Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "newspapers"

Round-up: Recent changes in local news outlets

2012-01-21T02:05:23Z

In a world where nearly everyone has a smartphone or an iPod and news flashes are delivered in 140 characters or less, the landscape of news media is rapidly changing. Here is a quick roundup of recent changes in the local news outlets:

Sacramento News & Review: Looking for a new editor

The Sacramento News & Review has been a print publication since 1989, and Melinda Welsh has been the editor for most of that time. About a week ago, she decided to step down, and now the News & Review is conducting a nationwide search for her replacement.

“I love the job, it’s the coolest job,” Welsh said Friday. “But it’s been long enough. Eighteen years as an editor? It’s time to do something different.”

Welsh said the nationwide search began as soon as she announced her plans to leave, and ads for the position have been appearing in local outlets and across the nation.

Welsh said, so far, there have been some responses to the ads, but the hiring office at News & Review is not yet to the point of conducting interviews.

“We’re targeting other alt(ernative) weeklies and looking for someone with experience in what we do,” Welsh said.

Although the search for an editor is open nationwide, Welsh said the News & Review would prefer someone with ties to Sacramento – especially since the paper focuses on local stories.

Welsh said the News & Review has gone through a number of changes over the years – but that’s the nature of media.

“It’s a time of change,” Welsh said. “I don’t think we’re behind the eight ball. The News and Review is thinner than it’s been, but our readership has increased. It’s just the ever-changing landscape of media.”

Capitol Weekly: Leaving print behind, going to online-only

Jan. 12 saw the print edition of Capitol Weekly – a newspaper devoted solely to politics and governance in Sacramento – delivered to offices in the state Capitol for the last time.

According to the Jan. 17 announcement in Capitol Weekly, the newspaper suspended its print edition in favor of an online-only presence.

Calling it “an essential element of the reorganization of our company,” Editor John Howard said in the announcement that the move was prompted by “challenging economic times coupled with the need for new technologies” to expand the company’s capabilities.

The switch to online-only came with employee layoffs at the newspaper – something
Lilly Fuentes-Joy, former photo editor with Capitol Weekly, said many people hoped would never happen.

“Financially the paper was going through hard times,” Fuentes-Joy said Friday, “but we all thought the paper would pull through.”

Fuentes-Joy said about 10 people were let go from the paper when it halted its print edition.

Howard said in the announcement that “the economy, changing readership habits and increasing demand for speed and access” spurred the change, and the company wants to focus on how to meet the needs of its readers and advertisers.

“I’ve seen Capitol Weekly go through so many changes,” Fuentes-Joy said Friday, “but not keep up with the changing times.”

The social media aspect of journalism has been key to the struggles of Capitol Weekly, Fuentes-Joy said.

“People still like print media,” she said, “but they want quick fixes – immediate news – but there’s no real depth.”

Capitol Weekly will continue to produce a conference series, special events and its television show, “Politics On Tap,” according to Capitol Weekly Publisher Arnold York.

Capital Public Radio: Moving jazz to sister station, focusing on news

Jazz and music lovers will no longer find their favorite music on KXJZ 90.9, because Capital Public Radio is making some changes to its format.

“Over the last several years, our research has shown a growing demand for news information,” Capital Public Radio General Manager Rick Eytcheson said Friday.

“The way people consume music has been evolving, and that rate of change is accelerating. People have so many options, and a lot of radio stations are struggling,” Eytcheson said.

In response to listeners’ requests and research that the organization did, Eytcheson said, the station moved its popular "Excellence In Jazz" program and several other music programs from KXJZ 90.9 to its sister station at 88.9 KXPR to allow more airtime at 90.9 for news and information programming.

“The news side continues to grow on public radio,” Eytcheson said, “and we’ve seen robust ratings growth. We want to build on that.”

Eytcheson said about two years ago, the station started to stream jazz music online, and managers were pleasantly surprised to see the number of people tuning in. Soon, the station began to simultaneously stream classical music to reach a larger audience.

With the newest format changes, Eytcheson said, he hopes no one loses out: Fans of news and information will get full-time programming on one station, and music lovers will get full-time programming on another station.

