About 150 jobs in the Los Angeles Times newsroom will go – some will be compulsory redundancies – after owners Tribune Company said advertising revenue had plunged 15% in the first quarter.

The cuts are expected to take two months to implement, with the LA Times, the fourth highest-circulating paper in the US, integrating its print and online newsrooms. Job cuts have already begun in departments other than editorial.

“We’re trying to get ahead of the changes that are rumbling through the entire industry, and envision what the enterprise needs to look like on a sustainable basis, rather than always playing catch-up,” the LA Times publisher, David D Hiller, told the New York Times.

The LA Times had a newsroom staff of about 1,300 a decade ago. After the latest round of cuts, it will have around 720 – still the US’s second largest editorial staff behind the New York Times, according to the LA Times.

In February, Hiller said he expected to decrease the news staff by between 40 and 50 positions.

A group of investors led by Samuel Zell took over the Tribune Company in December. At the time Zell said he did not plan newsroom cuts.

But the $8.2bn (£4.1bn) takeover deal left Tribune, which also owns the Baltimore Sun, with more than $12bn of debt.

Tribune reported an operating cash flow last year of about $1bn, barely enough to cover annual debt repayments.

News of the LA Times cuts comes as Journal Communications said it would cut about 10% of its 1,300-strong work force at its Milwaukee Journal Sentinel paper and other titles.

The World Newspaper Congress and the World Editors Forum concluded last night with a spectacular gala dinner here in Gothenburg, Sweden. It was surely fitting that the main entertainer was a comic illusionist because, over the course of four days, the twin conferences suggested that publishers and editors are living in parallel worlds.

The congress, the publishers’ conference, was dominated by the upbeat statistics about the good health of newspaper sales, newspaper launches and newspaper profits unveiled by the chief executive of the World Newspapers Association (WAN), Timothy Balding, and the very positive interpretation of those figures by WAN’s president, Gavin O’Reilly. This was the great illusion.

Yet all the discussions at the editors’ forum were dominated by how to deal with the decline – whether rapid or gradual – of newspaper circulations and the accompanying flight of advertising as people turn their backs on newsprint in favour of the internet. This was the reality.

In fairness, the split wasn’t quite as pronounced as that. There were some eye-opening contributions to the congress, notably by Juan Antonio Giner and Dean Singleton . On the other side, I picked up on a couple of dinosaur comments from editors at the forum. Overall, however, there was a marked contradiction between the claims that newsprint newspapers are flourishing and that online is a mere distraction – yes, that’s the O’Reilly message – and the views of those coping with the problems caused by circulation declines.

So let’s deal first with those misleading figures. I am not saying that Balding’s statistics are false. However, there are two big problems with them. Firstly, as WAN becomes more efficient it is discovering papers that it never knew existed before, so there is no like-for-like comparison with previous years. Secondly, the figures are skewed by the undeniable surge in launches and sales in vast countries such as India, China and, to an extent, Russia.

I spoke to countless editors from the advanced economies – the United States, Britain and other European countries – who were genuinely baffled by the figures. Some were angry too because the optimism generated by the Balding-O’Reilly axis makes it more difficult for them to show the gravity of the crisis they face.

Scepticism about WAN’s buoyant message is widespread. On the way to last night’s dinner I sat next to a veteran Argentinian journalist who said the papers in his country were gradually losing sales. Shaking his head, he said: “I just don’t know how Timothy can say what he’s saying.”

What is truly sad is that Balding presented the circulation figures under the title “World trends in the newspaper industry”. But the last thing the global figures (up 2.7% over last year, reaching 1.7bn readers daily) do is reflect the underlying trend. My hunch is that the 150-year cycle of commercial newspapers is going to be concertinaed in the developing countries to about 20 years. That, surely, is the real trend we face. How else do we explain what’s happening in the US, Britain and Scandinavia, the countries that have the longest newspaper histories?

Of course, I realise that Balding and O’Reilly are acting as propagandists for the industry. They genuinely believe that digital missionaries, like me, have helped to influence investors and advertisers to turn their backs on newsprint. (I just wish we had that kind of power). They are right to say that newsprint is still the most profitable media sector, as it will be for at least the next five years.

