Amateur hour: ‘Citizens’ take turn at journalism That … · Seminars aplenty ahead for...

N E

P A

Promotinggrowth and

excellence inNew Englandnewspapers

Volume 47/ No. 10October 2006

NEPABulletin

inside Big changes for GateHouse papers, P. 5

Advertising . . . . . . . . . . . 17Awards Briefs. . . . . . . . . . 18 Briefs. . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 14, 15Classified Ads . . . . . . . . . . 19Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Deaths. . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 24Legal Briefs. . . . . . . . . . . 8, 9News Ventures . . . . . . . 3, 22 Transitions . . . . . . . . . 20, 21Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

?QQuestion ofuestion ofthe Mthe Monthonth“How well has the news media itself

portrayed the financial status of

print newspapers todayand their prospects for

the future?”

Visit www.nepa.org to answer this month’s question.

September Question of the Month results, Page 6

by Kim BurdettBulletin Staff

Anyone can be a reporter. Or so it seems if you log on toWikinews at www.wikinews.org, a Web site that reports news sole-ly via user-generated content.

The site displays a hyperlinked headline that will take the user tothe full text of any breaking news story reported on the page. One

word differentiates Wikinews from other news sites, however: edit.That one small word written at the bottom of every article allows

other Wikinewsies to add, fix, delete or otherwise change any infor-mation already posted. It is a collaborative worldwide newsroom,where everyday people have a chance to write the news as well asread it.

Amateur hour: ‘Citizens’take turn at journalism

The New England Press Association soon will be distributing bymail copies of the 2007 NEPA New England NewspaperDirectory to its nearly 600 members. The cover was designed byMark Johnston Associates of Plymouth, Mass. Extra copies andcopies for non-members are available for $60 each.

Official notice about this winter’s New England PressAssociation annual convention will be on its way next monthto NEPA’s almost 600 newspaper members as fall begins tocome to a close.

That’s when the convention planning that began this pastspring takes a turn toward reality. And the reality is thatNEPA’s 56th Annual Convention and Trade Show will fea-ture the kind of deep and varied menu of offerings as in yearspast.

Again next year the convention has scheduled more than50 workshops during its two days – Friday, Feb. 9, andSaturday, Feb. 10 – at the Boston Park Plaza. Although the2007 convention’s emphasis is on technology, and includesdiscussions of multimedia news presentations and onlinenews and advertising, the workshops will cover the usualbroad range of other topics of interest to newspaper ownersand practitioners: design; photography; sports coverage;advertising sales; management; legal issues; news reportingand writing.

Other staples from past years’ conventions are returning in2007 as well. A reception Friday evening will honor NEPA’s

_______________________Convention to Page 23

____________________________Pros, cons to 0

Convention countdown

Seminars aplenty ahead for NEPA’s 2007 convention

2 NEPA Bulletin • October 2006

NEPA Board of DirectorsPresident

Lynn Delaney (802) 893-2028The Milton (Vt.) Independent

First Vice PresidentMarlene Switzer (978) 739-1300Community Newspaper Company,

Beverly, Mass.

Second Vice PresidentDavid Solomon (603) 673-3100

The Cabinet Press Inc., Milford, N.H.

SecretaryMary Pat Rowland (603) 742-4455

Foster’s Daily Democrat, Dover, N.H.

Past PresidentEllen Zappala (978) 374-0321Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co.,

North Andover, Mass.

MembersDerek Anderson (207) 594-5351

VillageSoup Co., Rockland, Maine

Sean Burke (508) 746-5555MPG Newspapers, Plymouth, Mass.

Phillip Camp (802) 457-1313The Vermont Standard, Woodstock, Vt.

Terry Carlisle (207) 667-2576The Ellsworth (Maine) American

Nick Daniloff (617) 373-4050Northeastern University, Boston

Oreste D’Arconte (508) 222-7000The Sun Chronicle, Attleboro, Mass.

Gary Farrugia (860) 442-2200 The Day, New London, Conn.

Matthew Hayes (401) 253-6000East Bay Newspapers, Bristol, R.I.

Tim Kane (413) 283-8393Turley Publications, Palmer, Mass.

Cal Killeen (603) 436-1800Portsmouth (N.H.) Herald

John Lenger (617) 495-1585Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.

Marcia O’Brien (401) 789-9744The Narragansett (R.I.) Times

Will Rowlands (203) 226-6311Westport (Conn.) News

Helen Smith (617) 969-5243NE Scholastic Press Association, Boston

Jane Spencer (802) 388-4944Addison County Independent,

Middlebury, Vt.

Thomas Ward (401) 334-9555The Valley Breeze, Cumberland, R.I.

Geordie Wilson (603) 224-5301Concord (N.H.) Monitor

EXECUTIVE DIRECTORBrenda L. Reed

ADVERTISING DIRECTORLinda Conway

MEMBER SERVICES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

Elaine Reiter

BRIEFSComputer glitchdelays Journal’selection report

The Providence (R.I.)Journal’s decision to cut its crewof election-tally runners beforeRhode Island’s U.S. Senate pri-mary in September was part ofan effort to trim the Journal’sbudget, according to a report inThe Providence (R.I.) Phoenix.The Phoenix said the decisionproved particularly costly afterthe Board of Elections’ comput-er system failed.

The Journal’s Web site,www.projo.com, had advertisedplans to begin posting resultswhen polls closed at 9 p.m. ThePhoenix said the Journal’s Website relied on real-time results onthe Rhode Island Board ofElections’ Web site, which failedto post its results in timebecause of a computer glitch.

According to the Journal, thecompany used to relay voter tal-lies to the Board of Electionsinitially neglected to disengageits computer’s security device,delaying the transmission ofresults. The first set of voter tal-lies were not posted on theboard’s Web site until 10:10p.m. By that time, the Phoenixsaid, local television channelswere declaring the election’swinner, U.S. Sen. LincolnChaffee, who defeated hisRepublican opponent, StephenP. Laffey, by an eight-percent-age-point margin.

The Journal described theboard’s computer glitch in a

post-election article, but, as thePhoenix noted, the paper didnot mention its own Web site asone of those affected by theproblem.

Joel Rawson, the Journal’sexecutive editor, was on vacationwhen the NEPA Bulletin calledfor comment Sept. 28. Thepaper’s spokeswoman and pro-motion director, BarbaraNauman, did not return twomessages from the Bulletinrequesting comments.

Disabled ex-workerat Patriot Ledger sues over her firing

A former mailroom worker atthe Patriot Ledger of Quincy,Mass., is suing the newspaper,claiming that she was firedbecause she was disabled.

The Ledger reported that adiscrimination suit was filed inAugust on behalf of formerPatriot Ledger employee DianeScannell of Quincy, and herhusband, William Scannell. Thedetails of the suit — includingthe compensation the Scannellsare seeking and what claim orclaims William Scannell is mak-ing – were not disclosed in thePatriot Ledger’s report. DianeScannell had worked in thepaper’s mailroom for 10 years.

According to the PatriotLedger, the lawsuit alleges thatin July 2005, Scannell injuredher knee on a metal bar that wasprotruding from a mailroommachine. She said she returned

to the mailroom in Novemberand was permitted to do her jobfrom a sitting position.

The suit claims that thePatriot Ledger fired ScannellDec. 8, two weeks after her doc-tors lengthened her expectedrecovery time and suggested thatthe paper provide a modifiedwork regimen for an extendedperiod of time. Scannell notedin her lawsuit that a co-workerwith an injured ankle was per-mitted to work from a seatedposition for six months.

The Patriot Ledger has hiredMark W. Batten, a lawyer with

the Bostonfirm of Pros-kauer RoseLLP, to repre-sent the paper.Eben Krim,also a lawyerwith Pros-kauer Rose,

will join Batten in the paper’sdefense. Neither would offercomments to the Bulletin aboutthe Patriot Ledger’s counter-claims, noting the sensitivity ofthe case.

The Bulletin did not receivean immediate response to a tele-phone message seeking com-ment from Kirk Davis, publish-er of the Patriot Ledger.

As part of the federalAmericans with Disabilities Act,employers are required to makereasonable accommodations fordisabled workers who cannototherwise perform their assign-ed tasks.

Purcell injures hand in boating accident

Patrick J. Purcell, publisherof the BostonHerald, madeheadlines out-side the news-paper when heinjured hishand in a fish-ing accidentSept. 28.

Purcell, who owns a home onMartha’s Vineyard in Massa-chusetts, was fishing for bluefintuna near Nomans Land Island,about three miles offshore in his36-foot-long boat, WeekendEdition. While anchoring theboat, Purcell caught his handbetween the motorized anchor-ing line and the boat’s hull. Ac-cording to Chilmark, Mass.,Police Chief Timothy S. Rich,one of Purcell’s fingers was al-most completely severed in theaccident.

After initial treatment atMartha’s Vineyard Hospital,Purcell was taken via helicopterto Boston Medical Center,where doctors were able to reat-tach his finger.

Farragher named editor of Globe’sSpotlight Team

The Boston Globe has an-nounced that Tom Farragherwill replace Walter Robinson aseditor of the Globe’s award-win-ning Spotlight Team.

________Briefs to Page 14

Patrick Purcell

Postmaster:Send address changes to:

New England Press Association

360 Huntington Ave. 428CPBoston, MA 02115

(617) 373-5610fax: (617) 373-5615

Periodical Postage paid at:Boston, Mass.,

and aditional mailing offices.Subscription rate: $25/year

Mark Batten

CorrectionKatherine Herbert is a

graduate student at theNortheastern UniversitySchool of Journalism and amember of the Bulletinstaff. Her last name wasmisspelled in last month’sBulletin.

NEPA Bulletin • October 2006 3

Monadnock Ledgerand PeterboroughTranscript merge

The last editions of thePeterborough (N.H.) Transcriptand the Monadnock Ledger,also of Peterborough, as separateentities hit the newsstands Sept.21.

Newspapers of New England,based in Concord, N.H., theowners of the Ledger, boughtthe Transcript in an agreementannounced Sept. 11, the Ledgerreported Sept. 14.

Tom Brown, president ofNewspapers of New England,described the company as “aNew Hampshire newspaperfamily,” and said the new publi-cation will incorporate the bestof both papers and expand cov-erage to provide better service toreaders and advertisers, theLedger reported.

The first issue of the newpublication, the MonadnockLedger-Transcript, was pub-lished Sept. 28, and will beginpublishing twice a week, onTuesdays and Thursdays, byOct. 24, Marcia Patten, theLedger-Transcript’s editor, said.The single-copy price of thenew publication is unchangedfrom the old papers at 50 cents,Patten said. Subscription ratesare still being established for thechange to twice-weekly publica-tion, she said.

The new paper has a broad-sheet format, as did the oldones, Patten said.

The Monadnock Ledger’s cir-culation was about 8,600 andthe Peterborough Transcript’scirculation was about 3,800,according to the 2006 NewEngland Newspaper Directory.

Circulation for the Ledger-Transcript is about 10,000,Heather McKernan, the news-paper’s publisher, said.

Transcript staff memberswere invited to join the mergedpublication, the Ledger said.

In an announcement in thepenultimate issue of theTranscript, Publisher JoeCummings said he was pleasedto see the 157-year-old Tran-script name continue. Cum-mings is the fourth generationof his family to be the paper’spublisher, the announcementsaid. The Transcript was theonly local weekly newspaper inPeterborough for more than acentury, according to Wiki-pedia.org.

The Ledger was purchased in1986 by Newspapers of NewEngland, which also publishesthe Amherst Bulletin, the DailyHampshire Gazette of North-ampton and The Recorder ofGreenfield, all of Massachusetts;and the Concord Monitor andThe Valley News of WestLebanon, both of New Hamp-shire, the Ledger said.

The full terms of all existingsubscriptions to both papers willbe honored, the Transcript said.

The merged operations arehoused in the Ledger’s offices.

New magazine will focus on country life in N.E., New York

Classic Country Life, alifestyle magazine dedicated pri-marily to the people, places andbusinesses of New England’scountry towns and villages, willpublish its first print version in

mid-November. The magazine’s Web site,

www.classiccountrylife.com,was launched in January.

The publication, based inWolfeboro, N.H., is designed tobe an insider’s guide to countryliving in all six New Englandstates and upstate New York.

The magazine will includemore than 100 pages of “towntours;” sections on wildlife andthe outdoors, home and garden,food, travel, health and beauty;reviews of local businesses,shops and restaurants; real estateofferings; and profiles of thepeople and places that charac-terize the culture of the NewEngland countryside.

Alana Harold, the magazine’sfounder and editor in chief, saidthe quarterly will focus on offer-ing readers an authentic portraitof country life in New England.

The Granite State News ofWolfeboro reported that themagazine recently hiredWolfeboro resident TheresaFenton, who has 14 years ofbusiness experience, as businessmanager.

Harold said the magazineemploys 25 New Englanders,including editors, writers andphotographers, and will havefreelance contributors.

The magazine’s publisher,digiEDGE Communications, islocated in Wolfeboro.

Harold said the magazine willappeal to a “sophisticated audi-ence,” and its format and con-tent will reflect that market. Itwill feature a layout slightly larg-

er than the traditional magazineformat, with full color through-out, glossy, high-quality printand paper, and a varnished frontcover.

Complimentary copies of thefirst edition will be mailed totargeted high-end homeownersthroughout New England

In an effort to reach readersboth within and outside NewEngland’s borders, the magazinehas partnered with Hudson-RPM Distributors Atlas NewsDivision, New England’s largestretail chain distributor with sev-eral locations in Massachusettsand Maine, and IngramPeriodicals of Tennessee, a divi-sion of Ingram Book Group, thelargest wholesale book distribu-tor in the world. The publica-tion will be sent to businessesfrom San Francisco to Florida toMinnesota, and will be availableat more than 6,000 NewEngland retailers.

Borders and Barnes & Noblehave agreed to carry the maga-zine in their bookstores andmany New England hotels andbed and breakfast inns will offercomplimentary copies in guests’rooms.

Harold said she hopes topublish the magazine everyother month eventually.

Classic Country Life will goon sale in November and willretail for $4.95 a copy. Yearlysubscription rates are availableon the magazine’s Web site.

New Mass. magfocuses on area businesswomen

DEF Enterprises of Agawam,Mass., has rolled out its latestbusiness publication, TheWestern Mass Business Woman,a magazine offering up-to-datenews, information, and insightsfor the region’s working women,the Agawam Advertiser Newsreported last month.

The magazine is the second

publication to be launched byDEF Enterprises, which pub-lishes the four-year-old ValleyBusiness Outlook, a monthlyprint and online magazine dedi-cated to reporting positive busi-ness news and information forresidents of Western Massa-chusetts and Northern Con-necticut.

DEF Enterprise’s chief execu-tive officer and publisher, Dee

L. Emery-Fer-rero, told theA d v e r t i s e rNews that thenew magazinefocuses on iss-ues that affectall women inthe workplace,

“from the women on the manu-facturing line, working moms,the female entrepreneur, righton up to CEOs.”

The Advertiser News said thepublication includes articles onlaw and health care, financialadvice for women, businessstrategies, day-care recommen-dations, and re-entering theworkplace.

The magazine employs fivestaff writers. Emery-Fererro saidrevenue is based solely on adver-tising.

