Walk In, Grab a Muffin and Watch a Newspaper Reinvent Itself

New York Times photo

Torrington, a city of 36,000 in northwestern Connecticut, pockmarked with abandoned mills, is not the first place that comes to mind as a brave outpost on the digital frontier.

Peter Applebome writing at nytimes.com, The Register Citizen, with roots dating to 1874 and a print circulation that’s fallen from 21,000 in the late 1980s to 8,000 now, isn’t an industry giant either. But when it moved Monday from its dilapidated 105-year-old home into a renovated factory space meant to embody a full-bore embrace of the Internet, it provided one metaphor for how journalism is trying to reinvent itself. If Torrington seems an unlikely locale, well, that’s the point.

“That’s exactly why I picked it,” said John Paton, chief executive of the Journal Register Company, which owns more than 300 print and online products in 10 states, including 18 daily newspapers. “If I can paraphrase Frank Sinatra, if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.”

Mr. Paton has become a hero to new-media gurus by taking a newspaper company emerging from bankruptcy and turning it into a company militantly focused on the Internet, with its philosophy of digital first, print last.

The Register Citizen has six times the readership online that it has in print, and its new building is designed to mirror the open, collaborative culture of the Web. The business plan is based on making The Register Citizen’s Web site a magnet for all things local and thus an attractive place for advertisers, sponsors and others who can replace declining newspaper subscribers and advertisers.

Read more here.

The New Rock-Star Paradigm

Succeeding in the music business isn't just about selling albums

Damian Kulash Jr., lead singer of OK Go on how to make it without a record label, at wsj.com:

OK Go performs at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, above. The band is known as much for its inventive music videos as it is for its music. Wall Street Journal photo

For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

Then came the Internet, and in less than a decade, that system fell. With uncontrollable and infinite duplication and distribution of recordings, selling records suddenly became a lot like selling apples to people who live in orchards. In 1999, global record sales totaled $26.9 billion; in 2009, that figure, including digital purchases, which now represent 25% of sales (nearly 50% in the U.S.), is down to $17 billion. For eight of the last 10 years, the decline in revenue from record sales has gotten steeper, which is to say the business is imploding with increasing vigor.

Read more here.

After 25 Years, Larry King Signs Off

Joined by a dozen of his favorite guests over the decades, Larry King hosted his final edition of “Larry King Live” on Thursday, ending a 25-year chapter at CNN.



According to Brian Stetler, Media Decorder at nytimes.com, the suspenders will remain, he said, but his nightly forum for newsmakers and noisemakers will not. He said at the beginning of the program, “Welcome to the last ‘Larry King Live.’ It’s hard to say that. I knew this day was coming. These words are not easy to say.”

Mr. King, a television icon, announced in June that he had decided to step down from the program, which defined a generation of cable news and inspired an generation of interviewers. The ratings for “Larry King Live” had fallen sharply in recent years. In about a month “Piers Morgan Tonight” will take over the 9 p.m. time slot on CNN.

Mr. King, 77, will host specials four times a year for CNN, and he is exploring other on- and off-air opportunities. Said Bill Maher, a longtime friend of Mr. King’s, on the program, “This is the end of the show, not the end of a man.”

All sorts of stars came on “Larry King Live” on Thursday to praise Mr. King. The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams said the program had been “America’s kind of confessional,” and the “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest said Mr. King is “such a tremendous guy with a great heart.”

Read more here.

KFWB Unveils Successors To "Dr. Laura"

Les Brown

KFWB/980 AM announced Thursday it is adding consumer expert Bob McCormick and life coach Les Brown to the line-up Jan. 3 as part of changes following the departure of Laura Schlessinger to Sirius Radio.

Gary Lycan writing for ocregister.com reports McCormick will be on 9 to 11 a.m. weekdays with "Money 101" featuring content from The Wall Street Journal. His current "Money 101" segments will continue to air on sister station KNX/1070 AM.

Dave Ramsey will host "Total Money Makeover" from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. KFWB cited increased ratings since Ramsey started on 980 AM in September, 2009, adding that Ramsey's earlier sold-out appearance at an event in Los Angeles has prompted another appearance, March 24 at the Alex Theatre.

Brown will be on from 2 to 4 p.m. weekdays. The station announcement said, "Brown has risen to national prominence by delivering a high-energy, positive and empowering message which advises people how to shake off mediocrity and live up to their greatness.''

Penny Griego and Phil Hulett will continue to anchor news from 6 to 9 a.m.; Maggie McKay and Michael Shappee will anchor the afternoon news from 4 to 7 p.m.

