News

Many large dailies, including those with falling circulations, will raise ad rates in the new year, reports Media Life. The hikes reflect pressure from Wall Street to maintain profit margins even as the industry suffers increased competition from electronic media. Getting advertisers to pay the new rates, however, may prove more difficult than printing new rate cards: "If a newspaper says it's going to increase advertising 3 percent irrespective of circulation, that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is going to pay a 3 percent increase," Len Kubas, a Toronto-based consultant, tells the Web site.

The country's leading newspaper companies realize it is time to join their new-media competitors, not fight them, reports Rick Edmonds of Poynter Online. Representative of the coming industry "transformation" is Gannett's decision to train 362 print journalists as videographers by the end of January. Edmonds also highlights increasing collaboration between newsprint chains and Internet search giants Yahoo! and Google. Such developments are markers "that newspaper companies have moved beyond merely wringing their hands at the rise of these potent competitors and are figuring out ways to make money together with them."

As big-city dailies increasingly face cutbacks that threaten their ability to cover local affairs, civic leaders are expressing disquiet over the impact the downsizing has had on their communities, reports Governing magazine. From St. Louis to Los Angeles, prominent residents are concerned that the dailies' withering newsrooms and declining local coverage are doing damage to their cities. "If the people who live in a community are going to understand the way city hall or the county commission or the school board shapes their lives," writes Rob Gurwitt, "they need journalism that is there for the long haul and not just the occasional shout in the dark."