The first issue was launchedas a quarterly publication inSeptember, but Emery-Ferrerotold the NEPA Bulletin that shewill transition to a monthlypublication beginning inNovember because of an over-whelmingly positive response.

NEWS VENTURES

Emery- Ferrero

____News Ventures to Page 22


Y ou probably do notremember the nameBecky Zerlentes, but I

wish you would. Zerlentes, a woman boxer,

died in 2005 after a bout inColorado. An adventurer in herspare time but a teacher in reallife, Zerlentes tacked up thismotto outside her school office:“When you’re good at makingexcuses, it’s difficult to excel atanything else.”

We all make excuses. Forinstance, this would be a bettercolumn, but because I gotmyself in a scheduling squeeze,I didn’t have a whole lot oftime to work on it.

And yet, when you read thiscolumn, you expect it to beworthwhile. You expect to learnabout writing, about coaching,about how to do better whatwe too often do by habit.

Newsrooms overflow withdedicated, diligent, even pas-sionate people who really, reallywant to publish excellent news-

papers. But when I ask a simplequestion, I get such a disap-pointing (yet honest) answer, Ifeel like weeping.

Here’s the question, directedat skilled, earnest editors: Whatresponsibilities keep you fromone-on-one coaching ofreporters?

Because I am a writingcoach, I also am a writingzealot. I know that a newspaperneeds more than just stories; italso needs headlines, photos,charts, an inviting layout, etc.

But to me, an editor’s firstresponsibility is to the qualityof the writing in the newspaper.We even call our customers“readers.” I think I’m safe insaying that the quality of thestories is a newspaper’s No. 1selling point, or, in the worstcases, the No. 1 reason it doesnot sell.

I recently was a discussionleader at the American PressInstitute in Reston, Va. I spoketo about a dozen city and

metro editors of medium-sizedpapers. To prepare, I had theeditors answer several ques-tions, one of which was the oneI referred to above.

Here are some of the taskseditors list to explain whythey’re not spending more timecoaching: attending planning

meetings; supervising, assistingwith, or actually doing pagina-tion; sitting on, or even beingchairman of, corporate commit-tees; handling problems withthe Web site; answering e-mails(one editor said he receives 125to 250 e-mails each day).

See why we have so littletime for writing improvement?

Let’s see if we can eliminatethe items that have little ornothing to do with good writ-ing:

(1) In my 30 years in news-rooms, I’ve sat in on hundredsof so-called “planning meet-ings,” and with due respect tothose who participate, I thinkmost such meetings are worth-less. Here’s how I would plan.Each day, I’d walk around thenewsroom and ask eachreporter: “Do you have a goodstory for me today? How aboutfor tomorrow? And forSunday?” After less than fiveminutes with each, I wouldknow who has good stuff, whohas bad stuff, who has no stuffat all. Such one-on-one talkingis real planning.

(2) Pagination should be leftto copy editors. Most of thetime, city editors who are pagi-nating are doing it becausedesigning is playful, muchmore fun than coachingreporters.

(3) Supervising editorsshould only very rarely serve oncorporate committees. Whenthe boss says to the editor, “Ireally want you to serve on thiscommittee,” the editor’sresponse should be: “My serviceon that committee will not helpreporters write better. Betterwriting is my No. 1 goal, andit’s the reason you hired me.”

(4) If Web site duties areintruding on writing-improve-ment duties, editors should goto their bosses and slightlyamend the above response: “Myworking on the Web site willnot help reporters write better,and you hired me to improvethis newspaper’s writing.”

(5) If any editor can showme that reading 125 e-mails perday is improving the newspa-

per’s writing, I will back off.But until someone shows methat all those e-mails are con-tributing to the paper’simprovement, I’ll assert:Putting a city editor in chargeof handling e-mails is compara-ble to asking the CEO of Niketo handle after-Christmasreturns of ill-fitting shoes. E-mail is a nice, convenient tool,but if we allow it to, it will ruleour lives and divert us from ourmost important responsibilities.

In fact, if you look at whatmeetings, pagination, commit-tees, Web sites and e-mails havein common, you’ll realize thatall are welcome diversions fromthe much more arduous task ofexamining stories, looking forreporters’ weaknesses, theninstructing reporters in how toimprove.

Too many editors (and theirbosses) see writing improve-ment as a hobby, somethingwe’ll get to when things slowdown. I think readers wouldagree with me when I say thatexcellent writing should be thereason editors have jobs.

And if you do not agree, trythis: The next time a reader e-mails criticism of a story, tellthe e-mailer you would’ve madethe story better, but you werein a meeting and didn’t havetime.

THE FINAL WORD: Theuse of the verb “to parse” hasbecome the recent rage. Writerstend to think it works as a uni-versal synonym for “explain,” asin: “The Pentagon spokesmanspent an hour parsing Secretaryof Defense Donald Rumsfeld’sstatement.”

“To parse” has a clear, directand unequivocal meaning: Itmeans to take apart a sentence’selements and explain the func-tion and grammatical form ofeach.

Writing coach Jim Stasiowskiwelcomes your question and com-ments. Call him at (410) 796-0210 or write to him at 6310Bayberry Court, Elkridge, Md.21075.

Providing the business software systems that drive

for

Accounts Payable/Gen. Ledger

Circulation Management

Accounts Receivables

Classified Advertising

Display Advertising

www.vdata.com

Jim Stasiowski

Writing Tips

No excuse for editors ignoring writing coaching


Two recently combined seg-ments of Massachusetts’ largestnewspaper group have madesweeping changes, combining12 weeklies into six; switching12 newspapers from tabloid tobroadsheet format; setting uptwo central offices, and selling aprinting plant and offices at athird; and consolidating allprinting at two locations,according to published reports.

Enterprise NewsMedia LLC,based in Quincy, Mass., andCommunity Newspaper Com-pany, based in Needham, Mass.,were both purchased byGateHouse Media Inc. of Roch-ester, N.Y., in a deal that closedJune 8 for more than 120 news-papers and other publications.

Enterprise NewsMedia’sMemorial Press Group (MPG)of 13 community newspapers,based in Plymouth, Mass., andMPG’s Stoughton, Mass.-basedAssociated Newspapers group of12 papers have been integratedinto Community NewspaperCompany.

The primary reason for themerger was to reorganize publi-cations in the same geographicregion of Southeastern Massa-

chusetts that had been underseparate ownership until boughtby GateHouse Media. All of theaffected publications are nowunder the umbrella of Com-munity Newspaper Company,and Enterprise NewsMedia andMemorial Press Group haveceased to exist as company des-ignations.

Other Community News-paper Company publicationsoutside Southeastern Massachu-setts are not included in thenewly merged regional cluster.The two former EnterpriseNewsMedia dailies, the PatriotLedger of Quincy and TheEnterprise of Brockton, Mass.,also remain outside the newgroup.

In communities that hadboth a Community NewspaperCompany and an MPG newspa-per, the two papers have beencombined into one. The PatriotLedger listed those papers as thePembroke Mariner and Pem-broke Reporter, which havebecome the Pembroke Mariner& Reporter; the MarshfieldReporter, now folded into theMarshfield Mariner; the EastonBulletin and The Stoughton

Chronicle, both formerly part ofMPG’s Associated Newspapersgroup of Rockland, Mass., nowmerged into Community News-paper Company’s Easton Journ-al and Stoughton Journal, re-spectively; the Wareham Bull-etin, folded into the WarehamCourier; the Kingston Mariner,folded into the KingstonReporter.

Also as a result of the merger,12 papers have been convertedfrom tabloid format to broad-sheet. Among MPG’s papers,only Old Colony Memorial ofPlymouth remained as it was; italready was a broadsheet.

All of the changes took effectby Oct. 1.

The change to larger formatwas made in part to provideadditional space for enhancednews and features coverage, andto allow for more use of color byadvertisers and greater opportu-nity for editorial photographersto use color photographs, theSentinel of Marion, Matta-poisett and Rochester, Mass.,reported in a Sept. 14 an-nouncement about the merger.

The merged divisions willhave two new regional offices,

on Standish Road in Plymouthand Route 44 in Raynham, andwill continue to use Commun-ity Newspaper Company’s officein Marshfield. Advertisingoffices will be at the Marshfieldlocation.

MPG’s Call group of papers –The Lakeville Call, TheRaynham Call and The TauntonCall – will move from Tauntonto the new Raynham office, thePatriot Ledger said. The rentedTaunton office has been closed.

The company will sell itsMPG printing plant and officesin Plymouth, and all mergedpublications will be printed atCommunity Newspaper Com-pany plants in Framingham and

Auburn, both in Massachusetts,the Patriot Ledger reported.

The GateHouse Media pur-chases included two dailies, thePatriot Ledger and The Enter-prise of Brockton, and 25 south-of-Boston non-dailies owned byEnterprise News-Media, andCommunity Newspaper Com-pany’s four dailies, 93 weekliesand numerous other publica-tions. The acquisitions gaveGateHouse a predominant shareof Eastern Massachusetts’ small-er newspapers. GateHouse, aneight-year-old company former-ly known as Liberty GroupPublishing, had previously notowned any papers in Massa-chusetts.

GateHouse reorganizes in Southeastern Mass.

6 papers folded into others, 12 converted to broadsheets, printing plant up for sale

What does it mean,Where do you fit in?

With 38 years experience in New Englandwe have many options to discuss.

THE

PETERSON GROUP

Consulting and Brokerage ServicesTelephone: (860) 447-9198

Email: [email protected] Website: Johncpeterson.com

John C. Peterson, principal

Newspapers Trim Workforces As Advertising Slows

Journal Register Hopes To Sell Local Newspapers

Dow Jones To Auction Six Community Papers

Realtors Moving Away From Newspapers

Google Deal With Valpak Could Impact Newspapers

Classifieds Moving To Free Sites

Gatehouse Media In Market For More Newspapers

-Recent Headlines in Industry News

Number of jobs for print journalistsdecline in 10 years

The number of full-timejournalists working in theUnited States fell in a recent 10-year period, with daily newspa-pers and radio stations especial-ly feeling the bite.

So says “The AmericanJournalist in the 21st Century,”a book based on a survey ofAmerican journalists that leadauthor David Weaver, a facultymember at the IndianaUniversity School of Journal-

ism, did with colleagues.The study found that, from

1992 to 2002, employment atdaily newspapers fell by morethan 8,400 jobs, to 58,769, andemployment at all print mediaoutlets dropped by 3,268 jobs,

to 81,829.Weaver said most of the job

losses resulted from cost-savingmeasures by print media, asonline services, such as Craig’sList, dig into print advertisingrevenue.

Preserving Newspaperson Microfilm

Quality & Service are Our HallmarksNew EnglandMicrographics, Inc.344 Boston Post Rd., Marlboro, MA 01752800-433-4065 - Free Samples & Estimates


COMMENTARYThe

NEPA Bulletin

ISSN 08931062Published monthly by the

New England Press Association

360 Huntington Ave.428CP

Boston, MA 02115(617) 373-5610

$25/year from dues

Executive EditorBrenda Reed

[email protected]

Publication ManagerLincoln [email protected]

News Staff Coordinator

Donna Roberson

AdvertisingElaine Reiter

[email protected](617) 373-5946

This issue of the NEPA Bulletin

was produced with the cooperation of

Northeastern University and the assistance of students in its

School of Journalism,who serve as

the Bulletin’s news staff.___________

www.nepa.org

P artnerships evolve, grow and strengthen,and nothing demonstrates that morethan our association with Rob Bertsche,

a lawyer with the Boston firm of Prince, Lobel,Glovsky and Tye.

The New England Press Association’s rela-tionship with Bertsche started when he beganwriting articles for the Bulletin and evolved tohis leading the team that runs NEPA’s MediaLaw Hotline, one of our most important mem-ber services.

Bertsche not only brings his legal expertise toNEPA, but also his experience as a former cityeditor of the daily Transcript-Telegram newspa-per in Holyoke, Mass.

There are six lawyers who work withBertsche, and on occasion you might get the manhimself. Fortunately, our newspaper has only needed to use theHotline’s services in two sticky (or so it seemed to us) situations.As it turned out, we were more concerned than we needed to bein both instances, but the prompt and calm response was mostwelcome.

Many of you probably have sat in on one or more of the legalworkshops Bertsche and members of his team have led at ourannual conventions. Those workshops are usually so well-attended that there is an overflow.

So sign up early for February’s workshops “Fighting forAccess: A Legal Toolkit for Journalists;” “Your NewspaperOnline: How to Reduce the Legal Risks;” “Fifteen Ways toStay Out of Court;” and “Protecting Your Paper: The BusinessSide of Newspaper Law.”

Recently, we strengthened our partnership with Bertsche bynaming him general counsel to NEPA, and, in that capacity, healso serves on and adds strength to our legislative/legal commit-tee. That committee for too long had been ad hoc, and at theboard of directors’ retreat in March the board voted to make it astanding committee. A liaison representing each state serves on

the committee and keeps its members up todate on what is happening on legislative andlegal issues that might affect our member news-papers. If immediate action or support is need-ed, we can get the word out to our membernewspapers through e-mails and the NEPAWeb site. A letter will soon go to state pressassociations offering to partner with them ininformation-sharing on legislative/legal issues.

On a monthly basis, we try to keep ourmembers informed through the Bulletin. Checkout this month’s Legal Briefs page for moreupdates. In July, you would have learned thatthe Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass., filed acomplaint claiming that the Haverhill SchoolCommittee held an unannounced, no-minutes-taken meeting that violated Massachusetts’

Open Meeting Law. In the August Legal Briefs,the Bulletin reported that Connecticut became the 33rd state toadopt a shield law protecting journalists from being forced toreveal confidential sources, and that the Vermont PressAssociation urged its members to provide feedback to theVermont Legislative Council on accessiblity of public recordsand methods for improving that accessibility. And in September,the Legal Briefs reported that the Laconia (N.H.) Citizenreceived $3,200 for expenses it had paid in legal filings in aright-to-know lawsuit the paper filed against the town of Tilton.Also in September, it was reported that the MassachusettsNewspaper Publishers Association initiated legislation to pro-vide civil fines and criminal penalties for officials who violatethe Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.

We are very pleased to welcome Rob Bertsche and his valu-able knowledge. It looks like we are going to keep him verybusy.

Lynn Delaney is president of the New England Press Association’sboard of directors and editor of The Milton (Vt.) Independent. Shecan reached at (802) 893-2028 or at [email protected].

A valuable law firm partnership

Lynn Delaney

President’s Column

Formation of the New England News Council is a good idea,most respondents to last month’s Question of the Month said.

Of the 103 respondents, about 59 percent said they favoredthe News Council, and about 41 percent opposed it.

In June, the John S. and James L. Knight foundation of Miamigranted $75,000 for the startup of the New England NewsCouncil, an organization that hopes to promote good relations

between civilians and the news media. The council, based at theUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst, is in a formative stage.

The October Question of the Month is on Page 1 of theBulletin and on the home page of the New England PressAssociation’s Web site at www.nepa.org. Please follow the instruc-tions posted on the Web site to record your response. TheNovember Bulletin will publish the results of the OctoberQuestion of the Month.