No changes were announced in weeknight programming. Steve Carver, senior vice president and market manager for CBS radio stations in Los Angeles, said.

Read more here.

Opinion: Bravo Bloomberg Editorials

From Charles Warner's Blog "Media Curmudgeon":

The Wednesday, December 15, 2010, edition of the New York Times featured a story titled “Bloomberg to Publish Editorials,” and read in part: “The mayor’s company, Bloomberg L.P., said on Wednesday that it would begin publishing editorials across its vast media enterprise in an effort to broaden the company’s influence on national affairs.”

Bravo for Bloomberg News and its publications such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek.  The nation needs a sane discussion of important issues to reinforce the sensibleness of Jon Stewart and to counteract the insane and senseless extremism screamed by the likes of Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh on far right and Keith Olbermann on the left.

The Times story indicated that:

… the endeavor, called Bloomberg View, is intended to channel his [Mayor Bloomberg’s] personal philosophy and worldview.

“I think it’s very important that everyone understands that our editorial page is going to be, for sure, consistent with the values and beliefs of the founder — even if he happens to be mayor of New York City,” said Matthew Winkler, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News. “I fully expect us in our Bloomberg View always to reflect those values. In fact, I want people to come away from reading the Bloomberg View infused with those beliefs and values.”

And we know what those values are, because on December 13, Mayor Bloomberg gave a speech announcing his commitment to the No Labels movement that is the reasonable, middle-ground, independent antithesis to the virulent, rage-driven partisan politics from the right and left that is crippling our government and our country.  These extremists are throwing stupid partisan tantrums while our infrastructure, educational systems, climate, and a basic sense of decency deteriorate.

The current political tantrums are thrown mainly by narcissists who are good at manipulating public opinion to gain fame and wealth – entertainers who are not in the least bit interested (and rarely understand) the complex issues they rant about, but merely care about getting what they want: approval and money.  The last thing they want is to change the world; they like it the way it is – a celebrity obsessed (not idea obsessed) world more interested in fiddling than putting out the fires of hate that are burning down a social order of reasonableness.

Read more here.

My War With Rush Limbaugh

From John Avlon, cofounder of "No Labels" group:

Limbaugh is taking nasty shots at me and my new "No Labels" group, and Keith Olbermann named us a “world’s worst”—examples of the all-or-nothing politics tearing the country apart.

According to Rush Limbaugh, I’m a hard-core liberal, no different than Michael Moore who paid the bail for “the serial rapist Julian Assange.” Also, I’m not willing to admit who the terrorists are, and I’m helping to kill Christmas.

It’s all because I co-founded a new group that launched this week called No Labels. We’re Republicans, Democrats and Independents—dedicated to confronting the culture of hyper-partisanship that is distorting our debates and stopping our nation from solving the serious challenges we face.

This idea is threatening to professional polarizers like El Rushbo—which is why he devoted an hour of his show this week to attacking us. In particular, he took personal aim at co-founders Mark McKinnon (a Republican Bush/McCain adviser and fellow Daily Beast columnist), Kiki McLean (a Texas Democrat and Clinton administration alum) and myself. In the process, he again proved the need for No Labels.

Rush’s core concern seems to be that there is no such thing as the center or independent voters. He believes that America is divided between the far-right and the far-left, and he likes to offer only that false choice because he believes it’s a fight he can win. But an emphasis on swing voters or independents—the largest and fastest-growing segment of the electorate—makes the math more complicated. It screws an inflexible ideologue up.

Criticizing Limbaugh is not the same thing as demonizing him. We can recognize that he is a talented broadcaster, a popular political entertainer for folks on the far-right. He also helped create a big part of the problem in our politics today.

He uses conflict, tension, fear and resentment to drum up his ratings, appealing to a narrow but intense (and aging) niche audience by using the old trick of dividing Americans into "us" vs. "them," perpetuating the polarization he profits from. That’s why it’s a little absurd to hear Limbaugh point out disapprovingly that my book Wingnuts itself uses a label to describe the use of fear and hate by hyper-partisans. Its funny how quickly people who throw around labels for a living ("feminazi," for example) cry foul when a term like Wingnut is directed at them. But bullies are always shocked when you punch back.

Read more here.

John Avlon's new book "Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America" is available now by Beast Books both on the Web and in paperback. He is also the author of "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics" and a CNN contributor. Previously, he served as chief speechwriter for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was a columnist and associate editor for The New York Sun.

FOX59 Morning News to Start at 4 AM

Fox59 in Indianapolis is expanding its morning news by another half hour, becoming the first station in Indianapolis to offer local news at 4am. The earlier start will begin Monday, January 10th.