But the trend, the future, is online. Editors know that, which is why so much of the forum was taken up with presentations about multi-media journalism.

That said, I’m certainly with O’Reilly over the misguided obsession with attracting young readers. Trying to capture youth, or supposedly recapture youth, “is an unnecessary fascination”, he said. Advertising agencies are “mesmerised by trying to attract 15 to 16-year-olds”. But, once again, there was a disconnect between the WAN president’s view and what people were talking about.

Several sessions were devoted to trying to encourage the young to become newspaper readers. What was the point? I recall these debates from 40 years ago. They made no sense then and even less sense today when youth are already accessing the news they want – the news they want – online.

Despite the clash between illusion and reality, however, there were some excellent contributions that offered real insights and genuine hope for journalism (as distinct from commerce). I was particularly taken with the four editors who took part in a session I chaired. Each of them had an exciting story to tell: two spoke of niche newsprint launches (in India and Spain), one told of transforming a sports paper (in Italy) while the fourth revealed how he has managed to launch, and sustain, an online news site (in France). And, of course, the networking is invaluable too.

So it was a goodish conference, but it could have been much better. There is still too much talk about making profits – or not making profits – rather than how to carry journalism forward in the digital age. Editors must take the lead at next year’s conference, due to take place in March in Hyderabad, India.

“I AM NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE

I AM WORRIED ABOUT THE PRESENT

—

I AM NOT WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF NEWSPAPERS

I AM WORRIED ABOUT THE FUTURE OF JOURNALISM”

And I ended with this one:

“IF LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO DRINK BAD BEER,

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO READ BAD PAPERS”

Juan Antonio Giner, vice president of the Innovation consulting group, presents to WAN his list of 20 ways to kill a newspaper, writes Stephen Brook.

1. be dull and boring
2. change slowly
3. print yesterday’s news
4. don’t take risks
5. expect different results by doing things the same way
6. insult your readers
7. lie to advertisers
8. please politicians
9. cover buildings not people
10. don’t interact with audience
11. print badly
12. print poor colour
13. write long
14. don’t care about design
15. don’t care about talent
16. don’t sack bad managers
17. pay badly
18. don’t innovate
19. milk the cash cow
20. expect miracles

And the solutions?

Try wild ideas
Be different
Shake up things
Raise hell and sell newspapers
Make readers smile
Great stories
Be hyper local
Integrate or die
Show, don’t tell
Talent, talent, talent
Journalism, journalism, journalism

“The alternative is not a business that values profits and good journalism, but a business where good journalism is the business,” said Giner, who then finished with a flourish that all journalists could appreciate, but in this case had a double meaning:

“Life is too short to drink bad beer.”

From yesterday’s World Editors Forum first session:

When asked about the multimedia capabilities of their own newsrooms, 54% of survey respondents said tht their newsroom is already integrated.

Well, cooperation, darling, is not integration.

What we need is NOT more “convergenza parallela” but fully and real integration.

John Zogby, the author of this straw poll, said that “there is no standard definition of what an integrated newsroom actually is and that this is a discussion that must occur amongst media executives.”

Sorry, but he is wrong.

When you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong anwsers.

And this is the case.

Editors don’t need to discuss any “standard definition of what an integrated newsroom actually is”

What we need from pollsters is to their job.

Or we will win wars before the battles start.

And this is the case.

If this is not and issue, why the 2008 World Editors Forum main issue is “The integrated newsroom: why, how and when”?

You don’t to a world forum to discuss something that is not an issue.

Well, the reality is the Forum is right, but the poll is wrong.

And the fully newsrooms integration is the topic of the day.

For editors and for consultants.

As a matter of fact 14 INNOVATION consultants involved on Intengration projects are meeting this weekend in Norfolk, Virginia (USA) to discuss our experience in this area since we coined the “information engine” concept more than 15 years ago.

Since then, we have seen less than ten really integrated newsrooms around the world.

So, the fist step to solve a problem is to accept that there is a problem.

As simple as that.

