Newspapers

Eight months ago, I retired from a 37-year newspaper career. Since then, I've watched silently at what has transpired in my old business, and my amazement has turned to horror. On a dreary morning in January, I got together with three industry colleagues who are continuing the fight for their publications. Their passion and enthusiasm contrasted with the cold, damp weather, as well as with the bleak forecasts for newspapers. Their voices have not been heard much, but they should be. If nobody reads newspapers anymore, I wonder, why did the governor of Illinois try to silence the Chicago Tribune's editorial writers?

THE Daily News and the Inquirer are the print town criers of the past, present and the future. We the people must step up and continue to give these two informative and thought-inspiring newspapers our support. We must purchase them, and place our ads in them - and continue to place our input in them by answering various editorials with our letters. The newspaper gives us all a chance to read and think. Their words can bring us to every part of the world, they give insight to those who seek public office, and the reader gains the knowledge.

DISCUSSIONS about the grim future of newspapers can sound self-serving when journalists do the talking. But I don't make my living from newspapers - I want them to survive because I'm a reader not a writer. The first problem: Content is old before the ink is dry. Radio, TV and especially the Internet have accelerated that aging process and expose newspapers - both the product and the institution - to competition from more nimble content providers. Second problem: The Internet has also increased the competition among newspapers themselves.

It's a marvelous night for a womb dance . . . Two British tabs have published evidence that they say proves that singer Van Morrison fathered a child out of wedlock with one of his U.S. tour promoters. Morrison flatly denied a relationship with the Texas mother, GiGi Lee , when his own website (which his people claim had been hacked into) published an announcement on Dec. 29, 2009, of the birth of "little Van. " Big Van, 65, instructed his Irish publicist to say that he didn't even know the purported mother, identified incorrectly as "his wife GiGi.

I teach at a high school where the kids are bright, well-informed and politically astute. Most of them, however, think that a newspaper is something you use to clean up after a dog or put beneath an opened can of paint. They get most of their news from the Internet or from cable shows like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, two forums that hardly existed 10 years ago. This is not altogether a bad thing. For example, this fall I will write college recommendations for about 10 seniors.

THE "PUBLIC trust" aspect of newspapers is a bloated, facile and ultimately incoherent basis for running a newspaper. And the new ownership of the Daily News and Inky give us a chance to abandon the idea. In February, I offered some advice to imaginary investors in our papers. The gist: Let the papers compete with each other, prioritize the day's events for readers and dominate the local market. We now have new owners - and they turn out to be people who make that advice sounder than ever.

I love dictionaries. Looking up one word leads the eye to the words before and following, the next, and the next, and before you know it, you have read the meanings of intent. Reading the newspaper has the same effect. Each page offers myriad articles to read and I find myself reading about topics in which I thought I had no interest, from a Mickey Mouse collector to what the Eagles might offer Michael Vick. Would my eye be so captured on a website? Would I continue to expand my understanding of the world if I read only the articles I choose on my iPad?

High school newspapers should be to journalism what Little League is to pro ball - a place and time when young people can feel the purity of expression and the responsibility of teamwork before adult rules and standards take over. But not if adults insist on umpiring from the grandstand. Little Leaguers may dream of one day swinging a bat in the big leagues, but most of them never will. And while every kid working on a high school newspaper harbors a Woodward-and-Bernstein aspiration or two, most of them won't go pro, either.

Average weekday circulation at U.S. newspapers fell 5 percent during the six months that ended Sept. 30 from the same period last year, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported Monday. The decline compared with an 8.7 percent drop for the six months that ended March 30 compared with the year-before period. The Sunday circulation drop of 4.5 percent was also smaller than a 6.5 percent decline in the six months through March. The combined average weekday paid, print-edition circulation of The Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News fell 5.3 percent, to 342,361, from 361,481 in October 2009; the Sunday figure was down 4.3 percent, to 477,586, from 499,138 a year earlier.

HARRISBURG - Advocates for Pennsylvania newspapers and local governments clashed Thursday over a bill that would allow school districts, municipalities, and counties to publish legal notices on the Web instead of in newsprint. Editors and publishers who testified for the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association told the House Local Government Committee that the legislation would undermine an important source of revenue for their ailing industry and make it more difficult for Pennsylvanians who don't use the Internet to find important public information.