“We have seen viewers waking up earlier and watching earlier, ever since we moved up our start time to 4:30am,” said General Manager Jerry Martin.  “We are again showing our commitment to be there for viewers, being on even earlier.”

In the last year, Fox59 Morning News expanded to five and a half hours, running from 430-10am.  Since expanding, all of the station’s morning newscasts have experienced large ratings gains, and the station’s 7-10am hours are closing in on surpassing NBC’s Today Show.  Fox59 also has the fastest growing audience in earlier time periods, with its 6am hour growing faster than any other morning hour of any competitor.
“Coming on even earlier, starting at 4am, is part of our overall mission to meet the needs of our viewers and be the number one choice for them, whether they are up in the early hours or later in the morning,” said News Director Lee Rosenthal.

The current 430-6am team of Jenny Anchondo and Scott Jones will anchor the additional 30 minutes starting at 4am.  Weather updates will be handled by current morning Meteorologist Jim O’Brien and Weekend Morning Meteorologist Ron Smiley.

The additional 30 minutes continues the station’s rapid growth.  In the last year, Fox59 News has also added two hours each weekday from 4-6pm and three hours each weekend morning from 6-9am.  The station’s weekend morning news is also growing in January, expanding with an additional hour until 10am.  The additional time periods will have Fox59 producing 55 hours of local news each week – more than any other station in Indianapolis.

Rachel Maddow: I Used to Love Glenn Beck

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow made a startling admission to David Letterman Wednesday night: she used to be a huge Glenn Beck fan.


During her appearance, the liberal TV host said that she really liked Beck and his radio show prior to him getting a TV gig at Fox, even admitting she used to listen to Beck every day, according to theblaze.com and the huffingtonpost.com.

“I think he was the most talented radio personality of my entire generation,” she told Letterman. She described Beck’s pre-Fox radio show as “incredibly performative…he inhabited all these different characters, he would do all these voices, it was very entertaining. really funny, really fast-paced, very unpredictable, surprising, very good.”

But now her opinion has changed: “He mostly just talks about himself and it’s not as fun. But when he was on the radio, before he got on TV, he was great.”

Politico: Sarah Palin Goes 'Lamestream'

After making attacks on what she memorably labeled “the lamestream media” one of her signature issues, Sarah Palin has begun to experiment with a new strategy toward the press – engaging it.

According to a piece from Kenneth P Vogel and politico.com, the former Alaska governor has started cautiously cooperating with some of the same media outlets she and her supporters have accused of unfair and inaccurate coverage they feel has caricatured her as a flaky lightweight – a narrative her team seems determined to rewrite as Palin openly weighs a bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

“This is just about getting the press to characterize the governor accurately,” said Tim Crawford, a top Palin aide. “And, if that can be accomplished through Gov. Palin and some of the people around her talking to the press, we’ll try that.”

Palin’s effectiveness as Republican John McCain’s 2008 vice presidential pick was undercut by the bad press she generated, particularly from her stumbling television interviews. After that experience – and particularly since her resignation as governor last year, which she says was prompted partly by unrelenting media scrutiny – Palin has mastered a high-impact, if unconventional, communication style that almost completely circumvents most traditional media.

Instead, she’s relied on conservative media outlets from which she is unlikely to face tough questioning (most notably Fox News, for which she is a paid contributor) and social media such as Facebook and Twitter, combined with her own star power, to deliver cutting attacks on her opponents and the media that sometimes drive the political debate for days.

And she’s simultaneously showcased her personal charisma through two best-selling books, heavily promoted in campaign-style tours, as well as a quirkily endearing reality show about her adventures in Alaska.

But in recent weeks, Palin and her staff have adopted elements of a more traditional media strategy, cooperating with a host of neutral media outlets, notably The New York Times, TIME and ABC News, all of which, at one time or another, have drawn fire from Palin backers for allegedly biased coverage.

That cooperation has resulted in mostly flattering features that broke little new critical ground.

Read more here. 

Phone-Wielding Shoppers Strike Fear Into Retailers

Tri Tang, a 25-year-old marketer, walked into a Best Buy Co. store in Sunnyvale, Calif., this past weekend and spotted the perfect gift for his girlfriend.

Last year, he might have just dropped the $184.85 Garmin global positioning system into his cart. This time, he took out his Android phone and typed the model number into an app that instantly compared the Best Buy price to those of other retailers. He found that he could get the same item on Amazon.com Inc.'s website for only $106.75, no shipping, no tax.

Mr. Tang bought the Garmin from Amazon right on the spot, according to a story at wsj.com by Miquel Bustillo and Ann Zimmerman.