“Jazz isn’t going away,” Eytcheson said. “It’s just moving down the dial.”

In addition to the format changes, Eytcheson said, the news station will add new shows including, “The Splendid Table,” “Q” from Canadian Broadcasting Company, “Marketplace Money” and others.

Melissa Corker is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @MelissaCorker.

Editorial Note: Spelling corrections were made to this article after it was posted.

Andy Ihnatko coming to Sacramento

2010-02-15T22:28:27Z

Andy Ihnatko is an amusing, sometimes irreverant, technology journalist for the Chicago Sun-Times. Andy's style is both self-effacing yet knowledgeable with a little theatre like presence in his style of delivering what can be sometimes abstract concepts about new media. He is a contributor to Macworld Magazine as well as a technology commentator on CBS’ Early Show. He also has written some books with his latest offering, Iphone: Full Loaded, available through Amazon. He was a featured speaker at this year's Macworld held in San Francisco. This is the year that Apple previously had decided not to attend leading many to muse as to what impact this would have to this long time event. It is an industry showcase where Apple would feature many new products, normally opening with a keynote address by Steve Jobs revealing some awesome new gotta have it item. It was a carnivalesque environment in the past but with Apple MIA, many wondered how it would survive. Other Macworlds held in other parts of the country have since folded. The numbers are down this year as expected, but still many Apple aficionados made the pilgrimage as tradition called them to continue. Maybe with Apple still based in Cupertino, the mothership, the San Francisco Macworld Expo will still go on. Dates for next year have already been scheduled.

Andy was asked by the local Apple user's group, MacNexus, to stay over after his stint at Macworld to come speak to its general membership meeting in February. He worked it out to will take a little side trip out to Sacramento to hopefully give us a little of the Macworld experience before going home to Massachusetts. The MacNexus User Group’s roots go back as far as the Apple Corporation and its early Macintosh computers starting in 1984. Andy himself claims that he has been a commentator about technology since his teens. The MacNexus general meeting is held at the Sacramento Association of Realtors building on Howe Ave. This meeting has been opened to the general public for this special event.

Mr Ihnatko is expected to share his ideas of the iPad experience (he got to play with one for 45 minutes), the future of Apple and the smart phone wars (Android vs iPhone). He recently completed his year of Living With No Media; no physical items such as newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, CDs, or comic books which apparently was one of the most difficult items for him to be without. If information or entertainment could not be accessed through streaming, web surfing or other electronic delivery, he did not have access to it. He did this for personal reasons that he will likely write about. After 12 months of adapting to this change in lifestyle of self-imposed downsizing, he has some very interesting insights on how far we have come in accessing information, entertainment and communications in virtual form. He shared some of this with his audience at this year’s Macworld Expo which ended on saturday.

He also has insights on what he sees as the future of book publishing, large publishing houses versus self-publishing, the potential impact of the iPad on the newspaper industry and the difficulties for new authors trying to break into the market. He discussed this with Chris Breen at Macworld during a 15 minute interview that is downloadable as a podcast, YouTube HD video or as an RSS feed. If you want a little preview of his thoughts you may want to check out the video. You may also want to read Andy's Celestial Waste of Bandwith blog where he has recent posts about his experiences in San Francisco outside of Macworld. No doubt his speaking engagement before an eager crowd of Apple fans here in Sacramento should be a positive note on his observations during his trip out west.

When: February 16, 2010
Time: 7:00PM
Where: Sacramento Association of Realtors Building
2003 Howe Ave, Sacramento CA 95825

Cost: Free

Editor's Note: Zulay Moncada-Frost is the Secretary of the Board for MacNexus.

CalWatchdog Launch

2010-02-06T03:27:22Z

Navigating a newspaper is tricky. I avoid reading state government news early in the morning so as not to start my day feeling hopeless and impotent. Bring on the funnies.

Who is accountable for state governance?

Thursday night marked a new voice in state news and a new set of eyes narrowed on the Capitol.

