Snakes on the plains?

The morning got off to a nasty start for ophidiophobians in Oklahoma City when they opened Friday’s newspaper to see a headline sprawled atop page one warning: “Big snakes could slither into state.”The problem with the alarming spread in The Oklahoman – replete with the headshot of a frightening-looking Burmese python – is that the danger of a snake invasion is really quite remote, as the

Stonewalling won’t cut it

Bill Keller and Len Downie owe their readers the full details about the timing and circumstances that caused them to publish today's innuendo-rich and fact-lite exposes on John McCain.With blogs and pundits chattering about the possible motivations and machinations behind the New York Times article suggesting an improper political and/or personal relationship between McCain and lobbyist Vicki

The ‘eyes’ have it

More than three-quarters of the readers of this blog think two or more people should edit an article before it goes in the newspaper, according to the poll asking how many editors it takes to vet a story.Of the more than 400 respondents to the survey as of this evening, 55.2% favored two editors per story, 21.9% advocated three or more editors per story, 20.4% said a single editor was sufficient

Can newspapers afford editors?

Now that pending layoffs at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times have made newsroom cutbacks all but unanimous, some managers eager to maximize the feet on the street at their newspapers are wondering if they really need all those editors.“How many people have to read a story before it goes in the paper?” asked a senior editor at a major metropolitan daily who is struggling to sustain the

Help wanted. Desperately.

Newspapers have lost more than half of their print recruitment revenues since the category hit an all-time high of $8.7 billion in 2000, the peak of the Internet bubble.Though final numbers aren’t in for 2007, print recruitment revenues will be lucky to hit $4 billion for the year, making for a sales drop of about 54% in the seven-year period.This is a big deal, when you consider that recruitment

R.I.P, PM newspapers

Like canaries in a coal mine filling with methane, the few remaining afternoon newspapers in competitive metro markets are gasping their last.Only six weeks into the year, the toll has begun::: The presses were silenced forever on New Year’s Eve at the Cincinnati Post (last reported circulation 42,000).:: The Madison Capital Times (circulation 17,000) announced today that it will be cut to a

MNI faces 50% writeoff of KRI deal

The McClatchy Co. could be on track to write off half of the $4.4 billion it paid for the Knight Ridder newspapers it proudly acquired in the summer of 2006.The dramatic failure of the transaction – which took place in the early days of a catastrophic downturn for the newspaper industry that few foresaw at the time – is evident in McClatchy’s announcement today that it will have to take the

Yahoo! for Yahoo? New worries

The hundreds of newspapers counting on Yahoo to turbo-charge their online sales could suffer sputters instead, as their prime technology partner addresses a hostile takeover bid by Microsoft and a simultaneous internal reorganization to cut costs.While there are too many moving parts at the moment for anyone to predict the future with certainty, the reality is that Yahoo’s newspaper partnership