Sunday Morning Media News

Are You There Sam? It's Me, Blogger - Washington Post
So last week I chose not to mention the fact that Chicago Tribune ace NBA writer and resident old person Sam Smith hates bloggers. With Leather's Sam Smith takedown was swift and painless, and I figured he had sort of handled the issue. Also, With Leather used a naughty word as a tag, which I'm not allowed to do.

Moving Printing Presses Video - Post Register
Next door to the press room at the new PPC is the CTP room, and it now has tile on the floor. CTP stands for computer-to-plate, a state-of-the-art process that takes full pages from a computer to the metal plate that is placed on the press and prints the actual images you see on your copy of the paper.

Microsoft, Hearst unite to deliver newspapers online - SFGate
Microsoft Corp. and Hearst Corp. unveiled a software service Thursday that allows newspaper readers to download stories and read them even when not connected to the Internet. The News Reader, which is now available to readers of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, enables readers to automatically transfer a sampling of stories from the newspaper's Web site onto their computers by clicking on a desktop icon.

Post-Gazette Union Approves Deal - Houston Chronicle
The newspaper's management sought union concessions due to several years of operating losses. The Post-Gazette has said that it has lost $23 million since 2003, and it has predicted a further operating loss of $20 million this year. The newspaper reported in October that its daily circulation in the last six months had plummeted from 230,887 to 212,075 and its Sunday circulation declined from more than 382,000 to just under 355,000.

LAT Book Review in for a change - LAObserved
Newsroom sources at the Times expect the Sunday Book Review will be folded into a new hybrid opinion section and delivered in Saturday papers. The new section that some staffers have seen would be tabloid-sized, with the favored format apparently using dual front pages like the New York City tabs.

Newspapers brought financial woes upon themselves - Outlaw.com
Newspapers had a pre-internet monopoly on readers' attention which meant that classified advertising became an extremely profitable part of their business. Since the advent of classified advertising, online margins have been eroded. Since the almost entirely free Craigslist became utterly dominant across the US, publishers say margins have plummeted.

The Lights Are On At The LA Times - But no One is Home - LA Cowboy
Now I have done a lot of nagging about headline writers at the LA Times and the even worse ones on the website - who write headlines that contradict the content of stories. I have also mentioned the pissed off LA Times writers who regularly inform me of their unhappiness with headlines appended to their stories which distort what they have written.