Question of the Month

Respondents favor N.E. News Council


Globe, like Herald,cuts costs by cutting its daily page count

Decreased advertising rev-enue and a shift in readershippreferences has forced TheBoston Globe to reduce its dailypage count by as much as 10percent, according to a reportpublished in September in theBoston Business Journal. Thereduction affects the Globe’sSunday edition as well.

The Journal said the Globe’sannouncement came as thepaper’s publisher, RichardGilman, resigned in pursuit ofwhat he called “other writingprojects.” The Journal saidGilman’s resignation was unex-pected.

The Globe’s executive vicepresident, Alfred S. Larkin Jr.,told the Journ-al that the cutswere part of anongoing pro-cess, and thateach section ofthe newspaperwould experi-ence some re-duction in pages. He said nolayoffs were planned.

The Globe’s page reductionscame on the heels of a similardecision at the city’s other majornewspaper, the Boston Herald,which recently trimmed sixpages a day from its daily paperand its Sunday paper.

Kenneth Chandler, theHerald’s edito-rial director,told theJournal thatthe reductionswere part ofan effort torespond to“the realitiesof the business and competitionfrom the Internet.”

Chandler also said no layoffswere planned at the Herald.

The page reductions at theGlobe are the latest sign of anindustry-wide struggle to retain

readership and advertising rev-enue in the age of the Internet.

New England newspapershave been particularly vulnera-

ble to industry trends, according

INDUSTRY NEWS

____Industry News to Page 18

Speculation arose last month about thesale of three Connecticut newspapers –The Hartford Courant, the GreenwichTime and The Advocate of Stamford –should their Chicago-based parent, theTribune Co., divest itself of some of itssmaller holdings.

The Courant reported Sept. 27 that thefamily of David Chase, a local business-man, announced interest in bringingtogether a group of local investors to buythe newspaper. Chase’s daughter, Cheryl,executive vice president and general coun-sel of Chase Enterprises of Hartford, con-firmed her father’s interest, the Courantsaid.

Veteran Courant reporter SusanCampbell published an open letter toDavid Chase in which she wrote that localownership could enable the nation’s oldestcontinuously published newspaper to per-form its function of being a vital part ofdemocracy. If Chase were to buy the news-paper, reinvest profits and allow thepaper’s staff to do their jobs, he would berewarded, she wrote in the Sept. 29 letter.

Doug Dalena, a reporter for theAdvocate of Stamford, said he hoped thatthe Advocate would be bought by privateinvestors who would value and preservelocal journalism, the Chicago Tribunereported Sept. 23.

Conjecture about a possible sale aroseafter Tribune’s chief executive, Denis J.FitzSimons, announced in a Sept. 21 pressrelease that a special committee had beenformed to oversee “exploration of alterna-tives for creating additional value forshareholders.”

The Chicago Tribune reported Sept. 24that sources close to Tribune managementsaid the sale of many of the company’s tel-evision stations and several of its smallernewspapers would be a favored solution.

The company wants to make a decisionabout its future by the end of the year, TheWall Street Journal reported Sept. 23.

A spokesman for Tribune Co. told a

Courant reporter that the company does-n’t comment on news-media speculation.

The Los Angeles Times, also owned byTribune, reported speculation from anewspaper analyst that Journal RegisterCo., based in Yardley, Pa., which owns 389publications across the Midwest andNortheast, could be a possible bidder onTribune’s Connecticut papers. JournalRegister owns 69 publications inConnecticut, among them the NewHaven Register and The Herald of NewBritain.

The analyst in question, John Mortonof Morton Research Inc. in Maryland,told the Courant that he never said hethought that Journal-Register might beinterested in the Courant, and mentionedonly the Stamford and Greenwich papers.

“I never mentioned The HartfordCourant. I never said that,” Morton toldthe Courant. “I don’t believe The HartfordCourant would be on the list that mightbe sold.”

The Hartford Courant is one of fourTribune Co. newspapers that were recent-ly disentangled from two complicatedinvestment partnerships, The MorningCall of Allentown, Pa., reported Sept. 23.

A sale to Journal Register would por-tend the end of journalism in Connect-icut, former Courant staffer FrankSpencer-Malloy wrote in a letter excerptedSept. 29 on Jim Romenesko’s mediaWeblog on the journalism Web sitePoynter.org.

Discontent with Tribune’s constantcost-cutting at the Courant and uncertain-ty about the paper’s future has “affected usa lot in terms of our mission,” DenisHorgan, Courant columnist andWeblogger, said.

“We’re being taken apart plank byplank, and it’s not because of anythingthat’s happening here but because of theproblems the Tribune’s having in LosAngeles and elsewhere,” he said.

Hartford Courant reporter RinkerBuck wrote a 3,000-word open letterlast month to Stephen D. Carver, theCourant’s new publisher, criticizingthe Courant’s parent company,Chicago-based Tribune Co., for its“disinvestment” in the newspaper.

The letter was posted publicly Sept.18 on Jim Romenesko’s media Weblogon the journalism Web sitePoynter.org.

In his letter, Buck, an award-win-ning journalist and longtime writerfor the Courant, outlined costly busi-ness decisions made by Tribune Co.that were unrelated to publishing thenewspaper, and asked why those “mis-takes” should be permitted to compro-mise the Courant’s traditionalstrengths: coverage of local towns;high-quality breaking coverage of bigregional stories; investigative report-ing.

Buck argued that continued layoffsand other cuts would “degrade” thepaper’s value to a potential buyer.Buck said he and other staff memberswould welcome the sale of theCourant to local businesspeople.

Buck’s letter was followed four dayslater by a sardonic post byCourant.com Weblogger DenisHorgan, in whichhe also criticizedTribune Co.’s finan-cial decisions.

Titled “Horganbuys Courant,” theWeblog entry de-scribed an imagi-nary situation inwhich Horgan inadvertently pur-chased the newspaper franchise thenproceeded to dismiss all of the staff onthe premise of saving money.

Courant staff writers publicly criticizeparent Tribune Co.

Hartford Courant, 2 Connecticut sister papers might be up for sale

Denis Horgan

Al Larkin

Ken Chandler


Conn. courts mightallow cameras on trial basis by June

Connecticut’s acting chiefjustice for the state’s SupremeCourt, David Borden, hasendorsed a recommendationproposed by the JudicialBranch’s Public Task Force thatwould open up Connecticutcourts to news cameras on atwo-year trial basis as early asJune, the Connecticut Post ofBridgeport reported.

Borden said the SuperiorCourt Rules Committee woulddiscuss and vote on the issue,one of the task force’s 38 recom-mendations, at the annual meet-ing of Connecticut judges inJune.

Of the 38 recommendations,35 have been endorsed byBorden, the Post said. The judgedid oppose a task force recom-mendation to allow voters todecide the fate of a constitution-al amendment that would affirmthe General Assembly’s authori-ty over judicial operations.

Several of the 38 proposals,including public access tojudges’ attendance records andperformance evaluations, publiconline access to criminal dock-ets, and permitting courtroomnote-taking by the press and thepublic, will be enacted immedi-ately, the Post said.

Borden defended the cameraproposal against criticism fromskeptical judges during a meet-ing in early October, the Postreported. He said allowingcourtroom cameras was in thebest interest of the publicbecause television is the primarymedium by which residentsobtain their news information.

Borden said the court wouldestablish rules to protect crimi-nal witnesses and jury membersfrom any unwanted intrusionsby cameras.

N.E. 1st AmendmentCoalition launchedas resource on access

The New England AssociatedPress News Executives Associa-tion announced the formationof the New England FirstAmendment Coalition at aSeptember conference in Prov-idence, R.I.

The coalition will be “aresource for news organizationsand any individual or groupwith an interest in their right toknow what government is doingwith the public’s information,”said Larry Laughlin, AP bureauchief for Northern New England.

Laughlin said the coalitionwill function as the first multi-state chapter of the NationalFreedom of InformationCoalition. The coalition will bemade up of news organizationsas well as other groups.Laughlin said Maine’s chapter ofthe National Freedom ofInformation Coalition includesgroups such as the Sportsman’sAlliance of Maine, the MaineRealtors Association, triallawyers, land surveyors, and theMaine library’s director.

The coalition plans to launcha Web site and a question-and-answer Weblog; a referencelibrary for freedom-of-informa-tion laws in New England;access to freedom-of-informa-tion case laws; and the latestupdates on planned legislationrelated to freedom of informa-tion.

The coalition has been estab-lished in Massachusetts as a legalentity and is awaiting confirma-tion from the federal InternalRevenue Service about its appli-cation for tax-exempt status.

DA sides with Mass. papers in faulting town’s private search

The Town Counsel Search

Committee of Westboro, Mass.,has been found by theWorcester, Mass., district attor-ney’s office to have violated theMassachusetts Open MeetingLaw when it privately narroweda group of 24 potential candi-dates for town counsel to oneperson, Boston lawyer GregoryB. Franks, the Metrowest DailyNews of Framingham, Mass.,reported last month.

Massachusetts law permittedthe search committee to discussprivately potential candidatesbefore presenting the group ofprospective finalists, the DailyNews reported. The districtattorney said the committee vio-lated the law, however, by nar-rowing the field to one candi-date before any public sessionscould be held.

“It is the opinion of the dis-trict attorney’s office that thesearch committee narrowed thefield of candidates in executive(closed) session beyond what ispermitted as preliminary screen-ing,” Assistant District Attor-neys Patricia C. Smith andRobert Bender wrote.

Although the WestboroBoard of Selectmen voted tohire Franks Sept. 20, the districtattorney’s decision mandatesthat the search committeereturn to the original pool ofcandidates and recommend atleast three of them to bereviewed by the selectman inopen session, the Daily Newssaid.

“If this remedial action is fol-lowed by the search committeeand selectmen, the district attor-ney’s office will take no furtheraction,” Smith and Benderwrote in their letter to select-men.

The Daily News said theissue came to light after a Sept.14 complaint was filed with theWorcester district attorney’soffice by Community News-paper Company, parent of theDaily News and the

Westborough News, allegingthat the search committee hadviolated its lawful obligation tohold public sessions before nar-rowing the field of candidatesfor town counsel.

“The search committee wentfrom 24 applicants in secret to asingle finalist in public, therebyshutting out any public access tothe process or the qualificationsof a pool of finalists,” RichardLodge, editor in chief of theDaily News, wrote in his letterto District Attorney John J.Conte.

Massachusetts’ Open Meet-ing Law permits private screen-ings of candidates for govern-ment positions during the initialstages of the hiring process if ithas been determined that openscreenings would negativelyaffect the ability to obtain qual-ified candidates. After that pre-liminary process, however, theprocess must be opened to pub-lic sessions.

Journal given access to ????s for jurorsafter trial made moot

After an initial denial, TheProvidence (R.I.) Journal wasgiven access this month to ques-tionnaires given to potentialjurors in the now-canceled trialof Michael Derderian, the for-mer nightclub owner who faced200 counts of involuntarymanslaughter for a 2003 firethat killed 100 people.

Derderian and his brother,Jeffrey, ended the jury selectionprocess Sept. 29 by pleading nocontest to 100 counts of misde-meanor manslaughter, avoidingthe need for a jury trial. Theremaining 100 counts ofmanslaughter, based on chargesof criminal negligence, weredropped by the state as part ofthe plea agreement.

Francis Darigan, a RhodeIsland Superior Court judge, last

month had denied the Journal’sinitial requests for the question-naires, which were to be used bytrial lawyers to narrow the fieldof 400 prospective jury mem-bers to 16 jurors, the Journalsaid.

Before the plea bargain, theAssociated Press reported thatthe Journal had pressed forwardwith its request and was await-ing a court date to hear theirpetition.

On Oct. 12, nearly twoweeks after the Derderianspleaded no contest, copies of theblank questionnaires werereleased by the court to the pub-lic. AP reported that the ques-tionnaire asked potential jurorswhether they knew anyonekilled or injured in the night-club fire, whether they had anopinion on Michael Derderian’sguilt or innocence, how muchthey knew about the case, andwhether they thought that they

LEGAL BRIEFS

Judge Francis Darigan

Michael Derderian


were capable of being fair andimpartial jurors during the trial.

The judge had said theJournal would be granted accessto open courtroom questioningof the jury pool, originallyplanned for late September.

Michael and Jeffrey Derder-ian owned The Station night-club in West Warwick, R.I. Onehundred people died in Feb-ruary 2003, when a fire ignitedby sparks from a stagedpyrotechnic display burned theclub to the ground.

Victims’ families wereshocked at the sentences handeddown by the judge as part of theplea agreement, which sentMichael Derderian to prison forfour years and spared his broth-er jail time if he performed 500hours of community service.Both men will have suspendedsentences of 11 and 10 years,respectively, and each willreceive three years’ probation.

According to Rhode Islandlaw, each count of manslaughtercarries a maximum sentence of30 years in prison.

Boston land agency, Jewish group disputeaccess to details of Islamic mosque deal

The Boston RedevelopmentAuthority is facing a lawsuitfiled Oct. 5 on behalf of TheDavid Project, a Boston-basedJewish nonprofit group, thatalleges that the authority illegal-ly withheld public documentsabout its sale of land to theIslamic Society of Boston forconstruction of a mosque in theRoxbury section of Boston, TheBoston Globe reported.

The David Project is seekinga full disclosure of all documentsabout the controversial propertytransaction. The Globe said thegroup is particularly interestedin the content of e-mails sent bythe authority’s deputy director,

Mohammad Ali-Salaam, aboutthe sale of the proposed site.

The suit, filed in SuffolkSuperior Court, also asks thatthe authority turn over Ali-Salaam’s travel records for tripshe reportedly took to theMiddle East to shore up termsof the mosque constructiondeal.

The Globe said the authori-ty’s spokeswoman, Susan Els-bree, denied that the authoritywas withholding any publicdocuments,

“(The authority is) confidentthe court will find that the(authority) has complied withall public records requests,” shesaid.

The David Project’s allega-tions are just the latest in a seriesof lawsuits involving the Jewishadvocacy group and the IslamicSociety of Boston, the Globesaid. The Muslim group hadpreviously sued The DavidProject; Fox 25, WFXT-TV inBoston; and the Boston Heraldfor alleged defamation of itsleaders and conspiracy to blockthe mosque project, accordingto the Boston Herald.

The Globe said The DavidProject recently tried to have theMuslim group’s defamation andconspiracy suit dismissed, butthat motion was denied. TheDavid Project defended thestatements that the IslamicSociety of Boston claimed weredefamatory, saying they werebased on valid concerns aboutthe mosque project and theIslamic Society of Boston.

Boston resident DavidPolicastro has also filed a lawsuitagainst the Islamic Society, theGlobe reported. The Globereported that Policastro said theauthority sold the land to theIslamic Society at a price farbelow the fair market value. Thereport made no mention of thesale price or the assessed value ofthe land.

The Globe quoted TheDavid Project’s president,

Charles Jac-obs, as sayingthat thegroup’s publicrecords disclo-sure suit wasthe result ofthe BostonR e d e v e l o p -

ment Authority’s refusal tocooperate with The DavidProject and the City Council intheir attempts to review details ofthe land deal.

Jacobs founded The DavidProject in 2002 “to promote afair and honest understandingof the Arab-Israeli conflict,” thegroup’s Web site says.

