More news from Advance

Here's another new venture from Advance Publications.


Newspaper owners team up in deal-finding venture
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A group of newspaper publishers and other media companies are teaming up to sell more advertising aimed at people looking for online deals.

Eight companies formed a joint venture that has acquired Find n Save, a search engine focused on discount offers made by merchants in cities across the U.S. The venture acquired Find n Save as part of its purchase of Travidia, an online shopping service. Financial terms of that deal weren’t disclosed in Thursday’s announcement.

The joint venture’s initial owners include: Advance Digital, part of Advance Publications Inc., whose newspapers include The Plain Dealer in Cleveland; A.H. Belo Corp., owner of The Dallas Morning News; Cox Media Group, owner of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and more than 100 radio and TV stations; and Gannett Co.; owner of USA Today and more than 80 other newspapers as well as more than 20 TV stations.

Discussions are being held with other media companies interested in joining the venture.
Find n Save is tapping into the coupon craze that helped turn Groupon’s daily-deal service into a hot commodity. Although it’s still losing money, Groupon Inc. is growing so fast that the 3-year-old company already has a $15 billion market value.

Unlike search engines such as Google, Find n Save specializes in showcasing discounts offered by advertisers within local markets. A consumer can type, say, “burrito” into a search field, and receive a list of nearby Mexican restaurants and the deals they’re offering.
 
The search engine makes money from the advertisers in its database. Other ads can be placed by companies looking to connect with people whose search engine requests have signaled their interest in certain products and services.

The participating newspapers will share in the revenue and contribute daily deals covering their markets to Find n Save’s index.

Find n Save currently tracks local deals in 19 of the top 50 U.S. markets. The joint venture plans to add 21 more top markets to the list during the next month. By the end of 2013, the joint venture expects more than 400 newspapers to be affiliated with Find n Save.

Newspapers have been mining the Internet for more revenue to offset a steep decline in print advertising that has triggered bankruptcies and massive cutbacks during the past three years. The drop has been driven by the Internet’s appeal to advertisers looking for less expensive — and in some cases, more effective — alternatives to print advertising.

The joint venture overseeing Find n Save will be run by acting CEO Christopher Trippe, who helped newspapers put together a partnership with Yahoo Inc. that began five years ago.

The venture’s other partners include Hearst Corp., whose newspapers include the San Francisco Chronicle and 14 other dailies; MediaNews Group, owner of the San Jose Mercury News, The Denver Post and more than 50 other newspapers; McClatchy Co., owner of The Sacramento (Calif.) Bee, The Miami Herald and 28 other dailies; and The Washington Post Co., publisher of the largest newspaper in the nation’s capital.

A final salvo from a downsized reporter

What he said. Apparently this reporter posted this blast against his newspaper's downsizing on his way out the door. It was removed from the newspapers website fairly soon, but in today's world, it will last forever in these caches.

Thank you to an alert FFE reader for the link.

Just in case the link disappears I'm saving a copy of the text. Let me know if the link breaks down.

Some news makes me want to barf

If this is the 'new' journalism, I'm glad I'm not around for it. Admittedly, this is the opinion of an ancient curmudgeon who still prefers old school reporting.

And there will be a lot more of this kind of reporting with this 'new' model.

What will they think of next? Perhaps giving cash bonuses to reporters who produce tons of meaningless copy to create as many "hits" on the Internet as possible. Watch for it.

Sunday story about the changes in the Flint Journal

The Sunday Flint Journal had a story on the move to the Rowe building downtown and another story on the layoffs. The story did answer the question about the Muskegon Chronicle layoffs. In the article it was reported that there were layoffs at the Muskegon Chronicle but none that required public reporting.

More bad news for the Sunday papers?

If this trend spreads to Michigan, it will not be good news for the Sunday revenue stream for daily newspapers. I know in my house the Sunday Vlassis coupons are one of the major reasons we still subscribe.

Editorial losses statewide at Booth

So far no indication of any job losses at Muskegon or Ann Arbor in the latest round of layoffs at Booth, but monitoring of the State WARN site will continue.

The State site also lists duplicate reports under the separate headings of Booth and for The Grand Rapids Press. Not sure if that is a mistake or if the numbers are combined. The Booth listing has 55 layoffs and Grand Rapids lists 146 layoffs. So the total layoffs for the State are either 488 or 543. At this time I am unable to reconcile those two numbers.

Here's what I do know about editorial. Layoff notices to reporters (including sports) of all grades were as follows: Grand Rapids (15); Kalamazoo (6); Bay City (12); Flint Journal (12); Jackson (10); and Saginaw (6). That's a total of 61 reporter positions lost. Currently the MLive Media Group is advertising for 9 news reporters, but it is unknown if the individual ads for each paper represent just one job or a series of positions. There are listings for a "Sports Reporter - Engagement," whatever the heck that means and Ann Arbor is advertising for a "Sports Reporter - Buzz" which I guess means they are looking for some kind of bee.

Two of the reporter positions are for slots in Lansing and Detroit, which would seemingly be new positions, although Booth once had an active and full Lansing bureau.

Right now there are 81 job listings on the MLive Media Group site. Editorial accounts for a minor percentage of those positions right now.

