newspapers

Breaking story after story, two great American newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, are resurgent, with record readerships. One has greater global reach and fifth-generation family ownership; the other has Jeff Bezos as its deep-pocketed proprietor and a technological advantage. Both, however, still face an existential foe.

The New York Times should accelerate the shift underlined in its latest quarterly results: reconsidering the daily print product and moving aggressively abroad.

People in the newspaper industry increasingly joke about the triumvirate of Gatehouse Media, Digital First Media and Gannett taking over the bulk of the country’s 1,350 daily newspapers as conglomerate Gannett-Gatehouse-DFMCo. Today, those three companies own a full quarter of the nation’s dailies, as family-run operations dwindle and final generations of newspaper-owning families look for the exits before the passageway becomes too narrow. At the 25% level, we may seem like a long way away from Gannett-Gatehouse-DFMCo, but a newer phenomenon — megaclustering — moves the industry closer in that direction.

For the first time in New York Times history, digital-only subscription revenue ($82.5 million) has surpassed print advertising revenue ($77 million). Those numbers were revealed during the paper’s second quarter earnings call to investors Thursday, when executives also touted an increase in advertising growth from the previous year’s quarter — the first time that has occurred in nearly three years.

Several dozen news organizations, including the San Diego Union-Tribune, San Antonio Express-News, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, KQED and, as of last week, The Washington Post, have started using the social network to connect with readers.

The Guardian has introduced a tool at the bottom of article pages so readers can vote for topics they want more detail on. The data from the tool, simply called Reader Questions, is fed back to editors to shape future coverage. “The data teaches us we shouldn’t make assumptions about reader levels of knowledge,” said Chris Moran, the Guardian’s strategic projects editor. “Editors are now treating a story that they might know inside and out much more objectively.”

When it comes to virtual reality, few publishers are as committed as The New York Times, with its dedicated VR app and Daily 360 feature, helped by funding from tech giants Samsung and Google. Another early mover, USA Today, is entering its second season of its weekly VR show, VRtually There. But outside those two publishers and a handful of others, there’s less to crow about.

The former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate filed a lawsuit against the Times on Tuesday alleging that a recent editorial falsely portrayed her as responsible for inciting the 2011 shooting of Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords. She is seeking more than $75,000 in damages.

Jay Solomon was fired by The Wall Street Journal Wednesday after reporting revealed his involvement in prospective commercial deals — including one involving arms sales to foreign governments — with an international businessman who was one of his key sources.

The small, family-owned company, which completed the sale of its TV assets in April, has agreements to sell its remaining newspaper assets to GateHouse Media and Ogden Newspapers.

Kathleen Kingsbury joins the paper from The Boston Globe where she has been managing editor for digital.

They’re pals who once vied for the same jobs. Now, as editors of The New York Times and The Washington Post, they’re locked in a daily battle for Trump scoops.

The Los Angeles Times on Friday issued a staffwide announcement that it’s offering buyouts to the newsroom. The announcement, which came in a memo from editor and publisher Davan Maharaj, described the buyout program as limited in scope and attributed it to adverse industry conditions.

Before Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO and e-commerce visionary, bought The Washington Post in 2013, the Post was losing revenue and its losses were widening, as it struggled to find income to replace its decline in print ads. The Post is now privately owned and doesn’t discuss specific figures, but says revenue and profits are up, as subscribers grow and digital ad revenue increases. Its monthly web traffic has grown 56%, to 78.7 million over the past two years, according to ComScore.

GateHouse Media has introduced a brand campaign, “Newsroom Hero.” The campaign, which is the first in the company’s history, highlights GateHouse Media’s deep community connections and commitment to serving as a trusted source of local, award-winning news.

Hearst has snapped up the 205-year-old New Haven (Conn.) Register, two smaller in-state dailies, eight weeklies and Connecticut magazine from Digital First Media, the companies said Monday.

The Wall Street Journal is the latest news organization to build a mobile-first secondary app as a user-interface playground — and then return focus to the core app.

The Washington Post and Advance Local are the first to get profile pages to post stories, ask me anythings and all the memes they want.

Montana Republican congressional candidate Greg Gianforte was issued a citation late Wednesday after he allegedly “body-slammed” The Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs at a campaign event on the eve of a hotly contested special election.

The Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet developed an algorithm guided partially by editors and partially by reader preferences that delivers a personalized homepage for each website visitor. Editor-In-Chief Fredric Karén credits the technology with a significant boost in online traffic and digital subscriptions.

Advance’s Post-Standard overwhelmingly beats its local television peers in social media performance in Syracuse, N.Y. according to Shareablee data. Its social media lead says a careful video strategy, helped by some viral hits, has lifted it.

The Sacramento Bee on Monday enacted a round of layoffs, the latest in a series of staff reductions executed by its corporate parent, The McClatchy Co. Bee Executive Editor Joyce Terhaar acknowledged the layoffs Monday morning in an email to staff that did not specify the number of staffers cut.

The New York Times plans to release “more information by the end of the month” about a buyout program for editors amid a much-anticipated reduction of the editing staff. A memo sent to the newsroom this morning by Executive Editor Dean Baquet and Managing Editor Joe Kahn said: “We’re working hard to improve and streamline our editing system. Our goal is to preserve meticulous text editing while meeting the demands of digital, which requires more speed and more visual storytelling. We have also said that we expect some reductions in the size of the newsroom, including in the editing staff.”

Tronc, the parent company of the Chicago Tribune, has entered into a nonbinding letter of intent to acquire Wrapports Holdings, which owns the Chicago Sun-Times as well other assets such as the Chicago Reader alternative weekly, the Aggrego digital content business and the syndicated column The Straight Dope. The announcement follows months of discussions between Wrapports and Tronc and after both organizations worked closely with the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.

The Globe is the latest paper trying to “once and for all break the stubborn rhythms of a print operation, allowing us to unabashedly pursue digital subscriptions.”

With prose that was savagely funny, deceptively simple and poorly imitated, Breslin created his own distinct rhythm in the hurly-burly music of newspapers.