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Tuesday, December 9, 2008 By

Los Angeles Times owner may file for bankruptcy

Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune owner Tribune Co. is preparing for a possible bankruptcy filing, reports the Los Angeles Times.

The Chicago-based media conglomerate, which also owns the Baltimore Sun and five other major daily newspapers and a string of local television stations, is wobbling under a $12 billion debt load, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Tribune has been shaky since last December, when real-estate mogul Samuel Zell led a debt-backed deal to take the company private, it says. Tribune sold off Newsday to reduce debts. But the company's cash flow may not be enough to cover nearly $1 billion in interest payments due this year, says the Journal.

The Financial Times in London is also feeling the pinch of recession and falling advertising revenue.

It is offering buyouts and freezing salaries for employees who earn more than $50,000 a year, reports Reuters. Some of the staff are also being offered three-day weeks to cut costs, says the Guardian.

The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times are also having problems, says the Economist. It adds:

News Corp’s shares have actually fallen by more this year than those of the New York Times Company. And it is only Mr Murdoch’s diversification many years ago into television and the internet that has camouflaged what a poor financial investment it was to buy the Journal.

The Times now boasts the most visited American newspaper website,

But (the New York Times publisher) Mr Sulzberger has yet to find a business model on the web that generates enough money to support the Times’ high-quality, but expensive, global network of reporters. He is running out of time to do so. Meanwhile, Mr Murdoch dreams of becoming his puppet-master.

The Man Who Owns the News, the new Murdoch biography,  “describes in convincing detail Mr Murdoch’s ever-stronger desire to acquire the New York Times”, the Economist adds.

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Monday, December 5, 2005 By

Who says blogs fry brains?

The messenger can distort the message. Professor Naomi Baron did not say a word against blogging or about the "shallow nature of reading online" — the Register was putting words in her mouth. I had a look at her own column in the Los Angeles Times where she did complain about students’ reluctance to read complete texts and asked, "Has written culture recently taken a nose dive?"

But there was no mention of blogging at all though the Register reported how her article "provoked an outpouring of empathy" from bloggers who moaned their online activity was sapping their patience to think deeply or read complex novels.

Baron’s complaint was not about the quality of reading or writing on the Net, but a reluctance among students to read at all. "Many of this generation are aliterate — they know how to read but don’t choose to,” she wrote.

And she blamed the search engines, not the blogs, for this. Students used to doing a quick search on the Net don’t want to plough through whole books, she wrote. Her generation too preferred short cuts and used Cliff’s Notes, she said, but Google, Amazon etc have made things too easy for students today.

"Will effortless random access erode our collective respect for writing as a logical, linear process?" she asked. "Reading successive pages and chapters teaches us how to follow a sustained line of reasoning.

"If we approach the written word primarily through search-and-seizure rather than sustained encounter-and-contemplation, we risk losing a critical element of what it means to be an educated, literate society."

It is a serious complaint and the Register quoted that last paragraph. But it twisted the professor’s words into a dig at blogs by getting bloggers to moan about their own deficiencies.

The thing was cleverly done. The Register report did not actually say the professor criticised blogs. But it gave that impression by linking her words to what the bloggers had to say. It grabbed my attention and I blogged about it. But that was not what the professor said.

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Sunday, December 4, 2005 By

Blog frying my brain?

Pan Blogs have been rubbished for ranting, venting, blathering, wool-gathering, navel-gazing and various other reasons, but now they are alleged to fry brains as well.

The Register, in a report "10 per cent of US Net users addicted, needing therapy", zooms in on the mighty fuss kicked by a professor of linguistics, who claimed that "the shallow nature of reading on the web diminished her students ability to reason".

The professor, Naomi Baron, "isn’t the first to observe this", said the Register. "Academic researchers have found that net use creates a problem-solving deficit disorder among children, and cognitive scientists have discovered the bombardment of email depletes IQ faster than marijuana."

It then quoted from Baron: " If we approach the written word primarily through search-and-seizure rather than sustained encounter-and-contemplation, we risk losing a critical element of what it means to be an educated, literate society."

And some Netties agreed. "Her column (in the Los Angeles Times) provoked an outpouring of empathy", said the Register, and went on to quote a blogger:

"It actually destroys brain cells or something, because if I’ve been doing too much online reading, I lose the patience for following a sustained or subtle argument, or reading a complex novel."

