Posts Tagged ‘Miami Herald’

McClatchy to reap $230M in sale

Friday, May 7th, 2010

The McClatchy Company is about to pocket $230 million from a man interested in a sure-fire advertising vehicle.

But, Mark Siffin isn’t advertising in the company’s newspapers. He wants land McClatchy owns so he can build a parking garage and erect a pair of 20-story-tall electronic billboards on top of it, according to the South Florida Business Journal.

Siffin will pay $230 million for 10 acres owned by McClatchy’s Miami Herald. He plans to build the garage and a retail center next door. He has already paid McClatchy $16 million toward the purchase, which included an extension on the contract to close in 2011.

Siffin still has to get a city commission to approve a new ordinance allowing the electronic billboards. Some residents oppose them.

Regardless, McClatchy gets to sell land it has been trying to unload for some time at a good price; the same lot was under contract for $190 million in 2005, the height of the real estate market, according to the Journal.

You’d think $230 million could save a lot of journalists’ jobs, but you wouldn’t want to bet on it.

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McClatchy planning to become hub for local sites

Thursday, April 8th, 2010

McClatchy newspapers are bringing other local Web sites and blogs onto their home sites in “blog networks,” starting at the Sacramento Bee and coming soon to the Charlotte Observer and Miami Herald.

“The Bee has been working on the concept for about a year,” says the Sacramento Business Journal. “Editors and multimedia managers collected and reviewed sites, ranking them based on quality of content and frequency of posts.”

The Bee’s effort is called “Sacramento Connect” and so far features about a dozen blogs.

“We see that that’s the direction that the Web is going and we really want to be a part of that,” Sean McMahon, The Bee’s digital product development manager, told the Business Journal. “We have a trusted position in the area, and we thought it was time to embrace all these independent voices and bring them in and try to promote them.”

The thinking is traffic to all the sites would improve, the Business Journal says.

“At least two other McClatchy Co. newspapers” — The Observer and The Herald — are developing similar networks, the report says.

In Raleigh, The News & Observer has made similar attempts to become a local portal.  Its Triangle.com includes a section called “Share” for local blogs and forums meant to be produced locally through the site.

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Miami Herald puts tip jar back under the counter

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

The Miami Herald announced over the weekend it was ending a program begun in December in which it asked readers to donate to the newspaper.

“After evaluating two months of response, we’ve decided to end the program,” Elissa Vanaver, a company vice president and assistant to the publisher, said in the newspaper’s report. She would not say how much money the effort had raised.

Shortly after initiating the program, in which credit card forms linked at the bottom of articles on MiamiHerald.com and ElNuevoHerald.com enabled donations,  Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal said it had “elicited an encouraging steam of gifts, ranging from $2 to $55.”

Vanaver said when the program was launched in December and again this past weekend that The Herald has no plans to charge for content online. The newspaper does charge $2.99 for mobile applications that deliver sports content, its report said.

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McClatchy accepts $6M to delay land deal

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

The McClatchy Co.  is pocketing $6 million this week by allowing a suitor to delay closing on a deal to buy land adjacent to the company’s Miami Herald, the Sacramento Business Journal said Wednesday.

Citisquare Group LLC previously paid a $10 million non-refundable deposit and, under the new agreement, if it fails to close the purchase by January 31, 2011, will have to pony up another $7 million.

Citisquare had until December 31, 2009, to close the transaction on 10 acres next to the newspaper plant.

The publisher will release a new look at the land’s value in its 4th quarter earnings report January 27, the Business Journal said.

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McClatchy waits for Miami land deal to close

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

The firm set to buy land adjacent to McClatchy Company’s Miami Herald has asked for another extension of the closing date.

Citisquare Group LLC had until the end of December to close the 10-acre deal, according to the Sacramento Business Journal, but asked to extend their time to January 19 in exchange for increasing the fee they’ll pay should the deal not go through. McClatchy could collect $7 million if the deal fails; the previous fail-tab was $6 million.

Citisquare could extend the closing deadline to the end of January 2011 for an additional $6 million nonrefundable deposit on or before January 19 of this year.

McClatchy has already banked a $10 million nonrefundable deposit that the company says  it put toward debt.

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Miami paper collecting readers’ donations

Monday, December 21st, 2009

The Miami Herald is deriving revenue by soliciting donations on its Web site, say Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal. Credit card forms linked at the bottom of articles on MiamiHerald.com and ElNuevoHerald.com since last week enable donations to the McClatchy Newspapers properties.

“The first few days of this experiment have elicited an encouraging steam of gifts, ranging from $2 to $55,” Gyllenhaal wrote in Sunday’s paper. “They’ve also provoked an array of reactions, here and across the country, since this has drawn attention as the first effort of its kind.”