Guide available to open-access laws in all 50 states

The Reporters Committee

for Freedom of the Press hasreleased the fifth edition of itsguide to open government lawsin all 50 states.

This edition is called the“Open Government Guide.”The previous titles was“Tapping Officials’ Secrets.”

The Open GovernmentGuide is an outline of importantcomponents of open-recordsand open-meeting laws. There isa focus on the difficulty ofobtaining certain informationbecause of privacy and nationalsecurity concerns since the ter-rorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The compendium of open-meeting and open-record laws isthe cornerstone of our servicesto reporters trying to make surethat public information flows tocitizens,” Lucy A. Dalglish,executive director of the Report-ers Committee, said. “We hope

it gets fre-quent use inevery news-room in A-merica.”

Authors ofthe manual areopen-govern-ment expertswho have worked on previouseditions.

An online version of theguide is available for free on theReporters Committee’s Web siteat www.rcfp.org/ogg. The guideis also available for purchasethrough the Web site. The priceof a printed volume is $100. ACD-ROM version is $50, whichincludes searchable versions inAdobe Acrobat documents andother formats. An individualstate book is $10, and electronicdelivery of PDF versions costs$5 per state book.

LEGAL BRIEFS

NEPA M edia Law H otline

Prince, Lobel, Glovsky & Tye attorneys at theNEPA Media Law Hotline are ready to answeryour questions on a range of media law topics,involving prepublication review and a variety ofother issues.

1-888-428-7490or m edia@ plgt.com

EXPANDED SERVICES FOR MEMBERS:

NEPA Media Law Hotline

1-888-428-7490 or [email protected]

Charles Jacobs Lucy Dalglish


That phenomenon, called citizen journalism, hasexploded on the Web in the past few years and has cre-ated a buzz among professional journalists and news-media enthusiasts.

In recent international events, such as the December2004 tsunami in Asia and the London bombings in July2005, “citizen” interaction in the news media reachednew heights as civilian photographs and videos becamepremium footage used in news reports by the BBC andCNN.

“These initiatives are generating hyperlocal and spe-cial-interest news and information and breaking-newseyewitness accounts from far, far away — from theperimeters of major media markets to the outer reachesof rural areas,” Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab:The Institute for Interactive Journalism at theUniversity of Maryland, said in an article for NiemanReports.

In New England, so-called citizen journalism sites —or placeblogs, as some practitioners call them — arepopping up in growing numbers.

This isn’t the first time citizens have contributed totheir local news media, however. There is a long tradi-tion at local weekly newspapers, and others, of commu-nity residents freelancing as correspondents, coveringtown government and other local news.

Nonetheless, changes in technology have allowed forparticipatory journalism to multiply greatly in cyber-space.

“Placeblogs are about the lived experience of a placethrough the words, ideas, photos, audio and video of anindividual resident or residents of a place, and (they) can

be written either by ‘just folks’ or by journalists who runplaceblogs on newspaper sites,” said Lisa Williams,founder of H2otown.

H2otown, at www.h2otown.info, is a news site orig-inating in Watertown, Mass. The site is heavily influ-enced by citizen participation, and is just one of manyplaceblogs in New England that focus on the hyperlocalmentality of smaller communities. The site’s main pagefeatures posts by Watertown residents about libraryhours, car accidents and other town happenings. The reare links to other newspapers and Web sites that men-tion Watertown.

Bill Densmore, director of the Media Giraffe Projectat the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, thinksthat that phenomenon is a result of the convergence ofthree things: the easy and economical way the Internethas enabled news to be reported; the void in small-townnews coverage by large newspaper corporations, whichhave cut small-town news; and Americans craving asense of community.

“Citizens are finding it harder to get their chicken-dinner news,” Densmore said. “The thirst for commu-nity is to find an outlet, and that outlet is citizen jour-nalism.”

Take Deerfield, N.H., as an example. At a MediaGiraffe conference July 1, Maureen Mann of thePhilbrick James Forum at www.forumhome.org dis-cussed the impact her placeblog had on the small townof Deerfield. Before the forum was created, a smallnumber of residents paid attention to town government.After the news site was established, the voter participa-tion rate in the town rose from the typical 25 to 30 per-cent to 43 percent in municipal elections, Mann said invideo footage of the conference.

Not only do such sites vary in location, they also dis-play varying levels of journalism.

Some placeblogs, such as the New Haven (Conn.)Independent at www.newhavenindependent.com andCT News Junkie at www.ctnewsjunkie.com, are run byprofessional journalists who take pride in their objectiveand authoritative reporting.

“We’re professional journalists. Our standards areprofessional,” said Paul Bass, editor of the Independent.

At the Independent, people submit photographs andstory ideas for the site, but the content is written solelyby paid staff members. After the story is posted, peoplecan make comments. Although civilians aren’t writingthe news, Bass thinks that their voice is heard andbrought forth without the placeblog losing its legitima-cy.

Other citizen journalists, such as Robert Falcione ofHopkinton, Mass., have had no prior training in jour-nalism before creating their sites. Falcione, a profession-al photographer, created his site, HopNews atwww.hopnews.com, to share his photography with localresidents. He began attending selectmen’s and schoolboard meetings and posting information about theevents on his site, accidentally propelling him into therealm of participatory journalism.

Falcione’s hyperlocal initiative actually came inhandy with the murder in January of Hopkinton resi-dent Rachel Entwistle and her 9-month-old daughter.The murder case drew national and international atten-tion, and Falcione’s intimate relationship with the town

Pros, cons abound about ‘placeblog’ professionalism

David Ertischek

___________________Placeblogging to Page 11

‘Placeblogs and local newspapersaren’t in direct competition.

Sometimes our attention will fall onthings that aren’t subjects of interestto a newspaper ... and other timesour attention will fall on topical

areas ... ’

-- Lisa Williams

____________________Pros, cons from Page 1

Robert Falcione


paid off when he updated his site with breaking news onthe case long before large media outlets were able toreport the same information.

The passion that Falcione has for his job is palpableas he talks about the Entwistle murders. He, like manyvoluntary citizen journalists, is driven by his love forreporting rather than the paycheck. He still works fulltime as a photographer, on top of his 14-hour daysworking for HopNews.

“I’m just having so much fun,” Falcione said.It is this passion for the job that makes citizen jour-

nalism such an exciting new phenomenon. “Citizen journalists are embedded in the community

and are fully dedicated to helping the community,”Media Giraffe’s Densmore said. “They aren’t fully inde-pendent from the community, as a journalist ideallyshould be.”

While participatory journalists have the drive andloyalty to report news at a hyperlocal level, one of theissues facing citizen journalism is the scant or nonexist-ent professional training in journalism of some of thosewho practice it.

“There are certain journalistic standards that youneed to adhere to,” Sarah Duckett, editor of the every-other-week Hopkinton Independent, said. “If (citizenjournalists) call themselves reporters, and aren’t held upto those standards, they are doing a disservice to thereading public.”

That is a fear some professional journalists haveabout the highly popular placeblogs: Are they credible

and do they have any ethics? And do those sites plan topull profit from the established news media with theirnew, more personal edge?

Some members of the mainstream news media voicedoubts, ranging from hesitancy to hostility, about citi-zen journalism.

Lisa Williams of H2otown doesn’t think that there isa cause for concern, however.

“Placeblogs and local newspapers aren’t in directcompetition,” she said. “Sometimes our attention willfall on things that aren’t subjects of interest to a news-paper, such as sandwich shops or where to find aplumber, and other times our attention will fall on top-ical areas that are part of the ‘beat’ of local reporters,such as city hall or the school committee.”

Newspapers and placeblogs tend to overlap onlywhen there is a crisis in the community, Williams said.

David Ertischek, editor of the Watertown (Mass.)Tab & Press, thinks that H2otown is a great resource forthe town and sees the relationship between the newspa-per and the online news site as healthy competition.

“It makes us want to work harder,” Ertischek said.“Globe West comes out twice a week, but I still consid-er H2otown more of a competition because they’re24/7. It’s like New York City; it never sleeps.”

Whether or not citizen journalism is viewed as com-petition by the mainstream media, initiatives have beenestablished to promote more citizen journalism sites.For instance, the Knight Foundation has paid for 10“New Voices” grants for startup print, broadcast or elec-tronic news efforts that foster community journalism,and received 243 proposals in 2005. And the MediaGiraffe Project is planning to produce a training videofor citizen journalists.

While the print media tries to embrace the Web as itsfuture, it should also have a real desire for a relationshipwith citizen journalism, Densmore said.

“If this phenomenon of hyper-local citizen journal-ism catches on, (the mainstream media) will have to bethere or become irrelevant,” Densmore said. “Besides,it’s fun to do journalism without limits to space anddeadlines.”

‘We’re professionaljournalists.

Our standards are professional.’

--- Paul Bass

‘Placeblogging’ has its place

_________________Placeblogging from Page 10

9 weeklies in Conn.,R.I. go to tab format

The nine weekly TimesCommunity Newsgroup news-papers, which cover news in sev-eral communities in Connect-icut and Westerly, R.I., will nowbe published in tabloid format.

Lee Howard, managing edi-tor of the Times newspapers,announced the changes in astory published in all nine week-lies in early September. Thetransition from the papers’ tra-ditional broadsheet format tothe tab format began Sept. 7.

The new look is part of aneffort to give readers a paperthat is both easier to read andfocused on news and stories rel-

evant to each weekly’s commu-nity, he said.

The design is characterizedby a magazine-styled layout andfeatures cover stories with localappeal, an array of human-inter-est columns, news briefs, andcolor photography. Howard saidthe new design will feature morenoticeable advertising, a poten-tial draw to advertisers.

Howard told the NEPABulletin that the transition hasnot been without its challenges.

“It has been a learning experi-ence,” he said.

But reader response to thechanges has been mostly posi-tive, Howard said.

“(Readers) like the papers’focus on local community news

they can relate to,” he told theBulletin.

He said readers have specifi-cally voiced appreciation forweekly cover stories that featurein-depth profiles of communityresidents and leaders.

The nine weeklies affected bythe changes are The WaterfordTimes, The Lyme Times, TheMontville Times, The ThamesRiver Times, Groton Times,New London Times, MysticTimes, Stonington Times, all inConnecticut, and The Westerly(R.I.) Times.

The Times CommunityNewsgroup is a division of TheDay Publishing Co. Both areheadquartered in New London,Conn.

Report: Iraq warnews fading from papers’ front pages

Stories about Iraq are increas-

ingly not being featured onfront pages nationwide, accord-ing to a piece by Eric Boehlert atmediamatters.org.

According to his tally, neitherThe Boston Globe nor TheHartford (Conn.) Courant ranany front-page stories on Iraqduring the three-week period hestudied.

Using a Nexis search of front-page stories at major newspapersacross the country between Sept.1 and Sept. 21, Boehlert foundthat news from Iraq rarely madethe front page.

Boehlert noted polls showingthat Americans see Iraq as thekey issue facing the country.

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BRIEFSFarragher, who most recently

has been a member of theS p o t l i g h tteam, joinedthe Globe in1997. He hasworked on theGlobe’s metrodesk and as aproject writer.Before joiningthe Globe, Farragher coveredlocal, state and national news forthe San Jose (Calif.) MercuryNews for nearly a decade.

In January, Robinson will be-gin a new job, teaching journal-ism at Northeastern University.

The Spotlight Team, theGlobe’s investigative reportinggroup, recently won a PulitzerPrize for public service reportingfor its coverage of the sexual-abuse scandal in the RomanCatholic Church. The SpotlightTeam’s major project of 2006, aseries of articles on the strugglesof debtors titled “Debtor’sHell,” has shed light on thepredatory practices of somedebt-collection agencies and thecomplicity of small-claimscourts.

Boston man charged in robbery ofHerald hawker

A Dorchester, Mass., manwas arrested after he allegedlystole cash from a Boston Heraldvendor in downtown Boston,the Herald reported last month.

Police said Donald Hall, 35,of Dorchester approached thestreet vendor at about 11 a.m.and asked the newspaper hawk-er to change a $20 bill, theHerald reported. When the ven-dor produced a wad of cashtotaling $32, Hall allegedlygrabbed the money and ran.

The vendor chased the sus-pect into a nearby hotel, but wasunable to catch him, the Herald

said. Police later arrested Hallbased on the vendor’s descrip-tion of the thief, although thepolice report did not indicatewhether the money was recov-ered. Hall was reportedlyunharmed.

He was arraigned Sept. 25and charged with unarmed rob-bery, the Herald said.

Fired bureau chief forVt. AP takes biz job

Christopher Graff, who wasfired in March as bureau chieffor The Assoc-iated Press inVermont, hastaken a job ascommunica-tions chief forThe NationalLife Group ofMontpe l i e r,Vt.

When Graff was fired March20, it was reported that he hadbeen let go for allowing a col-umn on open government, byU.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy, aVermont Democrat, to circulateon the AP wire. The decision tofire Graff drew criticism fromsome Vermont journalists andsome elected officials. AP’s ter-mination letter to Graff indicat-ed that the Leahy letter andallowing one of his reporters tocontribute to an election-yearbook about Howard Dean wereamong the reasons for his dis-missal. Dean is a former gover-nor of Vermont, an unsuccessfulDemocratic candidate for presi-dent in 2004, and chairman ofthe Democratic National Com-mittee.

Graff worked for the AP for27 years.

Graff also plans to leave asmoderator of Vermont PublicTelevision’s “Vermont ThisWeek” before beginning his jobwith the National Life Group inDecember.

Journal’s Heslin is N.E. coordinator for Sunshine Week

The regional coordinator forSunshine Week 2007 in NewEngland is Thomas E. Heslin,managing editor for new mediaat The Providence (R.I.) Jour-nal.

Sunshine Week 2007, thethird annual national initiativefor open government, will runfrom March 11 to March 17.Heslin has been the NewEngland coordinator for Sun-shine Week all three years.

Heslin is one of six regionalcoordinators in the UnitedStates who will contact printand broadcast news media, edu-cators and civic groups to builda network of participants.

As in past years, newspapersnationwide will be asked to pub-lish material about open-gov-ernment issues and protectingpublic access to public informa-tion.

In anticipation of SunshineWeek 2007, the AmericanSociety of Newspaper Editorshas announced that merchan-dise bearing the Sunshine Weeklogo is now available for pur-chase online at www.cafe-p r e s s . c o m / s u n s h i n e we e k .Available items include T-shirts,caps, coffee mugs, tote bags andother assorted items

The U.S. Patent and Trade-mark office recently granted aregistered trademark to theAmerican Society of NewspaperEditors for the Sunshine Weeklogo.

All proceeds from the sale ofmerchandise will be used to payfor Sunshine Week programs.The majority of money forSunshine Week comes from agrant from the John S. andJames L. Knight Foundation.

More information aboutSunshine Week is available atwww.sunshineweek.org.

Remarks by ex-BU communication dean renew controversy

Controversy continues toswirl around John J. Schulz, for-mer dean of Boston University’sCollege of Communication.

Schulz made comments at arecent staff function that somepeople in attendance perceivedas a threat to take a baseball batto his critics, according to areport in the Boston Herald.