About fifty people gathered at Pyramid Ale House to celebrated the launch of CalWatchdog.com, a new journalism venture with a mission of “holding the government accountable for its spending and regulatory programs by exposing government waste, fraud and abuses of power.”

I sat down with Steven Greenhut,, CalWatchdog editor in chief, amid beer, rain and power suits.

Q: What inspired CalWatchdog and what was involved in developing it?

A: We started in the beginning of the session, in early January, and the idea is to provide news coverage, investigative journalism and cover state government. There is a ton that needs to be covered and there is always need for more news coverage in the state.

Q: Do you work with traditional news outlets like print newspapers in Sacramento?

A: Yes, we’re trying to get our stories published in newspapers. I had my columns appearing in The Orange County Register and The North County Times and our cartoonists’ works are in Slate. I’ll be releasing an investigation pretty soon that we’re trying to pitch to different newspapers. We’re hoping to find a new model of nonprofit-funded journalism.

Q: Tell me about the model.

A: We’re trying to be more than a blog. We’re doing fresh stories that haven’t been covered, regional reporting and investigations. There’s always room for that. The more the merrier; it’s a huge state government. I like the new environment but we don’t know how it’s going to shake out yet. Some people have pitched nonprofit journalism as the new model and its probably one new model, but there are all sorts of models out there. What I like is the competition. But we all want the same thing: to see more news stories out there.

Q: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of working online?

A: I’m new at it as I’ve been in newspapers for a number of years. It’s something different. Journalism is evolving and, while newspapers are still an important source of information, a lot of them have cut back on their state bureaus. But I love newspapers, so I hope to work with more of them. I also like blogs. I think they offer great and important news stories. But we’re focusing more on analysis and fresh stories, not just commenting. We still do some opinion. I’ve been an opinion columnist for so many years that I wanted to continue with that, but it's secondary. News comes first.

Q: Do you have a staff of writers?

A: Anthony Pignataro is our investigative journalist, Katie Grimes is our news reporter and we’re using some freelancers.

Q: Do you incorporate citizen journalism? Public input?

A: The blog that we do is more a developing one based on the work of our staff. But if someone had a good story idea and pitched it to me, we’re certainly open. But, nothing against that, we’re not geared at citizen journalism. I know that’s a good approach and I like it, but it’s not ours. Our approach is to have reporters and more traditional stories.

Q: What made you break out of newspaper and print and come into something like this?

A: I’ve been covering local government in Orange County for a long time. I wanted to come up to Sacramento and focus on state government, which is a mess.

Q: Is this a bipartisan effort?

A: We don’t hide the fact that we’re a project of the Pacific Research Institute, which is a free-market oriented think tank. I’m a libertarian, but my staff doesn’t necessarily share my political views. We’re not trying to do political stories, we’re trying to do serious journalism. I’m not partisan at all. I don’t care for either party! But we’re not going to hide behind a fake objectivity, a “he said, she said.” We’re going to try to analyze stories as fairly as possible, no partisan angle whatsoever, and just get to the bottom of it. We look at fraud, waste, and abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars. We do fair stories and figure that if you look at those issues, it's certainly going to make my point, which is that government is too big. But we’re not going into this trying to push opinions and try to attempt political slant.

Q: What is involved in your process of uncovering stories?

A: I have my staff always out looking for stories. Katie is up here at the Capitol a lot. Anthony is out looking at public records and I have different freelancers who pitch stories to me. And we’re just getting started. We’ve been up for about a month, so hopefully we’ll be amping up more and more stuff.

Bee to cut 25 jobs

2010-01-13T03:58:42Z

The Sacramento Bee and other McClatchy newspapers are making another round of job cuts.

The Bee announced Monday it will cut 25 people by month's end, while McClatchy newspapers including North Carolina's News & Observer and The State in South Carolina announced additional layoffs. The total number of layoffs at the country's third largest newspaper company was not available.

Reporters will not be among those cut at The Bee, although the paper will lose a photojournalist, two copy editors, two designers and two others in the newsroom, said Pam Dinsmore, the paper's community affairs director.

