Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Excellence in Journalism Banquet

This year's banquet will begin with check-in and cocktails at 7 p.m., Saturday, May 10 at the Riverside Marriott. We are starting a little later than usual, because the Marriott has another event ending at 5 p.m. in the same room as ours.

Tickets are $40 per person or $350 for a table of 10.

Meal choices this year are Prime Rib, Salmon and Vegetable Napoleon.

If you plan to attend, please e-mail an RSVP to billnorrisspj@yahoo.com. We need to know the names of the attendees and their meal preference. We are going to do our best to keep all the meals straight this year, so it is very important that we have meal choices in advance. (If you want to trade meals once you're at the table, that's up to you.)

Any other information, contact Bill Norris at the e-mail above.

Evening with the Editor

The Los Angeles Press Club Presents: Transforming the Los Angeles Times: An Evening With Editor Russ Stanton

7 p.m. this Thursday, April 24, at the club

The Times recently tapped its innovations expert as its new editor. Russ Stanton, in one of his first appearances, will offer some early glimpses of how he plans to turn around slipping circulation and deal with slashed budgets that are affecting the entire news business.How will The Times continue its Pulitzer-winning tradition? Come here Stanton on the future of newspapers, the new business and hear answers to your questions about the West's largest daily.

COST: Bring your friends. The event is free to Press Club and SPJ members, $10 for non-members and $15 at the door. Refreshments included.
WHERE: The L.A. Press Club at the Steve Allen Theater, 4773 Hollywood Boulevard, two blocks west of Vermont Ave. (Metro: Sunset/Vermont station)
RSVP: rsvp@lapressclub.org or 323-669-8081

Monday, April 21, 2008

Ethnic Media Workshop in LA

SPJ/LA to Host Panel on Hyper-Localism in Los Angeles' Ethnic Communities on May 15

Save the Date: Thursday, May 15
The Greater Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists invites you to join us on Thursday, May 15 for a discussion with journalists from the Latino, African American, Asian and Arab-American media on covering the city's diverse ethnic communities. Since LA has become an ethnic majority city, producing and investigating local stories can be challenging, especially when it means crossing over ethnic language and cultural barriers. These veteran journalists will share tips and insights on how mainstream journalists can effectively pursue, and even partner with, ethnic media journalists for stories that involve ethnic communities.

WHAT: Hyper-Localism in Los Angeles' Ethnic Communities
WHEN: 7 p.m. on Thursday, May 15
WHERE: Cal Plaza, Suite 3950, 300 S. Grand Ave.
RSVP: SPJ/LA's Julian Do at jdo@newamericamedia.org

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Professional Category Winners (Take 2)

Here's THE COMPLETE list of names (UPDATED 4-21) who will be getting invites for the Excellence in Journalism banquet. The event will begin at 7 p.m. May 10 at the Riverside Marriott (we're starting a little later this year, there's an event in the same room that will keep us from starting at our usual time).
As always, if you see a name misspelled on this list, let us know. You can either post a comment on this board, or you can e-mail billnorrisspj@yahoo.com.
College results are on a separate posting.

THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Jim Alexander
Paige Austin
Leslie Berkman
Sonja Bjelland
Jennifer Bowles
Sarah Burge
Claudia Bustamante
Michelle DeArmond
Maggie Delbon
Duane Gang
Jeff Girod
Julia Glick
Ben Goad
Lora Hines
Paul LaRocco
Tammy McCoy
Cassie McDuff
Gregor McGavin
Sean Nealon
David Olson
Patrick O'Neil
Shirin Parsavand
Rodrigo Pena
Kimberly Pierceall
Douglas Quan
Chris Ramos
Sandra Stokley
Leezel Tanglao
Janet Zimmerman

THE SUN
Stacia Glenn
John Murphy
Jason Pesick

INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN
Will Bigham
Mediha DiMartino
Leo Greene
Wendy Leung
Jeff Malet
Therese Tran

THE CALIFORNIAN
Chris Bagley
Brian Eckhouse
Landon Negri

DAILY PRESS
Hillary Borrud
Ryan Orr
Katherine Rosenberg
Sheila Rowland
Michael Stenerson
Gerald Tang

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY NEWSPAPERS (WHITTIER/PASADENA/SGVN)
Evelyn Barge
Pia Abelgas Orense
Audrey Reed

