MONDAY'S LINKS: Wen Ho Lee Deal a Bad Precedent?, Global Newspaper Sales Up, 'Toronto Star' Shines

By: E&P Staff In today's edition, the Toronto Star beats the competition badly on a big terror story, could the media's deal Wen Ho Lee set a bad precendent?, and Page Six editor Richard Johnson is arrested for drunk driving.


***

In Bomb Plot News Coverage, a Toronto Newspaper Shines
The competition between Toronto's four major daily newspapers is often intense, particularly over crime news. But its results are rarely as one-sided as the coverage that followed the arrests of 17 Ontario residents in what the police call a terrorist bomb plot. Some readers of The Globe and Mail awoke Saturday to find nothing about the raids while, at the other extreme, The Toronto Star published 3,000 words and several photos spread over three pages.


***

Global Newspaper Sales Rise
The World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers, said global newspaper sales increased 6% over the past five years, and when free dailies were included, circulation increased 1.21% last year and 7.8% over the past five years. Free dailies made up 6% of all global newspaper circulation and 17% in Europe alone, WAN said.


***

'Wash Poost' Trying to Honor Many Buyout Takers at Once
Years of institutional memory are walking out the door of The Washington Post over the next few months, with about 70 reporters, editors and others accepting buyouts. Replacing their collective wisdom will be hard, of course, but consider for a moment the more immediate logistical problem of how to honor and bid adieu to so many staff members at the same time. The business news section, which is losing nine people, confronted a potential pile-up on Thursday. The department feared a cake jam, in which nine cakes would have clogged the aisles, not to mention the arteries, of innocent bystanders, as well as a press jam, in which nine honorary farewell front pages -- tailored to each departing employee -- would have clogged the presses.


***

Despite Strupp's Scoops, E&P Gets Little Recognition
"It seems that Editor & Publisher has a problem with the media," writes Jon Friedman. "It's nothing less than deliciously ironic when a publication which has been reporting on the press for more than a century is displeased about the way that IT, in turn, is being covered. Specifically, E&P's editors are disappointed that their magazine isn't getting more attention. E&P Editor Greg Mitchell nodded knowingly when I said I was surprised by the dearth of publicity. 'Sadly, that is true,' he said. 'Publicists have said that the press only covers consumer magazines, not trades. But I don't know if that's true.'"


***

Sportswriters Pretending Baseball's Steroids Era Is Over?
"It's easy to understand the media's love-fest with Albert Pujols," writes Jeff Pearlman. "The St. Louis Cardinals slugger crushes baseballs into the outer realms. And more important in the wake of the BALCO fiasco, he has yet to be tainted by evidence of steroid use. Pujols has 25 homers in 51 games played, putting him on pace to break Barry Bonds' record of 73 home runs in a single season. Both fans and rival players breathlessly praise Pujols as they once did Bonds. St. Louis' marketing department is constantly churning with new ideas for milking the Albert cash cow. And within baseball's press boxes, writers and reporters check their e-mail, drink free sodas, and question, well, nothing."


***

Competition -- A Dirty Word in Newspaper Distribution
"If there is one sector where the normal laws of business do not apply, it is the distribution of newspapers," writes Emily Bell. "It is a world where profitability is no measure of durability, where good promotional practice is to give away DVDs, thereby encouraging people to put your product in the bin and switch on a TV instead, and where, year by year, fewer people purchase yet investment in securing readership goes exponentially upwards. So abandon rationality all ye who enter here."


***

Could Media Deal With Wen Ho Lee Lead to More Litigation Involving Press?
The decision by five major news organizations to pay $750,000 to a nuclear scientist named in news stories as the target of an espionage investigation is prompting warnings that the unusual payment could embolden others aggrieved by government leaks and lead to more litigation involving the press. "The implications of this are just staggering," a former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Jane Kirtley, said in an interview yesterday. "I think this is blood money that has been paid here."


***

Page Six Editor Richard Johnson Charged With DWI
Richard Johnson, the editor of The New York Post's Page Six, was arrested as he drove through Manhattan early Friday and was charged with driving while intoxicated, the authorities said. Mr. Johnson, 52, was arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court shortly before noon and then released, a spokesman for the Manhattan district attorney said. The charge of driving while intoxicated, a misdemeanor, carries a maximum sentence of a year in jail and a $1,000 fine.


***

'Daily Hampshire Gazette' Switches to Mornings
In one of the biggest changes in its 220-year history, the paper will become a morning newspaper in September. The Gazette has always been published in the afternoon, except for Saturday and holiday papers, which have been delivered in the morning since 1972. The change reflects the trend in the newspaper industry.