Digital First Media
An agreement between the Newspaper Guild of Detroit and 21st CMH Acquisition Co. has delayed the sale of Journal Register Company, Adrienne LaFrance reports.

The deal eliminates 15 positions, including laying off five circulation clerks, three janitors and seven paginators who worked at the Macomb Daily and the Daily Tribune. Unionized employees had been braced for worse, including 15 percent across-the-board pay cuts. JRC newspapers elsewhere in the country are also reporting layoffs on the horizon, including 11 cuts to news and circulation staff at The Daily Freeman in New York. A letter was sent to all Journal Register employees in February that said the new company will decide which employees it will hire.

The sale had been scheduled for Tuesday. Journal Register Company filed for bankruptcy in September.

Digital First Media | The Oneida Daily Dispatch
The Oneida (N.Y.) Daily Dispatch will print three days a week beginning next month, owner Digital First Media announced Wednesday.

As is customary with such announcements, DFM promises "expanded online, mobile and electronic offerings" for Daily Dispatch readers. The paper says no staff reductions are planned.

The paper will print Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Previously, the paper printed only Monday through Saturday. The Sunday edition will feature "a complete print redesign," the release says, including an "expanded local news and features sections, an easy-to-read 'Start Your Day Here' feature that includes national and world news digests, as well as multi-day comics, puzzles and horoscope sections." (more...)

CJR | CJR
Digital First Media CEO John Paton shared some financial information with Columbia Journalism Review reporter Ryan Chittum, who also posts a Journal Register Company bankruptcy document filed with a court in New York.

Of JRC’s $295 million in revenue last year, $167.1 million of it was print ads, $86 million was print circulation, and $30.1 million was digital ads. That means digital ads were 10.2 percent of JRC’s total revenue, up sharply from the pre-Paton era when it was a miserable 2.8 percent.

Chittum points out three important caveats: (more...)

The Journal Register Company announced it was declaring bankruptcy Wednesday. Digital First Media operates JRC; its CEO, John Paton, said in the announcement that a subsidiary of JRC's current owners has made a bid for the company, so possibly when the company emerges from bankruptcy it will enjoy the same management, just with less debt. It's not an easy business move to get one's arms around. Here are a couple of explainers.

• JRC editor Matt DeRienzo calls the bankruptcy a "big, pain-in-the-ass distraction in the short-term" but is optimistic: The company "remains very profitable on an operating basis," he writes, and newsroom spending is "flat" company-wide. "That’s a remarkable achievement in the environment and economy of today," DeRienzo writes, "and I’d challenge you to find another major newspaper company that hasn’t cut newsroom spending over that time period." The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., DeRienzo writes, will see that JRC employees won't lose their retirement. (more...)

NAA | Ebyline Blog
Research conducted by the Newspaper Association of America shows that some news organizations, like Gannett, vary their paywall thresholds at different papers, while others, like Digital First, stick with the same number across them all.

NAA's spreadsheet (subscriber only) details the paywall strategy, launch date and owner for 156 papers. The metered approach is by far more popular — employed by 84 percent of the papers — than a "hard" paywall, Ebyline notes.

This chart from Ebyline's Susan Johnston shows the pace at which paywalls were adopted, with a big spike in the third quarter of 2011.

(more...)

Digital First | AJR
Advance Publications has an ally in John Paton, CEO of Digital First Media, who writes that despite some missteps, he supports the company's decision to stop printing The Times-Picayune every day and focus on the website. Paton expresses surprise that the company has been "lambasted for not continuing with the old line of business that is driving them out of business."

Could they do it better? I think they could do it a lot better but they are attempting to dramatically change their business.

And it is a change largely directed at a future that focuses on the new line of business and less on the old.

Importantly, they remain committed to their core business and mission with what resources they have.

So I support them because their industry is my industry and it will not survive without dramatic, difficult and bloody change. (more...)