"It's so useful," Mr. Tang says of his new shopping companion, a price comparison app called TheFind. He says he relies on it "to make sure I am getting the best price."

Mr. Tang's smartphone reckoning represents a revolution in retailing—what Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Chief Executive Mike Duke has dubbed a "new era of price transparency"—and its arrival is threatening to upend the business models of the biggest store chains in America.

Until recently, retailers could reasonably assume that if they just lured shoppers to stores with enticing specials, the customers could be coaxed into buying more profitable stuff, too.

Now, marketers must contend with shoppers who can use their smartphones inside stores to check whether the specials are really so special, and if the rest of the merchandise is reasonably priced.

"The retailer's advantage has been eroded," says Greg Girard of consultancy IDC Retail Insights, which recently found that roughly 45% of customers with smartphones had used them to perform due diligence on a store's prices. "The four walls of the store have become porous."

Some of the most vulnerable merchants: sellers of branded, big-ticket items like electronics and appliances, which often prompt buyers to comparison shop. Best Buy, the nation's largest electronics chain, said Tuesday that it may lose market share this year, a downward trend that some analysts are attributing in part to pressure from price comparison apps.

Read more here.

"Sympathy" Need May Have Motivated Heidi Jones

Co-workers 'betrayed' by 'rape-lie' weather gal

For months, weathergal Heidi Jones (her website) had convinced sympathetic colleagues at WABC/Channel 7 that she had nearly been raped while jogging in Central Park.

Wednesday, that compassion turned to rage when staffers at the TV station learned that Jones had been lying all along, according to a story at nypost.com.

"It was an outrageous lie," said a fuming WABC staffer, who like others were "flabbergasted" to learn of the deception by reading about it in The New York Post."

"All this trust we had is shattered. We're like a family. We feel betrayed," the source said, adding that it had become "common knowledge" around the newsroom that Jones claimed to have been attacked in late September.

Station officials said yesterday they had suspended Jones, 37, and are conducting an internal investigation. A source said she will be fired.

Police sources said Jones had admitted to filing the false report because she suffered from "personal and professional pressures" and wanted to gain "sympathy" over an undisclosed personal issue.

"I am surprised by it," said another Channel 7 staffer. She's really a nice girl. There must be something deeper that we don't yet know about."

By yesterday afternoon, Jones was persona non grata at the station.  A poster of the weather gal that hung in one of the hallways of WABC had been taken down.

Nearly two months after the alleged attack, Jones told cops she was jogging in Central Park on the afternoon of Sept. 24 when a Hispanic man in his 30s or 40s grabbed her from behind, dragged her into a wooded area and attempted to rape her. She told police that the would-be rapist was scared off by two passers-by who came to her aid.

She also claimed that the same man approached her on Nov. 21 and threatened her.

Read more here.

Wed, Bed Or Kill?

Boston Herald photo

A Boston sports radio host has come under fire for touting an online polling game that asks men which high-profile, Boston female news anchor - (left to right) Maria Stephanos, Sara Underwood or Bianca de la Garza - they would wed, bed or kill.

According to Jessica Heslam at bostonherald.com, Barstool Sports posted the “hot Boston reporter edition” of its regular poll Tuesday. While that’s par for the course for the smutty site, “98.5 (WBZ-FM) The Sports Hub” yakker Mike Felger then went on-the-air and encouraged his radio listeners to vote for Underwood - his wife and a weekend anchor and reporter for Fox 25.

Apparently, many voters were in favor of “killing” Underwood, or “the Wood” as her hubby affectionately calls her.

“I need help because I don’t need the Wood killed,” Felger told listeners. “I’m asking you to marry her or (expletive) her.”

Maureen Gallagher of Jane Doe Inc. had harsh words for Underwood’s Lesser Half.

“The fact that Mike Felger unapologetically speaks of his wife, one of the women in the poll, in these terms is disrespectful to her, offensive to all women and many men, and promotes the idea that it is funny and acceptable to degrade women, even those you supposedly love,” Gallagher said.

Felger sought to downplay his clownish on-air banter. “We try not to take ourselves that seriously,” Felger told MediaBiz.

Read more here.

LA Times Worries Fox Is Skeptical

Fox News boss: It's not warmer until we say it's warmer

From Patrick Goldstein and James Rainey, The Big Picture blog at latimes.com:

Greenburg Art.com

Anyone who watches Fox News all day long, as I sometimes do, marvels at the remarkable discipline. The cable news leader finds a topic it wants to work over and then pounds it — with the language and tone remarkably uniform from one program to the next.

In recent days, one of the men behind the one-station, one-message rigor has come into public view: Bill Sammon.

