Grumpy Editor

Tropicana returns to original orange juice cartons

It’s back to the original orange juice cartons for PepsiCo Inc.’s Tropicana Products juice division after consumer complaints about the new packaging’s appearance, notes Grumpy Editor.

Customers said the new look, kicked off with much fanfare in January, resembled a generic brand and deemphasized Tropicana’s pulp-free, traditional or other type of juice.

The old, familiar cartons are expected to reappear within a month.

In other Grumpy Editor end-of-week leftover notes:

Military casket photo coverage approved.  An 18-year ban on news coverage of returning war dead from overseas has been reversed by the Obama administration.  News organizations will be allowed to photograph flag-draped coffins --- if families of the fallen troops agree.

Gannett Co. cuts dividend by 90 percent.  The largest U.S. newspaper publisher expects to save $325 million annually in slashing its dividend to four cents a share from 40.

Radio news staffs share coverage.  Reporters with long-time Los Angeles radio news stations KFWB and KNX, which have been operating with separate newsrooms, may now be asked to file for either AM station.

Even comic strips caught in layoffs.  The Oregonian, Portland, is cutting back on the number of its daily comic strips to 23 from 33.  However, they now will appear in color.

Two papers each cut 100 jobs.  The Providence Journal, Rhode Island’s largest newspaper, plans to eliminate 100 jobs by the end of next week while the Hartford Courant shed the same number this week.  The Journal is owned by Dallas-based A.H. Belo.  The Courant, is in the Tribune Co., Chicago, family.

Hollywood rediscovered in L.A.  Focusing on its own backyard, the Los Angeles Times is establishing a large arts and entertainment department.  Fifty staffers will cover “Hollywood’s movers and shakers and the celebrities who make Southern California their home.”  The department will be headed by an assistant managing editor/arts and entertainment, a new post.

How to throttle consumer confidence.  President Barack Obama during the week peppered speeches with the word “crisis,” topped off with “turn a crisis into a catastrophe.”

It’s ‘30’ for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News

Denver today joins the growing list of one newspaper towns when the final edition of the 150-year-old Rocky Mountain News rolls off the presses, observes Grumpy Editor.

The saddened staff, including 230 in the newsroom, heard the closure news at noon yesterday from Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of E.W. Scripps Co., the parent company. 

The announcement ended nearly three months of speculation about Colorado’s oldest newspaper.

That leaves The Denver Post as the sole daily in the Mile High city.

Boehne called the Rocky, as readers labeled it, a “victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.”  He pointed out to staffers there was a nibble from one potential buyer, but the prospect withdrew after realizing it would cost as much as $100 million "just to stay in the game."

Circulation of the Rocky was on par with The Post.  Both had about 210,000 average weekday circulation as of Sept. 30.

The Rocky goes to rest with these recognitions:

•  Winner of four Pulitzer Prizes in the past decade.

•  Named just this week as containing one of the 10 best sports sections in the nation.

•  Cited by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers as having one of the best business sections in the country last year.

•  Photo staff regularly listed among the tops in the nation.

The Rocky, believed to be Denver’s longest running business, was founded in 1859 by William Byers, a key influential figure in Colorado’s history.  Scripps bought the paper in 1926 and entered into a newspaper war with The Post. The Rocky in 1942 went to tabloid format that gave it a lift in circulation.

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Reminder:

Grumpy Editor’s end-of-week leftover notes now appears on Saturdays.

 

S.F. Chronicle gets warning from parent Hearst

San Francisco without a daily newspaper?

It could happen this year.

Parent Hearst Corp. warns the San Francisco Chronicle will be sold or closed unless there are major cost-cutting measures --- soon, learns Grumpy Editor.

The money-losing 144-year-old newspaper ranks No. 12 in the U.S. and is Northern California’s largest daily.

If the newspaper is shuttered, it would mean San Francisco would be the first major U.S. city without a major newspaper.