Stephen Burgay, a BUspokesman, did not confirmSchulz’s exact words, althoughhe did confirm that Schulzspecifically mentioned the use ofa baseball bat. The Heraldreported that while some facultymembers took that as an “off-hand joke,” at least two facultymembers who asked to remainanonymous said his remark wasbeing taken seriously.

Tobe Berkovitz, interimdean, downplayed fears, andtold the Herald: “I don’t see whyanyone would feel threatened byformer dean John Schulz nowbeing a professor at the Collegeof Communication.”

Schulz has been under scruti-ny since May when RenataAdler, a BU professor of journal-ism and former writer for TheNew Yorker, questioned discrep-ancies in Schulz’s resume. Schulzhas claimed that he was one ofonly two of 19 candidatesawarded a doctoral degree fromthe University of Oxford’s soci-ology department in 1981.Oxford’s records indicate, how-ever, that Schulz was one of 30candidates who received sociolo-gy doctorates that year. Adlerhad previously questionedSchulz’s appointment as dean in2003 over a 1999 incident inwhich he was forced to stepdown form another post afterimproperly citing a passage heread aloud to a class. A biogra-phy on the BU Web site alsosaid Schulz had covered the

Soviet war in Afghanistan. Hecovered the war from Pakistan,but never entered Afghanistan.Schulz has said the wording wasmisleading and he intended tocorrect it.

Though an investigatingcommittee concluded thatSchulz had done nothingwrong, Schulz agreed to stepdown as dean effective Oct. 15,but actually stepped down dur-ing the week of Sept. 27.

Courant takes its D.C. bureau chief off VOA radio show

David Lightman, Washing-ton bureauchief for TheH a r t f o r d(Conn.) Cou-rant, will nolonger appearas a paid pan-elist on Voiceof America, a

federal government-sponsoredradio station, the Courantannounced Sept. 16.

Lightman was paid $100 foreach appearance on “Issues inthe News,” a weekly show,according to a Sept. 14 article inthe Miami Herald. The Heraldbroke the story Sept. 8 that 10reporters from the Herald andEl Nuevo Herald of Miami hadreceived tens of thousands ofdollars during the course of sev-eral years for appearances onfederal government-sponsoredradio and television programs.

Clifford Teutsch, the Cou-rant’s new editor, said in a reporton Courant.com that Light-man’s paid appearances hadbeen approved before theybegan several years ago, butcould be seen as a conflict ofinterest and have consequentlybeen stopped.

Lightman told the MiamiHerald that he did not cover theState Department, Pentagon, orany Washington, D.C., agency,

________Briefs from Page 2

C. Graff

David Lightman

T. Farragher


and that the payments wereremuneration for his time andprofessional expertise. In thesame Herald article, Lightman’seditor, Michael Regan, saidthere had never been a questionabout Lightman’s integrity.

Journalists from the NewYork Daily News, The Wash-ington (D.C.) Times and othernational publications acknowl-edged receiving payments forparticipation in Voice ofAmerica programs, the Mc-Clatchy-Tribune News Servicereported. Light-man told thenews service that he only occa-sionally appeared on the weeklyshow. His last appearance wasSept. 3, the Courant reported.

Cranston Herald redesigns Page One

Seeing her newspaper’s frontpage exhibited among those ofother New England Press As-sociation member newspapers atNEPA’s convention in Februaryprovoked Elizabeth Wayland-Seal, editor of the Cranston(R.I.) Herald, to order a com-plete redesign of the 84-year-oldweekly.

“We had an award-winningfront-page story, and when I saw

our paper displayed next to theothers, it looked like a tombdesign,” Wayland-Seal said. “Itall but disappeared on the wall.”

After returning to RhodeIsland, Wayland-Seal tourednewsstands and “realized thereason why nobody was buyingour paper was because it van-ished into the floor.”

That realization spurred amonths-long examination ofnewspapers both locally andaround the globe to determinewhich elements would create aHerald that commanded peo-ple’s attention.

Wayland-Seal used dailypapers as her guide, becausethey had a more vital need to beattractive to readers. She alsocanvassed Herald readers andmembers of the community fortheir ideas and suggestions.

“Our underlying goal was tocreate something distinctivewithout being overly confus-ing,” she said.

The idea for a new designhad initially arisen two years agobut had languished untilFebruary. Then, when theredesign was complete, a “print-ing issue” put it on hold for acouple of months while a deci-sion was made about color,Wayland-Seal said.

Wayland-Seal and the Heraldstaff wanted the primary colorof the new design to be Kellygreen, but that was a difficultshade for the printer to consis-tently produce.

Wayland-Seal suggested pur-ple, thinking that no one wouldagree, “but they all thought itwas a great idea,” she said with alaugh.

“Purple is a color that it’s veryhard for the press to screw up,”plus it stands out on the news-stand, she said.

All primary stationary ele-ments on the new front page,such as the logo and masthead,are purple, she said.

Specific elements of the

revamped look include thechange of the word “Herald” toa script typeface, “so it doesn’tlook blocky,” Wayland-Seal said,explaining that “Cranston” and“Herald” are now offset hori-zontally.

“We also moved all theteasers from the top of the frontpage to a bar down the side,which moves the paper up aninch or so,” she said. “So there’smuch more movement on thefront page now. The teaser barpulls the eye downward and itlooks much more professional.”

The new front-page designwas launched Aug. 31.

The front-page redesign ispart of a “multi-step process”that will be introduced in phas-es, Wayland-Seal said.

Future, additional changeswill include a full-formatCranston Chatter page, wherereaders could submit and learnabout community events andaccomplishments, Wayland-Sealwrote in a note to readers pub-lished in the Aug. 31 issue. Anoverhauled Lifebeats section, acommunity-centered entertain-ment section shared with theWarwick (R.I.) Beacon, is alsoplanned, as is a redesignedsports front that would have itsown section head, she said.

Hartford Courantdebuts ads on somesection fronts

The Hartford (Conn.)Courant has joined The BostonGlobe, The Wall Street Journal,The San Diego (Calif.) UnionTribune and other newspapersaround the United States in run-ning advertisements on some ofits section fronts.

The revived practice debutedSept. 11, with a color advertise-ment on the front of the sportssection. No other section frontscarried ads that day, said KarenHunter, the Courant’s readerrepresentative.

Hunter wrote in a Sept. 17column that she received nocomplaints in response to therunning of the advertisement.

The front page of theCourant usually contained a fewlines of advertising as late as the1970s, Hunter wrote. Shedescribed the Courant’s headlibrarian, Kathy McKula, show-ing her an 1887 front page, halfof which was advertisements.

For the time being, advertis-ing space will be offered only onthe sports, travel and businesssection fronts, Hunter reportedin her column. She said she hadnot heard about any plannedspread of ads to other sectionfronts.

“The Courant’s front page isstill sacred, as it should be,” shewrote.

Hartford Courantdiscontinues Sunday NE magazine

The Hartford (Conn.)Courant will discontinue publi-cation of its Sunday magazine,NE, Oct. 8, Clifford Teutsch,the Courant’s editor, announcedin a Sept. 13 e-mail to staff thatwas quoted by Courant readerrepresentative, Karen Hunter, inher Sept. 17 column.

Originally called Northeastmagazine, the publication firstappeared in 1982 and was ini-tially “a vehicle for longer piecesthat offered different points ofview, photo essays, prominentcolumnists and puzzles,”Hunter wrote.

The move was prompted bythree main factors, according toa Sept. 24 column by JeniferFrank, NE’s editor: a desire tomaintain a high quality newspa-per in difficult economic condi-tions, a change in reader demo-graphics, and a continueddemand for financial cuts by theCourant’s corporate owner,Chicago-based Tribune Co.

Hunter wrote that, in 2000,the magazine was redesigned toa broadsheet format, and then in2005 its name was changed toNE in an effort to appeal tomore sophisticated readers.

Many “back-of-the-book”elements, such as the crosswordpuzzle and restaurant review,will become part of the SundayLife section, Teutsch wrote inhis e-mail.

State legislators’financial disclosures available online

The Center for PublicIntegrity, a nonprofit, nonparti-san organization in Washington,D.C., focused on producingoriginal journalism on issues ofpublic concern, is posting statelegislators’ disclosures of theirpersonal finances on its Web siteat www.publicintegrity.org.

The disclosures are requiredby most states so that any poten-tial conflict of interest can cometo light. Some of the informa-tion in the disclosures includesemployment, major invest-ments, major debts and boardpositions. Personal financial dis-closures are required in all theNew England states exceptVermont and are available at thesite.

BRIEFS

Redesigned Page One


WORLD OF THE WEBGlobe redesigns itsonline front page

The Boston Globe has redesigned itsdaily news page called Today’s Globe onthe Globe’s Web site, Boston.com.

The newly designed page puts all thestories in that day’s Globe on one pageunder the name of the section in whichstory was published. The old page con-tained links that would bring the readerto a separate page for each section.

John Yemma, the Globe’s deputymanaging editor/multimedia, said itwas the consensus of the newsroom andthe staff at Boston.com that the presen-tation of the daily paper needed a clean-er and easy-to-navigate format.

“We felt the old way was too clut-tered,” Yemma said. “The newspaper’shome online should be very straightfor-ward and very easy to navigate.”

Certain sections of the paper, such asFood, run once a week. Those are col-lected in a column to the right, followedby links to the Globe’s most recentSpecial Reports, which include projectsthat have been put together by theGlobe’s Spotlight news team, and havebeen featured in the paper up to a yearago.

The far right column continues tofeature a directory of services and fea-tures, with links to Globe services, theGlobe Store, its Weblogs and podcasts,reporters’ queries, and the Globe’sarchives.

The Globe has also just redesignedits online local news page, locatedunderneath the City and Region sectionof the new Today’s Globe page. Thelocal news page now features not onlytoday’s stories but continuous newsupdates throughout the day. A similarnational news page is coming next.

Respondent skewsNashua Telegraph online poll results

An unscientific online poll posted in

late August by The Telegraph ofNashua, N.H., was skewed by severalthousand votes coming from the Texascomputer of the son of the Nashuaschool superintendent, who was thesubject of the poll, the newspaperreported.

According to a Telegraph investiga-tion, the votes came from the computerof J. Ryan Earl, son of Julia Earl, who

was put on paidadministrative leavesoon after The Tele-graph reported thatshe had spent nearly$8,000 in federal andlocal money on atleast seven out-of-state trips, including

five to her home state of Texas.The poll asked readers whether Julia

Earl should keep her job as superinten-dent, and about 300 votes a day hadbeen running 9-1 against retention, theTelegraph reported Sept. 10, six daysafter removing the poll from its Website.

The Nashua Board of Educationmoved Sept. 5 to begin terminationproceedings against Earl after conduct-ing its own investigation into her travel,The Telegraph reported. An accountingof her travel was first raised in a reportby the Telegraph June 7.

After discovering that its online pollhad been abused, the Telegraphremoved it and posted an explanationand revelation of who had submittedthe multiple votes.

The Telegraph reported Sept. 27 thatJulia Earl said she would appeal if shewere fired, even though she acknowl-edged that she has little chance of suc-cess.

An investigation by New Hampshireeducation officials into Earl’s use of fed-eral money found no specific violationsof federal spending guidelines, althoughdepartment officials did express “signif-icant concerns” about how the moneywas used, the Telegraph reported Sept.30. It reported that officials began the

investigation in response to theTelegraph’s article about Earl’s travelexpenses.

On Oct. 4, the Telegraph reportedthat the Nashua police chief had left avoice-mail message with the paper say-ing that no criminal charges would bepressed against Julia Earl.

Eagle-Tribune hasenhanced ad option for Web advertisers

The Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co. ofNorth Andover, Mass., publisher of sev-eral daily and weekly newspapers inEastern Massachusetts and SouthernNew Hampshire, is offering onlineadvertisers a high-tech option for plac-ing ads on the Eagle-Tribune’s Web site.

A report in the NewspaperAssociation of America’s onlinePresstime Magazine said Eagle-TribunePublishing’s director of Internet opera-tions, Brad Koltz, originally created theadvertising Web bundling software pro-gram in 1996.

The program, called GIFFY, hassince been modified to allow advertisersto go beyond the creation of simplereplicas of print ads. Advertisers cannow take advantage of GIFFY’senhanced format, which offers interac-tive advertisements complete with busi-ness’ Web site links, e-mail links, andlocation maps.

Koltz said the upgrades to the origi-nal software have helped Eagle-TribunePublishing generate more online rev-enue, increase efficiency in placing ads,and make the ads more useful to read-ers, Presstime reported.

Koltz said the upgraded softwareoptions, which are available on selectproducts, have “boosted online revenueby hundreds of thousands of dollars.”He said the company plans to offerGIFFY’s enhanced options to all adver-tisers soon.

According to Presstime, the new soft-ware works by extracting the text from

an advertiser’s so-called PDF ad andincorporating information stored in thepaper’s advertiser data system to pro-duce a final online advertisement. Theenhanced ad is a so-called GIF file, withthe advertiser’s appropriate links postedabove the ad.

The new GIFFY ads are accessible oneach of Eagle-Tribune Publishing’spapers’ Web sites, and a pull-downmenu on the home page enables readersto locate a particular advertiser’s ads.Koltz said the software is geared towardEagle-Tribune Publishing’s papers.

“We’ve packaged GIFFY for our-selves, but it’s not hard to get your armsaround this technology,” he said.

Survey shows papers’ Web sites haveincreased their reach

Thanks to their Web sites, newspa-pers’ overall readership is increasing,according to the Newspaper Associationof America’s Newspaper AudienceDatabase, Editor & Publisher reportedOct 4.

As part of the survey, the NewspaperAssociation of America calculated thetop 10 newspapers nationally in increas-es of their Web site audience of adults18 to 24. The Boston Globe rankedsixth, with an increase of 32.8 percent,Editor & Publisher reported. TheWashington (D.C.) Times ranked firstwith 60.2 percent.

Newspaper Audience Database’s lat-est survey revealed a 31 percent increasein unique visitors tonewspaper Web sitesin the first half of2006. One in threeInternet users, or 55.5million people, wentto a newspaper site ina given month, thereport said.

John Sturm, president and chief

________World of Web to Page 19

John Sturm

Julia Earl


T here’s an old storyabout a man whose cargot stuck in a ditch. He

went to a nearby farmhouse forhelp, and the farmer said,“Maybe Jasper can help. Jasperis my blind mule.”

The farmer hitched the muleto the car, stepped back andshouted, “Pull, Deacon! Pull,Nellie! Pull, Cleo! Pull, Jasper!”

Sure enough, the muledragged the car out of theditch.

The driver thanked thefarmer and said, “Sir, that’s onepowerful mule you have there.But I couldn’t help but noticethat you called out four names.I thought its name was Jasper.”

“Oh, it is,” the farmer saidwith a wink. “But if ol’ Jasperhad thought he was pulling byhimself, there’s no way he couldhave done it.”

Teamwork is important.When we feel like we’re part ofa team – a group that is pullingin the same direction – we can

get more accomplished. I remember a conversation

with Wayne, who works with alarge advertising agency.

“When we’re competing fornew business, we put a lot oftime into the development ofcampaign ideas,” he said. “Mostaccounts insist on seeing exam-ples of the creative work thatcan be produced for them. It’spart of their decision process.”

