Westword cuts staffers, pay amid ‘roughest stretch we’ve ever seen’

The layoffs and cutbacks keep coming. After exhaustively reporting on the impending sale — and possible shutdown — of the Rocky Mountain News last month, Denver’s alternative weekly Westword turns a spotlight on itself, writing in blog posts that three staffers were laid off Monday and top brass at parent company Village Voice Media (VVM) are taking 10 percent to 15 percent pay cuts.

Rocky spikes column asking if Feds might intervene to prevent shutdown

Rocky Mountain News contributor Jason Salzman wrote in a column for the newspaper last week that “putting the Rocky on the market for one month over the holidays looks like it’s not a good-faith effort to find a buyer for the newspaper.” But the observation didn’t appear in the Rocky because editor and publisher John Temple rejected the column, Salzman says in a blog post Tuesday. It’s the first time in more than four years the Rocky has refused one of his biweekly “On the Media” columns, Salzman writes.

Carbondale newspaper shuts down ‘for the unforeseeable future’

Citing “the current economic situation,” Carbondale’s 34-year-old weekly newspaper, The Valley Journal, announced on Christmas Day it would cease publication. An editorial told readers to look for local news in other publications owned by Gypsum-based Colorado Mountain News…

Insider offers encouraging ideas for a battered, bruised news industry

It’s been an especially tough year for the news industry, which is suffering mass layoffs, sales and bankruptcy filings by some of the biggest companies in print and broadcast journalism.

But all is not lost says Reuter’s Chris Cramer at the Global Forum for Media Development. Andrew Lam writes the following from rough notes taken at the discussion and posted at the New America Media blog:

Rocky Mountain News staffers take to Web in effort to save newspaper

A Web site aimed at keeping the Rocky Mountain News alive launched Sunday night as part of a campaign by the newspaper’s staff to rally public support a week after E.W. Scripps Co. put the Denver daily up for sale and said it could cease publication if no buyer emerges. The IWantMyRocky.com site urges readers to share memories and propose methods to keep the 149-year-old newspaper — Colorado’s oldest business — from closing. “We meet in this strange place in a noble effort to save the Rocky Mountain News,” Rocky columnist Mike Littwin writes. “And if we can’t save the Rocky, we can, at minimum, make some noise before we go.”

Politicker.com shuts down Colorado, 11 other state sites, lays off reporters

Twelve Politicker political news sites around the country, including PolitickerCO.com in Colorado, were shut down and their reporters unexpectedly laid off Friday morning. The sites, billed as “Inside politics for political insiders,” covered news in 17 states around the country, are owned by the Observer Media Group, based in New York.

The death of print journalism

^{© Copyright 2008 David Fitzsimmons – All Rights Reserved.}

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Read more about the impending decline of print journalism.

Denver Post owner begs to differ with credit downgrade, Tribune comparison

The parent company of the Denver Post disputed a report Thursday afternoon that followed Moody’s Investors Services downgrade of its credit rating to one suggesting “a substantial risk” of default. An Editor & Publisher article noted that MediaNews Group’s debt-to-earning ratio was almost as high as that carried by the Tribune Co., which filed to reorganize under Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Monday, but the privately held MediaNews Group said the comparison failed to take numerous factors into account and insisted the company wasn’t in danger.

Singleton memo: Post blindsided by Rocky sale, ‘first step’ to closure

The owner of the Rocky Mountain News notified the owner of the Denver Post it “planned to close the Rocky Mountain News as soon as practical” more than two weeks ago, The Post’s owner, Dean Singleton, wrote in a memo on Thursday. Earlier that day, the Rocky’s owner, E.W. Scripps Co., announced its newspaper was for sale. “As you know,” Singleton wrote in the memo, “an announced sale is usually the first step leading to a failing newspaper’s closure.”

Analyst: Give the Rocky Mountain News 90 days, then it’s gone

The announcement Thursday that Denver’s Rocky Mountain News is on the block for the next 30 days starts a clock ticking that will “almost certainly” lead to the 149-year-old newspaper shutting down in 90 days, writes Alan D. Mutter, who blogs about the news business in Reflections of a Newsosaur.