He does not provide any further information about the amount raised.

“We think of this as a way to try something new at a time when The Herald has dozens of experiments under way,” he said. “We hope it helps us explore how readers view this whole equation. It also responds to the small but steady group of readers who, like the caller the other day, have asked how they can contribute.”

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Dignity, shmingnity: Herald puts its hand out

Wednesday, December 16th, 2009

McClatchy Newspapers’ Miami Herald has begun soliciting donations at the end of its online articles.

“Support ongoing news coverage on Miamiherald.com,” says an interactive message at the end of articles at the site. The click-through goes to a page with a credit card form and a message that says in part, “If you value The Miami Herald’s local news reporting and investigations, but prefer the convenience of the Internet, please consider a voluntary payment for the web news that matters to you.”

They’ll take Visa, MasterCard or American Express.

“We’re trying something new, we’re putting it out there to see if it works, to see what the response is,” Elissa Vanaver, Herald vice president/assistant to the publisher, told NBC Miami. She said there are currently no plans to start charging for content.

Though McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt said just last week that all of the firm’s newspapers are profitable, the Herald announced the elimination of 24 jobs and a cutback in hours at the beginning of December. This followed elimination of more than 370 jobs in 2008, 175 more in March and 16 more in August, according to one count, a pattern followed at each of McClatchy’s 30 daily newspapers.

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More layoffs at Miami Herald

Thursday, December 3rd, 2009

The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper, announced the elimination of 24 positions Wednesday and a reduction in hours “for departments directly related to newspaper production,” Editor & Publisher reports.

McClatchy Watch has Publisher David Landsberg’s e-mail to employees.

All hourly staffers in Prepress, Printing Operations, Electric Shop, Machine Shop, Packaging and Transportation will see their work weeks reuced to 37.5 hours, according to the New Times of Broward-Palm Beach, which has Landsberg’s and Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal’s e-mails.

“In the newsroom, this will mean the loss of six full-time positions, one part-time position and reductions in hours for several staff members, most of them editors and supervisors,” Gyllenhall says. “Those affected were contacted first thing this morning.”

Newsroom cuts include an assigning editor, two copy editors, two designers, a photo editor and a part-time librarian, New Times says.

“We’ve worked to keep the number of jobs lost as low as possible and have tried to avoid impact on newsgathering. For this reason, no reporter or photographer positions will be involved. The reduction for El Nuevo Herald will be one and a half positions, both editing posts.”

But, “For a newsroom of 200 staffers and a media company with about 900 employees, (this week’s) cuts are not enormous,” the New Times says. According to its count, “In 2008, the Herald eliminated more than 370 jobs through layoffs and buyouts. This March,  175 more jobs disappeared, followed by 16 more in August.”

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Herald to boost ad exposure with indy news sites

Monday, November 2nd, 2009

McClatchy’s Miami Herald is looking for more exposure for its online advertising through partnerships with independent news sites springing up in the wake of industry layoffs.

A report from the South Florida Business Journal about  laid-off reporters who have started their own online publications says the newspaper has cut deals with “about five” local sites. The Herald will link to the sites, “including Miami’s Community Newspapers chain and the River Cities Gazette in Miami-Dade County” — both of which are decades old –  in exchange for the opportunity to sell ads on them, Rick Hirsch, the newspaper’s multimedia editor said.

Currently, The Herald’s “Partners” page links to a handful of  local TV and radio station sites listed as media partners in addition to other McClatchy sites and international papers.

The SFBJ report is about a Society of Professional Journalists panel discussion among now-independent journalists/entrepreneurs — including former Herald investigative reporter Dan Christensen, who publishes the not-for-profit Broward Bulldog investigative reporting Web site — about finding money to launch their new careers.

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Miami paper targets blogger

Saturday, August 22nd, 2009

The Miami Herald, a McClatchy newspaper, says a local blogger who used two photos from the newspaper in an August 18 post is stealing from the paper.

“The Herald’s lawyer alleges that I am stealing Herald content,” says Bill, a photographer from Miami Beach who writes the Random Pixels blog. “He also alleges that I derive income from ads on my blog and that using Herald content helps drive traffic to my blog.”

The letter from Herald attorney Ian Ballon (posted here and here) alleges that the blog has run full articles from the Herald as well as large photos, which is a violation of Fair Use. The paper does not object to “short excerpts” from articles, “thumbnail reproductions of photographs” or “continued commentary on the paper, including criticism,”  the letter says.

Random Pixels had a wrap-up of the argument so far with comments from other Florida  lawyers suggesting this is a waste of The Herald’s time and money (plus a claim that the blog actually drives traffic to the newspaper’s site and that the controversy is increasing traffic at the blog). The blogger denies running full Herald articles.

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