Sound familiar? Don’t youradvertisers like to see examplesof the ads that your paper canproduce for them, before theybuy into a new campaign?

“We have what we call PitchWeek,” Wayne explained. “Theentire agency is divided intoteams. Each group is providedwith a detailed profile of theaccount we’re going after –their products, their marketinghistory, their target audience,and so on. We work late andthrough the weekend, becauseall of this is in addition to ourregular work. Although it’s atime-consuming process, it pro-

vides the agency with a lot ofammunition for the actual pres-entation. And I’ve noticed thatit creates a real spirit of team-work and cooperation.”

Although the media side ofthe ad business is not set up foran agency-style Pitch Week, theconcept can be customized.Consider the regular sales meet-ings that occur in every addepartment in the publishing

industry. Why not set asidesome time to discuss ad ideasfor one client each week?

This calls for a structuredapproach to creativity. Duringthe designated time frame, stayaway from typical sales meetingtopics (prospect lists, quotas,bottom-line revenue, etc.).Instead, concentrate on theadvertising itself. Start with aclient profile (for example, aone-page outline of productand audience information).Then brainstorm on campaignthemes, headlines, and illustra-tive elements. Encourage thegroup to develop as many ideasas possible – then narrow thechoices.

You might be surprised atthe results.

“As long as the focus is clear,

there’s real power in groupthinking,” Wayne said. “Oneidea leads to another, whichleads to another, which leads toanother.”

Yes, there is real power whenpeople pull together toward acommon goal. Teamworkworks.

(c) Copyright 2005 by JohnFoust. All rights reserved.

John Foust conducts on-siteand video training for newspaperadvertising departments. His threenew video programs are designedto help ad managers conduct in-house training for their salesteams. For information, contactJohn Foust, PO Box 97606,Raleigh, NC 27624. E-mail:[email protected]. Phone:(919) 848-2401.

John Foust

Put the power of teamwork to work on ad ideasADVERTISING

Boston’s Bay StateBanner launches monthly health insert

The Bay State Banner ofBoston last month publishedthe first edition of Be Healthy, ayear-long monthly insert to theBanner that seeks to educateand inform Bostonians on racialand ethnic disparities in healthcare, and to provide resources tohelp people combat those issues.

The Banner said the publica-tion is part of a collaborativeeffort, and is co-sponsored bythe Boston Public HealthCommission, Partners Health-Care, Brigham and Women’sHospital, Massachusetts Gener-al Hospital, and Blue Cross BlueShield of Massachusetts.

The publication provides

readers with information andresources that discuss healthissues that disproportionatelyaffect the city’s minority com-munities. People can also findmedical advice, physician ques-tion-and-answer sessions, andinformation on disease preven-tion, the Banner said.

“The goal of Be Healthy is tolet our readers know that bybeing informed, active partici-pants in their own health care,they can live healthier lives andreduce the risks of diseases thatare all too common in our com-munity,” Melvin Miller, pub-lisher of the Bay State Banner,said.

The Banner said the publica-tion was made possible in partthrough a $1-million citywidepolicy initiative of Boston

Mayor Thomas Menino’s toback programs that discuss dis-parities in the health and health-care management of Boston’sminority communities.

Besides the monthly newspa-per insert, the Banner will alsopublish Be Healthy on its Website at www.bannerbe-healthy.com.

News items on this page andPages 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15,16, 17, 18, 19 and 22 were writ-ten from published reports andpress releases by Steven Altieri,Lorne Bell, Christina Campbell,Katherine Herbert, Jane Mackayand Donna Roberson, graduate stu-dents at the Northeastern UniversitySchool of Journalism and membersof the Bulletin staff. Roberson is alsothe Bulletin’s news staff coordinator.


Globe, Maine paper get grants for aidinghigh school papers

The Journal Tribune ofBiddeford, Maine, and TheBoston Globe were the onlyNew England newspapers thatqualified for awards from theAmerican Society of NewspaperEditors Foundation totaling$132,200 for 43 high schoolsmentored by 40 daily newspa-pers to help improve studentnews media.

Partnerships are formedwhen editors of daily newspa-pers seek out local high schoolsthat don’t have a working schoolnewspaper or one in need ofserious help. The newspaper andthe school work together to

brainstorm about an academic-year journalism mentor programfor students, teachers andadministrators in the school.

This is the first time that theBoston Globe and the JournalTribune are participating in thepartnership program. TheGlobe is working with BostonCollege High School and theJournal with Biddeford HighSchool.

As the programs develop, thedaily newspaper and the schoolcan apply to the AmericanSociety of Newspaper Editorsfor grants of up to $5,000 tohelp equip the school with thehardware and software to pro-duce a student paper. Progress ismeasured by what is eventuallyproduced: a quality independent

student newspaper that publish-es regularly online, in print orboth.

BU award for reporting on Asia goes to Times writer

David Barboza, a New YorkTimes correspondent based inShanghai, is the 2006 recipientof the Hugo Shong Journalist ofthe Year Award for Reporting onAsia Affairs, given by BostonUniversity’s College of Com-munication.

The award is presented to aprint journalist who has donethe most to advance publicinsight and understanding ofthe region in news or featurereporting during the previous

year. Barboza was presented the

$15,000 award by its namesake,Hugo X. Shong, a BU alumnusand trustee, at a BostonUniversity dinner ceremonySept. 22.

Gingrich to speak at Loeb 1st Amendment awards fete Nov. 27

Newt Gingrich, a formermember of Congress who servedin the House for 20 years andwho was speaker of the Housefrom 1995 to 1999, is the fea-tured speaker for the Nackey S.Loeb School of Communi-cations fourth annual FirstAmendment award honors.

The awards, which recognize

New Hampshire residents whoexemplify and guard free pressand free speech liberties, will bepresented at the Radisson Hotelin Manchester, N.H., Nov 27.The winner of the Nackey S.Loeb award will be announcedthat night and runner-up awardswill be presented to all of thehonorees.

Gingrich is chairman of theGingrich Group of Washington,D.C., a communications andconsulting business. He is also anews and political analyst forthe Fox News channel.

The school was founded in1999 by the late Nackey S.Loeb, formerly president andpublisher of the NewHampshire Union Leader ofManchester.

AWARDS and HONORS

to John Morton, a mediaresearch analyst and president ofMaryland-based Morton Re-search Inc.

“The national newspaperindustry is very soft this year,”he told the Journal. “And it’sworse in New England thananywhere else.”

Daily circulation at theGlobe has decreased by 8.5 per-cent during the past year. TheHerald’s weekday circulationdecreased by 9 percent duringthe same period, the Journalreported.

Negotiations over,Globe union to voteon contract proposal

The Boston NewspaperGuild, the union representingmore than 1,200 Globe staffmembers, will vote Oct. 18 onwhether to accept terms of anew contract proposed by thenewspaper’s owner, The NewYork Times Co.

Dan Totten, president of theunion, toldthe NEPABulletin thatboth sides hadcome to a“tentative ag-reement.”

He de-clined to com-ment on the details of the pro-posal until after the union votesin October.

“We expect a strong memberturnout,” Totten told theBulletin.

The Boston Herald, however,recently reported that it hadobtained an internal memofrom the Globe that detailedsome terms of the proposal. Thememo reportedly said the agree-ment – pending a union vote –would freeze all union members’pay for at least the next year.

It also said pay rates wouldremain unchanged throughout2007 if the paper’s revenuedeclined from its 2006 figures, aprospect the memo said waslikely “based on revenue figures

to date.”Editor & Publisher reported

Oct. 11 that Guild membershave raised serious objections tomanagement’s proposal that payincreases be tied to the Globe’srevenue growth. The report saidmany union members are par-ticularly angered with the pro-posal’s exclusion of revenue gen-erated by the Globe’s Web site,Boston.com, in determiningwhether pay raises are given in2007.

“As journalists who con-tribute, with enthusiasm andenergy and skill, to Boston.comin a variety of ways, we are writ-ing to express our strong con-cern about the company’s pro-posal to exclude us from sharingin the success of that part of ourcompany’s operation,” read apetition signed by 194 of theGuild’s members in response tothe Times Co.’s plan.

The Herald noted that theinternal Globe memo indicatedthat pay would remain frozenfor at least four years and “manyregressive issues” would arise –

including sick-time reductionsand repealing seniority privi-leges – should the union rejectGlobe management’s currentproposal.

The Herald made no men-tion of how the Globe’s propos-al responded to the Guild’s dis-pute with the Times Co. over itsproposal for employer health-care contributions for the nextfour years. The union said thatthe Times’ plan would requireGlobe employees to pay up to$900 a month to retain theirfamily health-care benefits.

The union aired its objec-tions to that plan in Augustthrough a radio advertisementthat attacked the Times Co. forbeing “greedy,” the Herald said.

Alfred S. Larkin Jr., theGlobe’s executive vice president,criticized the Guild’s ad, andtold the Herald that the unionwas trying “to bring public pres-sure to bear on what have beenprivate, and ongoing, labornegotiations.”

The NEPA Bulletin left a

message with Larkin’s officerequesting comment on thecontract negotiations to datethat went unanswered.

A similar proposal to halt payincreases is under way at theHerald. The Herald’s publisher,Patrick J. Purcell, recently metwith leaders of the paper’s 11unions and proposed a payfreeze for its union staff. Purcelltold the Herald that the meet-ings went well.

“Everyone understands thechallenges we’re facing,” he said.

The Herald’s Local 31032,the union that represents thepaper’s editorial and commercialstaff, voiced its backing for theBoston Newspaper Guild’sefforts to represent the Globe’semployees throughout the news-paper industry’s struggles.

“The Guild is well aware ofthe problems plaguing ourindustry,” Brain Whelan, presi-dent of the Local 31032, toldthe Herald. “We remain com-mitted to keeping Boston a two-newspaper town.”

INDUSTRY NEWS___Industry News from Page 7

Dan Totten


executive officer of theNewspaper Association ofAmerica, said the increase repre-sents the positive impact of pub-lishers’ innovations and strate-gies to broaden their onlineaudience, Editor & Publisherreported.

The survey showed thatnewspaper Web sites were draw-ing 10 percent more adults 18 to24 and 15 percent more adults25 to 34 in the first half of 2006compared with the first half of2005.

The data represent anincrease in “total audience,”which encompasses newspapers’print and online products, thearticle said.

The Newspaper AudienceDatabase method of measuringtotal audience puts newspaperson a more level playing field,according to Andrea Fulton,vice president and director ofprint at Carat, an independentmedia agency network. Fultonwas quoted in Editor &Publisher.

The article also quoted JohnKimball, senior vice president ofthe Newspaper Association ofAmerica, who said the surveywas not meant to diminish theimportance of paid circulation,

but rather toprovide a lookat “who arethe peoplereading news-papers?”

J a s o nKlein, presi-dent and chiefexecutive officer of theNewspaper National Network,said readership is a better pre-dicter of who will be seeingadvertisements than circulationis, and that readership numbersfor all of a newspaper’s platformsrepresented an “apples-to-applescomparison,” Editor & Pub-lisher reported.

Survey finds people trust newspapers, TV

A recent survey has foundthat traditional news-media out-lets such as newspapers and tele-vision are far more trusted assources of news than Web sitesand Weblogs.

Telecom Express, a Britishinteractive marketing company,asked 1,000 respondents whatpercentage of information theyreceived from various sourceswas accurate and unbiased.

Television was the most trust-ed source, at 66 percent. News-papers ranked second, with 63

percent accuracy, and radio wasthird at 59 percent. At the lowerend, Web sites and blogs scored36 percent and 24 percentrespectively.

Reports: Newspapers still No. 1 source for job seekers, althoughrecruiters prefer Web

Two recent reports providenewspapers encouraging anddiscouraging news about theircompetition with online sourcesfor classified advertising.

A recent report by TheConference Board Inc., a NewYork City-based global researchand business membershiporganization, found that threeof four job seekers still use news-papers to look for employment.

The Internet placed second,with three of five job seekersusing the Internet when lookingfor employment.

The survey showed thatnewspapers are the most com-monly used method of lookingfor a job in three of four majorregions across the United Statesand in all except the top incomebracket. Use of the Internet tofind jobs was higher than that ofnewspapers only in the WesternUnited States.

Meanwhile, though, Classi-fied Intelligence, an AltamonteSprings, Fla.-consulting groupon classified advertising, recent-ly reported that in a survey of

350 recruiters, print advertisingwas deemed to be the least effec-tive method to reach new jobseekers.

Only 13 percent of those sur-veyed said they would increasetheir spending on advertising inprint, while 45 percent said theyplanned to increase their spend-ing with online job sites.

Fifty percent of the respon-dents said job sites such asCareerbuilder.com were themost effective way to hire. Someof those surveyed said they makeas much as half of their annualhires from online job sites.

Online ads continue to grow, but some warning signs loom

This year has already set arecord high for Internet adver-tising revenue as a whole, in-creasing 37 percent in the firsthalf of 2007 to $7.9 billion.

Keyword ads displayed along-side search results make up 40percent of online ad revenues,according to the Interactive Ad-vertising Bureau, a New YorkCity-based association dedicatedto helping online, interactivebroadcasting, e-mail, wirelessand interactive television mediacompanies increase their rev-enues. Banner display ads, at 21percent, and classified ads, at 20percent, made up another largeportion of total revenue.

Despite the growth, onlineadvertising revenue still makes

up only 5 percent of all advertis-ing revenues.

Local online advertising,especially, will likely continue togrow, to $7.7 billion in 2007.That’s a 31.6 percent jump over2006, according to Borrell As-sociates, a media research com-pany based in Portsmouth, Va.The company reported that halfof local Web sites are adding totheir online-only sales forces.The number of online sales peo-ple have increased by about 37percent this year.

Borrell is predicting a slow-down in standard online ads by2008, and perhaps even adecline in 2010 as online adver-tisers move to more targetedonline advertising, including e-mail and paid search. Borrellalso said local video advertisingwill become a trackable categoryin 2007.

Despite an increase in rev-enue seen by online sites, a sep-arate report from BlackfriarsCommunications, a Maynard,Mass.-based consulting compa-ny that surveyed about 300 sen-ior executives and their market-ing budgets, says overall onlinemarketing will actually make upa smaller percentage of market-ing budgets this year. That willmean a drop from the 23 per-cent executives expected tospend at the beginning of thisyear. Internet advertising tookthe biggest hit, from a predicted11 percent share of overall mar-keting budgets to 7 percent.

__World of Web from Page 16

CLASSIFIEDS(Complete text for all classified advertisements online at www.nepa.org)

HELP WANTED

ADMINISTRATIVE

GENERAL MANAGER:Full- or part-time at 6,000paid weekly 20 miles south ofBoston.

ADVERTISING

ADVERTISING SERVICES

MANAGER: The Day Pub-lishing Company.

CLASSIFIED CALL CEN-TER MANAGER: The Sun

ADVERTISING SALES:Local weekly newspaper onCape Cod.

ADVERTISING DIREC-TOR: Daily New Englandnewspaper.

EDITORIAL

MANAGING EDITOR: TheDay.

EDITOR: The JewishJournal/North of Boston.

NEWSPAPER REPORTER:The Hardwick Gazette.

