Four of the country’s biggest newspaper companies are banding together to sell ads on their Web pages nationally, the Los Angeles Times reports.
The companies forming an alliance are Gannett Co. Inc., owner of The Honolulu Advertiser and the nation’s largest newspaper chain, Hearst Corp., New York Times Co. and Tribune Co.
Hearst properties includes the San Francisco Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tribune owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.
The effort, entitled quadrantONE, is an acknowledgement that, while newspapers still make money, their Web sites rarely do. But as more and more people get information strictly online, newspapers are going to have to figure how to make profit digitally.
The Los Angeles Times story said one study last year projected that Internet advertising would grow by an average of 21 percent annually by 2011, overtaking print-only newspaper ad revenue in 2010.
I hope quadrantONE succeeds because my paycheck depends on it. You should hope so, too, if you value the news you read, especially local news. Google, Yahoo and other Web portals are getting rich off Internet advertising, but they are not providing news to their readers — they are simply aggregating news from other sources. If newspapers go out of business or diminish their reporting substantially, it is not evident that anything as good will take their place.
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Defiant freedom of speech
At least 17 Danish newspapers published a cartoon depicting the prophet Muhammad wearing a bomb as a turban, a day after three men were arrested as part of alleged plot to kill the cartoonist.
Kurt Westergaard’s drawing was one of 12 depicting the prophet that enraged Muslims when they appeared in a Danish paper in 2005. The newspapers said they had republished the cartoon to show their commitment to freedom of speech.
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What we didn’t have room for in the paper ...
CORSICANA, Texas (AP) — A driver who apparently took her work rules very seriously abandoned a bus full of former prisoners along a highway because her hours for the day were over, police said.
The 40 passengers had been paroled or released from the state prison in Huntsville. Some wore ankle bracelet monitors.
They were aboard a charter bus that was headed Thursday to a terminal in Dallas but wound up 60 miles short.
“In 31 years in law enforcement I’ve never seen anything like this,” Corsicana Police Sgt. Lamoin Lawhon said.
Police said the bus was chartered from Greyhound Bus Lines Inc. The driver pulled over in front of a convenience store around 4 p.m. and told the passengers her allotted driving time was up and another driver was on the way.
A clerk in the convenience store called police. Officers arrived to find the former prisoners milling around the bus. Dispatchers exchanged several phone calls with Greyhound and prison officials while Lawhon and two other officers stayed with the bus and the passengers.
Just before 7 p.m., a second bus arrived with three drivers — including the one who had abandoned her passengers in the first place, Lawhon said.
Greyhound spokesman Dustin Clark said company officials were investigating the incident. “It is a very serious matter,” he said.
Clark said drivers have to follow strict guidelines on consecutive working hours and rest periods.
Police said there were no incidents involving the passengers while they were stranded.
“Their behavior was exemplary,” Officer Travis Wallace said.