The Chronicle, acquired by Hearst in 2000 for about $660 million, has posted significant red ink for the past seven years.  Last year’s loss was $50 million and “this year’s losses to date are worse,” declares the parent.

Since 2001, the newspaper’s readership is off by more than one-third.  Weekday circulation, as of Sept. 30, averaged 339,430 copies.

As with other newspapers, advertising revenue, especially from retailers, has dropped, eroding the bottom line.

Best prospect to acquire The Chronicle is MediaNews Group that includes dailies in Oakland and San Jose.

N.Y. Times, Conference Board differ on U.S. confidence

Two contrasting views on the state of confidence in the U.S. were put forward yesterday in material from the New York Times and the Conference Board, notes Grumpy Editor.

A lead in the New York Times (with a GOP jab worked in):

“President Obama is benefiting from remarkably high levels of optimism and confidence among Americans about his leadership, providing him with substantial political clout as he confronts the nation’s economic challenges and opposition from nearly all Republicans in Congress, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.”

Contrast that with a Bloomberg report based on Conference Board input:

“U.S. consumer confidence collapsed this month…the Conference Board’s confidence index dropped more than anticipated to 25, the lowest level since data began in 1967.”

(Grumpy Editor applied the bold-face emphasis in the two versions.)

The Times/CBS telephone poll, conducted Wednesday through Sunday with 1,112 adults, finds “more than three-quarters of the people polled said they were optimistic about the next four years with (Obama) as president.”

The Conference Board, in its consumer confidence survey of 5,000 households, reports its index “which had decreased moderately in January, declined in February, reaching yet another all-time low,” falling to 25 from 37.4 last month.

Feds plan to halt water to California farmers

Higher prices of vegetables from California, the nation’s top agricultural state, loom because U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials say patchy rainfall is forcing them to halt surface-water deliveries for at least two weeks starting on Sunday --- but, as things happen, a winter storm warning yesterday covered a major portion of the farming area, notes Grumpy Editor.

The storm is expected to continue into the morning hours today, according to the National Weather Service, dumping up to a foot or more of snow in portions of the Sierra Nevada, with rain at lower levels.

Rainfall amounts up to one inch will be commonplace with amounts in excess of three inches possible in some locations in the Sierra, predicts AccuWeather meteorologist Randy Adkins.

“Rivers and streams will be running quite high, and roadways may become flooded or blocked with debris,” he adds.

Alert editors in the California midsection would do well to dispatch photographers to local reservoirs to capture water surging into the basins, followed by updated quotes from the Reclamation folks --- who probably will claim that the precipitation was not enough to curb Sunday's scheduled water flow halt.

The planned irrigation water cutoff will affect thousands of California farms that typically receive 80 percent of all the water supplies --- from mountain streams to suburban reservoirs --- managed by the federal government.

CNBC poke at mortgage bailout arouses White House

CNBC’s Rick Santelli’s on-air complaint about “the government is promoting bad behavior” in connection with President Barack Obama’s mortgage bailout plan, not only brought cheers from the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange --- site of his broadcasts --- but from taxpayers around the country, notes Grumpy Editor.

But Santelli’s mention about “subsidizing losers’ mortgages” wasn’t greeted well on Friday by Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, who called Santelli’s declaration a rant, adding, “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives, but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgage, stay in their job, pay their bills, send their kids to school.’’

Gibbs added, “I feel assured that Mr. Santelli doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Perhaps the White House spokesman didn’t hear the whistles and cheers from traders within hearing distance of Santelli or view the many growing comments on Web sites backing the CNBC commentator.

Santelli is no novice on the business channel.  The veteran trader and financial executive joined CNBC 10 years ago.  Prior to that he was a vice president handling institutional trading and hedge accounts for a variety of futures related products at the Institutional Financial Futures and Options at Sanwa Futures.

In voicing his opposition to the stimulus package Thursday, Santelli said: “This is America.  How many of you people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgage that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills?”

To his CNBC audience Santelli called for a Chicago Tea Party “dumping in some derivative securities” into Lake Michigan.

