Today is their local paper. So when The Nation's Newspaper decided to experiment with social media, it started with the crowd it knows best: travelers.
10 Right: The Huntsville (Ala.) Times
Newspaper Webcasts are not exactly cutting edge these days, and it's inarguably true that dozens of papers do video a heck of a lot better than Jon Busdeker and Chris Welch, two arts and entertainment writers with The Huntsville (Ala.) Times weekly tab "Go: Your Good Times Magazine." Among the other examples, the hilarious political parodies created by The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle's opinion writers are more likely to flourish on YouTube, for example, and The Miami Herald's "What The Five" bantering couple are far more camera-ready.
10 Right: Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald
It's safe to say that Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald Publisher John Tabor is a big Newspaper Next fan. When its trainers came to the paper, he says, "We closed the whole shop for a day, and trained as many employees as we could." Of the 128 full-time employees, more than 100 showed up for the N2 sessions.
10 Right: The Times, Ottowa, Ill.
Starting a newspaper subscriber loyalty program is a no-brainer. Unfortunately, that's often as much brain power as many papers invest in creating and operating the program. Loyalty programs are ubiquitous among newspapers, and they are also nearly universally ignored by subscribers — many of whom don't even realize their paper is offering any benefit for being a good customer.
10 Right: Chicago Journal
As a student at St. Ignatius College Prep in the 1970s, every day Dan Haley saw the decline in the surrounding Chicago neighborhoods as crime blighted public housing projects in the West Loop, and abandoned manufacturing plants left the South Loop simply empty. "When I was a young man going to Ignatius, it was an odd, fascinating, and somewhat dangerous place," he recalls.
10 Right: Santa Barbara (Calif.) Independent
Virtually since launching the Santa Barbara Independent in 1986 from the merger of a political newsweekly and an arts-and-entertainment listings publication, Editor in Chief Marianne Partridge and Publisher Randy Campbell have told anyone who asked that the paper was not really an alternative. Sure, it was a free weekly and a member of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, but it aspired to be the No. 1 source not only of leisure time listings, but of in-depth news in the picturesque Southern California resort town.
Editors at Odds with AP
Associated Press President/CEO Tom Curley had just delivered an address on April 16 at the NAA/ASNE conference in Washington, D.C., when the event's congenial vibe turned ugly. For nearly an hour, Curley had highlighted the not-for-profit company's business gains, news coverage wins, and, in his view, a terrific new rate and fee structure that he claimed would give most of the 1,500 AP newspaper members up to $21 million in combined savings. But soon after he finished his report, several editors who had listened in the downstairs ballroom of the Renaissance Washington Hotel began to pounce on Curley — and the AP in general — for what they contend is an unfair restructuring plan and a failure to serve some of their needs.
Ohio Editors Speak As One
On Dec. 21, 2007, a group of editors and publishers from six Ohio newspapers launched the protest against The Associated Press with a letter to President Tom Curley. In it, they stated that AP's rates and news practices were unacceptable to them, declaring, "we pay nearly $4 million annually to the AP. That's a hefty sum even during the best of times — and we all would certainly agree that these are not the best of times."
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(Click on photo to enlarge)
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A FELINE LIFELINE IN FLOOD
Harry Baumert, Des Moines (Iowa) Register, June 12
Water was rising steadily from the Cedar River after days of rain, causing many to hurriedly flee. |
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