By: E&P Staff In today's edition, an online newspaper takes on the big boys, Philadelphia newsroom staffers worry that cuts will follow their sale from McClatchy, and a remembrance of Abe Rosenthal.
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Locally Focused Online Newspaper Takes on the Big BoysColorado Springs's High Plains Messenger is both an Internet newspaper and a fiscal experiment. "There's nothing like what we've done in the United States so far," says Joseph Coleman, the site's co-creator and resident moneyman, "and that can be dangerous. But if things go well, and we think they will, this place is going to blow up."
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Bidder for Philly Papers Floats Idea of Deep Newsroom CutsOnex Corp., a Toronto investment firm that is among the six known bidders for The Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, has floated plans for deep cuts in the newsrooms at both papers, according to Teamsters union leaders.
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'NY Times' and 'USA Today' Websites Switch RolesYesterday's New York Times, generally regarded as the heavyweight among national dailies, had a homepage full of fluff. At the same moment, the home page of USA Today, generally regarded as the lightweight of national dailies, was breaking a major story
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Remembering Abe's 'NY Times'"[Rosenthal] was unfailingly right about almost every aspect of the world he reported on and whose agenda he wound up determining every time the presses rumbled to life in the basement of 229 W. 43rd St.," writes David A. Andelman.
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Fabulist James Frey Admits Second Book Is Part-Fiction TooIs James Frey's "My Friend Leonard," the sequel to his discredited "A Million Little Pieces," fact or fiction? In an author's note to the paperback edition, which has just come out, Frey says it's some of both. "To call this book pure nonfiction would be inaccurate," the author writes. "It is a combination of fact and fiction, real and imagined events."
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Congress May Clamp Down on Social Networking Site MySpaceNew legislation from Congress would block access to social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook in schools and libraries, including instant-messaging services. The bill known as the "The Deleting Online Predators Act" introduced by Rep. Michael G. Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., aims at protecting minors from online child predators. According to the bill, it "prohibits access to commercial social networking Web sites or chat rooms through which minors" can access obscene or indecent material, be subject to unlawful sexual advances or repeated offensive comments of a sexual nature from adults, or access harmful information.
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Yahoo! Chief Considered Buying Google for a Pittance in 2001Acquiring Google for $3 billion seems like an impossible bargain today, but back in 2001 Yahoo! boss Terry Semel shied away from doing just that deal. Semel, the former movie mogul who runs Yahoo!, met with Google's two young founders, Larry Page and Sergei Brin, for dinner and talk turned to a possible deal between the two Internet companies. The pair said their company, which was just getting off the ground, was worth $1 billion -- but added they didn't want to sell.
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How Chicago Papers Covered Colbert"If this skirmish between old media and new had spent itself, never was the line between the two so clear," writes Michael Miner. "The old offers coverage, the new conversation. The old doesn?t like being part of the story and shrinks from characters like Colbert who insist it is. The new -- like a colony of ants swarming over a dead wren -- can?t separate its rapt attention to a story from the story."
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New Papers Are Launched in Rhode IslandWarwick, R.I., has emerged as a site of intensifying competition for newspaper readers. The Journal Register Company (JRC) is bolstering its presence in Rhode Island and nearby Massachusetts, launching a new daily in Warwick and a new weekly in Somerset, Massachusetts -- not long after the ProJo closed bureaus in those two communities and two others. Plans for launching the Warwick Daily Times, which debuted Tuesday, started well before the ProJo closed its Warwick bureau, says Times publisher David R. Dear Jr. ?[but] it just made that decision that much easier. We knew we were going to have a little easier time of it.?
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Get Lost, Eh! A Message to the Canadians Seeking to Buy PNI"I only have four words for Onex and its managing director Seth Mersky. Do not come here," writes Will Bunch. "You would be making the mistake of a lifetime, because my colleagues and I will do everything in our power to make you wish you had never heard of Philadelphia and its 'Enquirer,' let alone the Daily News.?
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