While pre-prepared obituaries are standard practice, it was a little surreal to see an obituary of Michael Foot by Mervyn Jones (d. 23 February 2010) in the print edition of the Guardian on 4 March 2010, the Tribune’s diary notes. An obituary for Jones, who was Michael Foot’s biographer, had appeared in the Guardian on 25 February. The deaths were so close together, the Tribune says, it had to run its own tributes in the same edition.
The LA Times and Chicago Tribune are pooling their foreign reporting operations to serve all Tribune newspapers. The operation will be run from Los Angeles.
Tags: Chicago Tribune, foreign reporting, LA Times, us“It’s true that Tribune Co. is talking about outsourcing its national and international news coverage to The Washington Post Co.,” comments Editor&Publisher, but warns that ‘big sticking points remain and the two are not close to a deal,’ as Chicago Tribune media reporter Phil Rosenthal reported in his blog Thursday afternoon. Full story…
Tags: Chicago Tribune, Editor&Publisher, Phil Rosenthal, The Washington Post Co., The Washington Post Company, Tribune Co, Tribune companyMore on this tomorrow, but just to link today’s (Monday) news that the Tribune Co. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, as reported here by the group’s own newspaper the LA Times, as well as numerous other news sources. The group also owns KTLA Channel 5, the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun as well as nine other newspapers and 22 other television and radio stations across the country.
The group’s chief executive Sam Zell said in a statement (via CNNmoney.co.uk):
“Factors beyond our control have created a perfect storm – a precipitous decline in revenue and a tough economy coupled with a credit crisis that makes it extremely difficult to support our debt.”
“We believe that this restructuring will bring the level of our debt in line with current economic realities, and will take pressure off our operations.”
The groups says it is able to sustain operations while it restructures. Here, Editor & Publisher looks at concerns inside the newsroom.
Excerpts from Sam Zell’s memo can be read here.
Tags: Baltimore Sun, Bankruptcy, chapter 11, Chicago Tribune, CNNmoney.co.uk, KTLA, LA Times, Reorganization, Sam Zell, the Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, Tribune Co, Tribune companyAs reported all over the shop, yesterday saw the launch of the online news aggregator site, The Daily Beast, captained by former editor of Tatler, Vanity Fair and The NewYorker, Tina Brown, and backed by Barry Diller, of IAC/InterActiveCorp.
PaidContent had managed a sneak preview, but the likes of Roy Greenslade, and Journalism.co.uk had to wait till its official grand unveiling yesterday afternoon.
Named after the fictional tabloid in Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 novel, Scoop, Tina Brown describes The Daily Beast, on her site, as: “the omnivorous friend who hears about the best stuff and forwards it to you with a twist.”
Her motley crew boasts the satirist Chris Buckley, former McCain adviser Mark McKinnon, Project Runway’s Laura Bennett and Facebook’s Randi Zuckerberg.
The site’s bold red and black design has a large list of contributors and features a collection of news, opinion, blogs, links and video.
Over at Cyber Journalist Net they reckon it’s ‘about 30 percent original content’ and Gawker is having fun speculating about Brown’s spending habits.
Opinion in the US seems to be split on the site: Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke thinks it ’sucks’, but as the New York Observer points out she said that about Huffington as well.
Steve Johnson at the Chicago Tribune reckons there’s irony in the choice of title but doesn’t think that necessarily matters.
With absolutely no advertising on the site, it will be interesting to see whether The Daily Beast can survive in the online jungle. It seems to have had a lion’s share of initial hype at least.
Tags: aggregation, Barry Diller, Chicago Tribune, Chris Buckley, daily beast, Evelyn Waugh, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Laura Bennett, Mark McKinnon, Nikki Finke, online news aggregator site, Steve Johnson, Tatler, the New York Observer, Tina Brown, USAEveryBlock, the local news and data aggregation service, has gone into a beta partnership with the Chicago Tribune.
The paper will publish a map and local news articles powered by EveryBlock, an announcement on the site’s blog says. Articles from the last 48 hours will be plotted on the Trib map to allow users to search geographically.
“[I]t’s an experiment in a new form of news dissemination – that is, news filtered at the block level – and journalists can look to us for inspiration in new forms of publishing information. Second, we unearth a lot of government data that journalists might be interested in researching further,” EveryBlock founder Adrian Holovaty said in an interview with Journalism.co.uk.
Tags: Adrian Holovaty, Chicago Tribune, Local, MappingAgence France-Presse (AFP) has retracted a photo of Iranian missile tests published this morning, stating the image had been ‘apparently digitally altered’ by Iran’s state media, the New York Times’ Lede section reports.
It was too late for the print editions of the LA Times, Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and others, who ran the pic on the front page, and for the BBC, New York Times and Yahoo News websites.
Below – spot the difference between 1) the AFP’s image…
…and 2) an image later obtained by the Associated Press:
According to the Lede’s report, the agency said the fourth missile may have been added to mask a grounded missile that failed to launch during the test.
Tags: Agence France-Presse, Associated Press, BBC, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, LA Times, the New York Times, Yahoo
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