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LA VERNE FANG-TASTIC HALLOWEEN with La Verne Mayor Don Kendrick and La Verne First Lady Gaynel Kendrick.

Amazon launches News app

Amazon has launched its News app on Fire TV, the company announced Oct. 22.

The aggregating app will appear on Fire TV home screens titled “News.” No download or subscription is required to use the feature, as it’s free and supported by ads.

Users can watch news clips and live feeds from providers such as CBS News, Bloomberg, HuffPost, Yahoo, Reuters, Sports Illustrated, Entertainment Weekly and others. When users want to watch the news, they can say, “Alexa, play the news,” and Alexa will automatically open the app and play content. Users can customize their news experience with the app.

The News app will be automatically downloaded to Fire TV devices, and users should see it on their home screen in the ‘Your Apps and Channels’ row. In addition to the News app, there is also a dedicated News row on the Fire TV homescreen. 

The app will be available to Fire TV customers in the U.S.

News and Tech

Thursday Morning in the Blogosphere

Redondo Beach, California

Misinformation makes its way to TikTok - Poynter

People might not trust local news that much after all - Nieman Lab

Price elasticity tests yield revenue opportunities for publishers - INMA

#KeepTruthAlive on International Day to End Impunity - Editors Weblog

NBC’s Digital Journalists Say They Are Forming a Union - The New York Times

A Good Design Can Help Newspapers Build Their Identity - Editor and Publisher

Comments on News Articles are Dead, Paving the Way for Conversations - INMA

Quad Reveals Plans to Sell Its $200M Book Printing Platform - Printing Impressions

Harvard’s student newspaper is under fire for practicing journalism - Los Angeles Times

New Media and Gannett announce board of directors for combined company - USA Today

French printing house gets Commander from Koenig & Bauer

French printing house L´Est Republicain is building a new press hall in Houdemont, France, to accommodate a Commander press line from Koenig & Bauer.

The line will replace two Miller-Nohab presses.

Koenig & Bauer will handle relocation of the press from Belgium to France.

At the same time, an additional web lead is to be added to the Commander.

Dismantling of the Commander is to start at the start of the coming year, and commissioning in the new press hall is already scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2020.

An extensive training package is being discussed and will be aimed at ensuring a stable start-up by familiarizing the operating and maintenance personnel with all aspects of the new press, according to Koenig & Bauer.

EBRA Group, the parent company of L´Est Republicain, prints up to 1.2 million copies daily at peak periods. The company concentrated production capacity to four printing plants in 2018

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Today in Labor History October 31st

Seattle’s Hooverville

George Henry Evans published the first issue of the Working Man’s Advocate, “edited by a Mechanic” for the “useful and industrious classes” in New York City. He focused on the inequities between the “portion of society living in luxury and idleness” and those “groaning under the oppression and miseries imposed on them”. – 1829

Convict laborers sent to break coal mine strike, Occupy Seattle was inaugurated (in 1931), 400 stone masons finish Mt. Rushmore after 14 years, and more.

Tennessee sent in leased convict laborers to break a coal miners strike in Anderson County. The miners revolted, burned the stockades, and sent the captured convicts by train back to Knoxville. – 1891

Occupy Seattle was inaugurated. Led by unemployed lumberjack Jesse Jackson, the first Hooverville was built on vacant land owned by the Port of Seattle near Pioneer Square. Within two days over 50 shacks were erected and by 1934, 600-1000 people were living in them. By 1941, Seattle’s “Hooverville” covered 25 blocks. Hoovervilles eventually spread throughout the country. – 1931

After 14 years of labor by 400 stone masons, the Mt. Rushmore sculpture was completed in Keystone, South Dakota. – 1941

The Upholsterers International Union merged into the United Steelworkers Union. – 1949

The International Alliance of Bill Posters, Billers & Distributors of the United States & Canada surrendered its AFL-CIO charter and was disbanded. – 1971

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Tampa Bay Times lays off 7

The Tampa Bay Times laid off seven journalists last week, Poynter reported.

The layoffs involved five full-timers and two part-timers. Two other openings won’t be filled.

St. Petersburg, Florida-based Poynter owns the paper.

Also, the paper will merge its national and local sections in print Monday through Saturday, Poynter said.

A large auto dealership advertiser was lost to the paper recently and digital revenue did not amount to as much as hoped, Poynter said.

In August, a partnership of Tampa Bay business leaders, including Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik and Paul Tash, chairman of the Tampa Bay Times, raised its loan to the Times Publishing Company by $3 million. With the boost, the total loan amounts to around $15 million, Poynter said. The Times said the increased funds would go to its pension plan.

News and Tech

Wednesday Morning in the Blogosphere

Los Angeles Times Internships - Los Angeles Times

Why editorial illustrations look so similar these days - Quarizy

Refinery29 Brings in Ex-Nylon Editor, TIME Makes 3 More Hires - Folio

Deadspin staffers revolt against order to cover just sports - New York Post

New programme launched to drive Asian newsroom change - WAN-IFRA

It’s time to get personal with consumers, or get lost - America's Newspapers

When New York Times Reporting is Weaponized - Columbia Journalism Review

This Wisconsin newsroom wants to cover esports like high school football - Poynter

Pretty much no one has seen Facebook News yet, but it’s off to a rough start - Nieman Lab

USA TODAY’s Digital Innovation Continues with Launch of Simplified, Faster Website - EP

McClatchy to cut about 30

One percent, or about 30 staff members, will be cut at McClatchy, according to an email to staff from McClatchy President and CEO Craig Forman, Poynter reports.

Copy editors seem to be taking the biggest hit, according to Poynter. No reporter jobs will go, according to the memo.

In his memo, Forman also indicated that the company’s board is expected to name Peter Farr, McClatchy’s chief accounting officer and corporate controller, as Elaine Lintecum’s successor as CFO. It’s among a number of personnel and regional structure changes outlined in the memo.

In a different memo, Kristin Roberts, McClatchy’s vice president of news, wrote about expanded shared editing teams and centralizing print planning. The memo said the company would complete the removing print production completely from its newsrooms by moving print planning into the McClatchy Publishing Center (Charlotte, North Carolina).

In other news involving the company, McClatchy is planning to drop the Saturday print editions of the Fresno Bee and Modesto Bee in the near future, the Sacramento Business Journal reported.

McClatchy also plans to drop the Saturday print of The Tacoma News Tribune and The Olympian in January, KING-TV reported.

Earlier in the year, the company dropped Saturday print of the Myrtle Beach Sun News (South Carolina), the Durham Herald Sun in Durham (North Carolina) and the Bellingham Herald (Washington).

News and Tech

Today in Labor History October 30th

Ed Meese

In an escalation of their attempts to intimidate and run the Industrial Workers of World out of Everett, Washington, Sheriff Donald McRae and his deputies rounded up 41 Wobblies who had come to town to support striking shingle workers, beat them, and forced them to run through a gauntlet of “law and order” officials armed with clubs and whips.  The IWW would return, however, with greater numbers on November 5. – 1916

Sheriff Donal McRae and deputies round up and beat 41 Wobblies, Ed Meese urges employers to spy on workers to catch them using drugs.CLICK TO TWEET

Ed Meese, Attorney General in the Ronald Reagan administration, urged employers to begin spying on workers in locker rooms, parking lots, shipping and mailroom areas and even the nearby taverns to try to catch them using drugs. – 1986

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Facebook News launches; some publishers paid, others not

Facebook is testing Facebook News with a subset of people in the U.S. The service provides stories from hundreds of news organizations. Some news organizations have deals with Facebook to be paid for their content, people in the know on the plan say, The Washington Post reports.

Among those to be paid are Dow Jones and Bloomberg. Among those who don’t have deals are The Associated Press and Reuters, according to the Financial Times.

The content will be curated by a combination of a human team and computer algorithms.

Organizations that are participating include The Washington Post, Business Insider, BuzzFeed News and numerous local sources, the Post said. The New York Times will probably be on board, the Post said, but the paper’s deal is not yet done.

During the initial test, Facebook will showcase local original reporting by surfacing local publications from the largest metro areas across the country, beginning with New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Houston, Washington D.C., Miami, Atlanta and Boston, Facebook said in its post announcing the news tab launch.

In the coming months, the social media giant will include local news from Today In, Facebook’s local news and community information tab, which recently expanded to over 6,000 U.S. towns and cities. 

“We are concerned that anything less than a fully comprehensive solution could put some publishers that are already struggling at a distinct disadvantage,” wrote News Media Alliance President and CEO David Chavern about the launch. “So, while it’s a good start, currently it is far from a comprehensive solution.”

News and Tech

Tuesday Morning in the Blogosphere

The newspaper industry

What’s Left of Condé Nast - New York Magazine

Getting Away with Murder - Committee to protect Journalist

LinkedIn now has a newsroom of 65 journalists. It's hiring more - CNN

Will Facebook’s new news tab be a milestone or millstone? - Ken Doctor

What Tribune Publishing Company Traders Should Know - Urgence News

Does your news organization owe African Americans an apology? - Poynter

G/O Media Tells Deadspin Staff in Leaked Memo: Stick to Sports - Daily Beast

Los Andes Reshapes Strategy to Integrate its Print, Non-Profit Products - INMA

Man accused of killing 5 Maryland newspaper employees admits to crimes - Fox

What working at a suicide prevention hotline taught me about being a journalist - Medium

Meredith sells Money to Ad Practitioners

Meredith has closed on the sale of the Money brand to Ad Practitioners, a portfolio of digital brands, including ConsumersAdvocate.org. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The sale includes the money.com website, which averages 4 million monthly unique visitors, according to comScore. Currently, 14 employees work on money.com at Meredith offices in New York. Under terms of an employee lease agreement between the parties, the 14 will remain Meredith employees until Jan. 31, 2020, at the latest.

“We are pleased to find a great home for the Money brand and wish all parties great success under the new ownership," said Meredith Chief Development Officer John Zieser. "We continue to make significant progress on our asset sales and expect to shortly announce additional transactions at attractive multiples.”

Meredith acquired the Money brand as part of its January 2018 acquisition of Time Inc. After a portfolio analysis, Meredith decided to sell non-core properties, the company says. Assets sold to date have included the Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated brands, in addition to some international holdings.

News and Tech

Today in Labor History October 29th

Katsu Goto

Japanese immigrant and labor advocate Katsu Goto was strangled to death, his body then strung from an electric pole, on the Big Island of Hawaii by thugs hired by plantation owners. They were outraged over Goto’s work on behalf of agricultural workers and because he opened a general store that competed with the owners’ own company store. – 1889

Japanese immigrant and labor advocate Katsu Goto was strangled to death, the stock market crashes, beginning the 10-year Great Depression, and NOW was founded in Chicago.CLICK TO TWEET

The Wall Street Crash, also known as Black Tuesday, the Great Crash, or the Stock Market Crash of 1929 was the most devastating stock market crash in U.S. history when taking into consideration the full extent and duration of its aftereffects. The crash signaled the beginning of the 10-year Great Depression that affected all Western industrialized countries. – 1929

The National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded in Chicago. – 1966

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Network of websites pose as local newspapers on Facebook

Monday Morning in the Blogosphere

Standard to drop its Friday edition - The Kentucky Standard

Network of websites pose as local newspapers on Facebook - Wood TV

Google And Facebook Didn't Kill Newspapers: The Internet Did - Techdirt

Morrissey performs in LA wearing explicit anti-Guardian vest - The Guardian

Wyoming small newspapers successful despite digital upheaval - Cowboy State Daily

Facebook’s news project will pay some publishers millions of dollars for content - Recode

Turkish fact-checkers are at war against old military operation footage and photos - Poynter

Google News Initiative lab helps Latin American publishers grow digital subs - WAN-IFRA

Facebook has finally decided that the best way to deliver news is to act like a newspaper - Recode

Community Impact Newspaper Announces Plan to Expand into Atlanta in 2020 - Community Impact

Today in Labor History October 28th

The Gateway Arch

Union organizer and anarchist Luisa Capetillo was born in Ariecibo, Puerto Rico. She organized tobacco and other agricultural workers in Puerto Rico and later in New York and Florida. In 1916 she led a successful sugar cane strike of more than 40,000 workers on the island. She demanded that her union endorse voting rights for women. In 1919, three years before her death, she was arrested for wearing pants in public, the first woman in Puerto Rico to do so. The charges were dropped. – 1879

Union organizer and anarchist Luisa Capetillo was born, the Gateway Arch was completed without loss of life, and more.CLICK TO TWEET

Two mine workers were killed in Virden, Illinois. – 1898

The Gateway Arch, a 630 ft high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri was completed after two and a half years. Although it was predicted 13 lives would be lost in construction, not a single Ironworker died. – 1965

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Sunday Morning in the Blogosphere

