MediaNews Group

Starting Sunday, the San Mateo County Times will be an edition of the San Jose Mercury News. Both brands are owned by Media News Group, whose other holdings include the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times and the Marin Independent Journal.

In an e-mail to Bay Area News Group employees, the company clarified the transition. Among the sentiments:

Media News Group, the Denver-based owner of the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times and the San Jose Mercury News, is looking to eliminate 18 newsroom jobs from its East Bay unit. This comes on the tail of rumors alleging that the company is undergoing bankruptcy arrangements or a change in ownership -- both of which Media News denies.

What they're not denying is that flagging revenues continue to take a toll, and the quickest means to slashing expenses is to divest the company of employees. The 18 positions will be eliminated by mid-summer. Before layoffs take place, the company is looking for buyout volunteers.

Full text of the memo from executive editor and vice president Kevin Keane, courtesy of the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club, after the break:

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MediaNews Group today issued a release denying a media report suggesting that the organization has proposed a refinancing plan that would precipitate both a change of ownership and a possible bankruptcy filing.

MediaNews, whose release was published on Romanesko this afternoon, did not specify which media report it was referring to. But it's possible it was a story by Debtwire, an industry subscription service, discussed in a blog post on Denver's Westword today. The post quoted the Debtwire story as saying, "The company is expected to implement its restructuring through a pre-arranged or pre-packaged bankruptcy filing" and attributing that information to an unnamed lender and sellside analyst.

"The story is inaccurate in almost all respects," the MediaNews release said. "Proposals to the company's lenders do not include a change in control of the company, nor do they include proposals for any bankruptcy filings, as the rumors suggest. MediaNews Group remains in compliance with its bank agreements while refinancing discussions continue."

Complete release, after the jump.

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The vote was in Tuesday from the members of the Bay Area News Group-East Bay Unit of the California Media Workers Guild, and it was unequivocal. By a 57-2 count they approved their first Guild contract since organizing last June.

In a time in which newsrooms are being decimated if not eliminated nationwide, the initiation of a union and subsequent ratification of a contract is fairly groundbreaking.

"This is an historic moment," said Michael Cabanatuan, president of the California Media Workers, on the Guild website.

The contract will run alongside that signed last week by the Guild for the San Jose Mercury. Both will expire on Nov. 30, 2010. The organizations are both owned by Denver-based Media News Group.

"This is a really happy conclusion to a long struggle on the part of a lot of people," said Sara Steffens, unit chair of the BANG-East Bay, on the Guild website. "It's clear that our union's here to stay. We want to continue building a new relationship with the company."

The tentative contract can be read at Onebigbang.org, the Guild's Bay Area News Group site.

The first step in Media News Group's efforts to create actual profit through its products is set to debut in Denver next month. Called "Individuated News" or "I-News," subscribers will print their own personalized papers, which will include targeted advertising and coupons. In-home printers will be installed by Media News Group, and will be offered to subscribers at a deep discount.

The program's test run involved several long-term guests at a Denver hotel, who downloaded and printed a 12-page paper. The company hopes to have 300 printers installed in Los Angeles, where it publishes the Los Angeles Daily News, by August.

Media News Group operates a string of Bay Area papers, including the San Jose Mercury News, the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times and the Marin Independent Journal.

Shortly after announcing a tentative agreement for the San Jose Mercury News, the California Media Workers Guild struck up another tentative accord with Media News Group, owner of the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and more than a dozen other daily papers and websites.

The difference, in light of the fact that the Mercury is also owned by Media News Group: The Mercury has been a union organization for decades, while this will be the first such contract for the rest of the East Bay chain.

"We didn't get everything we wanted, but we think this proposal is a strong starting point to build our future relationship with the company," said Sara Steffens, unit chair of the East Bay Guild unit. "There are some things in this contract that nobody's had before at BANG-East Bay."

Some key provisions:

Media News Group CEO Dean Singleton has been making the rounds of the Colorado weeklies. Last week it was an interview with Westward; this week he talks to the Colorado Statesman ("Colorado's weekly nonpartisan political newspaper").

Then, halfway into the interview, in the first question about the newspaper industry, Singleton drops this:

"Some major metros that are surrounded by strong suburban local dailies aren't going to make it because they don't have enough of the ad pie to support what they do."

