Monday, December 18, 2006

Newspapers in the News

Seattle Pressmen Upset Presses Not Rolling Last Week
That was 12:50 a.m. Friday, when all power was lost to the Seattle Times North Creek plant in Bothell. Frank Paiva, vice president for operations, sensed that his people might not be able to print any more newspapers. He was right. At that point, three of the plant's four presses had been struggling to print advance sections of the Friday Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Those runs should have been done several hours before, but power lurches and surges had created havoc for the presses. A fourth press, which isn't used for the advance runs, had started to print the mainsheet of the Friday Times, but only 13,000 copies were off when the power crashed.

Reader comments in jeopardy
This is the second time since StarNet launched in 1995 that the Star's online forum has forced management to rethink allowing online interaction. The last foray, the Community Front Page, was yanked completely in 2000 after attempts to maintain civility failed.

Newsroom Mentoring: A Rare but Essential Element of Journalism
One of the casualties of this hothouse environment is the needed respite from the daily pressures to be able to think aloud with colleagues and with the more experienced folk about the nature of the job and the challenges that are facing journalists.

Santa Barbara News-Press OwnerThreatens Hair Stylist Over Sign
The owner of Santa Barbara County's largest daily paper accuses a hair stylist of defamation and orders him to take down a sign bearing her name.

Ex-publisher gets prison term
Former Newsday Publisher Robert Johnson was sentenced Friday to 15 months in federal prison and fined $50,000, following his plea to possession of child pornography and obstruction of justice.

Belo's Monthly Revenue and Statistical Report November 2006
Belo Corp. today issued its statistical report for the month of November. Consolidated revenue for November increased 8.6 percent versus November of last year.

Beacon Journal publisher lays out vision
Moss acknowledged that the Beacon Journal has been through difficult times. Profit has fallen 60 percent in six years, he said, and to align the company with that new reality, the staff was cut from 715 to 630.

Chron takes swing at free papers, flyers
It's not often that a newspaper will print an argument calling for restrictions on the First Amendment, but the Sunday Chronicle carried just such an op-ed -- written by a former assistant managing editor at the paper, Alan Mutter. Mutter says San Francisco should set up a program like the do-not-call list that would permit residents to stop the delivery of "menus, advertising circulars, business cards, pamphlets, political propaganda, phone directories or giveaway newspapers."

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