DESERT DISPATCH
Aaron Aupperlee
Matthew Peters
Scott Shackford
Jason Smith

HESPERIA STAR
Peter Day
Beau Yarbrough

VALLEY NEWS
Paul Gallaher
Tim O’Leary
Julie Reeder
David Reynolds
Shannon Starr

HIGHLANDER
Evelyn Barge
Richard Irwin
MaritzaVelazquez

REDLANDS DAILY FACTS
C.L. Lopez

IDYLLWILD TOWN CRIER
Betty Bailey
Becky Clark
J.P. Crumrine
Marcia Gawecki
Jenny Kirchner

THE BUSINESS PRESS
Joseph Ascenzi
Darla Martin Tucker
Carol Park
Jahmal Peters

CHAMPION NEWSPAPERS
Marianne Napoles

OC WEEKLY
Daffodil J. Altan
John Gilhooley
Janine Kahn
Nick Schou

IE WEEKLY
Stacy Davies
David Silva

BLACK VOICE NEWS
Taylor Jordan

INLAND EMPIRE NEWS RADIO
Julie Estrada
Jim Ness

DAILY JOURNAL
Jason W. Armstrong

Fourstory.org
Barbara E. Hernandez

SMART BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Ray Marano

Thursday, April 17, 2008

College Contest Winners**

With all but a couple of categories finished, here's a list of winners for the college entries. Again, if you find a spelling error, please let billnorrisspj@yahoo.com know. UPDATED 4-28

UNIVERSITY OF LA VERNE
Michelle Ajemian
Tom Anderson
Veronica Andrews
Jessica Bell
Angela Gangi
Matt Hill
Katherine Hillier
Erin Konrad
Marilee Lorusso
Yelena Ovcharenko
Galo Pesantes
Sher Porter
Chelsea Sherier
Jonathan Smith
Madison Steff

CAL POLY POMONA
Allen Chen
Joseph Muldoon
Brandon Tan
Daniel Tedford
Lucio Villa

RIVERSIDE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Yessica Acevedo
Christopher Dietrich
Timothy Guy
Khai Le
Bouroeun Lor
Sabrina Jones
Desiree Perez

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

A slip that will live in infamy?

It was just a slip of the tongue.

During the annual Associated Press luncheon in Washington, D.C., William Dean Singleton, MediaNews chairman, was in a high pressure situation and slipped up while asking a question of Presidential candidate Barack Obama and called Osama bin Laden as "Obama" bin Laden.

We all had a good laugh and moved on ... unless you read the Huffington Post I guess. The Website has posted a video from an Arab language television newscast which delivers the news of the gaffe to a whole new audience.

Presidential candidates support a shield law

SPJ leaders pleased with Democratic hopefuls’ support of a federal shield law

INDIANAPOLIS – Leaders of the Society of Professional Journalists today welcomed additional support of S. 2035, the Free Flow of Information Act, from Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Advice on how to get started on multi-media reporting

From the Society of Professional Journalists.

Solo journalism advice
By Debora Wenger
Bob Cronkleton is a reporter for the Kansas City Star. He recently answered a question about multimedia reporting which was posted on the Criminal Justice Journalists listserv. It offers some valuable advice, right from the front lines.

Industry news

The mighty New York Times is now talking about layoffs.

The New York Observer writes the story.

The times are a changing for AP

The Associated Press will cut its service fees next year due to the severe financial turmoil most of the papers in the country are struggling with. The story below is through Yahoo Finance:

State Of AP: Singleton: Less Than 25 Percent Of 2009 Revs From Member Newspapers; No New Century Net
For a sense of the dramatic shift at the Associated Press in the digital age, consider this: by 2009, less than 25 percent of Associated Press revenues will come from member newspapers. That was just one of the stats tossed out by William Dean Singleton during his chairman's report at the AP annual meeting in Washington D.C. Monday. (Unfortunately, I couldn't make it this year so working off his published remarks.) This year, only 28 percent will come from member newspapers, he said: "Broadcasters, internet companies and international subscribers now provide the lion's share of AP revenue."

Old news about Belo

Sorry for posting such old news folks. But the blog is pretty young and was not really up and running at full speed when this news came out. But it won't happen until April 28 anyway...

A.H. Belo Corporation , owners of the Riverside Press Enterprise, will announce its' first quarter financial results on April 28. Following the announcement, there will be a conference call that will be simulcast on the corporation's Web site. This will be a first for A.H. Belo, a new corporation formed when Belo Corp. split its television and newspaper operations.

Read the Yahoo Finance story on it.

