PNNA annual meeting approaches

The annual PNNA meeting is just around the corner! November 8-10 PNNA members will gather at The Benson Hotel in Portland, Ore., to discuss issues facing newspapers. Thursday, Nov. 9 will feature two sessions dealing with print, online integration, a session on human resources issues, the AP Hour and a presentation by API on the Newspapers Next innovation project. Friday, Nov. 10 Bob Hale, publisher of the Juneau Empire, will lead the Great Ideas Roundtable. The registration form and the schedule of events for the PNNA Annual Meeting in Portland are posted on the PNNA website. Call the hotel directly to make reservations; the deadline is Sept. 29th. For more information see the schedule and registration form or contact Jack Bates at jack@pnna.com. See you in Portland!

PNNA to announce award winners at annual meeting

PNNA will present awards for several contests at the 86th annual PNNA meeting in Portland. The results for the following contests will be presented:, C.B. Blethen Awards, Dolly Connelly Awards, 2006 Print Quality Contest, Ted M. Natt First Amendment Award and the Associated Press Staffer of the Year Award. For more information on the awards contact Bryan Clark at bryan@pnna.com or 888-344-7662. 

Newhouse School establishes national awards

The Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University has established the Mirror Awards to recognize excellence in media industry reporting. The awards honor reporters, editors and teams of writers who hold a mirror to their own industry for the public’s benefit. Honorees will be recognized for news judgment and command of craft in reporting, analysis and commentary on developments in the media industry and its role in the economy, culture and democracy. The first Mirror Awards ceremony will take place in New York City in late spring 2007. The deadline for entries, formally announced at a later date, will be in mid-January. The work must have been published or broadcast between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2006. Entries will be evaluated based on three criteria: excellence of craft, framing of the issue, and appropriateness for the intended audience. For more information click here.

NEWS:

Lee to sell some Pacific Northwest operations

Lee Enterprises Inc. announced in a press release last week its plans to sell its stand-alone publishing and commercial printing operations in the Pacific Northwest and a twice-weekly newspaper in Oregon. The asset sales are expected to be completed by early October. To read the entire release, click here.

Salt Lake Tribune reporter dismissed for plagiarism

Shinika Sykes, who reported on higher education in Utah for The Salt Lake Tribune, was dismissed last month after an allegation surfaced that she plagiarized material from the University of Utah’s student newspaper. “There’s nothing untrue in that story. There’s nothing false in that story, and I talked to everyone,” Sykes said in an article by The Tribune.

Seattle Times, union reach tentative pact

The Seattle Times and the largest union at the newspaper reached tentative agreement Wednesday on a new, two-year contract that calls for no across-the-board wage increases. In an article by The Times last month, Liz Brown, the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild’s administrative officer, said the union’s negotiating committee was divided on the proposal, and some might not recommend members ratify it. A vote has been tentatively scheduled for Sept. 13 and 14, she said. During negotiations, The Times agreed to let a Guild economist review some company financial records. The Guild said those documents confirmed that the paper, when one-time gains from property sales are excluded, had lost millions from 2000 to 2005. Next year, an arbitrator is expected to issue a final ruling on a long-running legal dispute between The Times and The Hearst Corp., owner of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, that Times executives have said is key to the paper’s long-term profitability.

Pentagon moves toward monitoring media

According to a story by the Associated Press, the U.S. command in Baghdad is seeking bidders for a two-year, $20 million public relations contract that calls for monitoring the tone of Iraq news stories filed by U.S. and foreign media. Proposals asked companies to show how they’ll “provide continuous monitoring and near-real time reporting of Iraqi, pan-Arabic, international, and U.S. media,” according to the solicitation issued last week. Contractors also will be evaluated on how they will provide analytical reports and customized briefings to the military, “including, but not limited to tone (positive, neutral, negative) and scope of media coverage.” The program comes during what has appeared to be a White House effort, before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, to take the offensive against critics at a time of doubt about the future of Iraq. The military last year was criticized for a public relations program in Iraq that included hiring a consulting firm that paid Iraqi news media to carry news stories written by American troops. Pentagon officials have defended the program as a necessary tool in the war on terror. But critics have said it contradicts American values of freedom of the press.

Online newspaper ad revenue jumps 33%

An article by MediaPost Publications revealed that newspapers’ online ad revenue topped $667 million in the second quarter, marking a 33 percent increase from last year’s $501 million, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Although this is the ninth consecutive quarter of double digit increases, the Web’s contribution to publishers’ bottom line was dwarfed by contractions in the print ad market. Print revenues dropped .02 percent to $11.7 billion, and combined revenues were almost flat, growing just 1.1 percent to end at $12.4 billion. Among the print categories, classified advertising held steady at $4.1 billion, retail ad spending was up 1.0 percent to $5.6 billion and national advertising was down by 3.8 percent, coming in at just under $2 billion.

