Annual PNNA conference draws 74 to Spokane

Seventy-four people, including representatives from 28 member newspapers and a dozen suppliers traveled, to Spokane for the PNNA annual meeting at the Davenport Hotel Nov. 9 through Nov. 11. The ambiance of the beautifully restored Davenport Hotel set the stage for outstanding programs and the networking opportunities that make these annual functions so worthwhile. Highlighting the meeting were: a presentation by Paula Ellis, VP Operations for Knight Ridder, this year’s keynote dinner speaker; a session on best circulation practices, a shield law panel, a panel of editors and reporters who discussed the coverage of the online activities of Spokane Mayor Jim West, an AP presentation on its pilot project for young readers and a great ideas roundtable.

Interspersed with the sessions were the awarding of the C.B. Blethen Memorial Awards for Distinguished Newspaper Reporting, the Dolly Connelly Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism, the Print Quality Awards, the Ted Natt First Amendment Award and the Washington AP Staffer of the Year Award. Complete winner lists are available for viewing on the PNNA website as is a photo gallery of many attendees.

The final event was the annual business meeting of the PNNA membership. At that meeting it was agreed to hold the 2006 annual meeting at the Benson Hotel in Portland on Nov. 8 - 10, 2006. Additionally, it was voted to amend the bylaws of the corporation to expand the Board of Directors of PNNA from 10 to 15 members and to hold the association dues at current levels for the coming year.

The PNNA Board of Directors are (from left): Harry Whipple, Newspaper Agency Corp., Salt Lake City; Heidi Wright, Herald and News, Klamath Falls, Ore.; Tony Baker, The Register-Guard, Eugene, Ore.; Dennis Waller, The Chronicle, Centralia, Wash.; and Stephanie Pressly, Idaho Press-Tribune, Nampa. Directors absent: Bob Blethen, The Seattle Times; Cheryl Dell, The News Tribune, Tacoma, Wash.; Mike Sexton, Anchorage Daily News; Tom Whitehouse, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.; and Rufus Woods, The Wenatchee World, Wash.	Mark Henschen, circulation director, North County Times, Escondido, Calif., delivers a presentation on circulation best practices.
Frank Blethen (left) and Jeff Wohler, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore., which received three first-place awards for newspapers with circulation over 50,000 for Deadline Reporting, Investigative Reporting and Diversity Reporting.	Shield Law Panel panelists are (from left): Rowland Thompson, executive director, Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington; Washington state Attorney General Rob McKenna; Davis Wright Tremaine attorney Marshall Nelson; and King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng.

Save the date: May 3-5 for West Coast NIE conference

PNNA is helping to coordinate a West Coast NIE conference May 3-5, 2006, in Tacoma, Wash. This united program will provide for a critical mass of attendance, which is appealing both for participants and for vendors, said Jim Henderson, NIE manager at the Tacoma News Tribune and Northwest coordinator for the conference. He said the combined conference would give constituents the chance to meet NIE colleagues from a new area and to pick up new ideas and trends. Kelley Arakelian at The Fresno Bee, and vice president of the California Newspaper in Education association, is working with Henderson on conference plans. PNNA has mailed Save the Date postcards to NIE managers, circulation directors and publishers.

PNNA training set for March 21-22

Early plans for the PNNA Spring Training Conference, to be held March 21-22, 2006, in Portland, Ore., include these seminars:

* Online Tech for Journalists: how to create and present news content on different platforms

* Online Advertising Sales

* Circulation for District Managers

* Human Resources (topics to be determined)

PNNA members can expect a format and cost similar to the fall conference held in Seattle. The fall seminars were $125 per person. Seminars will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will include continental breakfast and a lunch buffet. Watch for specifics about seminar topics in this eBulletin, the PNNA listservs and your mailbox.

Seattle Times’ Dardarian is APME president

Suki Dardarian, deputy managing editor for The Seattle Times, took over at the end of October as president of the Associated Press Managing Editors. She worked a summer internship at The Seattle Times in 1980, and returned five years ago after working for The Herald in Everett and The News Tribune in Tacoma. She has been active in APME for nine years, a period during which it has launched an array of projects about journalism excellence, reader connection, ethics, training and freedom of information. "APME matters because it is a place where editors stop, think, debate, learn, teach and argue," she answered. "It takes energy but it gives energy. It rejuvenates you."