Monday, April 14, 2008

A longer story on the funny gaffe

From Editor and Publisher:

AP Chairman Refers to "Obama bin Laden" -- In Posing Question to Barack Obama
By Joe Strupp
Published: April 14, 2008
WASHINGTON After addressing the journalists gathered at the annual Associated Press luncheon in Washington, D.C., today, Sen. Barack Obama, standing at the podium, took a few questions. The last one from the audience, delivered via AP chairman W. Dean Singleton, was related to Afghanistan, our troops in Iraq and the threat posed by, as Singleton put it, "Obama bin Laden."

Sam Zell Named to AP Board

Murdoch, Zell Named to AP board
April 14, 2008
WASHINGTON Rupert Murdoch and Sam Zell, two media figures who led major newspaper acquisitions in recent months, are among four new members joining the board of directors of The Associated Press, it was announced Monday at the news cooperative's annual meeting

Et Tu Mr. Singleton?

It's been documented (even by Jon Stewart) how many people have mangled presidential candidate Barack Obama's name. MediaNews chairman Dean Singleton mistakenly added to the list of mispronunciations, according to a short article by the Associated Press and published by the Lexington Herald Leader.

**************************************
Make that Obama, not Osama, please

The Associated Press
WASHINGTON --Sen. Barack Obama's name has been mangled plenty of times, though not always in the presence of 1,200 news executives and TV cameras.

LA Times still deciding what to do with reporter

Editor and Publisher's Website have posted a story in which Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton updates the situation with Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chuck Philips. He has not been let go from the paper but his fate is still undecided, according to the story. Philips became embroiled in controversy after it was discovered that his March 17 article linking Sean "P. Diddy" Combs to the shooting death of Tupac Shakur was based on fabricated information.

Sigma Delta Chi award winners

The Society of Professional Journalists national today (April 14) released the list of recipients 2007 Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism. The list includes Michael Ramirez, of the Investor’s Business Daily, for editorial cartooning. Ramirez also won that other prize, The Pulitzer.

KABC-TV Anchor Jovana Lara to MC SPJ/LA event

A news release from the Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists:

SPJ/LA ANNOUNCES KABC-TV ANCHOR JOVANA LARA WILL SERVE AS MISTRESS OF CEREMONIES FOR THE 32ND ANNUAL DISTINGUISHED JOURNALISTS AWARDS BANQUET

LOS ANGELES – KABC-TV anchor Jovana Lara will serve as the mistress of ceremonies for the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists' 32nd annual awards banquet later this month.

The Distinguished Journalists Awards banquet will be held on Wednesday, April 30 at the Omni Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The event helps SPJ/LA raise money for local programs, including scholarships and professional development.

Journalist and author Cokie Roberts will be the speaker at this year's event, which honors six local journalists.

This year's award recipients are Bob Banfield of KABC-TV, Beth Barrett of the Los Angeles Daily News, John Rabe of KPCC-FM and Tom Tugend of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. Los Angeles Times reporters Scott Glover and Matt Lait will be honored with the Freedom of Information Award.

Lara joined ABC7 Eyewitness News since December 2000 as a reporter and was promoted less than two years later to her current position as a co-anchor for the station's 11 a.m. newscast.
Tickets to the banquet are $80 per person for SPJ members, and $90 for non-SPJ members. Tables of 10 are available for $800.

More information on the banquet is available at www.spj.org/losangeles
The Society of Professional Journalists is the nation's largest and most broad-based journalism organization, dedicated to promoting high standards of ethical behavior and encouraging the free practice of journalism. Founded in 1909 as Sigma Delta Chi, SPJ works to inspire and educate the next generation of journalists and protects First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and press.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Media News to stop publicly filing financial news

As reported by Reporter-G and Gary Scott who has learned it from the Rocky Mountain News, MediaNews has agreed to provide its financial information directly to its bondholders. Bondholders have agreed to let MediaNews stop making filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ... effective immediately.

Dean Singleton in the news

From "Scoop World" Independent News:

Newspapers in the USA The Next Five Years

Paris, 10 April 2008 - Dean Singleton, the Vice Chairman and CEO of the MediaNews Group in the United States, has joined the programme of the World Newspaper Congress, where he will present his group's strategy plans for the next five years, while addressing the current difficulties of the most challenging market in the world.

Industry news

Gary Scott reports on more moves, literally, at LANG East.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Rally the troups!?

As some of you have already seen on Laobserved.com, Meg Worley takes the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin to task for a goof found in a headline posted their Website.

Of course there's always two sides to every story, or in this case mistake. Read all the way to the bottom and check out Daily Bulletin columnist David Allen's funny response to the blog item.

Catching Online Plagiarists

Here’s an interesting item posted on Craig Silverman’s blog Regret the Error about a suspected Online plagiarist.

Buyouts good for the papers?