"We've made the decision that the reporting staff — that's not a place that can go down in any numbers," Dinsmore said.

Currently, 71 reporters work in The Bee's newsroom and Capitol Bureau, and total newsroom staff numbers 197, she said.

Bee management will offer buyouts to trim positions in four departments: 16 in audience development and membership services, one in human resources and one in advertising, in addition to the seven newsroom cuts. Employees will be offered a maximum of 40 weeks' pay, depending on how long they worked at The Bee, Dinsmore said.

"It's a pretty generous severance package," she said.

The Bee will lay people off to meet the goal of cutting 25 by Jan. 29 if enough buyouts are not taken. These are the fourth round of cuts in about 18 months. McClatchy cut 15 percent of its workforce last spring. Before that, the company had already cut more than 4,000 positions, or a third of its employees, in about a year.

On Monday, The Bee also jointly announced it will team up with Capital Public Radio over the next year to offer a series of stories exploring Sacramento's attempts to pull out of the recession. The two news agencies will coordinate the project, which they described as the first of its kind for Northern California. Reporters will work on stories for their own agencies rather than collaborate to produce joint stories.

“We’re looking forward to this ongoing collaboration with Capital Public Radio," said Joyce Terhaar, The Bee's managing editor for content, in a prepared statement. "We each bring different expertise to the partnership that augments what we offer readers online."

The Bee lifted a wage freeze last month and has hired three people since November. Two journalists, one from the Los Angeles Times and the other from the Boston Globe, joined the editorial board this month.

McClatchy owns 30 daily papers and dozens of non-dailies, among other interests.

A representative of the Bee's Newspaper Guild unit could not be reached for comment.

Community discusses role of local media

2009-04-03T05:50:30Z

Representatives of local media outlets and community members came together Thursday night to discuss how to make local media better and more reflective of the community. The meeting was organized by the Sacramento Media Group, California Common Cause and Access Sacramento.

There was discussion and debate about the role and responsibility of our local media. Ron Cooper, executive director of Access Sacramento, summed it up when he said, “Media and your influence over media is really a local issue.”

The event was well attended by a diverse mix of community activists, students, and stakeholders. There were representatives of local broadcast stations, newspapers and online ventures.

The debate was lively, civil and structured. The most contentious issues surrounded bias, balance and facts presented by local media.

Another major topic of discussion was the lack of breadth or depth of local coverage.

Surprisingly, there was a lot of debate about the formation of community advisory boards to help media organizations be more responsive to the needs of the local community. Many thought the boards might have too much influence over coverage, and that their roles would have to be narrowly defined.

There was very little talk of the changes in our local media landscape brought on by technological innovation and the recession. But the structure and form of the discussions kept the focus on constructive criticism of the current state of local media.

The event was held at the Coloma Community Center.

All participants were asked to sit at tables based on their interest or primary media of choice. There were tables for TV, radio, newspapers, internet and general media. Each table had seats for 12, and all were filled.

The format was simple. Each group held structured discussions on public affairs, diversity, political coverage, community input and broadband internet access. Then, after the discussion, moderators from each group presented to all participants. Finally, there was time for individuals to speak to the whole group.

There will be a full report detailing the conversations of each media group, and when it is available, I will link to it.

The night was a great jumping-off point for discussions about local media, particularly the challenges that lie ahead.

More importantly, what do you think? Please continue the conversation below.

New layoffs at The Bee: Who?

2009-03-09T22:49:48Z

Just one work day after union members voted to accept wage cuts and layoffs to postpone even more cuts, The Sacramento Bee started laying off some 128 employees in editorial and other departments Monday morning.

Among the names of those getting pink slips today were pop music writer Rachel Leibrock and sports writer Martin McNeal, as well as general assignment reporters Ramon Coronado, Melissa Nix, Walt Yost, sports writer Scott Howard-Cooper, and photographers Brian Baer and Florence Low. And for virtually the first time since the paper started shedding positions nearly three years ago, there were editors among the casualties.

Also leaving are IT wunderkind and newsroom gadfly Marco Smolich, and longtime newsroom aide George Costenbader.