Washington A.G. to introduce shield law

Washington Attorney General Rob McKenna plans to have a bill introduced next year that would shield reporters from having to reveal confidential sources, according to a Nov. 5 report in The Seattle Times. Washington currently doesn’t have a statutory shield law. However, the state has what is considered a qualified privilege based on past court rulings.

Judge dismisses libel suit against Post-Intelligencer

A libel lawsuit filed in May by a Washington state forensic scientist against the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and one of its investigative reporters was dismissed in mid-November, according to a Nov. 19 report in that newspaper. The article in question involved two Oregon men who were released from prison after being wrongfully convicted of murder. The scientist’s lab work and testimony were part of the state’s case to convict the two men. It was the first time since 1905 that a defamation case in Washington was dismissed on a motion to dismiss. According to the report, “The judge noted the rarity of such an action, but said he thought it was merited because the plaintiffs’ suit presented no evidence that the article was false.”

Spokesman-Review wins Online Journalism Award

SpokesmanReview.com was honored with the 2005 Online Journalism Award for general excellence among medium-sized sites. In selecting The Spokesman-Review’s (Spokane, Wash.) website, the judges said they were impressed by the site’s efforts to make journalism more transparent with such features as Daily Briefing, where the staff critiques the paper and plans news coverage; News is a Conversation, which allows readers to talk about news coverage; and Ask the Editors, where editors reply to readers’ questions.

Great Falls Tribune launches CareerBuilder pub

The Great Falls Tribune, Montana, launched a new state employment advertising publication called CareerBuilder Montana in early November. The free weekly publication includes job openings from across Montana. It complements CareerBuilder.com, an online employment site that averages more than 26 million unique visitors each month, which is owned by Gannett Co. – the Tribune’s parent – and two other newspaper companies.

3 private equity firms consider bid for Knight Ridder

The Associated Press reported Dec. 1 that three private equity firms are considering a bid for Knight Ridder Inc., the newspaper publisher whose three largest shareholders are pressing for a sale, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The Blackstone Group L.P., Providence Equity Partners Inc. and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. are in the early stages of preparing a bid for the San Jose, Calif.-based company, which publishes 32 newspapers around the country including PNNA newspapers The Bellingham Herald, Wash.; The Idaho Statesman, Boise; and The Olympian, Olympia, Wash.

Craigslist founder to launch online journalism program

Craig Newmark – founder of craigslist.com – told those gathered in England at a forum called “Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford” that he plans to launch a “major online journalism project within three months that will copy his ‘wisdom of the masses’ approach to advertising and apply it to journalism,” according to a Nov. 22 report on MediaGuardian.co.uk. The report quoted Newmark: “Things do need to change. The big issue in the U.S. is that newspapers are afraid to talk truth to power. The White House press corps don’t speak the truth to power – they are frightened to lose access they don’t have anyway.” Newmark declined to discuss details of the program, “but implied that they would involve using web technology to let readers decide what the major news stories should be.”

Local online media buying service launched

Chicago-based Intergrent on Nov. 28 announced the launch of a new service – Centro – that enables interactive agencies to build and scale advertising campaigns across hundreds of local websites. Centro makes it easier and cost-efficient for agencies to buy advertising on hundreds of branded local websites at once, including newspapers, TV sites, radio sites, alternative weeklies and business publications. Centro's system includes more than 1,300 local sites encompassing online sites from each of the Top 100 markets in the U.S., reaching more than 50 million unique users each month.

Teens spend hour a week reading newspapers

Fifty-four percent of teens have spent one or more hours reading a newspaper in the last week, according to a new study by Teenage Research Unlimited for the Newspaper Association of America, Mediapost reported on Nov. 23. The section of the newspaper most popular with teens by far is the comics, followed by, in descending order, sports, entertainment, advertising (food, clothing, etc.), and local and community news.

Alabama offers tuition, stipends for 'J' grad program

The University of Alabama is taking applications for a new on-site, tuition-free, stipend-paid graduate program in community journalism next fall. The Knight Foundation-backed program will soon accept applications for six students to begin one-year programs in August 2006. Information is available at www.comj.ua.edu.