In your opening you said that Aftonbladet was a video rich site and that you’re a rival to Swedish TV broadcasters, could you explain how?
In a single week we have about one million visitors just to the video service. Even that is bigger that the whole of the audience to the biggest commercial TV site TV4. We are the biggest on web TV.

But Swedish public service television focuses on longer programmes for web TV but they don’t have the same reach.

Is yours just news programming?
We work with feeds from AP and Reuters, the same feed really that TV companies have for their news programmes. We use part of that, clip it down and re-edit it and so on.

The other part is that we have a lot of user videos, so when there is a big explosion or a back is robbed for example it takes just two minutes to get videos from the users.

So we do a lot of campaigning for the readers to send those to us and not to the TV stations.

The third part is that we have team of our own, both programming and editing, and also reporters going out on big stories.

And they put packages together?
We don’t make news programmes, we use news clips. From 30 seconds to three minutes. Then we have also starting small format programmes for the web, five minutes or so, that are based on fashion with our fashion reporter for example and they are starting to get very high numbers.

We have also started for the European Football Championships an 18 minute programme with our football experts.

Just a year ago it was just 30 seconds to a minute clips that were popular now there is a whole menu that is increasing fast.

What do you put that success down to?
We stared in 1997 and have had a small video web team all the way through. But we really launched web video services in a big way two years ago.

One very important point is that TV company websites just take clips from their ordinary news service…we noticed that when we have a video clip that we produce together with written text, when you integrate it into a news story the numbers go up.

We try to have moving pictures with big news stories as fast as possible and we are much faster than the TV guys.

As the clips get longer has that changed when viewers watch them?
In the afternoon people look at shorter clips then in the evening we have a prime time at eight. The same as TV. People are looking at more and watching longer formats here, using us in a different way. They are at home they are more relaxed and we are really taking people from the traditional broadcast TV to us.

We are not stealing a big audience yet but we haven’t had this peak at eight o’clock before…a lot of young people don’t look at linear TV anymore.

More than 100 Washington Post reporters, editors, photographers, artists and other journalists will take early retirement packages offered by the company as a way to cut costs, reducing the newsroom staff by at least 10 percent.

A number of familiar bylines will leave for good or no longer appear regularly in the paper, including those of military affairs reporter Thomas E. Ricks; feature writers Linton Weeks and Peter Carlson; health reporter Laura Sessions Stepp; science reporter Rick Weiss; the husband-and-wife foreign correspondent team of John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore; critics Stephen Hunter, Desson Thomson and Tim Page; Federal Diary columnist Stephen Barr; Weekend writers Richard Harrington and Eve Zibart; and Metro reporters Sue Anne Pressley Montes and Yolanda Woodlee.

Political dean David Broder took the package but will remain on contract; his column will continue to appear in The Post. Sports columnist and ESPN personality Tony Kornheiser also took the offer, but his most recent full-length column in The Post appeared in 2005. Since then, his presence has been largely limited to printed excerpts from his daily Talking Points video, which is planned to continue.

The list includes a number of Pulitzer Prize winners, including Ricks, Broder and Hunter.

“I realized about a year ago I no longer had to be the film critic,” said Hunter, a successful novelist who has a book coming out in September and commutes from Baltimore. “Part of it was New York Avenue fatigue, part of it was movie fatigue, part of it was CGI fatigue,” he said, referring to digitally rendered movie special effects. “I’m doing what The Post would not do: I’m firing myself for being too old.”

In addition, a number of Post editors who are less-known to the outside world will leave, including Deborah Heard, the Style section’s top editor, and Michael Keegan, who runs the News Art department. Other key editors leaving are Maralee Schwartz and Tony Reid from the Business section; Home editor Belle Elving; Travel editor K.C. Summers; Book World editor Marie Arana; and from the Style section, editors John Pancake, Peter Kaufman, Lynne Duke and Rose Jacobius, the longtime night editor and legendary headline writer.

Post employees from non-newsroom departments took the packages, as well, though no numbers were given.

The early retirement packages, or buyouts, were offered to staff members who were at least 50 years old and had at least five years of Post experience. Many will leave by the end of the month; some will stay on until the end of the year, including columnist and veteran foreign correspondent Nora Boustany. The deadline for accepting a buyout was May 15; yesterday was the end of the period staffers had to change their minds. More than 200 newsroom employees were eligible.

