Personally I think the best way to cut costs is to slowly let the printed version of the paper wither away, until all that ends up at the end of subscribers’ driveways is a stack of obituaries. THEN everyone will finally get the point and take to reading the paper online, on their kindle, their blackberry, Macintosh tablet or anything else that doesn’t turn your fingers black.

Syndicate far and wide, but don’t put all your marbles in one not-so-reliable product…. especially when it ain’t free!

photo by quinn.anya via flickr (CC)

Tribune Co. papers rewiring for experimental week without AP

The Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers plan to utilize as little content from the Associated Press as practical during the week of Nov. 8.

The goal, as the papers review costs and needs, is to see whether severing ties with the news cooperative next fall is a viable option, the Chicago-based media company confirmed Monday.

The trial is scheduled to be conducted almost 13 months after Tribune Co. gave the AP a required two-year warning that it might drop the news service, effective Oct. 15, 2010. Tribune Co. said at the time that it was keeping its options open while weighing what role, if any, the AP would play in its future.

Some content Tribune Co. papers get from the Associated Press, such as sports statistics, will still be published during the experiment. The company also said that if the AP is the only available source for a report considered vital, it will use that AP coverage. But the company wants to see to what kind of void the absence of AP stories and photos would have.

Besides the content provided by the staff of its own titles, Tribune Co. newspapers will draw from such news sources as Reuters, the Washington Post, New York Times, Agence France Presse, Cable News Network, Global Post, Bloomberg and McClatchy newspapers during its AP-less trial. Not all of those sources are normally available to Tribune Co. papers.

Some newspapers have determined that shared wire content that is available to readers from many other outlets is worth less to them than unique, proprietary content, especially online. Coupled with reductions in the space allocated for news in print, papers are weighing whether there’s the same need for Associated Press content as in the past.

“The Associated Press has been working with all members of the cooperative, including Tribune Co., to ensure that the AP news report retains its value to member newspapers and their readers,” AP spokesman Paul Colford said in a statement.

The AP Board of Directors in April announced a new $35 million in rate reductions for 2010 for its member newspapers on top of $30 million in rate reductions for 2009 announced a year earlier. AP expected that the total assessment decreases for papers would average a little less than 20 percent, although it would vary widely for members depending on their services levels.

Tribune Co. TV stations will not participate in the experiment, which falls during the November ratings period. Tribune Co. newspaper Web sites also will not be affected, the company said.

Posted at 07:36:22 PM

in Chicago, CNN, Newspapers, Tribune Co., Washington Post Co.

You might be interested in:

• News service picks off another Tribune staffer (ChicagoBusiness Insider)
• Chicago News Cooperative begins building its base (Chicago Tribune)
• Tribune Co. papers gear for experimental week without AP (Chicago Breaking News)
• Chicago News Cooperative hopes to rewire accountability journalism (Tower Ticker)
• Tribune, L.A. Times veteran James O’Shea launching news co-op, will supply N.Y. Times Chicago content (Tower Ticker)

2 more recommended posts »

But don’t let the cat out of the bag before you’ve got a basic index page, 404 or… anything but the de facto Register.com-branded ztomy.com-fueled link farm.

So when the LA Times announced a “new product launch” in an all-staff memo this afternoon (thx, Ed) it was disappointing to see that said product was nothing but a Register.com link farm. Not to mention, what the memo describes is merely a repackaging of the short-lived print edition of Metromix along with some “reverse-published” blog posts. Whatever that means. Perhaps it can only be read when held up to a mirror?

Times editor Russ Stanton had this to write about the so-horribly-named-it-makes-me-quiver ThisIsBrandX.com: “It’s content sharing on an extremely local level and will bring our great work to an audience that does not currently see it.”

I feel for my friends at the LA Times who do amazing work in spite of it all. But the news about newspapers these days just gets me depressed. And with a name like Brand X — which implies knock-off, pirated, counterfeit merchandise — I just hope that the bulk of the content isn’t produced in China.

And anyway… THIS is Brand X:

UPDATE 4/7 kinda but not really there yet:

UPDATE: Read Tony Pierce’s like-it-is response.

in the time ive been blog editor at the times, i have been in countless meetings in regards to launching new blogs. in each of those meetings the question of name comes up. because i have seen “good” names and “bad” names make absolutely no difference, i have now reached the point where i advise those involved “i dont care what you name it, just name it and move on to far more important things like content.”

I’m anxiously awaiting said content so that I can just as quickly forget about the name (and strike out the Register.com Link Farm part of theh hed).

UPDATE: Brand X went live on April 15th.

But I couldn’t help but note the irony today, that soon after listening to On the Media‘s lead piece examining newspapers’ definition of “waterboarding” — I stumbled upon Fuller’s “News sells more opinion, at cost of sincerity” in the Trib.