He didn't name drop the Chronicle specifically, but did he have to? Singleton's newspapers surround San Francisco to the north (Marin Independent Journal), east (Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, among others), and south (San Jose Mercury News, San Mateo County Times). Perhaps he's thinking of starting a pirate newspaper in a ship off Ocean Beach, just to cut off all avenues of escape.

Oh, wait. A sentence later comes this:

"The San Francisco paper is in trouble because it has a very high cost structure and is surrounded by suburban dailies" -- read: Media News holdings -- that take the overwhelming majority of the advertising. Suburban dailies there have done a better job -- not only at local news and circulation, but also in advertising. They're hurting, too, they're just not hurting as bad."

Take that, Chron management. We're smarter than you, we're better than you, and in a few months we'll still be breathing, even if it's labored breaths. The entire industry has taken to a new degree of candor as it confronts its economic crisis, but this brings it to a new level.

Look for more next week in the Denver Weekly News.

Such is the power of media consolidation that the words of a guy in Colorado can mean so much to the Bay Area. Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group, gave an interview to Westward, a Denver weekly, about the state of his company and journalism in general. MediaNews's 54 daily papers across the nation include the San Jose Mercury News, the Contra Costa Times and the holdings of the former Alameda Newspaper Group.

Last week we told you about his leaked memo that described plans to begin charging for content. This week, he elaborates further. Some highlights:

Now that the memo from MediaNews honcho Dean Singleton has had time to circulate and percolate, the blogosphere has had a crush of reaction. Despite the reasoned (if years-too-late) propositions outlined therein, not all the responses were favorable. A quick compendium:

* On Buzz Machine, Jeff Jarvis eviscerates the plan as one that could have been written in 1996, then responds by offering nine points clarifying why he feels newspapers are obsolete.

* At PaidContent.org, David Kaplan points out that when he spoke to Singleton last fall, "the publisher told me point blank that newspapers' troubles were primarily a result of the bad economy, rather than competition from the internet."

* Barbara Kelly at j.linx points out that there's "not a whole lot here that is new, especially since the plan relies on 'great local journalism' MediaNews will make available online. There's one problem right there: local reporting requires local reporters, and Singleton has been cutting their numbers right and left."

* Danny Gans simply sums up the strategy as "WE'RE BROKE + YOU GIVE US MONEY = PROFITS!!!YAY!"

* Finally, two quick step-by-step fixes, offered up by angry critics.

Jim Hopkins had this to offer on the Gannett Blog:
1. Give away absolutely 100% for free, your good to quite-good news and information via the newly commercialized Internet.

2. Clasp face in horror as share price falls, and stock options grow worthless.

3. Adjust, chop, cut, degrade, reduce, shrink, and otherwise weaken your principal product. Then, and only then, ask people to pay for it!

And Jamie Kelly at the Internet Remix:
Possible online revenue models for newspapers, as envisioned by Dean Singleton:
1) Charge for content people can get anywhere for free

If that doesn't work:

2) Sue people for not paying for content they can get anywhere for free

If that doesn't work:

3) Sue people who offer content for free

If that doesn't work

4) Go to readers' home, shake them by the ankles, take any money that falls out.

The editors of the SF Appeal and SFist—both free online news sites—are having a chuckle over MediaNews' decision to start charging for content.

From a back-and-forth between Eve Batey ("me") and Brock Keeling, posted on the SF Appeal, in reference to an article in the San Francisco Business Times:

(from the article: "giving away the content that appears in the print edition for free does an 'injustice to our print subscribers' and creates 'perceptions that our content has no value.'")
5:00 PM
me: so what I'm getting from this: if free web content creates the perception that "our content has no value," then local.com and these "niche web sites" will be populated with valueless content
amirite?
5:01 PM
Brock: exactly

(From the article: "The company also said that interactive revenue isn't growing enough to justify keeping access unfettered.")
me: when you say "interactive revenue" you have to say it in a robot voice
Brock: please. put. micro. payment. in. robo. slot.
me: beep boop beep new local portal for which we have yet to buy the domain
Brock: this is sad and makes me want to push my eyeballs out with my thumbs.

Read the whole exchange on the SF Appeal.

Photo credit: Dan Coulter (Flickr)