The Houston Chronicle obtains only brief comments from Tim Fleck, the 57-year-old author of the weekly column The Insider, and Houston Press Editor Margaret Downing, about the circumstances of the departure. Others assess the impact of Fleck's acerbic political coverage. In his last column for the Press, Fleck writes about Congressional candidate Lloyd "Ted" Poe, known for the shame sentences he handed out as district judge, and the time Poe underwent his own moment of shame.
If you want to know where ad spending is heading this year, follow tech and the male libido. Experts expect a big spike in advertising for Viagra-like pharmaceuticals (that already started with Super Bowl spots), for cell phones, for discount retailers and home-improvement stores battling for market share, and for big-box stores that are finally seeing a boom in the DTV market.
MoveOn.org, the Web-based liberal advocacy group, draws admiration from Democrats and provokes grudging respect from Republicans for its canny use of the Internet to recruit membership and deliver its anti-Bush message. The organization, which claims more than 1.4 million members in the United States, made headlines last month with its contest to select 30-second anti-Bush television spots.
The Wall Street Journal wasn't so interested in coverage of poverty and urban issues, or critical analyses of people in power. So in 1968 Roldo Bartimole left that paper and devoted the next 35 years to writing for alternative publications, living on the modest pay that comes with that pursuit. For 10 years he wrote a column for the Cleveland Free Times, leaving when Village Voice Media shut down the since-revived paper in 2002. He also wrote for the Cleveland Edition in the 1980s and, most recently, for an African-American weekly, City News. Now 70, Roldo is giving up his one-man newsletter, "Point of View," to retire. New York Times reporter Walter Bogdanich tells E&P that even the targets of Bartimole's barbs had to admire his courage in following through on his beliefs.
"This was the definition of silly," a Republican council member says of the Cincinnati City Council's move to subpoena Leslie Blade to talk about her investigative piece. Having Blade testify brought the council no more information than reading the story, he says. Blade refused to answer a few questions during her half-hour appearance before the council Tuesday but said she wrote the article because "you're talking about public funds—about public trust—and the rules should be followed."
Last year was not an easy one for US newspapers. A lacklustre job market made for empty recruitment pages. Cutbacks in department store advertising hurt retail category revenues. And troubles in the tourism industry translated into thin travel sections. But there was a bright spot. National advertisers, from entertainment groups to carmakers, showed an increasing willingness to launch their products, promote their brands and supplement other media campaigns in newspapers.
Student government representatives are debating whether the Gannett Newspaper Readership Program is a threat to the student paper, the Iowa Daily State. Gannett is asking student government to approve distribution of four newspapers on campus—the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register and USA Today as well as the Chicago Tribune and New York Times. Funding would come from a student fee of about $5 per semester. Mark Witherspoon, the student paper's adviser, tells Daily reporter Luke Jennett that Gannett aims to increase circulation so it can boost advertising rates. "Gannett is asking students to pay $270,000 to hurt campus life—to injure themselves," Witherspoon says.
Three more of the nation's publicly traded newspaper companies on Thursday reported higher advertising revenues in the fourth quarter, although a long hoped-for, all-out newspaper recovery hasn't materialized yet. Print advertising revenues at The Washington Post rose 3 percent to $572.2 million in 2003 compared to the year before, and increased 4 percent to $155.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to a year ago. General and preprint advertising revenues rose in the fourth quarter and full year and offset declines in classified and retail. And although classified revenue was down at The Post, help-wanted revenues actually rose $800,000 or 6 percent in the fourth quarter, even though volume was flat. It was the first rise in revenues in employment classifieds since 2000.
Andrew Scutro wanted to see how well American troops communicated with Iraqis when he went to the suffering Middle East nation but confronted some communication barriers of his own. He would have loved to accompany an Iraqi handyman to his neighborhood but was warned that being seen with an American could endanger the man. Freelance writer Whitney Joiner interviews Scutro about the weeks he spent embedded with a civil affairs unit.
Daily papers have treated alternative newsweeklies with contempt, but it seems "that even that small share of local advertising revenue that is often a weekly paper's sole means of support is now coveted by the big boys," writes News Editor James Shannon in a MetroBEAT cover story. In February, Gannett's Greenville News will launch a youth-oriented weekly, The Link, to compete with the Greenville, S.C., alternative paper. Alt-weekly publishers in other cities tell Shannon how they dealt with the Gannett challenge. Boise Weekly Editor-in-Chief Bingo Barnes says he "spent the first month driving around and moving our racks and newsstands back into prime locations."
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