Week-old News: Volume 10 — Feb. 7, 2010
Comments In Week-old News, I look at the biggest news stories involving newspapers, social media and the internet from the past week.
Seattle Times makes announcement on debt: In a note to its readers, The Seattle Times announced it had reorganized its debt to secure the paper’s near-term future. In a business story on the company’s Web site, Times reporter Lynda V. Mapes wrote the paper had put up as collateral two of its South Lake Union properties, including the paper’s headquarters, to secure the restructured debt.
The report continued to discuss the staff reduction and other measures the paper has used to survive. The papers’ circulation has been boosted 32 percent, however, after the other main Seattle paper, the Post-Intelligencer, canceled its print operations in March of last year.
Publisher Frank Blethen said the Times did not make money in 2008 or 2009, but he was optimistic profitability would return as the economy improves.
MediaNews announces paywalls: Bloomberg reported Friday that MediaNews would roll out a paywall to two newspapers in a pilot program which, if successful, would likely be adopted at other papers in the company, possibly including the Denver Post.
Readers would have access to 25 “premium” articles a month before being charged an undetermined fee. MediaNews president Joseph Lodovic told reporter Greg Bensinger the premium content would include some columns and investigative reporting.
Lodovic wouldn’t say whether subscribers to the papers (the Chico, California’s Enterprise-Record and York, Pennsylvania’s Daily Record) would get the content for free or have to pay for an upgrade to see all the content.
MediaNews, whose parent company recently filed bankruptcy, is using Journalism Online LLC to help process the payments.
See more on the New York Times’ upcoming paywall, and on Newsday’s unique subscriber initiative.
Santa Barbara News-Press loses arbitration case: The Santa Barbara (California) News-Press was ordered to pay the legal fees of a former editor, The Associated Press reported.
Arbitrator Deborah Rothman ordered Ampersand Publishing, parent company of the News-Press, to pay $900,000 for the fees of former editor Jerry Roberts after the paper filed a $25-million suit against Roberts for defamation and breaking a confidentiality agreement.
The AP said a judge still has to confirm or vacate the judgment.
Roberts quit his job in 2006 amid complaints that the newspaper’s publisher, Wendy McCaw, was interfering with editorial content. A following shakeup at the paper included many staffers who quit or were fired.
Flyonthenews
Comments appreciated (button above).
Themocracy