A total of 12 editor positions were among those receiving layoff notices. It appears there will be one sports editor (or something akin to that) for the whole chain. That person is a former Michigan State sports info flak who apparently helped start a pro-MSU blog site. That will bode well for coverage for my alma mater, but not sure what credibility that will have with readers from that other school.

A total of 9 photographers received layoff notices in the chain.  Although already consolidated, it appears that 12 copy editors also received pink slips in this latest round.

There are also additional editorial losses from the layoffs of 7 "content specialists" in Bay City and 1 from the Flint Journal.

Many folks have contacted me and asked what I thought about what will be the number of new editorial jobs and starting salaries with the new company. The short and honest answer is that I have no idea.

But it seems clear that if the company wanted, it could have simply moved everyone over to the new company seamlessly at their current salary. So my speculation is that there will either be far fewer editorial positions at a comparable salary or more jobs (but less than now) at a reduced pay scale.

As folks apply for these positions and let me know what the pay scale is, I'll pass that along.

It appears the layoffs come from every department and many are folks who were hired in the wake of the first round of buyouts a few years ago. My focus here is on the editorial departments but feel free to review the documents through the links and send me your reflections on the non-editorial areas.

A business mag's perspective on Booth changes

An FFE reader sent this article along about another person's perspective on the Booth changes.

More Booth layoff notices

The link to the State WARN website has been restored. Here are some additional layoff notices to the State.  The total, as close as I can figure it on the fly, is 543 statewide layoff notices.

When I get a chance later today I'll review the sheets and put together a more concise look at the editorial positions, but that will have to wait until tonight as we are in Buffalo taking care of family business today.

Valley Publishing

Grand Rapids Press

Kalamazoo Gazette

Bay City Times

Fancy new digs for MLive Media Group

Here's the MLive story on the fancy new Grand Rapids digs for the MLive Media Group company.

Detailed layoff numbers for the Jackson Cit-Pat

Here are the total layoffs as reported to the State for the Jackson Cit-Pat. I will post links (the link to the Grand Rapids corporate layoffs is broken) as they come. It is a total of 71 for the Jackson paper and many from the newsroom.

A total of 91 of the current 142 employees at the Flint Journal received the layoff notices. The positions lost are listed here.

Saginaw News is reporting 12 positions gone.

Official State layoff notices are posted for Grand Rapids, Flint

Thanks to a FFE reader there is the first of what promises to be more WARN postings (this link, which worked yesterday is taking me to the page, but the information that was on there Monday is not on there today - the links to the information in the above posting still seems to be working) on the State website. So far Booth is reporting 82 Flint Journal employees received layoff notices and 55 Grand Rapids Press employees (a poster said those 55 employees are Booth corporate employees not Press employees) received layoff notices.

Previous layoff notices to the state were:

1/11/2010 - Kalamazoo Gazette - 105 employees

3/23/2009 - Flint Journal - 82 employees
3/23/2009 - Ann Arbor News - 85 employees
3/23/2009 - Valley Publishing in Bay City - 63 employees

Obviously, these numbers do not include those who accepted buyout packages which certainly number in the hundreds.

Crain's: An analysis of recent Booth moves

A couple folks, one here and one by e-mail have sent me this link to a Crain's in-depth article on the recent changes at Booth.

It's a pretty good look at what has transpired, although they, like me, can't get a handle on what the total layoffs are across the state.

Flint news via blogspot by an 'old' pro

Thanks to an FFE reader I received a link to a blog by former(?) Channel 12 news reporter Cathy Shaffran who always did a professional job in her work for WJRT-TV.

I met Cathy on the street at crime and accident scenes and bumped into her (not literally) over the years on the police beat.

Hopefully she will make more money on her blog than I have on this one ($46 here so far, not even enough for Google to issue a check). She has some interesting breaking news from City Hall today.

Yeah, probably needed a correction

A friend of the blog - Kevin McKague - sent along the following newspaper correction:

And as a point of reference I used to live very near to San Carlos, California where the Enquire-Bulletin is published.

More reflections (and info) from Chattering Teeth

There's more interesting stuff about the changes at Booth at "Chattering Teeth."

Welcome to the future of local journalism

Here's a story that shows what the future will be like with freelance "content producers," fewer copy editors and a reliance on non-paid staff.

What took the media so long in Joe Paterno story?

Interesting Reuters story on the initial reluctance and slow response of the media to the Penn State scandal.

Annarbor.com rankings

Here are some graphs and information about the current popularity of Annarbor.com. I'm no Internet guru so I'm not even going to try to pretend what these numbers mean. On the Alexa site it rates the Ann Arbor site as "very slow" in loading. In the bottom 18 percent of all sites.

And just to be fair my site is way down the list.

Job listings up at MLive Media Group

There are currently 72 job postings for the new MLive Media Group. They are heavily weighted toward sales, but there are some reporting positions and other "content producers."

None say what the starting salaries are, but with the experience and job requirements listed those positions should be worth at least $50,000 a year or more.

If someone applies for those jobs, please let me know what they are offering in salary and benefits so I can let others know.

Also, there are "content production" positions in all the properties except Bay City. The only jobs listed (so far) in Bay City are sales positions. Not sure if that means anything for the Bay City Times, but perhaps they are planning to have the Flint or Saginaw reporters fill that hole as well.

Maybe there are more jobs coming, but right now that's the list.

Newpapers dying: Not according to this survey

Here's a study published by  E&P that says newspapers are still viable.