Then on NBC’s “Today” on Friday morning, Santelli said, "Maybe I could have chosen some words better, but I think at the end of the day, what this boils down to is you have to treat everybody fairly."

NBC and CNBC are in the General Electric Co. family.

Joining Joe the Plumber, who ruffled feathers before the election, maybe there will be a following for Rick the Revolter.

Positive economic news item gets overlooked

A ray of positive economic news poked through the gray clouds on Thursday, but few news outlets even mentioned it.  (In The Wall Street Journal, for example, it rated one paragraph in the middle of a five-paragraph story that included jobless claims and producer prices.)

The Conference Board Leading Economic Index increased 0.4 percent in January.  That follows a 0.2 percent rise in December, up from a decline of 0.7 percent in November.

In other Grumpy Editor end-of-week leftover notes:

Dividend suspended to preserve cash.  The New York Times has shelved its quarterly dividend, joining a growing list of other media companies with similar action:  E.W. Scripps Co., McClatchy Co. and Media General Inc. (see other item, below).   Times stock closed yesterday at $4.07 a share --- about equal to the $4 price of its Sunday edition from a newsstand.
 
Employees in furlough program.  Media General, Inc. workers will be taking a mandatory 10 days off in coming weeks “in the face of an economy that continues to contract, causing the advertising market to further weaken.”  The company publishes 24 daily newspapers, including The Tampa Tribune, Richmond Times-Dispatch and Winston-Salem Journal; and community newspapers in Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina; plus more than 250 weekly newspapers and other targeted publications.  It also owns 19 network-affiliated television stations.

More editorial staffers depart.  In a cost-saving move, 14 more Los Angeles Times newsroom workers waved goodbye on Thursday, with 56 more to be eliminated by the end of next month.

Not shy in the editorial position.  Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, amplifying information with the weekly magazine’s downsizing in mid-May:   We’ll be more opinionated, but we aren’t going to be partisan.

Newspaper redesigns take the spotlight.  The Washington Post is “tweaking” its online and print editions, jazzing up contrasting elements.  Meanwhile, the world’s top five best-designed newspapers do not include U.S. representation.  From 11,000 entries, the 30th annual Society for New Design competition gave top awards to:

•  Akzia, Russian biweekly, with a circulation of 200,000.
•  Eleftheros Tipos, Greek daily, 86,000 circulation.
•  Expresso, Portugal, weekly, 120,000 circulation.
•  The News, Mexican daily, 10,000 circulation.
•  Welt am Sonntag, Germany, weekly, 400,000 circulation.

Farewell to Countrywide Financial.  Hoping to erase a name linked to sub-prime loans and its loose mortgage-lending reputation, Bank of America Corp. starting April 27 will be changing the Countrywide name to Bank of America Home Loans --- to the delight of its public relations department.

Jobs for honest former New York financial folk?  Full-page ads this week from 99c Only Stores included a box:  NOW HIRING, ex-Wall Street bankers.  Apply at your local 99c Only Stores…as long as you’ve paid your taxes!

Memo to editors: Survey banks on loan action

Grumpy Editor recalls major surveys galore --- several a day, in fact --- leading up to the Nov. 4 election and wonders if media (and pollsters) have since slipped into hibernation.

An easy poll that no publication or wire service has conducted is simply checking the 20 largest banks that received government (i.e. taxpayers) rescue funds to unearth trends in stamping approved on loan applications, including those for home, auto and business.

Maybe print and broadcast media are sitting back awaiting news releases from the Treasury Department or the Federal Reserve.

Well, that happened this week.

Despite cries on many fronts that banks are sitting on funds or using bailout money elsewhere, it comes as no surprise that the Treasury, with a survey of its own, finds the 20 largest banks that received money through the government’s $250 billion capital-injection program report loan activity unchanged or slightly lower in the last quarter.

