Newspapers

You remember Steven Mikulan? The widely-respected journalist and editor the LA Weekly canned last month after 25 years on staff? Mikulan was known for his versatility, earning accolades as both a theater critic and trial reporter. He counted Dominick Dunne as one of his many fans. Mikulan's most recent role at the paper was as editor of the LAW news blog, LA Daily. Said Kevin Roderick on LA Observed "I liked the aesthetics, if you will, that Mikulan brought to the Weekly's blog. He seemed to rise above the overheated city is falling apart while the Valley suffers meme that's currently in vogue at the Weekly, and his range of posts was a main reason I began checking the blog, well, daily."

Anyhow, the LAW fired him. And now they're looking for his replacement on Craigslist. Comfort with web publishing (including basic HTML) a must!!!

Previously on FBLA:

Cord Jefferson of The Awl takes exception to a recent article in Slate entitled "Paper Hangers: Newspapers aren't doing as badly as you think."

"Chillax, people," wrote Daniel Gross, who also works for Newsweek, a newsmagazine that fired lots of people last year before cutting its page count. "I can't help but think that many newspaper-doomsayers are conflating hope with analysis." Which brings us to our first problem: Based on this article, it would seem Gross believes there are actual Internet monsters-"newspaper-doomsayers," "digerati," etc.-cackling and blogging with glee every time a newsroom loses an editor. Mentioning the latest abysmal newspaper circulation statistics, he says "newspaper haters" must be joyous.

Newspaper haters is a group of people that doesn't really exist, but, even if it did, it wouldn't be composed of people in Internet media. Those people, if they don't occasionally do odd jobs for papers and magazines themselves, have close friends who do. Close friends who, if unemployed, are going to have nowhere to look for work but the Internet. In other words, a blogger who roots for print's demise is actually rooting for his pals to be fired and come steal his job. Nobody does that. Daniel Gross is projecting, arguing that the newspaper die-off is made up by making up some silly animosity on the part of the Web.

Next week, beginning November 8, the Tribune Co. newspapers including the LA Times are going to use as little Associated Press content as possible. It's an experiment designed to gauge whether discontinuing use of all AP content would be a practical option for the future. From Phil Rosenthal at the Chicago Tribune:

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

Some content Tribune Co. papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.

The heated debate over paywalls and charging for content continues to rage. Our sister blog BayNewser has turned to crowdsourcing for the answer, and the rest of the MediaBistro family is spreading the word:

The issue is coming to a head. The New York Times is going to decide "within weeks" whether to erect a paywall. And Newsday already has. Some in the journalism business think newspapers won't be able to survive unless they start charging readers to read their stories on the Web. Others think it'll be the beginning of the end, as readers flee to free sources of news - with advertisers close behind.

What do you think?

Do You Think Paywalls Will Save Newspapers?(trends)

Anyone keeping track of web traffic knows that celebrity news equals page hits, if not journalistic respectability. Maybe that's why the LA Times is launching a new celebrity blog. Below is the LAT memo, found via LA Observed:

To: The Staff
From: Lisa Fung, Online Arts & Entertainment Editor

Christie D'Zurilla is joining the entertainment team as a blogger for a new celebrity blog on latimes.com. The move is a natural progression for Christie, a former stand-up comic and SAG card holder who has been a copy editor and backstop for the Dish Rag blog since it launched on the site in 2007. In addition to anchoring the blog, Christie will edit posts submitted by other contributors.

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Just when it seems there's no humor left in the downfall of the newspaper industry, The Onion manages to make us chuckle:

According to a report published this week in American Journalism Review, 93 percent of all newspaper sales can now be attributed to kidnappers seeking to prove the day's date in filmed ransom demands.

"Although the vast majority of Americans now get their news from the Internet or television, a small but loyal criminal element still purchases newspapers at a steady rate," study author and Columbia journalism professor Linus Ridell said. "The sober authority of the printed word continues to hold value for those attempting to extort large sums of money from wealthy people who wish to see their loved ones alive again, and not chopped into pieces and left in steamer trunks on their doorsteps."

"These are sick, sick individuals," Ridell added. "God bless them for saving our industry."

Read the full article at The Onion website.

The pages are about to get skinnier. A Chicago Tribune article explains the downsizing of the LA Times:

Tribune Co. is trimming the margins of its daily newspapers in an effort to improve its financial margins. All its daily newspapers -- including the Chicago Tribune -- will adopt a web width of 44 inches in the coming months, the company confirmed Tuesday.

Web width is a measurement of the size of a roll of paper for the presses, and for consumers it translates to the width of four broadsheet pages. By reducing the web width, the papers should realize a cost savings because less newsprint is required.

What that means in plain speak is that the front page of the LA Times will now be 11 inches wide instead of 12. Tribune says this will have no impact on content.

Found via LA Biz Observed

Veronica Rocha details the extremely odd crime on the paper's staff blog:

A Glendale News-Press rack that stands outside the newspaper's office on Brand Boulevard suddenly went missing.

The 4-foot-tall, red news rack was last seen Friday evening.

The rack is heavy set and contained the Oct. 2 edition of the News Press.

Anyone with details may call Glendale Police at (818) 548-4840.

The motives of the thieves remain an utter, mind-stumping mystery.

Here's a real way to honor the victims of 9/11, by holding the government accountable for their spending in the name of homeland security. Meet California Watch:

Today, newsrooms across the state are running the first project produced by California Watch, the largest investigative reporting team in the state.

The series of stories written by reporter G.W. Schulz focus on waste and mismanagement in the state's homeland security grant programs. He had a lot to work with. Schulz, a staff member at the Center for Investigative Reporting, found scores of examples of waste, questionable expenditures and a lack of oversight.

California Watch and Schulz was able to help out several major newspapers around the state with local angles on the story. Even though we might get a nasty letter from them saying it, even the Sacramento Bee was able to take advantage of a non-profit's investigative reporting:

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Keith Olbermann calls out editors Keith Sharon, Todd Harmonson and David Bean by name for allowing Mark Whicker's horrible sports column treating Jaycee Dugard's 18 year detainment by a pedophile like she was in a curious soap opera-like coma where all she wanted was to see a sports page.

Previously on FBLA: