In a deal focusing on growth rather than new cuts and layoffs, financier Donald Sussman will invest at least $3 million in MaineToday Media. The company's employee stock ownership plan will be maintained and the Portland Newspaper Guild will continue to hold two seats on the board of directors. "We have worked hard in partnership with management and the board of directors to help shape a plan to modernize our technology and strengthen this business," Guild President Tom Bell said. "We are encouraged that Maine Values LLC supports that plan and is providing the resources to fund it."
NABET-CWA, SPJ Also Sign Letter to Mayor, Police Chief; Seek Meeting
Staff —
January 31, 2012— The Newspaper Guild
Local and national Guild leaders, together with NABET-CWA and the Society of Professional Journalists have signed a letter to Oakland's mayor and police chief over police interference -- again -- with journalists covering Occupy demonstrations. At least five credentialed journalists were detained and/or arrested during protests Jan. 28. Click here for a PDF of the letter.
Pakistani officials have arrested a senior militant accused of involvement in the 2002 murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was also a former member of the Guild. Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi and beheaded the following month.
The recent dustup between Nate Thayer and The Atlantic concerning payment (or lack thereof) for freelance writers has highlighted a fact obvious to many working in newsrooms across all platforms: Writers, as a profession, don’t make very much, especially considering the volume of work they perform on any given project.
Beginning in the summer, The Washington Post will start charging frequent users of its website, asking those who look at more than 20 articles or multimedia features a month to pay a fee, although the company has not decided how much it will charge. The paper said, however, that it will exempt large parts of its audience from having to pay the fees. Its home-delivery subscribers will have free access to all of The Post’s digital products, and students, teachers, school administrators, government employees and military personnel will have unlimited access to the Web site while in their schools and workplaces.
Women outnumber men in journalism schools, yet men outnumber women when it comes to investigative reporting. Even in 2013, "the face of watchdog journalism is male," says Sheila Coronoel of Columbia's Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism. And that needs to change. “Having more women journalists means women’s perspectives on policy and other issues are represented more fully and women’s concerns are reflected on the front pages, not relegated to the ‘lighter’ sections of the newspaper." Chart: The dominance of male bylines.
Here's the good news out of Pew's 2013 report on the state of the news media: newspaper circulation is hodling steady, and even growing on Sundays. But the bad news is that, “There are more signs than ever that the reduced reporting power in the news industry is having an effect and may weaken both the industry’s capacity to produce in-depth journalism and its credibility with the public, at the same time that others are gaining more voice.”
Stephen Mindich, Publisher —
March 15, 2013— Boston Phoenix
In what is the final issue of his newspaper, Boston Phoenix Publisher Stephen Mindich writes, "As everyone knows, between the economic crisis beginning in 2007 and the simultaneous radical changes in the media business, particularly as it has affected print media advertising, these have been extremely difficult times for our Company and despite the valiant effort by many, many past and current staff to attempt to stabilize and, in fact, reverse our significant financial losses, we have been unable to do so and they are no longer sustainable."
Worldwide intimidation of journalists, up to and including unsolved murders, is rising, a panel of experts on the issue warns. Further, panelists said that the United States, despite its free press traditions and its constitutional protections, rarely protests or raises the issue. Photo: From Committee to Protect Journalists video on Syria.
Aron tells it this way: "The latest rumor about the next owner of the L.A. Times, which is for sale, is a doozy. A bombshell. It's a doozy wrapped in a bombshell exploding inside a Drudge siren. Multiple sources tell L.A. Weekly that Charles and David Koch -- the infamous right-wing billionaire brothers -- are considering an offer on either the Tribune Co. newspaper group, which includes the L.A. Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun or the entire Tribune Co., which includes more than 20 stations like WGN and KTLA Channel 5."