In exchange for leaving, employees will get a lump-sum payment based on their years of experience. The oldest and longest-serving Post employees can receive the equivalent of two years’ salary and begin receiving their pensions immediately.

This is the third round of buyouts The Post has offered in the past five years. The first came in 2003, the second in 2006. Post newsroom employment peaked at 908 in 2003; there are now about 780 full-time-equivalent newsroom workers. After the buyouts, that number will be about 700.

The Post will take the opportunity to restructure its newsroom in ways that may not be apparent to readers.

“There is no plan right now to eliminate sections of the paper” or to reduce the frequency of their publication, Managing Editor Philip Bennett said yesterday. The buyouts will affect “chiefly how we organize our coverage — more how we do things than what we do,” he said. Bennett called the buyouts a “very, very difficult and painful process.”

Steadily declining circulation and advertising revenue over the past two decades have led newspapers to reduce staff sizes through buyouts and layoffs, the latter of which The Post has avoided.

In 1999, for instance, the newspaper division of The Post Co. reported $157 million in operating income. By 2007, that number had fallen to $66 million. Daily average circulation of The Post peaked at 832,232 in 1993. It stands at 638,300.

The newspapers of the future?

The future of newspapers?

Well, let’s start the revolution as Mao said, with one first step.

And my “revolutionary” suggestion is very easy:

No more boring front pages.

After we do that, we can do more, of course, but this is very crucial.

Many of today’s front pages around world are just…

Boring.

Dull.

Depressing.

Garbage.

Yes, real garbage.

Who does this terrible job in these newspapers?

Theese front page editors or designers must be fired.

On the spot!

This is what is killing our industry.

Not internet.

Not Google.

Not MySpace.

Not Television.

Not Radio.

We!

Our poor news judgment.

Our lack of visual journalism.

Our boring, dull and depressing front pages.

Lok at these ones just from today:

You can do perhaps this in New York…

But not in Puerto Rico…

Hillary is going to sunny Puerto Rico and they select a picture of her with a winter coat.

What the hell is this?

Who writes these creative headlines?

Crucial vote?

Are you kidding me?

A green cover.

Yes, green fields.

So you know, they are green.

Yes, green.

Something really new.

Yes, a very compelling way to wake up your readers.

With things.

Like fields.

But what about we?

What about people?

What about real persons?

What about emotions?

What about human interest stories?

What about passion?

What about humor?

Anything but front pages with nothing to say!

Are you ready for more surprisses?

Well, look at this tremendous front page:

More green.

With politicians!

Posing politicians.

Is this a shocking picture?

No really.

It’s a boring one.

Who cares about them except their PR spinning people?

But, wait a minute, please, I have more and worst stuff to show to you.

Look at this!

Yes, yes, more politicians!

Happy ones.

Smiling but not too much.

Happy to know each other.

We are so fortunate to see them… shaking hands.

What an unique picture!

A Pulitzer one for sure.

Readers must be rushing right now in Shangai to get a copy of this paper.

A collectors issue for sure… of how bad a newspaper front page can be, my friends.

But, again, wait, wait, I have more wonders of the world.

Now from Belgium:

A front page just words!

Words.

Words.

Words.

In the most visual multimedia graphic Century of the human history.

The book-newspaper front page!

Again, readers must be really excited in Belgium.

This must be a sold out issue…

But if you are not interested in words, here is your paper in the same newsstand:

Well, green is the color of the day.

In Belgium too.

In a popular newspaper the readers are offer no pictures but this dramatic, compelling, unique and outstanding graphic…

They need to enter this front page at the International Malofiej Infographics Awards… and win the worst graphic of the year.

What a shame!

Let me finish just with three different front pages, all of them from the same country, and all of them also from today.

They are not exceptional but quite good compared with all these previous garbage.

And it shows different approaches to make your paper more appealing

First this one that goes from the front to the back.

Second, this from Salzburg that promotes reader’s pictures.

A front page done with the partnership of an advertiser, both audiences, readers and advertisers, will be happy today with this poster.

