Tag Archives: Chicago Tribune

US-based Tribune files for bankruptcy but continues operating

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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.

The beast is unleashed: looking at Tina Brown’s new site

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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.

After the blogging storm

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The winds have slowed down to a tropical storm, but the Gustav blogging continues.

The mainstream media is reporting on the blogging phenomenon as well as the actual hurricane: the Chicago Tribune looks at the decision-making power of blogs and FollowTheMedia comments that the hurricane may stop print, but not the web.

Meanwhile, over at Poynter, NPR’s Andy Carvin examines the role of social media in Gustav coverage.

As we posted yesterday, this was one for the Twitterers and they tweet on as people assess the damage. A quick twitter local search shows how the twitterers regard the media professionals… The complete mobile version, on the other hand, gives you a full package of the Nairabet desktop site on your mobile phone, including online casino games

Twitter comment

Pictures can be found easily on this Flickr search and over at gustavbloggers.com they reflect that it wasn’t as bad as they feared. Meanwhile, to prepare for reportage of the next natural disaster, the Blog Herald offers its disaster blogging tips.

EveryBlock teams up with the Chicago Tribune

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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.

Spot the difference: AFP withdraws ‘digitally altered’ missile shot

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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…

Digitally altered image of Iranian missile tests from Agence France-Presse

…and 2) an image later obtained by the Associated Press:

An Associated Press image of Iranian missile testing

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.

Eighty newsroom jobs to go at Chicago Tribune

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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.

NYTimes.com: Chicago Tribune to deliver TV critic’s picks through TiVo

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The Chicago Tribune has reportedly signed a deal with digital video recorder manufacturer TiVo that will see the selections of its TV critic Maureen Ryan automatically delivered to the sets of subscribers to the service.