Coming after the departures of some 65 newsroom employees over the last year through buyouts and attrition, the layoffs further weaken The Bee's news-gathering operation, bringing the editorial staff down to 190.

A number of positions are also being eliminated in advertising and the classified call center, as well as a graphic artist, an ad assistant and three people in the IT department. Other jobs in the packaging center are also being eliminated.

Early waves of departures have come over the last three years, after buy-out packages were offered to a range of names such as Bob Sylva, R.E. Graswich, Janet Fullwood and other name writers. The cuts have accelerated in the past year: The Bee's Dale Kasler reported today that the paper has cut 301 jobs since last June, about a quarter of its staff. But unlike earlier rounds, this one featured little to soften the blow.

There could have been even more layoffs, if the Guild members hadn't voted to accept the company's latest conditions: 3 to 6 percent salary cuts, and a week's unpaid furlough, and freezes in pension contributions and 401k matching contributions. Accepting those conditions allowed management to keep 19 other employees on, at least for now.

According to today's Bee, the news department is losing 29 union and non-union workers, or nearly 13 percent. That brings the total of newsroom jobs shed over the last year to about a quarter of the original 250 employees. Parent company McClatchy is laying off 1600 employees, or 15 percent of its work force.

There's no guarantee that this will be the end. With McClatchy's stock under fifty cents a share today (down from a high of $77), the future of the company looks bleak.

It could have been worse. The Rocky Mountain News recently stopped publishing entirely, and both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the San Francisco Chronicle are apparently weeks or even days away from doing the same.

Ed Fletcher, a Bee reporter and shop steward for the Newspaper Guild's unit at the paper, said in an email that he didn't want to release the names of those being laid off yet, out of respect for their feelings.

But because they are, many of them, public figures whose departure is a loss to Sacramento, their names should be mentioned. So here, pieced together from different sources, is a list of the names of people said to be laid off today at The Sacramento Bee. If you heard other, or different, names, please comment below. Note that these are only half of the people being let go today.

Melissa Nix

Martin McNeal

Quwan Spears

Brian Baer

Florence Low

Rachel Leibrock

Terry Dvorak

Walt Yost

George Costenbader

Yvonne McKinney

Robert Faturechi

Scott Howard-Cooper

Rachael Bogert

Marco Smolich

Debbie Meredith

Chad Jones

Jennifer Morita

Ramon Coronado

Cheryl Dell, Melanie Sill, are you listening?

2009-02-12T06:46:02Z

I have a simple suggestion for the Sacramento Bee. It's an experiment. It might not work, but since the ad revenues for newspapers are drying up faster than the lakes and reservoirs of our drought-ridden state it's time the Bee took a few chances.

Why doesn't the Bee try to sell ads on its Twitter page?

Now before the Bee did that it would have to promote its Twitter page. Currently, it has only 468 followers, about half as many followers as the Sacramento Press's Twitter page has. This fact is indicative of the Bee being at sea where new media is concerned.

Twitter works really well for aggregating the content of the Bee's online paper. I unsubscribed to its RSS feed in my Google Reader, because I found it difficult to follow in that format. However, I check my Twitter page all day, and I almost always read the Bee headlines. In fact, the Bee is one of the reasons I check my Twitter page all day.

Now let's assume that I am not an outlier, but the norm for Twitter users. I like hiking. So let's say the Bee sells an ad to REI that gets posted in tandem with every article it posts about outdoors activities. Maybe the ad is doubled as a banner on the acticle's actual page. Maybe the Twitter posting is sold as a value-added with the banner ad. Whatever the details, the Bee would be taking a bold step in the direction of micro advertising.

Again, this idea may have already been mulled over and found wanting. I'm putting it out there because the idea of the Bee folding up or getting entirely eviscerated disturbs me. I want the Bee to everything it can to adapt to the changing media landscape. I want it to try new things until it hits upon a business model that will make it profitable again. I love new media outfits like The Sacramento Press, but they are not yet ready to take up the slack if local, dead-tree newspapers go the way of the horse and buggy.