Sammon is a Fox News vice president and Washington managing editor who worries about semantics on the network conservatives love best. And, according to Sammon e-mails recently obtained by the liberal media watchdog Media Matters, the Fox boss particularly worries about making sure the on-air talent uses language favorable to the conservative point of view.

First to be revealed was a Sammon e-mail telling Fox personalities not to call the healthcare reform preferred by Democrats “the public option.” The news executive said he preferred “government-run health insurance” or “government option.”

Republican pollster Frank Luntz had previously noted that the problem with the "public option" language was that, well, the public didn't find it so objectionable. The reaction turned more negative when the reform -- actually an exchange of private insurance companies overseen by the government -- was deemed to be "government run."  Howard Kurtz noted as much in a Daily Beast column.

Next out of the gate, Media Matters revealed a Sammon e-mail regarding the language of climate change. Sammon asked Foxsters in the e-mail, dating to last December, to “refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question.”

The directive came about a year ago, just minutes after Fox White House correspondent Wendell Goler reported from the Copenhagen climate summit that 2000 to 2009 was “expected to be the warmest decade on record.”

After the Sammon e-mail had been issued, Goler and others on Fox adopted more skeptical language.

Read more here.

Tom's Take:  I've always thought it was healthy for news media to be skeptical when it comes to government policy and actions.  Especially, when there is a suspect political agenda driving it.

For NPR Stations, A Sigh Of Relief



Slate graphic

 A funny thing happened to NPR stations after the worst publicity fiasco in NPR's history: almost nothing at all.

Paul Farhi at washingtonpost.com writes public radio outlets across the country braced for the worst from their listeners after NPR fired commentator Juan Williams for remarks he made on a Fox News program in late October. With denunciations ringing nightly on Fox and from conservatives in Congress, the stations worried that they might be punished for the actions of Washington-based NPR, public radio's leading programming organization.

Of particular concern: that the storm over Williams would affect contributions from listeners, corporations and local governments, which stations rely on to stay in business.

Yet after an initial flurry of mostly angry e-mails and calls in the wake of the Oct. 20 firing of Williams, the controversy waned quickly and has all but disappeared, station managers say.

More important, perhaps, is that few contributors revoked financial pledges made to the stations during fundraising drives held the week of Williams's firing.

New Hampshire Public Radio, for example, raised $473,000 during its fall drive, a record amount for the nonprofit organization that runs a statewide chain of stations. The number of people who called or e-mailed saying they would no longer support the organization "wasn't significant," says Betsy Gardella, NHPR's president and chief executive.

Adds Gardella: "I think our takeaway is that our audience is very loyal and really values what we do."

The story is almost the same at WMFE (90.7 FM), the NPR affiliate in Orlando. The station is amid a fund drive this week, and contributions are running "above target," says Jose Fajardo, its chief executive.

Fajardo says he occasionally hears criticism of the Williams episode from people around the city, but that he's heard nothing from state legislators in Tallahassee - a sign, he says, that state funding for Florida's public broadcasters isn't in immediate jeopardy.

Read more here.

Also read here:

Virginia Governor targets public broadcasting (Roanoke Times)

Let's Get Those Phones Ringing! The cunning genius of the public radio fundraising drive.
(slate.com)

Goumba Johnny ‘Very Surprised’ to Leave WKTU

“Goumba Johnny” Sialiano has been a fixture on Clear Channel’s dance station WKTU for 15 years. Today, we learned that Sialiano is no longer with 103.5.

Sialiano is most associated for his time working side by side with Sean “Hollywood” Hamilton in evenings and afternoons. He also several years, with several co-hosts, in morning drive.

“I was very surprised,” Sialiano tells FishbowlNY exclusively. “I was surprised because of my performance and the numbers. …Was it about performance? I don’t think so. Certainly, the numbers don’t add up.”

He points out that his shifts had the highest rating and Cume on the station, attracting over 2 million listeners daily.

“Our show had 40 percent of all ‘KTU listeners listening in the afternoon,” Sialiano says.  The popular jock/sidekick is left scratching his head.

“Do I have the answer after that? I don’t, ” Sialiano admits. “This is the type of thing that maybe a year from now I’ll be able to look at it and see it clearly. Right now it doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.”

Sialiano is keeping his composure, but is obviously miffed by not working at his beloved ‘KTU any longer.

Not under contract since 2007, Clear Channel execs recently were looking to change that.

“Out of nowhere, I was offered a contract at a reduced salary.”

Calling it a “substantial paycut,” Sialiano took last weekend to discuss it with his wife.

Read more here.