“The concern with large news media corporations has been that they would stifle diversity of political opinion,” wrote Fuller. He picks on MSNBC’s and FOX News’ commercialization of political opinion slanted “toward whatever attracts a crowd.”

Now, with the fragmentation of media and audience, there is no clear commercial argument against presenting the news with a point of view.

But there remains an atmosphere of politicization and “stifling” in print, take for example the Chicago Tribune’s definition of “waterboarding” as explained on the aforementioned On the Media very uncomfortably and definisively by deputy editor Randy Weissman:

Our official definition is — effective today — “an interrogation technique that simulates drowning a prisoner, comma, creating the sensation of imminent death.”

OK. Just as inefficient a definition as the New York Times (“simulated drowning”) or the LA Times (“an interrogation technique simulating drowning that dates to the Spanish Inquisition”) but its his awkward defense that seems to reveal political motivation behind using “simulate” and “sensation.”

Weissman:

Simply put, if you look in Webster’s, drowning is death, and waterboarding would only fit that definition if, if the prisoner died. Ask most people if a person drowns what happens, you — I would be willing to bet you that they would say he died.

Even after On the Media host Brooke Gladstone reiterated that drownING is the gerund and surely someone who is drowning can still be saved, Weissman blamed the politicization of the Trib’s semantics on Webster’s (where the gerund is not defined):

Well, I will go along with Webster’s New World Dictionary, which says “to die by suffocation in water or other liquid.”

Weissman was embarrassingly off the mark in his radio interview but at the same time Fuller may have a good argument with what he sees emanating from the dark side of today’s rich media environment that COULD filter wisdom, knowledge, and fact via free expression theory.

It’s not that Fuller hasn’t fully accepted media in the universal multimedia sense by blaming TV news and entertainingly charged, one-sided blogs (he wrote ten years ago quite knowledgeably on the future of so-called convergence in News Values).

Fuller attributes humanity’s neurological disinterest in neutrality as a main reason for the decline in newspaper readership and rise of fanatical talk radio and cable tv nutjobs. And I wish the following sentence didn’t sound so true:

…[T]he information revolution itself has created the conditions in which the emotions come to the surface and emotionally hot presentations of information — such as ideological slant, shrillness, even humor — draw the brain’s attention.

In the depressing epilogue, Fuller buries serious journalism with the sad fact that corporate ownership and consolidation will likely breed further insincerity (uh, hello Tribune Corp?).

And this is where the independent journalist and blogger can keep serious, honest reporting alive. Assuming free expression and social trust works to filter the good, real, legitimate news and information to the forefront in the networked world.

I’ve messed with numerous mapping applications — namely Mapbuilder and Platial and none are as effective, easy to maintain / update and share as this map tracking the ongoing fires in Southern California. Nice one, Times.

Map Updated 10/29

View Larger Map

SignOnSanDiego is also in breaking coverage mode via their text-only Fire Blog updates. With up to a quarter million people already being evacuated from areas of San Diego County it’s possible Qualcomm Stadium could be very reminiscent of the Superdome staging area (except of course that it’s not covered and the weather ain’t nearly that bad, save for the smoke in the air).

Also, LA City Fire Department is now live with its long-incubating real-time alerts feed. Subscribe via e-mail or Twitter. For very regular updates from San Diego to your mobile device, follow Nate Ritter.

Below, The Daily news‘ less-detailed Google Map focusing on Los Angeles and the Valley and a real-time slideshow of the more incredible photos documenting the fires via flickr:

Satellite photos of the fires here (NOAA) and here (NASA). InciWeb fire containment chart here. More fire-mapping resources here.

Finally, video via Google/YouTube here

No doubt Murdoch will open up WSJ.com to all as well. Both the Times and Journal were the only daily newspapers to successfully implement a paid subscription model, the Times reportedly generating over $20 million in revenue over the course of the two year TimesSelect experiment.

But the advertising landscape has changed, especially as ad sales models shift away from the pageviews to total time spent. This on the same day that AOL, which stands to benefit greatly from Nielsen’s total time spent measurements, announced a realignment of its ad strategy and a physical move from Dulles to Madison Avenue.

PaidContent breaks down the TimesSelect numbers here.

While I’m glad that I’ll no longer have to read another Frank Rich column out of context, cut-and-pasted on some random blog, I’m even happier that the excellent multimedia content on TS, as well as Kristof’s spin-off blogs (like this one written by my friend Will) will be free for the world to read.

So, are my beloved TimesSelect podcasts going to return… or what?

MORE: NYT;s letter to readers — the Pay Wall comes down at midnight EDT on the 19th. Also, Gillmor, Jarvis, and Ingram react.