Newspapers

Just in time for the holidays comes a study bearing the un-startling news that newspapers and news magazines are doing a crummy job of appealing to young adults. The news is not a gift for editors. Under the tutelage of former USA Today editor Nancy Woodhull, 19 University of Rochester students spent a month scrutinizing four newspapers (two major metros, two medium-sized), Newsweek, Time and U.S. News & World Report. What they learned was that the only members of Generation X seeing their lives reflected on the page were athletes, celebrities and criminals.

Web surfers hunting this week for online versions of The Inquirer and at least nine other newspapers have risked landing, instead, on the Web site of an ex-Ku Klux Klanleader promoting white separatism. Unknown to the papers, someone in recent days registered Internet addresses that included part or all of the newspapers' names, then linked those addresses to the racist site. Anyone who typed one of the addresses - called domain names - into their Web browser in hopes of finding a news site saw gothic letters across the screen, and a black-and-white cross circled with the words "White Pride World Wide.

A First Amendment flap in central Pennsylvania was resolved Wednesday when a judge said two local newspapers were no longer under court order to delete archived news articles about 41 clients of a State College lawyer seeking to have their records expunged. The expungement orders will be revised to remove any reference to the Centre Daily Times and the Daily Collegian, the student paper at Pennsylvania State University, Centre County Judge Thomas Kistler said. "It was never anybody's intention to restrict" the papers, he said in a telephone interview.

The Daily News and Inquirer are going back on the auction block next week, after a potential sale to a group of hedge funds collapsed yesterday under opposition from Teamster delivery drivers. Federal bankruptcy Judge Stephen Raslavich ordered a new auction in his courtroom a week from tomorrow, without any contingencies for labor agreements. Greg Osberg, chief executive of the hedge-fund consortium that agreed last April to pay $105 million in cash for the newspapers, said the group intended to bid and prevail again, this time with more clout to deal with the balking Teamsters.

"It's how you know" is the latest in a string of advertising slogans adopted by The Inquirer to sell the benefits of reading the paper. Billboards, newspaper ads and radio spots are popping up, emphasizing the paper's local offerings and usefulness. Just a few years ago, journalists rarely participated in efforts to promote the paper. Now, many are involved in the planning, eager to go on air or have their pictures taken if it helps sell their reports. The turning point for me on the need to adopt more aggressive sales pitches came in 1994 during a workshop with grassroots neighborhood leaders.

Journalists have been watching efforts by the Los Angeles Times to build a new business model with a wary eye ever since former cereal executive Mark Willes started to adapt his marketing methods to the Times-Mirror newspaper dynasty. Would it be possible to safeguard the integrity of the newspaper's content when the new CEO was asking editors to tear down "the walls" that traditionally separated the news and business sides in his quest to sell more newspapers and grow profits?

What comes after information? Shift from repetition to reputation. Price of black milk rises. "Exclusivity, once the main purpose, has become a primary threat. " Critique of evolutionary reason. But being is not just about BEHAVING. A tree whose branches grow back into its roots. A film projected without light. A science of making citizens. A gift you can't even give once. Vulnerability unequally distributed across globe, see Page A7. An insurrection at the level of Page B10. A new use for "we"?

Former Gov. Ed Rendell on Saturday disputed a report that he and a group of business and political leaders might not buy the company that owns The Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly.com, and he lashed out at critics who challenged their interest or right to own the media properties. The group's negotiations are ongoing, Rendell said in an interview with The Inquirer, and its offer was a civic gesture to save the papers. "You'd think this was the first time some political people owned a newspaper," he said.

A union representing advertising, circulation and editorial workers at some Knight Ridder Inc. newspapers said it had hired financial advisers to solicit investors for a "worker-friendly" buyout of nine unionized papers in the chain, including The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. "Standing still is not an option," Linda Foley, president of the Newspaper Guild-Communication Workers of America, said in a statement. "We are going to go after those properties, and we are going to attempt to persuade others in labor, management and the investment community to join us. " Under pressure from shareholders disappointed by the newspaper industry's weak advertising growth and rising newsprint and benefit costs, Knight Ridder in November asked investment bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to solicit buyers for the company.