"It is clearly the most valuable and largest community in the world. It's like a new town square — a new water cooler. " — Vincent Schiavone, cofounder of ListenLogic, a market research company based in Fort Washington, speaking of Facebook Inc., which raised more than $16 billion in an initial public offering of shares.   "We're long-term investors. It's nice to have the stock up for one day, but it's only one day. It's hard to extrapolate much as to the future of the company.

WELL, THAT was quick. Greg Osberg, the publisher and chief executive officer of Philadelphia Media Network - the parent company of the Daily News , Inquirer , Philly.com and SportsWeek - stepped down Friday, a little more than a month after a group of local investors bought the company for $55 million. The 54-year-old Paoli native had served as the publisher since 2010, when the media company emerged from a lengthy bankruptcy in the hands of out-of-town hedge-fund groups.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney apologized Thursday for "stupid" high school pranks that he said may have gone too far and moved quickly to stamp out any notion that he bullied schoolmates because they were gay. His swift response reflected the Republican presidential candidate's recognition that his record on gay rights is under heightened scrutiny after President Obama's embrace of gay marriage. One day after gay rights moved to the center of the presidential race with Obama's announcement on same-sex marriage, a Washington Post report about Romney's high school escapades nearly 50 years ago added a personal dimension to Democrats' contention that he's out of step on the sensitive topic.

Flyers goalie Ilya Bryzgalov refused to talk to reporters during the team's postseason media day Thursday, but he candidly told a Russian newspaper he was fed up with the scrutiny he was under during his first year with the club. "What I lived through this season I wouldn't wish to an enemy," he said to reporter Natalia Bragilevskaya of SovSport. ". . . I need to keep working. I understand the fans. They paid their money and want the show. But many forget that we are not robots, but living people.

The Philadelphia Historical Commission's approval Friday of a sign for The Philadelphia Inquirer on the former Strawbridge & Clothier department store at Eighth and Market Streets unleashed a brief uproar over the status of the Daily News under the new owners of Philadelphia Media Network. The historical commission decision involved a Market Street entrance to the headquarters of the media company, not the corner of Ninth and Market, where the company plans a digital display. KYW radio initially reported on its website that "only the Inquirer's name will be featured on the marquee" and not that of the Daily News.

This newspaper's parent company sold last week for $55 million, a staggering $460 million less than what it fetched in 2006. The plight of the company, which also owns the Daily News and Philly.com, reflects trends afflicting newspapers across the country, which continue to bleed revenue and jobs as readers and advertisers migrate to the Internet. It seems that advertising-fueled newspapers, nearly the last institutional bastion of journalism, are not sustainable. The Philadelphia papers' questionable salvation came in the form of rich benefactors.

If Mitt Romney secures the Republican presidential nomination, he might want to start worrying about whether Rick Santorum is going to give him the John McCain treatment. Twice in the 2008 primaries, as McCain was closing in on the nomination, Santorum took to his newspaper column to trash him as moderate. McCain "has too often joined the very people who seek to destroy and replace what we fight to conserve and improve," Santorum wrote. "And so we wonder: Is this the man we can trust to take our case to the American people?"

The Inquirer is launching a service that seeks to enhance the newspaper through interaction with tablets and smartphones. Using the cameras embedded in such devices, readers will be able to scan photographs or advertisements in the newspaper to access hidden content, which will then be streamed to the devices. Readers could, for instance, watch a special video or hear an interview associated with a newspaper story, or they could get updates through the day on a breaking news story.

Earlier this year, Trenton-based Republican consultant Rich Ambrosino's phone started ringing off the hook. It had just become public that one of New Jersey's most powerful political figures, George E. Norcross III, was part of an investor group looking to buy Philadelphia Media Network, the parent company of The Inquirer, and other politicians were worried, Ambrosino said. "The political culture being what it is, there's always going to be Republicans saying, 'He's doing it to influence public policy outcomes,' " he said.

The pursuit of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com began in October with an unsolicited offer by two businessmen with South Jersey roots, Lewis Katz and George E. Norcross III. It ended Monday with Katz, Norcross, and four other local investors paying $55 million to acquire the daily newspapers and their related website from the hedge funds and financial firms that had owned them since they emerged from bankruptcy in 2010....