PRODUCTION

ASSISTANT PRODUC-TION MANAGER: HersamAcorn Newspapers.

TECHNOLOGY

WEB DEVELOPER: Sea-coast Online

Part-Time Web Administra-

tor: Seacoast Online.

Online Editor: Seacoast On-line.

POSITIONS WANTED

425. Editor-Reporter.

426. Circulation, Sales orDistribution Management.

WORLD OF THE WEB

John Kimball


CONNECTICUT G. Claude Albert and Barbara“Bobbie” Roessner have beenpromoted from deputy manag-ing editors to co-managing edi-tors of The Harford Courant.

David Brensilver has beennamed editor of the TimesCommunity News Group ofnine weeklies. He replacedPhoebe Hall, who took a jobon The Day of New London’scopy desk.

George P. Gombossy is step-

ping aside as The HartfordCourant’s business editor towrite an investigative columnfor the Courant.

Cy Philbrick has replacedShannon Sousa as sports editorof The Lyme Times of EastLyme, Old Lyme and Niantic.

MASSACHUSETTS Glenn Drohan, who had beeneditor the Advocate of NorthAdams since August 2003, hasbecome editor of the NorthAdams Transcript. Rebecca

Dravis, assistant editor of theAdvocate, replaced Drohan.

Bill Fonda has been named edi-tor of the Marshfield Mariner,Pembroke Mariner and ScituateMariner. Replacing Fonda onthe Orleans beat of the Orleans-based Cape Codder is reporterMatthew Belson, who will con-tinue to cover Brewster. MattRice, a part-time sports reporterfor the Cape Codder andHarwich Oracle since June2005, is moving to full-time sta-tus and will cover Chatham plushis current sports beat.

Gail Spector has been namededitor of the Newton TAB.

Spector replaced Don Seiffert,the TAB’s editor since February2000 who has become suburbaneditor of The Enterprise ofBrockton.

Allison Goldsmith returnedSept. 28 to The Inquirer andMirror of Nantucket as sportseditor. Dean Geddes, who filledthe job of sports reporter for sixor seven months, is leaving thenewspaper to move to Delaware.Joel Silverstein has been namedarts and entertainment editorfor The Inquirer and Mirror.

Steve Sheppard, a journalist,writer and editor on Nantucketfor the past 25 years, has been

named sports editor of TheNantucket Independent. ChrisEdmonds, who had been theIndependent’s sports editor, hasleft Nantucket to pursue a careerin law.

Betty Keva has returned to theJewish Journal/North of Bostonof Salem as interim editor,replacing Ben Harris. Harris,editor for the past year, left Sept.22 to become a correspondentfor the Jewish TelegraphicAgency, an international newsservice based in New York City.

Gabriel Leiner has joined thestaff of the Weston Town Crier

MILESTONESTRANSITIONS

(Full accounts of all Transitions online at www.nepa.org)

Roger V. Snow Jr., began career injournalism as a reporter and editor,including as aviation editor, withPortland (Maine) Press Herald andthen-Portland Evening Express;later owner and publisher ofWestbrook (Maine) Journal; found-ed Cape Elizabeth and SouthPortland (Maine) Journal, latercombined to become AmericanJournal of Westbrook.

Constance E. Indio, with her hus-band, Joseph, founded theNantucket (Mass.) Town Crier in1947 and edited and published itfor 16 years before selling it to TheInquirer and Mirror of Nantucket.

Eugene L. Martin, joined then-Waterbury (Conn.) Republican in1948 as a reporter in Bristol,Conn., bureau; became wire editorin 1952, assistant city editor in1957, and city editor in 1964; in1967, became executive editor ofthe Waterbury Republican, theAmerican of Waterbury, and theSunday Republican; served on theboard of directors of American-Republican Inc. from 1979 untilretirement in 1988.

Richard H. Woodbury, begannewspaper career as a junior high

school student correspondent forthen-Portland (Maine) EveningNews, and later as a high schoolstudent for then-Portland EveningExpress; joined Sunday Telegram ofMaine in 1937, and became its edi-tor in 1948; later named assistantmanaging editor of Portland’s threethen-Guy Gannett-owned newspa-pers, the Portland Press Herald, thethen-Evening Express and theSunday Telegram; served for 10years as public affairs director forthe newspapers; instructor in jour-nalism and adviser to student pub-lications at Portland Junior College.

Arthur L. Jones. began career as asports reporter for The Daily Newsof Newburyport, Mass.; later areporter at then-Boston HeraldTraveler before joining The BostonGlobe as a reporter in 1970; part ofGlobe staff that won Pulitzer Prizefor coverage of court-orderedschool desegregation; left Globe in1979 and worked as a televisionreporter at then-WBZ-TV, Chan-nel 4, in Boston, where he won aNew England Emmy Award forinvestigative coverage of Boston’ssubway system in 1980; left newsmedia in 1981 and taught journal-ism at Boston University beforebecoming deputy press secretary for

former Massachusetts Gov. MichaelS. Dukakis, and later press secretaryfor former Boston Mayor RaymondFlynn; from 1993 to 1995, was adeputy press secretary in ClintonWhite House; since 2003, directorof news office at the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology.

Paul T. Mahoney, productionmanager for then-Framingham(Mass.) News, now MetrowestDaily News, and for USA Today.

Gordon Manning, began career inprint in 1941 as a reporter atUnited Press International inBoston; held editing jobs beforebecoming managing editor ofCollier’s magazine; then joinedNewsweek magazine and was pro-moted to executive editor in 1961;in 1964, Manning left Newsweek

to join CBS News; a news executiveat CBS from 1964 to 1975 andthen at NBC from 1975 to 1995.

John ‘Jack’ Lautier, began newspa-per career as a sportswriter for for-mer Hartford (Conn.) Times;joined staff of Bristol (Conn.) Pressin 1976 as a sportswriter, which heremained during his career.

Nancy Meersman, began journal-ism career as a reporter for Foster’sDaily Democrat of Dover, N.H.;joined New Hampshire UnionLeader of Manchester in 1970.

John Impemba, began as areporter with the Essex County(Mass.) Newspaper Group; laterwas a reporter for The Standard-Times of New Bedford, Mass., and

DEATHS(Full text of obituaries online at www.nepa.org)

______Transitions to Page 21

Richard J. Pedroli Jr., Sunday editor Richard J. Pedroli Jr., 44, of Milford, Mass., died of heart

failure during an evening jog Oct. 2.Pedroli, Sunday editor of the Metrowest

Daily News of Framingham, Mass., joinedthat paper in 1998 as a copy editor afterspending 17 years on the staff of The Call ofWoonsocket, R.I., first as an intern and thenon the sports staff.

He leaves his parents, Richard J. Sr. andDorothy; a brother, David, a sister, Dori, aniece, Haylee.

��

��

��

DonationsMemorials

Estate Planning

Fully Approved ForTax Deduction

New England PressEducational Foundation360 Huntington Avel, 428CPBoston, MA 02115617-373-8287email: [email protected]

________Deaths to Page 24

Richard Pedroli


MILESTONES

as a news reporter. KatieLeisener, a reporter at the TownCrier for six months, has left toteach writing at EmmanuelCollege in Boston.

Mike Melanson has been hiredas a staff reporter and DavidSelig as the sports reporter atthe Express newspapers of EastBridgewater, Whitman andHanson.

Jocelyn Walker has joined thestaff of the Wilbraham-Hampden Times as a sales repre-sentative. She replaces KerryMcGarrett, who will coordinateclassified advertising at thenewspaper’s parent company,Turley Publications in Palmer.

Tony Massarotti has been pro-moted to general columnist forthe Boston Herald sportsdepartment. Massarotti hasbeen at the Herald for 17 years,covered the Boston Red Sox for14 years, and, for the past sevenyears, was the paper’s baseballbeat columnist.

Keith Rahilly, who began innewspapers in 1999 as homedelivery manager of TheBerkshire Eagle of Pittsfield andwas circulation director of theNorth Adams Transcript from2002 to 2003 before returningto the Eagle as circulation man-ager, has been named sales andmarketing director of TheVillages Daily Sun of LakeCounty, Fla.

NEW HAMPSHIRETracey Rauh Solomon hasbeen named executive editor forthe North Andover, Mass.-basedEagle-Tribune’s New Hampshirenews operation. Solomon willlead the staff responsible for the

paper’s daily editions inSouthern New Hampshire, aswell as the twice-weekly DerryNews. Christine Gillette hasbeen named acting features edi-tor and Sonya Vartebedian act-ing assistant features editor ofthe Eagle-Tribune’s NewHampshire news operation.

David Hanks has been namedcirculation director of the KeeneSentinel. Hanks succeededPatrick Trubiano, the longtimeSentinel circulation manager,who has retired.

RHODE ISLAND Anthony M. Bovi has beennamed advertising manager ofthe Kent County Daily Times ofWest Warwick and the WarwickDaily Times. He replaced JudyHogan, who has retired.

John Barry has joined TheBlock Island Times as director ofadvertising and production.Barry replaced Bruce Mont-gomery, who became the Times’owner and publisher in 1999and sold the paper in March toBetty and Fraser Lang but stayedon as director of advertising andas a cartoonist. He will continueto draw cartoons for the paper.Judy Kisseberth has joined theBlock Island Times as officeassistant.

Mark Silberstein,, associate edi-tor of the Warwick Beacon, hasleft to become managing editorof WOIO-TV, the CBS affiliatein Cleveland.

Jennifer A. Salcido has joinedthe Bristol Phoenix as a reporter.She replaced Kaitlin Curran,who left to continue her educa-tion.

Mark Silverman has been

named editor and vice presidentof content and audience devel-opment at the Tennessean ofNashville. From 1979 to 1986,Silverman worked as copy edi-tor, then news editor of theProvidence Journal Bulletin.Before that, he was a reporterand copy editor for what is nowthe Telegram & Gazette ofWorcester.

VERMONTJames Therrien has left as edi-tor of the North Adams (Mass.)Transcript to become editor ofthe Bennington Banner. Ther-rien replaced Noah Hoffen-berg, who has become theAmherst bureau chief at theDaily Hampshire Gazette ofNorthampton, Mass..

Guy Page was hired in lateAugust to be the first circulationmanager for The News andCitizen of Morrisville. Page willalso sell advertising for thenewspaper and for its Web site,newsandcitizen.com.

Kimberley E. Whalen hasjoined the Stowe Reporter asproduction manager. She re-places Stacey Comiskey, wholeft in late July to take a job inher home state of Texas.

Alex Nuti-de-Biasi has beennamed managing editor of theJournal Opinion of Bradford.Nuti-de-Biasi replaced CicelyRichardson. She will continueto report for the JournalOpinion, once again in Orfordand Fairlee.

TRANSITIONS(Full accounts of all Transitions online at www.nepa.org)

____Transitions from Page 20

The Milestones were written frompublished reports and press releases bySteven Altieri, Christina Campbell,Katherine Herbert, Jane Mackay andDonna Roberson, graduate studentsat the Northeastern University Schoolof Journalism and members of theBulletin staff. Roberson is also theBulletin’s news staff coordinator.

Maine editor Offer retiring after 41-year news career

David B. Offer, executive editor of the Kennebec Journal ofAugusta, and the Morning Sentinel of Waterville, both inMaine will be retiring at the end of the year.

Offer has spent 41 years in journalism, working at publica-tions across the country. He began his careeras a reporter for the Wenatchee (Wash.)Daily World and moved a year later to TheHartford (Conn.) Courant, where he was aninvestigative reporter and won a fellowshipworth $10,000. He used the fellowship for amaster’s degree in political science from theUniversity of California at Berkeley.

Later, he worked as an investigativereporter in Wisconsin and Arizona before becoming managingeditor of the La Crosse (Wis.) Tribune.

In 1987, he became editor of The Newport (R.I.) DailyNews.

In 1999, he was briefly editor of the military paper, Starsand Stripes.

Offer has been president of the New England AssociatedPress News Executives Association, and a director and nation-al treasurer of Associated Press Managing Editors. He is pastpresident of the Connecticut chapter of the Society ofProfessional Journalists and served for six years on the society'sboard of directors. He has served as a juror for the PulitzerPrize four times. Offer was chairman of the Small NewspapersCommittee of both Associated Press Managing Editors and theAmerican Society of Newspaper Editors.

He twice won the Allan B. Rogers Award for best editorialwritten by any newspaper in New England. He is being pre-sented with the Yankee Quill Award in Boston in November.He received the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism in 2001from the University of Oregon after resigning from Stars andStripes after four months when officials ordered him to with-hold a routine story about a planned troop movement fromGermany to Israel. In 1988, he was awarded the WellsMemorial Key for distinguished service to the Society ofProfessional Journalists. In 2004, he was awarded theDistinguished Service Award of Associated Press ManagingEditors.

David Offer


NEWS VENTURES, NEWS DEALSCurrently the magazine’s

content is integrated into ValleyBusiness Outlook Magazine’sWeb site, www.vbomaga-zine.com. Western Mass Busi-ness Woman will roll out itsown Web site in November,Emery-Ferrero said.

The magazine is published intabloid format and rangesbetween 24 and 32 pages. It isavailable for free at more than350 locations throughoutWestern Massachusetts, and isdistributed to 500 local busi-nesses. Subscriptions are avail-able for an annual rate of $19.

Edible Coastal Mainelaunched in summer

Edible Coastal Maine, a foodmagazine whose first issue waspublished this summer, is “dedi-cated to telling the stories” ofMaine’s lobstermen and shellfishers, small farmers and artisanfood makers, according to themagazine’s Web site.

It will be published quarterlyby Mainely Living LLC, aRockland, Maine-based compa-ny, according to the Web site.

The first issue featurescelebrity cookbook authors,including Linda Greenlaw, thefishing boat captain whom “ThePerfect Storm” made famous,The Lubec (Maine) Light re-ported.

Merrill Williams is editor andpublisher of the new magazine,said Jim Bazin, Edible CoastalMaine’s creative director. Bazin

said the maga-zine has a staffof “two-and-a-half ” —W i l l i a m s ,Bazin and apart-time staffmember whoworks as a

copy editor, office manager andwriter — but will need to ex-pand soon. He foresaw a partic-

ular need for staff in advertising,marketing and distribution.

Williams had an extensivecareer in public relations andmarketing in the hospitalityindustry, according to a biogra-phy on the Web site of EdibleCommunities, an Ojai, Calif.-based publishing and informa-tion services company of whichEdible Coastal Maine is part. Inthe biography, she describes hergoal for Edible Coastal Maine asbeing to “help connect the localfood dots.”

The first print run of the full-color glossy in July was 20,000copies, Bazin said. He said thenext run, for the November“holiday-themed” issue, will be35,000, but the mid-Januaryedition will be substantially larg-er, at 135,000 to 150,000copies, because advertisers“want to do special things” inthat issue, Bazin said.

The magazine is available fora cover price of $6 at bookstoresalong coastal Maine and at spe-cialty food shops and high-endkitchen supply shops, Bazinsaid. The target market is peopleinterested in and appreciative ofthe artisan foods of Maine, espe-cially tourists who regularlyvacation along the Maine coast,he said.

Subscription rates are $29 forone year — four issues — and$49 for two years, Bazin said.Because the magazine is printedon heavy, glossy paper, the costof mailing is about $2 a copy, hesaid.