College papers may be best way to reach students

According to a new report from Y2M: Youth Media & Market Networks and College Publisher, the campus newspaper may still be the most efficient medium to reach college students. Forty-four percent of students read their college papers in print at least twice per week and 33 percent pick it up at least once per month, while 24 percent read the online versions frequently, which is to say twice a week, and 33 percent visit it at least once a month. Comparatively, only 28 percent of undergrads frequently read their local, non-campus papers in print, and only 22 percent read them online. “Marketers may be surprised at how loyal students are to reading their college newspapers. Undergraduates really do have a keen interest in local news, so [college newspapers] can’t be beat because it’s content created for young people, by young people,” says Paul Pennelli, director of web products for College Publisher, an ad network for college papers and their web sites. Ad pricing for college papers is somewhat lower than for local papers of comparable circulation, and Pennelli says that while few college papers are audited, they seemed to have avoided the circulation declines plaguing general interest newspapers across the country. 

Acquisition puts MTV in college newspaper business

MTV’s college campus-based network, mtvU, announced that it has agreed to purchase Y2M: Youth Media & Marketing Networks, the owner of College Publisher, a network of online college newspapers. According to MTV officials, the move is meant to further expand the youth-focused media brand’s presence in the multimedia space. “This acquisition is in line with our business strategy of moving forward in the digital space and continually expanding our online portfolio of music, gaming, news and entertainment,” said MTV Networks chairman and CEO Judy McGrath. “Bringing mtvU and Y2M together is another avenue for us to be everywhere our audiences are, deepening our relationship with them and connecting them across every platform and device, all the time.” The purchase will add new features and media tools developed by mtvU — but the papers will retain autonomy in design and editorial. This transaction is expected to close in the third quarter. 

Calif. is first state to ask for national shield law

California lawmakers have made California the first state in the country to officially call on Congress to enact a federal shield law for the protection of journalists. The 76-0 Assembly vote followed a 40-0 vote in the Senate last week. The resolution, AJR 31, by Assemblywoman Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, urged Congress to pass one of six federal shield law bills that have been introduced this session. Evans said the absence of a federal shield law undermines state protections. California’s shield law cannot protect journalists from federal subpoenas. A poll conducted in May 2005 by the First Amendment Center and the American Journalism Review indicated that 69 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “Journalists should be allowed to keep a news source confidential.”

Valassis sues ADVO, rescinds offer

Valassis announced last week it is rescinding its $1.3 billion offer to acquire ADVO and is suing the direct mail company for fraud. Valassis said in a statement its action in Delaware Chancery Court was based on allegations that Advo management misrepresented the financial health of the company and failed to reveal internal control deficiencies. ADVO said in a statement following the receipt of the suit that “ADVO believes it is baseless and without merit and plans to defend itself and stay committed to the merger. ADVO can only surmise that Valassis’ action is merely a smokescreen to hide the fact that Valassis is suffering from an extreme case of buyer's remorse.” Valassis announced in July that it was acquiring outstanding shares of Advo for $37 each. The combined company was expected to serve about 20,000 advertisers, including 94 of the top 100 in the U.S., with direct mail, newspaper inserts, coupon fliers, e-mail marketing and other programs.

Jill Carroll among new Harvard fellows

Jill Carroll, the journalist held hostage for nearly three months in Iraq, was among fellows named Thursday at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Carroll plans to analyze the decline of international news bureaus in the changing newspaper industry, Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy announced Thursday. The other fall 2006 Shorenstein Fellows, who will do research projects, are Garance Franke-Ruta, senior editor at The American Prospect; William Powers, media critic for National Journal magazine; and Allan M. Siegal, former assistant managing editor and standards editor at The New York Times. The center also will have three visiting faculty members: Kennedy School faculty member Matthew Baum, former Los Angeles Times editor John Carroll and Evan Thomas, assistant managing editor of Newsweek.

PEOPLE:

Two Seattle Times executives promoted

Two top newsroom executives at The Seattle Times were promoted in moves Publisher Frank Blethen said are part of a broad plan to cement leadership for the transition into the next generation of family ownership. Michael Fancher (pictured far left), who has held the role of executive editor for 20 years, will move into a newly created position of editor-at-large. Managing Editor David Boardman (pictured near left) will become executive editor. Fancher, 60, retains his role as senior vice president of The Seattle Times Co. His new role includes some of the content and community-outreach duties he has taken on in the past. But he will devote more time to readership and audience research, he said, and to developing long-term strategy. Boardman, 49, has been the newspaper’s managing editor since 2003 and will oversee the news content of The Times and its website.

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