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.

Full story at this link…

Similar Posts:

• AP: LA Times and Washington Post ending joint news service
• US-based Tribune files for bankruptcy but continues operating
• Eighty newsroom jobs to go at Chicago Tribune
• Chicago Tribune: US Tribune papers to shun AP content for a week
• CNN Money: Sun-Times Media files for Chapter 11

“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…

Similar Posts:

• AFP: LA Times and Chicago Tribune in foreign desks merger
• CCJ: “When real news didn’t come to me, I decided to go get it myself”
• Editor&Publisher: New York Times creates ‘instant op-ed’ feature online
• #FollowJourn: @bill80/digital editor
• NYTimes.com: Chicago Tribune to deliver TV critic’s picks through TiVo

More 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.

Similar Posts:

• AFP: LA Times and Chicago Tribune in foreign desks merger
• SoE08: Robert Peston on the media’s role in the economic crisis
• Northcliffe’s operating profits drop 81 per cent
• Blogs transformed mainstream media coverage of the credit crisis, Kristine Lowe argues in new book
• Media Release: Schibsted titles to livestream Norwegian football matches

As 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.

Similar Posts:

• paidContent:UK: Tina Brown’s new ‘Daily Beast’ previewed
• FT.com: The Daily Beast one year on
• BusinessInsider: Advertising will arrive at the Daily Beast ‘by late spring,’ says Brown
• MediaBistro: Tina Brown – ‘I would never ask a writer to work for free’
• Times uses interactive poll for front-page splash

EveryBlock, 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.

Similar Posts:

• Innovations in Journalism – Everyblock
• Everyblock launches in two new cities
• Are online maps ‘whitewashing’ the UK? Not in the hands of the news providers
• CNN Technology: How can EveryBlock’s model be used worldwide?
• Geo-what? Oh, it’s coming to the UK soon…

Agence 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.

Similar Posts:

• NYTimes.com: FBI obtained reporters’ phone records
• AP facing boycott, to set blogger guidelines
• AP (via Captured Photos): Why the AP published images of a fatally wounded marine
• Press agency Deadline reaps online rewards
• NYTimes.com: Five major newspapers to share content

The Chicago Tribune is to follow the LA Times by culling newsroom jobs and reducing the number of pages in its printed editions.

Around 80 of its 578 newsroom posts are expected to be culled with further cuts appearing in non-journalistic positions.

The printed edition of the Tribune is expected to reduce the number of pages it publishes by 13 or 14 per cent each week.

Management began informing staff of the changes late on Tuesady, the Tribune itself reported.

This is the fourth round of staff cuts since 2005, when the paper had nearly 700 newsroom staff on its books. In real terms the paper expects to lose around 55 people as positions made vacant in recent months have remained unfilled.

Last week, The Los Angeles Times, another Tribune Company newspaper, announced that it would reduce the number of pages it published each week by 15 per cent anddo away with 250 staff roles, 150 of them from the newsroom.

Similar Posts:

• LA Times: Los Angeles Times to cut 250 jobs
• BNONews.com: NYTimes to cut 100 from newsroom
• Roy Greenslade: whole editorial board quits NJ Star-Ledger
• Happy New Year – and good luck looking for a new job…
• Editorial job losses at Express Newspapers reduced from 70 following union talks