Newspapers

John Cowles Jr., 82, a Minneapolis newspaper executive and philanthropist, died Saturday at home in Minneapolis. Scion of a family that owned the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, started Look magazine, and dominated the newspaper business in Minneapolis for more than half a century, Mr. Cowles (rhymes with bowls ) succeeded his father in 1961 as the editor of two Minneapolis papers, the morning Tribune and the evening Star. He became president and chief executive officer of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune Co. (later renamed Cowles Media Co.)

New York Mets pitcher Dwight Gooden said he seriously considered retirement in the summer of 1986, less than a year after winning the Cy Young Award, because baseball "wasn't fun anymore," two New York newspapers reported yesterday. According to reports in the Daily News and Newsday, Gooden was disturbed by winning only one of five starts between July 4 and Aug. 11 and talked with his family about walking away from the game. He said his sister, Betty Jones, persuaded him to stick with it. "I was ready to hang it up," he told Newsday.

"Grizzly Bears" and "Patriots Refrigerated" were two of the headlines splashed across the pages of British newspapers Monday, as Super Bowl XX stole the spotlight from the country's traditional sports, soccer and cricket, for a day. For the first time, most of the country's eight national papers sent correspondents to cover the NFL championship game in New Orleans, with their stories reflecting the mounting football craze in Britain. It was 2 a.m. in London when the game ended, but millions of football fans stayed up until the wee hours to watch the game live on television.

My first newspaper job was with the Goldsboro News Argus, which is, for the ill-informed, the leading newspaper in Wayne County, N.C. It then had a circulation of 9,000. I wrote its farm column, "Rambling in Rural Wayne. " Farmers summoned me to the scene whenever there was a significant farming event. I wrote, for example, about the first farmer of the season to transplant tobacco plants from the seed bed to the field and about the season's first cotton blossom. I clucked over farmers' wives who made the county's best strawberry preserves.

Philadelphia Media Network Inc., owner of The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, is selling the community newspaper division that includes the Northeast Times and My Community Trend. The buyer is Broad Street Media L.L.C., a new company whose investors include Clifford and Stuart Richner of Richner Communications Inc., which publishes 28 community newspapers and shoppers, mostly on Long Island, N.Y., and publishing executive Darwin Oordt. Terms were not disclosed.

Maybe those of us who work at newspapers should be perversely flattered that he chose print. He sent a manifesto to us rather than sending a camouflaged videotape to Larry King or Tom Brokaw. Maybe it pegs the Unabomber as the low-tech man he claims to be, a man who still wants to be read, not just heard. Surely it pegs him as a murderer with a penchant for public opinion, a terrorist who writes in the editorial "we. " On Tuesday, the full tract of a treatise on "Industrial Society and Its Future" blackmailed its way into the Washington Post, co-sponsored by the New York Times.

Daniel Ginyard, 94, a former manager for a South Jersey car dealership and part-owner of two weekly newspapers in Philadelphia, died Thursday, May 30, at Wilmington Hospital of the Christiana Health Care System. He was a former Willingboro resident. Born in Orangeburg, S.C., Mr. Ginyard graduated from Central High School in Philadelphia, took business administration classes at Temple University, and enlisted in the Army in 1943. During 10 years of active duty, he served as a communications officer and a transportation officer, including for a time in Japan, nephew Philip Ginyard said Wednesday.

By Mike Hoyt A few years ago, my old boss David Laventhol had an extended conversation with Rupert Murdoch about newspapers. It was after some sort of big-deal journalism dinner, and they talked long after the tired waiters wished they'd go. David had a storied career in newspapers. He helped invent the Style section of the Washington Post when he was a young editor there. He was editor and publisher of Newsday, publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and president of Times Mirror, finishing his career with me at the Columbia Journalism Review.

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.

Clueless. That's what most journalists are when it comes to predicting the future of newspapers. That was clear last week during a meeting of the annual convention of the nation's editors to discuss a theme to greet the new century. While most young people are using a variety of multimedia methods to communicate, editors are still worrying about a convention agenda focused on traditional journalism: improving suburban coverage, writing awards, hiring and writing for diversity, and making newspapers more lively.