News Media Guild

The University of Colorado at Boulder is considering the possibility of discontinuing its School of Journalism and Mass Communications "for strategic and budgetary reasons," the state’s flagship university announced Wednesday.

The executive editor of The Washington Times says the owner of the financially troubled newspaper has reached a preliminary agreement to sell the paper to a company affiliated with the Unification Church.

Monterey County Herald management opened contract negotiations with the Guild on Tuesday with requests for several economic concessions, citing the continued slide in advertising revenue. The Guild’s contract with the Herald, owned by MediaNews Group, covering about 90 workers, expires Nov. 16. Guild leaders next week will announce the time and date for a membership meeting to discuss the specifics of management’s proposal and our response.

Back in April, Barron’s said The Washington Post Co. "may be the most undervalued media company in America," with a share price that was "dirt cheap." With the stock having plunged since then, the financial weekly repeated its assessment even more firmly over the weekend.

The Times Union in Albany, N.Y., violated federal labor law in 2009 when it laid off 11 employees without negotiating criteria with their union, an administrative law judge has ruled — and the newspaper has been ordered to reinstate the workers with benefits as well as back pay.

Former Honolulu Advertiser staffers on Monday launched a Website patterned after the Metromix entertainment site at the former Gannett Co. daily.

The Hearst-owned Albany (N.Y.) Times Union broke the law when it removed workers from their jobs when the newspaper was supposed to be negotiating layoff criteria — and broke the law again when declaring impasse in those negotiations, a judge has now ruled. The 11 affected employees should be returned to work and repaid lost wages and benefits.

The Tribune Co.’s plan to emerge from bankruptcy has unraveled in the wake of an independent report concluding that talks leading up to the company’s 2007 leveraged buyout bordered on fraud, attorneys said Friday.

I’m sure curious what Fox News talkers like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck make of the news that their corporate bosses recently contributed $1 million to the re-election drive of Republican governors nationwide. Unfortunately we don’t know what the talkers think of the stunning development because there’s apparently been a news blackout inside Fox News and it appears nobody on staff is allowed to discuss the embarrassing development, let alone try to defend the actions.

Unions representing former employees of the Sun-Times Media Group Inc. are seeking information from the company in a dispute over termination of health insurance benefits.

With Republicans hoping to recapture a number of statehouses in November, the media conglomerate headed by Rupert Murdoch is inserting itself into the races in bold fashion with a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association.

Why has News Corp’s million dollar gift to the Republican Governors Association gotten so much attention? I think there are a few top-of-mind reasons and one — a little paper called the Wall Street Journal — that forms the subtext here.

Declines in newspaper spending are expected to slow this year, with the market eventually stabilizing by 2013 and growth beginning in 2014. But with spending of only $36.76 billion in that year, newspapers will not come close to the $66.37 billion in peak spending the industry saw in 2005, according to the Veronis Suhler Stevenson Communications Industry Forecast 2004-2014.

A Delaware judge has agreed to again extend deadlines in the Tribune Co.’s bankruptcy as the company continues negotiating with creditors.

It’s Patch day in the news news world, as AOL formally announces the expansion of its network of local sites. It’s really a ratification of what we’ve been hearing, as CEO Tim Armstrong stakes his reborn company’s future on professional news content creation, here, specifically local. The number bandied about: $50 million in investment in Patch, resulting in 500 local sites across 20 states by the end of the year.

AOL’s effort to own America’s local news, said it has grown to 100 sites in 20 states, up from six sites since the company bought the fledgling news startup in June 2009. AOL also said it hopes to be in 500 communities by year’s end.

Tribune Co., citing "vigorous negotiations" toward a new settlement with its creditors, asked the judge in its bankruptcy case for more time to work out a reorganization plan that "would maximize consensus" around a deal.

Murdoch may be the world’s most successful newspaper man, with a history of outsized reach and profits (though, now, fading) in Australia and the UK, but here, in the US newspaper business, he’s only ever been a dud.

Thirsting for good news, the welcome given TBD.com by news observers has been a bit overwhelming. In a desert of too-scarce good news about the news business, TBD represents one of the potential oases, like its smaller — and largely nonprofit — counterparts from San Diego to Austin to the Twin Cities to New York.

Tribune Co. Chairman Sam Zell is demanding his share of repayment in the media company’s bankruptcy if lower-priority creditors, emboldened by a recently released examiner’s report, get anything.