Now, this is something that any alert business editor could have uncovered around mid-January --- a month earlier. All it involves is having a staffer dial some or all of the 20 banks to see what’s happening with taxpayer funds and loan action.

Then get additional input from the American Bankers Association.

But all this won’t be necessary now.  The Treasury plans to release monthly reports, surveying what banks’ loan departments are doing.  So editors can sit back and await the news releases, and save the expense of long-distance telephone calls.

In another survey this week, the Federal Reserve reports about two-thirds of banks say they tightened terms for business loans over the past three months. 

Again, with the infusion of federal funds in mind, that’s an angle for savvy editors to explore, starting with a simple question:  Why?

The “why” is important because the Fed on Wednesday sharply downgraded this year’s economic projections.

So what are the banks doing with all the taxpayer-contributed funds?  Is it a case of hoarding?  Are they hiring loan officers?  Or, in seeing opportunities, are they using those funds to make investments, such as acquisitions, while slamming loan department doors to customers? 

Alert and inquiring editors would perform a public service by dispatching “loan-seeking” staffers in person to “friendly” banks to check on availability of auto, home and business financing.

Findings should lead to some interesting articles.

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Reminder:  Grumpy Editor’s end-of-week leftover notes now appears on Saturdays.

Reprise: GM contracts at home, expands overseas

With front-page stories that teary General Motors Corp. this week seeks billions of dollars more from Uncle Sam (translation: taxpayers), plans to slash 47,000 jobs and phase out or sell its Saturn, Hummer and Saab lines, Grumpy Editor today repeats a pre-Christmas posting that deserves another look.

Remember, under the headline, GM gets bailout, adds another overseas plant, the following appeared on this site on Dec. 22, 2008.

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Escaping most news reports on the $9.4 billion government bailout of General Motors Corp. last week was what’s going on overseas with the “hard-hit” Detroit-based member of the Big Three automakers, notes Grumpy Editor.

While GM is shuttering plants and cutting jobs in North America, it’s merrily rolling along overseas.

Just last Wednesday, GM formally unveiled a passenger vehicle plant in Shenyang, in northeast China.  The factory is producing the Chevrolet Cruze, a compact sedan.  (The Cruze eventually will make its appearance in the U.S.)

The Shenyang facility is the fifth plant GM operates in a joint venture with a Chinese company.

What’s more, GM plans to grow its operations in China, where it already has invested $5 billion.

Elsewhere, the company last month announced it plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil.

Also last month, GM opened a $300 million factory in Russia.

Meanwhile, GM's investment in India now exceeds $1 billion.

Much local radio news relies on newspaper clips

All local radio programs, including news, were once noted for immediateness, recalls Grumpy Editor.

With news, if an event suddenly developed, radio reporters routinely were on scene broadcasting in minutes.

That meant beating their print counterparts by a day.

Some news-conscious stations even had specially-equipped mobile units patrolling busy city areas.  There was competition not only among stations, but with dailies.

Now, however, many staff-cutting radio stations, with skeleton --- or no --- newsrooms rely heavily on morning newspapers.  Local items are clipped for broadcast. 

Crime stories get the major play, following in the steps of their upper-level TV cousins:  If it bleeds, it leads.

These brief items often are recycled throughout the day, becoming rather stale by late afternoon.  It’s not unusual to hear Friday news items broadcast on Mondays.

Other than “live” radio talk show hosts that grab most of the daytime listenership, other programming, especially overnight and on weekends, is where listeners are treated to a growing number of paid half-hour (or longer) commercials, many focusing on health products.

These are mixed in with recycled or aged (not quite like fine wine) programs.

Example with the latter:  Heard on a 50,000-watt radio station over the President’s Day weekend was reference to “as we approach the holiday season and the Super Bowl.”  That later was pinpointed, timewise, to “on this Thanksgiving weekend.”  All the happy holiday chatter on that three-months-old program was long outdated.

On the other end, another radio program promoted flowers for Valentine’s Day.  However, it was on Sunday, one day after the hearts-and-flowers observance.