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To: MJ who wrote (439)	5/8/2012 1:19:04 AM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 826

The Washington Post Is In Even Worse Shape Than You Think Jeff Bercovici, Forbes Staff 5/07/2012 forbes.com The Washington Post Co. reported its first-quarter earnings on Friday, and the news coming out of the newspaper division was mostly grim. The unit lost $22.6 million in the quarter, with revenue down 8% and revenue from print advertising specifically falling 17%. Meanwhile, the Post just reported one of the biggest circulation drops of any major newspaper with the lucrative Sunday edition selling 5.2% fewer copies and the daily edition skidding almost 10%. Oh, and newsroom leaders are so distressed about the way the business decline is affecting them, they held a secret meeting with the paper’s president, Steve Hills — without inviting executive editor Marcus Brauchli. Now, are you ready for the really bad news? Check out the chart below from AppData.com. It shows the number of monthly average users (MAU) of the Washington Post Social Reader, an app that encourages Facebook users to read and recommend articles from the Post’s website. Nice Guy, Finishing Last: How Don Graham Fumbled the Washington Post Co. Jeff Bercovici Forbes Staff For those readers who suffer from chart-blindness, AppData shows Social Reader’s MAU falling from 17.4 million to 9.2 million over the past 30 days. It would be hard to overstate the importance and centrality of the Social Reader to the Post’s strategy. When I interviewed the Post Co.’s chief digital officer, Vijay Ravindran, earlier this year he pointed to the app as one of the company’s most promising new products, a way of bringing precious new younger readers to a franchise that has been otherwise challenged to reach them. It’s in large part the promise of social-powered distribution that has induced Post chairman Don Graham to keep the paper’s digital editions free. This even though other newspapers are having real success with various types of paywalls, and even though Warren Buffett, the company’s biggest and most influential outside shareholder, has made it clear he thinks papers must charge for their digital content. In other words, if the trend in the chart above is genuine and not some kind of blip, the Post needs to completely reevaluate the assumptions underlying its digital distribution strategy. And fast. Update: It doesn’t seem to be a blip. Buzzfeed’s John Herrman notes that other Facebook-based media consumption apps, including the Guardian’s, are showing signs of audience collapse as well. Meanwhile, here’s what an AppData spokeswoman told me, via email. The data from AppData comes directly from Facebook. The data is accurate; no methodology/implementation change from AppData would cause the change. Facebook is constantly testing how social readers/open-graph-enabled apps appear and and how much distribution they get in the news feed. This may impact the active user counts for all social reading apps, including others like The Guardian. For example, it recently started grouping social reader stories in a “Trending Articles” aggregation. Many Facebook users are still learning about social reading apps, deciding whether they want to use them or not, and whether they want to share activity with their friends. The peak growth of the Washington Post Social Reader may have come from users trying it out, and since then has come back down.

To: MJ who wrote (439)	5/8/2012 12:44:36 PM
From: joseffy	1 Recommendation Respond to of 826

NY TIMES death spiral Dozens just laid off at The New York Times - lawyers, minorities hardest hit Will the last person to leave The New York Times please turn off the lights? More than 50 people were laid off on the corporate side. The layoffs include George Freeman, one of their well-known in-house lawyers. The worry is this is just the begginning of cuts — and that the company is putting pressure on the unions. Several of the people who were laid off were minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics. Ooh, they're sacking minorities, including African Americans and Hispanics now. And lawyers! Things must really be serious over there. The entire legal floor is in shock. I love the smell of schadenfreude on a Friday afternoon… Yes, amazingly enough, printing nothing but Obama White House propaganda does not actually result in any jobs created or saved. A Real Newspaper might want to report on a story like that. wyblog.us credit to brumar

To: MJ who wrote (439)	5/11/2012 4:59:57 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 826

Message 28139827

To: MJ who wrote (439)

5/11/2012 5:08:38 PM

From: joseffy

Respond to of 826

Washington Post Changes Story, Doesn't Admit Error

by Dana Loesch

On Thursday, Breitbart's Retracto, the Correction Alpaca asked the Washington Post to correct its anti-Mitt Romney hit piece wherein it included an inaccurate and misleading statement about his past. The error was exposed when Stu White contradicted WaPo's reporting in an interview with ABC.

The publication reported that White had "long been bothered" by the Romney bullying incident, when in fact, he wasn't witness to it, and wasn't aware of the story until contacted by the Washington Post. The Post changed its piece after we made our request without informing its readers of the change.

The original copy:

“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and has long been bothered by the Lauber incident. "But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks."

The changed copy, my emphasis:

“I always enjoyed his pranks,” said Stu White, a popular friend of Romney’s who went on to a career as a public school teacher and said he has been "disturbed" by the Lauber incident since hearing about it several weeks ago, before being contacted by the Washington Post. "But I was not the brunt of any of his pranks."

We appreciate the correction and would have appreciated it even more if the Washington Post had alerted its readers to the change.

To: MJ who wrote (439)	5/15/2012 4:29:21 PM
From: joseffy	Respond to of 826

Message 28146821

To: MJ who wrote (439)	5/17/2012 1:56:30 PM
From: joseffy	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 826

Berkshire Hathaway buys 63 newspapers [Obama Lover Buffett will Overtly control mass media] Politico ^ \| 5/17/12 \| Dylam Byers Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has bought 63 newspapers from Media General for $142 million, the companies announced today. Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary BH Media Group will now add daily and weekly titles in Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama to the Omaha World-Herald Company newspapers it already owns. Those papers include the Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) and the Winston-Salem Journal (NC). Media General, which also owns 18 network-affiliated television stations, will hold its Tampa, Florida, newspapers.