Old time pressmen at the Los Angeles Times

Unleashing New Weapons in the War on Fake News - Towards AI

Five Takeaways from a New Study of Local Digital News Publishers - RJI

When journalists delete tweets, they may be erasing the first draft of history - CJR

College journalists are the only ones left to cover some American cities - Daily Bulletin

‘Digital is the testbed’: Why the 2020 election is focused on online advertising - Digiday

Kellyanne Conway and Newspaper Face Off Over Warning to Reporter - New York Times

Local Newspapers Could Be Crushed Under the Debt of Mega-Mergers - Editor and Publisher

Google announces funding for local news, including The Salt Lake Tribune - Salt Lake Tribune

This Portuguese fact-checking platform reached its break-even point in less than a year - Poynter

Facebook launches news service featuring curated stories from Chicago Tribune - Chicago Tribune

Express KCS gets ISO 27001 certification

Express KCS, an independent provider of creative production services to global brands and publishers, has received ISO 27001 certification, the company said. The  ISO 27001 is the international standard that describes best practices for an information security management system (ISMS). ISO 27001 certification covers Express KCS' creative production services supported by MediaFerry, their proprietary, cloud-based workflow management system.

The certification process calls for an organization to establish compliance with 114 information security controls. The overall process to achieve certification required Express KCS to undergo a rigorous assessment by independent auditors to evaluate the current standards and practices followed by the company.

Express KCS is already ISO 9001:2015 certified, and the current considerable step “guarantees that the clients' information is kept safe as per the international standards—further enhancing the excellence of the solutions provided by Express KCS,” according to the company.

News and Tech

Today in Labor History October 27th

New York City subway

The New York City subway opened on this date in 1904. The first rapid-transit system in America ran its first route from City Hall to Grand Central Station, then west to Times Square and north to 145th Street. More than 100 workers died during the construction of the first 13 miles of tunnels and track. – 1904

40,000 Philadelphia textile workers were fired in an attempt to purge the factories of “radicals”. – 1920

The New York City subway opened, 40,000 Philadelphia textile workers were fired, the National Negro Labor Council was formed and more.CLICK TO TWEET

Three strikes on work-relief projects in Maryland were underway today, with charges that Depression-era Works Projects Administration jobs were paying only about 28 cents an hour, far less than was possible on direct relief. Civic officials in Cumberland, where authorities had established a 50-cent-per-hour minimum wage, supported the strikers. – 1935

The National Negro Labor Council was formed in Cincinnati to unite black workers in the struggle for full economic, political and social equality. The group was to function for five years before disbanding. Many union leaders of the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO) and the American Federation of Labor (AFL) considered it a Communist front. In 1956, it was officially branded a communist front organization by the U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownwell and disbanded. – 1951

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Friday Morning in the Blogosphere

Newspaper Industry Circulation Continues Decline

Meredith Sells Money Magazine Brand - Folio

Understanding Information Disorder - First Draft

Tampa Bay Times lays off 7 newsroom employees - Poynter

Facebook to offer ‘News’ tab for users - The Washington Post

South Georgia newspaper publisher found dead in office - AJC

Another Of My Old Newspaper Homes Is Gone, Gone, Gone - WVXU

Journalists Covering Catalonia Demonstrations Attacked, Harassed by Police - CPJ

The Media Industry Might be Healthier Than You Realize - Whats New in Publishing

Storyful’s new investigative reporting unit helps publishers dig into social media - Nieman Lab

Chapman University apologizes to student newspaper for restrictions on P. Bush’s speech - OCR

Family Circle to cease publication

December’s issue will be the last for Family Circle, CNN and others reported.

The magazine targeted at women goes back to the early 1930s.

Meredith spokesperson Art Slusark told CNN Business that about 70 staff members out of 6,000 working at the company were laid off last week. That number included some 25 employees from Family Circle.

Some management at Family Circle will be moved to different positions at other Meredith-owned entities.

Des Moines-based Meredith bought Family Circle from Gruner + Jahr USA in 2005.

In 2018, Meredith bought Time Inc. and subsequently sold off Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated. The company has held onto women-focused brands like Real Simple, Martha Stewart Living and Southern Living, CNN Business points out. Meredith recently said it will launch a publication with TV hosts Drew and Jonathan Scott of HGTV series "Property Brothers" early next year.

News and Tech