SJSU Journalism 61- Writing for Print, Electronic & Online Media - Prof. Bob Rucker. Fmr.CNN Corresponodent

March 30, 2009 (AP) — Tribune Co., a newspaper publisher and television station
owner operating under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, said Monday that it has
combined a newspaper and two TV operations in Connecticut in a bid to become
more efficient and cut costs.

The move puts the operations of The Hartford Courant and WTIC-TV and WTXX-TV
in Hartford under one roof, an unusual pairing, and places a TV executive in charge
of both. The company said Monday that Richard Graziano, the general manager
of the two TV stations, will become the publisher of Courant.

He replaces Steve Carver who has been publisher of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
paper since November 2006. The Courant is the nation's oldest continuously
published newspaper with a weekday circulation of about 165,000 and
Sundays at 235,000.

The TV stations, the only two local stations in Hartford, will broadcast news from
a new studio to be constructed in the paper's newsroom. They each plan to add
two half-hour broadcasts, at noon and 6 p.m.

"This is the future of media," said Randy Michaels, Tribune's chief operating
officer, said in a statement. "Whether in print, over the air, or online —
the delivery mechanism isn't as important as the unique, rich nature of the
content provided."

Tribune filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors in December. It also owns
the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun as well as 23
TV stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

Union: 'S.F. Chronicle' Could Cut Up to 225 Jobs
"Most disheartening, we were told that even if they agreed to slash pay and
vacations as we offered, it would make no difference: the devastating job cuts, affecting
more than one-third of our members, most likely would happen anyway," a union bulletin
stated. "And the paper might be closed anyway."

SPJ Chapter Seeks 'Public Discussion' on 'SF Chronicle' Future
The Northern California Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists today called
for “a public discussion" of Hearst Corporation’s threat to cut jobs or close the
San Francisco Chronicle.

'San Francisco Chronicle' May Be Sold, Shut Down
The San Francisco Chronicle will be sold or closed unless major cost-cutting measures -- including an unspecified "significant reduction in the number of unionized and non-union employees" -- can be realized within weeks, parent company Hearst Corp. said
Tuesday evening.

Feb 24, 2009 - Editor and Publisher - Mark Fitzgerald

UPDATE: Top 30 Newspaper Web Sites See a Rise in Uniques
Newspapers are having an abysmal start to 2009 with advertising revenue plunging in
double digits. But on the readership side -- online, anyway -- it's a different story. For the
month of January, 25 of the top 30 newspaper Web sites experienced a rise in unique visitors, according to the latest report from Nielsen Online.

Feb 20, 2009 - Editor and Publisher - Jennifer Saba

by Chris Lefkow Chris Lefkow – Wed Mar 25, 10:36 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The Christian Science Monitor prints its final edition on
Friday, bringing a 100-year run as a daily newspaper to an end but beginning a new
era as an online publication.

The Boston-based Monitor announced plans in October to eliminate its daily print edition
and become the first national US newspaper to adopt a Web-based strategy.

Like other US dailies, the Monitor had been losing readership and print advertising
revenue to online media for years and circulation was hovering around 50,000 by the
time the decision was made to shut down the presses.

Editor John Yemma said the award-winning newspaper will still print a weekly edition
for subscribers and a printable three-page daily news digest by email but the main
focus will be on its website, CSMonitor.com.

He said visitors to the website, which currently attracts more than two million unique
visitors a month, should not expect an immediate and dramatic change overnight
but a steady improvement over time.

"It's not like we have new flash graphics or anything going up," Yemma told AFP.
"I'm sure we'll have to struggle to find our feet in the first couple of days.

"But after that you'll see the website will start to probably look different because it will be manned more hours of the day with fresh content," he said. "Our desire, of course, is to ultimately be 'round the clock.

"By freeing our journalists from print we should be able to devote more of their time
and attention to Web content," Yemma said.

He said the Monitor had cut its editorial staff from 97 employees at the end of last
year to around 80 but was maintaining eight foreign bureaus, a network of stringers
and six domestic US bureaus outside of Boston and Washington.

"All that stays intact and our budget stays virtually the same there."

Yemma said the downsizing was hard "but now that we've completed that and
we're on the verge of making our big push I think there's a lot of excitement about us
being pioneers."

He said the Monitor, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last November, did not
currently plan to charge visitors to its website like some other newspapers, notably the
Wall Street Journal, are doing.

"I've looked at all those proposals that are out there -- micropayments, paywalls,
and so forth -- and frankly I don't see anything yet that makes sense," he said.

"But we're never going to say never if we can figure out a way to do it."

The Monitor, which has won seven Pulitzer Prizes, the top US journalism award,
was forecast to lose 18.9 million dollars in the budget year ending April 30 requiring
a subsidy of 12.1 million dollars from its backer, the Christian Science church.

The Monitor's Web shift comes less than two weeks after another major US newspaper,
the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, printed its final edition and was reborn as an online-only publication, and with other dailies in trouble.

Hearst Corp., owner of the P-I, as the 146-year-old daily was known, shut down the
print edition of the Seattle newspaper on March 17 and announced plans to publish
entirely on the Web with a greatly reduced editorial staff.

The E.W. Scripps-owned Rocky Mountain News closed down in February,
leaving Denver, Colorado, with just one newspaper, and several other newspaper
groups have recently declared bankruptcy, including the Tribune Co., owner of the
Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and six other newspapers.