Edible Nutmeg, newConn. food mag,launched Sept. 10

Edible Nutmeg, a new quar-terly magazine covering localfood, artisans and sustainableagriculture in Connecticut, waslaunched Sept. 10 with its fallissue, The Litchfield CountyTimes of New Milford, Conn.,reported Sept. 22.

Printed in color and namedfor Connecticut’s signaturespice, the magazine is being dis-tributed free at local restaurants,wine shops, grocers, specialtystores, farmers markets, coffeeshops and bakeries, the Timesreported. The inaugural printrun of about 15,000 copies wasinitially distributed mainlythroughout Litchfield County,near the magazine’s home baseof Washington Depot, Conn.,distribution to other areas of thestate is expanding, the Timesreported.

Mary E. Adams and RobertLockhart are co-publishers.Lockhart also is editor, accord-ing to the magazine’s Web site,www.ediblenutmeg.com. EdibleNutmeg is a member of theOjai, Calif.,-based Edible Com-munities family of magazines.

The “Contributors” sectionof Edible Nutmeg’s Web siteshows most of the articles andphotographs to be submitted byConnecticut-based writers andphotographers.

Subscriptions are available at$28 a year.

Mass. lodging group plans mag to targetlucrative gay market

The Massachusetts LodgingAssociation has targeted nextspring to launch a new gay- andlesbian-oriented travel maga-zine, the Boston Herald report-ed Sept. 29.

Titled Great Gay Escapes andbased in Boston, the magazinewill be a 48-page glossy sent bydirect mail to 24,000 gay andlesbian homes in New YorkCity, Philadelphia and Washing-ton, D.C., the Herald said.

“It’s an experiment,” said ArtCanter, president and chiefexecutive offi-cer of the asso-ciation. Hesaid a signifi-cant numberof the associa-tion’s mem-bers areenthus ias t icabout the idea.

The gay market is perceivedto be a highly lucrative onewhere people travel more oftenand have more money to spend,and Massachusetts has threemajor gay destinations: Boston,Provincetown and Northamp-ton, Canter told the Herald.

The magazine will be pub-lished by Jake Publishing ofBoston, which produces BostonSpirit, a magazine that providescoverage every other month ofthe Greater Boston gay and les-bian communities, the Heraldsaid. Boston Spirit obtained themailing list for direct-mail dis-tribution of Great Gay Escapesfrom Planet Out Inc.’s magazineThe Out Traveler of LosAngeles, Canter said. He saidthe Massachusetts LodgingAssociation hopes to publishGreat Gay Escapes “at mini-

mum once a year.”

Canter said that in the 2007edition, spring, summer, fall andwinter will be each be treated asa separate components of themagazine. There will be no cal-endar of events, he said.

Great Gay Escapes will bedistributed free of charge,Canter said. The association issoliciting advertising to offsetthe magazine’s costs, the Heraldreported.

Conn. firm buys 3 Southern papers

Heartland Publications,based in Old Saybrook, Conn.,and owner and operator of 26paid daily and weekly newspa-pers in Kentucky, Oklahoma,Tennessee, Ohio, West Virginia,and North Carolina, recentlybought the Richmond CountyDaily Journal of Rockingham,N.C., and two weekly publica-tions from Community News-papers Inc. of Athens, Ga.

The purchases were reportedin Editor & Publisher and arepart of what Michael Bush,Heartland’s president and a for-mer New England newspaper-man, said is a program of strate-gic acquisitions aimed at grow-ing the company.

The Richmond CountyDaily Journal has a circulationof 8,011. The two weeklies pur-chased by Heartland are TheCheraw (S.C.) Chronicle, with acirculation of 6,350, and TheAnson Record of Wadesboro,N.C., with a circulation of4,948.

Heartland Publications isjointly owned by The WicksGroup of Companies, a NewYork City-based private equitycompany, and Wachovia CapitalPartners, based in Charlotte,N.C.

Art Canter

Jim Bazin

___News Ventures from Page 3


annual college scholarship winners, and the newlyinducted members of the New England Newspaper Hallof Fame (please see related story, this page).

Saturday evening caps the convention with the post-annual banquet presentation of awards to winners ofNEPA’s Better Newspaper Contest. NEPA has receivedjust under 6,000 entries for the Better NewspaperContest. The 5,825 entries will be judged in 63 cate-gories, and the actual number of awards will not bedetermined until the judging is completed. Althoughnot a record for entries, those submitted this year comeclose to last year’s number of entries, which was themost NEPA ever received.

Ongoing during the two days of the convention willbe the annual Trade Show.

The first of the Trade Show exhibitors, Zope Corp.. ofFredericksburg, Va., already has signed up, said ElaineReirter, NEPA’s members services and marketing direc-tor. Zope offers Internet publishing options for newspa-pers such as content management, classified advertise-ments, ad-serving and management, Weblogging andvideo.

Reiter, who is coordinating the Trade Show, said thatthis coming year there will be extra hospitality servicesfor exhibitors. They will receive complimentary ticketsto Friday and Saturday’s luncheons, which will givethem an opportunity to become more acquainted withconvention-goers. The exhibitors also are being provid-ed a special room where they will be able to meet withinterested clients and to network.

The 2007 convention unofficially begins Thursday,Feb. 8, with an all-day seminar. The American PressInstitute is offering a condensed version of its“Management of the Weekly Newspaper” seminar forpublishers and senior managers who want to becomepublishers. There is a separate fee for the Thursdayworkshop.

Next month, NEPA members will be mailed conven-tion program guides and registration packets, and willbe sent an e-mail notice about the convention.

Registration will begin in late November and will beavailable online this year for the first time in NEPA’s his-tory. Information is available now on the NEPA Website at www.nepa.org.

Regular registration fees apply until Jan. 8. After thatdate, a 10 percent late fee will be charged. Walk-up reg-istration will be available, with the 10 percent surcharge.

More information about the convention and regis-tering for it can be obtained by calling Elaine Reiter at(617) 373-5610 or by e-mailing her [email protected].

The following are summaries of four of the more

than 50 workshops that will take place at the conven-tion:

‘Fighting for Access:A Legal Toolkit for Journalists’

10:45 a.m.-NoonFriday, Feb. 9

This workshop will deal with common issues jour-nalists face when trying to gain access to what are sup-posed to be public records they rely on day in and dayout for their news reporting.

The workshop will be led by Sean Murphy, an inves-tigative reporter with The Boston Globe, and JefferyPyle and Kimberley Keyes, news-media lawyers with theBoston law firm of Prince,Lobel, Glovsky & PyleLLP.

The workshop will fea-ture practical discussionsto help journalists learntheir rights and the bestways to be successfulwhen fighting for accessto government records,such as the correct way tocraft a public recordsrequest and how to appeala denial; explaining whatpublic access is andmeans; outlining therights of journalists under open-meeting laws.

The workshop also will discuss the right of journal-ists to access court records, and what to do when recordsare sealed and journalists want to challenge that and getinformation the public is entitled to under the FirstAmendment.

Keyes said: “We want to provide journalists withammunition when faced with recalcitrant individualsand (with) difficulty challenging closure of documents.”

‘Power Reporting:Newsroom Training in

Computer-AssistedReporting, Writing and Editing’

9 a.m.-NoonFriday, Feb. 9

Want to find facts fast, and learn how to make yournews coverage even stronger?

The “Power Reporting” workshop at the NEPA con-vention might be for you. It will be led by Bill Dedman,a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a journalism teacher,a former editor and current investigative journalist forMSNBC.com.

The workshop is intended to help give everyone in

the newsroom the ability to understand the importanceof public records and background information, in effectteaching everyone how to think like an investigativereporter, and to provide the basic tools for such report-ing to bring those skills to daily, beat and deadline newsreporting.

Dedman, a former reporter for The Boston Globe

Convention promises bounty of workshops___________________Convention from Page 1

___________________Convention to Page 24

Kimberley Keyes

Nominations open forNEPA’s Hall of Fame,Horace Greeley Award

The two most prestigious honors bestowed bythe New England Press Association are waiting fortakers at NEPA’s 56th Annual Convention andTrade Show in February in Boston.

NEPA is seeking nominations for its NewEngland Newspaper Hall of Fame and for itsHorace Greeley Award. The deadline for nomina-tions for both honors is Dec. 1. Letters of nomina-tion for either honor should be sent to Brenda Reed,NEPA’s executive director, in care of New EnglandPress Association, 360 Huntington Ave., 428 CP,Boston, MA 02115.

The New England Newspaper Hall of Fame hasinducted 66 members since its establishment onNEPA’s 50th anniversary in 2000.

The Hall of Fame is open to all New Englandnewspaper people; NEPA membership is not arequirement. Qualified nominees will have madeoutstanding contributions to the newspaper indus-try or their community or both. New Hall of Famemembers will be honored at a reception at theBoston Park Plaza Hotel Friday evening, Feb. 9,during the 2007 NEPA convention.

The Horace Greeley Award is named for the for-mer editor of The New Yorker Magazine, founder ofThe New York Tribune, and a native of NewEngland. It is awarded either to a New Englandjournalist or newspaper for outstanding service tothe public through newspaper work and for going“above and beyond” the usual duties of a journalistor newspaper. The recipient must be employed by aNEPA-member newspaper or must have beenemployed by a NEPA-member paper for the timewhen his or her work is being recognized.

The Horace Greeley Award winner is recognizedat NEPA’s Annual Awards Banquet, which isSaturday evening, Feb. 10, at the 2007 convention.

Katherine Herbert, a graduate student at theNortheastern University School of Journalism and amember of the Bulletin staff, contributed to this report.


and, until recently, man-aging editor for reader-ship of The Telegraph ofNashua, N.H., will stressthe importance of usingthe Internet and theWorld Wide Web toobtain access to publicrecords. He will discussnot only how to gainaccess to those records,but how to use them.

Dedman will teachreporters to ask suchquestions as, How up todate is the informationthey have obtained? What’s not included in that infor-mation? How should that information be attributed?

Dedman said that, overall, the seminar is “trying toteach strategies to use and to learn the tools used togather information today.”

The seminar is set up as somewhat of a “show andtell,” and the practical uses of what Dedman is teachingwill be worked into the discussion.

More information on the “Power Reporting” work-shop and others Dedman offers is available atwww.powerreporting.com.

‘You Can Redesign Your Small Weekly Newspaper

Without a Consultant’2–3:30 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 10In this workshop designed for editors of small week-

ly newspapers, Tim Kane, executive editor of TurleyPublications, based in Palmer, Mass., will talk about the

redesign of the communi-ty newspaper.

Kane said redesign ispossible for papers withminimal staffs that mightnot have the budget tohire a newspaper consult-ant. The workshop is for“the small weekly newspa-per editors who wear a lotof caps,” he said.

Kane will cover devel-oping a team, includingproduction staff, the pub-lisher and readers, andoffering up a blueprint forredesign. He will also discuss fonts, point sizes, pagesequencing, nameplates, the use of photography, andhow to redesign the front page.

“It’s actually, I think, an opportunity to fix the sys-tems,” Kane said of the redesign period.

He also suggested that editors planning a redesign lis-ten to opinions from the community.

“You definitely want to hook up with your readers,”Kane said.

Kane said an in-house redesign could be the way togo for small weekly papers.

“You have total control of the product, and also yousave a lot of money,” he said.

Kane has worked for and helped redesign papersowned by Community Newspaper Company, based inNeedham, Mass., and Stonebridge Press, based inSouthbridge, Mass. He has recently participated in theredesign of The Holyoke (Mass.) Sun for TurleyPublications.

Kane said he plans to offer “real world” advice duringthe workshop and encourages participants to sendtearsheets of their newspapers to him at Ware RiverNews, 92 Main St., Ware, MA 01082 or e-mail PDFs [email protected].

‘Journalism Ethics’10:45 a.m.–Noon

Friday, Feb. 9It’s a subject that is always in the back of editors’ and

reporters’ minds: ethics – and potential libel suits thatcan accompany a breach of them.

Jon Kellogg, executive editor of the Waterbury(Conn.) Republican-American, said he’ll bepursuing the Socraticmethod during the work-shop he is presenting on“Journalism Ethics.”

“It will be all generaldiscussion,” Kellogg said.

Kellogg said he willpresent real-life case stud-ies during the workshopto open up discussionabout how decisions aremade in the newsroom,how standards are set andwhat newsroom standardsshould be.

Ethics generally follow “rigid moral principles,”which don’t always work in the newsroom, Kellogg said.Each story is different and brings its own challenges andethical questions.

Kellogg said it is to be hoped that reporters and edi-tors will then begin bringing up their own issues for dis-cussions. The goal is to get journalists thinking aboutethics.

“I think that reporters and editors trying to makemomentous decision on deadline are almost doomed tofailure,” Kellogg said.

Katherine Herbert and Donna Roberson, graduate stu-dents at the Northeastern University School of Journalismand members of the Bulletin staff, contributed to thisreport. Roberson is also the Bulletin’s news staff coordinator.

Convention countdown stands at four months__________________Convention from Page 23

Tim Kane

Jon Kellogg

Bill Dedman

the Boston Herald; later became atelevision reporter for stations inMaine, Florida and Georgia.

William J. Hayes Sr., formerwarehouse manager for the BostonHerald.

Robert E. Fleming, sales repre-sentative at The Boston Globe for47 years; began working for theGlobe as a delivery boy at age 16;past president and director of theBoston Globe Credit Union.

Neil S. Jackson. worked in adver-tising sales and then as advertising

sales manager for The Courier-Gazette of Rockland, Maine, untilhe retired.

Gabriel Wollman, advertisingsalesman for The Salem (Mass.)News and a chapter chairman for along period with the NewspaperGuild.

Mary Elizabeth Rising, reporterat the Journal Opinion ofBradford, Vt.

Erik Skaanning, worked in thepublishing industry for 53 yearsand was a printer for the then-Dedham (Mass.) Transcript and

the then-Middlesex News ofFramingham, Mass.

Lucille DeView, award-winningplaywright and former columnistand writing coach for The OrangeCounty (Calif.) Register who alsoworked for the Boston-basedChristian Science Monitor, TheDetroit News and Florida Todayof Melbourne.

Russell E. McCleary, printer formany years; retired from Kenne-bec Journal of Augusta, Maine, in2001.

Grace H. Poland, wrote

Whitefield News column forLincoln County News andLincoln County Weekly, both ofDamariscotta, Maine.

Ray Irving Pestle Jr., farm corre-spondent for many years for theBrattleboro (Vt.) Reformer.

Sylvia Jannet Barney, proofreaderat The Republican Journal ofBelfast, Maine, for many years;reporter for community newspa-per in Union, Maine.

Johanna Boyson, administrativeassistant at Trumbull (Conn.)Times.

Augustus Newman Jr., workedfor many years in circulationdepartment at Norwich (Conn.)Bulletin.

Roy C. Luce, delivered papers forThe Times Argus of Barre, Vt.,during his retirement.

Cora May Welch, worked for TheCourier-Gazette of Rockland,Maine, until her retirement at age82 in 1996.

Joyce M. Holland, worked at theMachias (Maine) Valley NewsObserver until her retirement.

_____Deaths from Page 20

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