Newspaper Deathwatch

Earlier this week, the USC student-run online publication Neon Tommy published a profile of LA Weekly editor Drex Heikes. The story was not unflattering, and I was impressed by Heikes' candor about many of the issues facing the paper. He openly acknowledged how grim things had become:

"Sometime in the winter, spring, it bottomed out," Heikes said gravely from his new desk at the Weekly's Culver City headquarters. "I wasn't here, but from what I understand, there were sparks on the pavement. The shocks were gone. There was just nothing left."

Of course Heikes is cocksure he can turn the place around. His assessment is ballsy and honest, and who wouldn't appreciate that? Well, LA Weekly staffer Dennis Romero, for one. Today he wrote a blog post titled, "For The Record: Setting Things Straight Regarding Neon Tommy Report On LA Weekly." And to be fair, the Neon Tommy story contained a glaring factual error. It reported an editorial staff of six, when it is in fact about three times that. But Romero is more eager to contradict his editor's acknowledgment of problems at the paper - or to blame them on the former staff.

Tommy's gives some ink to the notion espoused by the Weekly's critics -- mostly former employees -- that the paper has seen better days and is need of rescuing or, in the parlance of the Neon ones, that it needs saving -- a "Herculean task."

(The headline of the Neon Tommy story was "Heikes' Herculean Task: Save The L.A. Weekly.")

Herculean is not the word. Once we dust off the notepads that were rarely used by some of the Weekly's columnists of yesterday, it'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.

His attacks on the pre-New Times LA Weekly come in unbelievably broad strokes that are not only unfair but inaccurate. For every desk-bound opinion columnist like Harold Meyerson, there was a hard-hitting reporter like David Zahniser whose notebook was never, ever dusty.

As one of the former staffers being slammed indiscriminately by Romero, I'm admittedly a little peeved. I'm gonna take a walk around the block, punch a wall, listen to some Joan Jett - but I'll be back. And I've got a few things to say.

NBC San Diego was less than impressed with the San Diego Union-Tribune's new automated pagination system:

Our sister blog MediaJobsDaily notes that the paper "eliminated 192 positions back in May after being bought by an equity firm. Now, it seems like they may want to hire some of those folks back...at least the copy editors."

Previously on FBLA:
192 Jobs Cut At San Diego Union-Tribune

Artists Jason Eppink and Posterchild are repurposing abandoned newspaper boxes in New York city. "When the last vestiges of a collapsed empire litter the landscape, there's only one thing to do: throw a bumpin' party and dance on the ruins."

More details here.

Cool, someone considering journalism has a future. Who said the press is fatalistic?

Nick Penniman from Huffington Post's investigative fund discusses the biz.

Via Twitter

Yahoo News reports:

The science section of The New York Times contained an unusual article on Tuesday. The story about a huge floating garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean was not written by a Times reporter but by a freelance journalist whose expenses were paid by hundreds of donors in an experiment in "crowd-funded" journalism.

The travel expenses for journalist Lindsey Hoshaw's trip were raised through Spot.Us, which describes itself as a "nonprofit project to pioneer 'community funded' reporting."

Spot.Us, according to its website, allows the public to "commission investigations with tax deductible donations for important and perhaps overlooked stories.

Previously on FBLA:

"The new growth industry is going to be corruption, corruption on a small scale, because that's the newspapers meat and potatoes is to kind of watchdog that type of thing," says former LAT reporter turned crime writer Michael Connelly.

Speaking of watchdogs, the commentary on this episode was by LA Weekly's Jill Stewart going out to our new Chief of Police Charlie Beck. Watch it here.

Chief Administrative Officer Gerry Spector indicated yesterday in a memo about retirement plan changes that the Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) was going to be killed. Ed Padgett has posted the memo on his Los Angeles Times pressmen blog, and we found the following excerpt especially interesting:

When we emerge from bankruptcy, we expect that the shares of Tribune stock held by the ESOP will be extinguished and the plan terminated. Duff & Phelps, a nationally recognized appraisal firm, recently determined that as of December 31, 2008, the value of a share of Tribune Company stock held by the ESOP was $0. Nonetheless, in keeping with the plan provisions, the company has made the initial allocation of shares to the accounts of eligible employees. You will receive a letter in a few weeks reflecting this valuation and informing you of the number of shares you were allocated, as required by the plan.

Wonder how much it costs the company to send notices to all those employees about exactly how shares of ZERO they own?

This summer, pressman Ed Padgett broke the news on his blog that on June 7, 2009, the L.A. Times Sunday circulation had dropped below a million for the first time in decades. Of course we covered it on FBLA. And then we all got a stern talking to from the LAT because of it. You see, *official* circulation numbers come from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

So Padgett must have been feeling vindicated when the ABC released the new circulation numbers today. From Editor & Publisher:

The Los Angeles Times reported its daily circ is off 11% to 657,467 and 6.7% on Sunday to 983,702.

Of course, it's wretched news - especially for employees of the LAT like Padgett. But when you've been given a hard time by your employer, who happens to be a newspaper, for doing accurate reporting about the newspaper - well, that pressman must be feeling a wee bit vindicated.

Previously on FBLA:

When Editor and Publisher's Greg Mitchell mentioned on his Twitter feed last night they were going to release the numbers of newspaper circulation decline, we thought,"This is going to be really bad." But 11.05% for the LAT is really bad, but way better than we figured. So there's the last bit of our Monday Morning optimism.

From E&P:

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL -- 2,024,269 -- 0.61%

USA TODAY -- 1,900,116 -- (-17.15%)

THE NEW YORK TIMES -- 927,851 -- (-7.28%)

LOS ANGELES TIMES -- 657,467 -- (-11.05%)

THE WASHINGTON POST -- 582,844 -- (-6.40%)

For the rest of the numbers go here.

Not only are the former LAT scribes banning together online to get work, the shutter bugs are too. Matt Randall didn't want us to leave out those laid off "worth a thousand words" journalists.

They're at The Pro Photography Network. Their press release states:

"We will shoot anything, anywhere, for anyone," said Matt Randall, who worked at The Times for 22 years as a Photographer, Photo Dept Operations Manager and lastly Financial Operations Manager of The Foreign Bureaus. He left the company in September 2008.

Randall tells FBLA in the four months most of the almost all laid off former LAT photographers have gotten work. So if you're a bride or just want to look like one...call these guys!