You be the judge.

Via Romenesko.

He was responding to Jack Shafer's column.

If Katie can't save network news, who can?

Time Magazine writer James Poniewozik shines a light on yet another example of the problems facing the press in a story about Ms. Couric's possible early departure from CBS. The article also asks that all important question, in this day and age, what journalist is worth $15 million.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Journalism Watches as Yahoo! Battles

AOL and Yahoo are looking to merge. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that "Yahoo Inc. and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL are closing in on a deal to combine their Internet operations. Here's the full story.

How does that affect journalism?

Well In almost every newsroom (if not in every newsroom) in this country, one thing has been made clear: The survival of Journalism depends on the industry's ability to make money off of the Internet.

We're collectively still struggle to solve that problem. But many including Media News and the Belo (owners of the Riverside Press Enterprise) had pinned at least some of their hopes on Yahoo! who has next-generation Online ad tools for some 600 newspapers which have joined in a newspaper consortium.

But with Microsoft making a bid to take over Yahoo! and now with AOL now attempting to merge with Web company, we can only speculate how this will impact the implementation of the Online ad tools.

Online Ad Revenue actually coming?

An April 7 article from Biz Report provides a glimmer of hope and briefly quotes Mr. Dean Singleton.

From the article:

According to the New York Times, marketers will be able to target online audiences based on online behavior, demographic profile or geographic location. The first to use AMP will be the hundreds of newspapers in Yahoo’s consortium.

More industry news

Our favorite watchdog Web blog LA Observed is reporting that "Los Angeles Daily Journal newsroom ... lopped off its copy desk last night." The layoffs reportedly took place April 8 as this item was posted Wednesday. The item is titled Expect More Tpyos at Daily Journal.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Professional Category Winners*

Here's a nearly complete list of names (UPDATED 4-16) who will be getting invites for the Excellence in Journalism banquet. The event will be May 10 at the Riverside Marriott (we may be starting a little later this year, there's an event in the same room that will keep us from starting on time).

As always, if you see a name misspelled on this list, let us know. You can either post a comment on this board, or you can e-mail billnorrisspj@yahoo.com.

College results will come in a later posting.

THE PRESS-ENTERPRISE
Jim Alexander
Paige Austin
Leslie Berkman
Sonja Bjelland
Jennifer Bowles
Sarah Burge
Claudia Bustamante
Michelle DeArmond
Maggie Delbon
Duane Gang
Jeff Girod
Julia Glick
Ben Goad
Paul LaRocco
Tammy McCoy
Cassie McDuff
Sean Nealon
David Olson
Patrick O'Neil
Shirin Parsavand
Rodrigo Pena
Kimberly Pierceall
Douglas Quan
Chris Ramos
Sandra Stokley
Leezel Tanglao

THE SUN
Stacia Glenn
John Murphy
Jason Pesick

INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN
Leo Greene
Therese Tran

THE CALIFORNIAN
Chris Bagley
Brian Eckhouse
Landon Negri

DAILY PRESS
Hillary Borrud
Ryan Orr
Katherine Rosenberg
Sheila Rowland
Michael Stenerson
Gerald Tang

SAN GABRIEL VALLEY NEWSPAPERS (WHITTIER/PASADENA/SGVN)
Evelyn Barge
Pia Abelgas Orense
Audrey Reed

DESERT DISPATCH
Aaron Aupperlee
Matthew Peters
Scott Shackford
Jason Smith

HESPERIA STAR
Peter Day
Beau Yarbrough

VALLEY NEWS
Paul Gallaher
Tim O’Leary
Julie Reeder
David Reynolds
Shannon Starr

HIGHLANDER
Evelyn Barge
Richard Irwin
Maritza Velazquez

REDLANDS DAILY FACTS
C.L. Lopez

IDYLLWILD TOWN CRIER
Betty Bailey
Becky Clark
J.P. Crumrine
Marcia Gawecki
Jenny Kirchner

THE BUSINESS PRESS
Joseph Ascenzi
Darla Martin Tucker
Carol Park
Jahmal Peters

CHAMPION NEWSPAPERS
Marianne Napoles

OC WEEKLY
Daffodil J. Altan
John Gilhooley
Janine Kahn
Nick Schou

IE WEEKLY
Stacy Davies
David Silva

BLACK VOICE NEWS
Taylor Jordan

INLAND EMPIRE NEWS RADIO
Julie Estrada
Jim Ness

DAILY JOURNAL
Jason W. Armstrong

Fourstory.org
Barbara E. Hernandez

SMART BUSINESS MAGAZINE
Ray Marano