And third this simple but elegant, interesting and well done infographic.

So, let’s hire these Austrian front page editors.

They are doing quite better than the rest.

And now a final word:

I just wanted to be funny… but. I am sorry, this is a very serious issue:

The daily failure to engage, connect and involve with our front pages readers and advertisers, our CLIENTS!

And our daily front pages are our best marketing tool.

And it’s not just a design question.

Sometimes they are very bad because they don’t have real neews or real stories to tell us.

That’s the problem.

The solution?

Hard news.

Amazing stories.

Great pictures.

Smart graphics.

Good headlines.

Journalism.

Just jorunalism, my dear.

Journalism.

Period.

That’s has been and will be always the real revolution.

The future of newspapers.

And the newspapers of the future.

Let’s not be confused.

“The report of my death is an exaggeration.”
- Mark Twain to the New York Journal, 1897
The first daily newspaper in the United States was born 225 years ago this week. The triweekly Pennsylvania Evening Post in Philadelphia became a daily on May 30, 1783.
Since then, most cities or small towns across the country have had their own daily or weekly newspaper. Currently, 1,422 dailies and 6,253 weeklies are being published.
Sure, the slumping economy has made times a little tough for them. But most still have profit margins well above most other businesses.
Exaggerated “obits,” a la Mark Twain’s, are being peddled mostly by newspapers themselves.
When semiannual circulation figures were released recently, newspapers headlined slight losses among eight of the top 10. But little or no attention was given papers that are growing. Examples:
• USA TODAY, the nation’s largest, increased to 2,284,219 daily circulation. It has shown gains every year in its 25-year history.
• The No. 2 Wall Street Journal gained to 2,069,463. Under new owner/boss Rupert Murdoch, it’s the most improved newspaper in the country and likely to show significant sharp future increases.
• A dozen other newspapers with circulations of 50,000 or more had gains ranging from 1.21 percent to 7.61 percent, including in Baton Rouge, La.; Cincinnati; Mobile, Ala.; Munster, Ind.; San Jose, Calif.; Seattle and Trenton, N.J.
Importantly, newspaper owners and editors have embraced the Internet and now are 24/7 providers of news, information, entertainment and advertising.
The hunger for all that is greater than ever in history. That’s why newspaper-oriented media companies have a bright future.
So, if you’re a news junkie, you’ll probably continue to get everything you’ve been getting from your newspaper. And more.
Al Neuharth is founder of USA TODAY.

Following up on vows to bring spending in line with its shrinking revenues, The Seattle Times Co. sliced the staff at its flagship newspaper by 125 employees this week.

Of the total, 73 were laid off and 52 left voluntarily, with 51 accepting buyout offers, spokeswoman Corey Digiacinto said.

The Times announced a month ago that, to help save $15 million, it would freeze 60 unfilled positions and lay off up to 131 employees. Voluntary departures trimmed the number of layoffs needed by more than 40 percent, Digiacinto said.

Before this week’s cuts, The Times had 1,845 full-time and part-time employees.

In the newsroom, 19 workers accepted buyouts. They included classical-music critic Melinda Bargreen and nightlife writer Tom Scanlon.

Executive Editor David Boardman said the newspaper recognizes classical music and nightlife are important parts of the community, and plans to continue covering both beats.

“We have yet to figure out exactly who and how,” he said.

Fifteen newsroom employees were laid off, including most suburban reporters. The Times has closed its news bureaus in Bellevue and Lynnwood and stopped publishing zoned editions for the Eastside and Snohomish County.

Some reporters will work out of a new bureau at the newspaper’s production plant in Bothell, Boardman said.

Digiacinto would not provide a breakdown of layoffs and buyouts for other departments.

But the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild, the largest union at the paper, said 49 of its members were laid off — 24 in circulation, eight in advertising and two in operations, in addition to the 15 in news.

In addition to the latest cuts, The Times announced earlier this year that it would lay off 17 employees, mostly in circulation.

Advertising revenues at The Times and most other metropolitan newspapers have declined in recent years, at least in part because readers and classified advertising have migrated to the Internet.

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company