Microsoft develops online classifieds

Newspaper publishers are about to confront yet another competitor for their dwindling classified advertising revenues. Microsoft Corp. is soon to offer a preliminary version of an online classified service, code named "Fremont." That's a neighborhood in Seattle that hosts Sunday open-air markets.

Traffic to newspaper websites continues to grow

According to a new report from the Newspaper Association of America, more than 47.3 million people visited newspaper websites in September, the most in any month since NAA began tracking online usage in January 2004. That's up from 40.9 million users – 15.8 percent – over the same period last year. And it represents 31.9 percent of all Internet users. The report speculated that the spike was caused in part by high interest in coverage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Nielsen/NetRatings on Nov. 15 reported an 11 percent year over year (through October) growth of newspaper website readers. That surpasses growth in the number of active Internet users, which was 3 percent. Furthermore, almost one out of four U.S. Internet users reads online versions of newspapers. Nearly 22 percent of newspaper readers prefer online sources, while 7 percent divide their time between print and online. The majority of readers, 71 percent, still prefer print newspapers. The nation's top newspaper websites were: NYTimes.com, USAToday.com, WashingtonPost.com, LATimes.com and SFGate.com.

Microsoft, AP team for online video news

Microsoft Corp. is teaming with The Associated Press to offer an advertising-supported online video news network in the first quarter of 2006, according to an AP report on Nov. 9. The network will be offered free of charge to AP's 3,500 newspaper and broadcast members, who would share in the revenues generated by the network based on how much traffic they generate. Microsoft will supply the technology, video player and advertising support to the network, while AP's broadcast division will provide the video, which will feature about 50 different stories per day.

Tool measures who's listening to podcasts

Audible Inc. is introducing a tool to help advertisers measure how many people are listening to podcasts, according to a Nov. 11 report in The Wall Street Journal. The tool tracks not just how many people download a podcast, but also whether it is played back and for how long.

API invests $2 million to test new business models

The American Press Institute on Nov. 14 announced a $2 million, yearlong project to conceive and test new business models to help newspapers thrive in the next decade. "Newspaper Next: The Transformation Project" will explore the trends disrupting the newspaper industry and develop practical business initiatives newspapers can adopt. Under the leadership of Stephen T. Gray, former managing publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and former CEO and editor of The Monroe (Mich.) Evening News, the project will: Assess the threat to newspapers in the next decade, including emerging competition; determine opportunities for newspapers, including implementation of available new technology; suggest executable new business initiatives – products, services and strategies – with detailed rationales; and prove implementation guides for these business plans, addressing the management of change and risk.

People:

Ed Navarro heads circulation for The Wenatchee World

Ed Navarro joined The Wenatchee World as circulation director and will oversee the 26,000-subscriber database, customer service and distribution of the daily newspaper. He brings more than two decades of experience in circulation, including stints as circulation director for the Brownsville Herald in Texas, the Hudson Valley Newspaper Group in New York and the Imperial Valley Press in El Centro, Calif. Most recently, he was distribution director for the Grand Junction Free Press in Colorado.

Fennells named ME of Idaho State Journal

Ian Fennels, 35, was named managing editor of the Idaho State Journal, Pocatello. He came to the paper from the Aberdeen American News in Aberdeen, S.D., where he was city editor. He’s also worked for newspapers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin. Fennells succeeded Chris Hunt, who resigned to work as spokesman for the sporting and conservation group Trout Unlimited in Idaho.

In Memoriam:

Laurie Stanton, 48

Laurie Stanton, director of financial accounting and controller of The Seattle Times, died Nov. 10, after battling breast cancer since 1996. She was 48. Stanton began at The Times in 1981 as a financial analyst. Over the years, she was promoted to accounting systems manager, financial accounting manager and controller. Five years ago, she was promoted to director of financial accounting. Born Aug. 11, 1957 in Dansville, N.Y., Stanton graduated from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y. in 1979. She is survived by her husband, Jim; 13-year-old son, Michael; father, Barry Haywood; mother, Lucinda Price; and sisters, Cheryl Haberly and Janine Bonfiglio.

CALL TO READERS : Send stories to the editor Nancy Brands Ward.

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