My goodness, even jocks and couch potatoes may not care for books, so why blame overexposure to the Net for any loss of patience to follow "a sustained or subtle argument" or read "a complex novel"?

It’s true most writing on the Net is not in a scholarly style, but nor are the stories in the daily newspaper. Even most books, for that matter, are not scholarly treatises — and for a very good reason. There is only so much the brain can absorb.

It may not be a bad thing that most blog templates and web pages are designed for short pieces. That reduces the risk of information overload. However, that can result not just from online but offline reading too. After all, what can be more mind-numbing than a legal document?

That is why many good writers — unlike wily lawyers — strive for clarity and simplicity. It was not a blogger who wrote: "Jesus wept."   

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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 By

The news about online news

The Los Angeles Times’ experiment in getting readers to write a joint editorial online — a "wikitorial" (see previous post, ‘Wikitorial’) — could not have been entirely disinterested. US newspapers are trying various ways to engage readers because of declining circulation. Poynter Online recently reported on this in an article. Old media have been buying new media to expand their online readership. The Poynter report mentioned recent deals like the New York Times’ acquisition of About.com and Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder’s purchase of Topix.net. The media companies would not have bought the websites unless they were popular with Internet users like me. 

Perhaps the most popular online news provider, however, is not a newspaper at all. It’s the BBC.

How big is the BBC?

"The improbable success online of Britain’s lumbering giant of a public-service broadcaster is largely down to John Birt, a former director-general who “got” the internet before any of the other big men of British media. He launched the corporation’s online operations in 1998, saying that the BBC would be a trusted guide for people bewildered by the variety of online services.

"The BBC now has 525 sites. It spends £15m ($27m) a year on its news website; and another £51m on others ranging from society and culture to science, nature and entertainment. But behind the websites are the vast newsgathering and programme-making resources, including over 5,000 journalists, funded by its annual £2.8 billion public subsidy.

"It is the success of the BBC’s news website that most troubles newspapers. Its audience has increased from 1.6m unique weekly users in 2000 to 7.8m in 2005; and its content has a breadth and depth that newspapers struggle to match."
– The Economist

Total newspaper readership has fallen by about 30% since 1990, says the Economist.

But some newspapers are beginning to be successful online as well. The Economist report, which covers British newspapers only, says: "The Guardian’s site is on the brink of making money. FT.com broke even at the end of 2002, after lots of investment, and the Daily Telegraph’s site started paying its way from 2002 onwards."

Interestingly both the Guardian and the Telegraph can be read for free online though the Telegraph requires registration, and the FT too offers some free content. Subscription sites such as the Times and the Independent are not doing too well, it seems.

If only the New York Times remained fully free too! The NYT columns are about to become subscription-only, but look at the Los Angeles Times. It introduced subscriptions for Calendar Live but made it free again after a couple of months. If a newspaper wants online readers, it had better stay free.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2005 By

‘Wikitorial’

I got the news from the BBC when the experiment had already been halted. But hats off to the Los Angeles Times for trying something as bold as this.

Newspapers run editorials giving their views and letters to the editor where their readers sound off. LAT came up with a new twist called a "wikitorial", allowing readers to rewrite an editorial on the newspaper’s website. That’s a huge step forward. It simply wouldn’t have been possible without the wiki and the Internet. Indeed Wikipedia founder James Wells was involved in the experiment.

The LAT reported yesterday:

"Nearly 1,000 users registered to participate in the rewriting of Friday’s lead editorial. Called ‘War and Consequences’, the piece argued for the US to set goals for training Iraqis to replace US troops in Iraq and for the firing of Defense Secretary Donald H Rumsfeld if those goals were not met."

Alas, the feature was removed only two days later "after some users sabotaged the site with foul language and pornographic images", said the LAT. But it added it might resume the experiment later.

It’s certainly a great idea. The paper was really trying to be the voice of its readers.

Of course, it wouldn’t have been possible before newspapers went online. Newspapers traditionally would have to be printed for their readers whose  views could be published only in subsequent issues. Now they can give their feedback immediately online — and even rewrite articles published on a wiki. The technology is there — and LAT had the vision to use it. Even bloggers may not have as much freedom on a team blog — there may be editors or moderators vetting the posts. One could argue such vetting is necessary to keep out offensive material, but still LAT deserves all the credit for trying something bold and new. Anyone interested can read the story here.

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