WEDNESDAY'S LINKS: Brit Tab Apologizes, Peltz Stake Boosts Tribune Co., Old Baltimore 'Sun' Gasps and Leaps

By: E&P Staff In today's links, the emergence of Nelson Peltz as a stakeholder could complicate what has been a bitter boardroom fight at Tribune, the Sun of Baltimore is plans to scale back its foreign coverage, and signs that product placement may continue to increase in the coming decade.


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Deadline U.S.A. ?06: Old Baltimore Sun Gasps and Leaps
New York Observer: Under the ownership of the Chicago-based Tribune Company, which bought the paper as part of Times Mirror in 2000, The Sun has tended to make splashier news than it?s written. Editor Timothy Franklin tends to use mild and positive turns of phrase like ?reorganizing.? Or ?trying to adapt.? Or ?rescaling,? which he used twice in half an hour. In the case of foreign news, rescaling means that by year?s end there will be nothing for the foreign desk to edit. The Tribune Company announced last month that it plans to close two of the Baltimore paper?s three foreign bureaus and to ?absorb? the third.


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Under Fresh Attack, Media Turns a Blind Eye
Niall Stanage in the New York Observer: When prosecutors won the right to inspect reporters? phone records earlier this month -- potentially unmasking numerous secret sources -- the story barely caused a ripple. Such a blatant threat to the freedom of the media might once have stirred national outrage, or at least a spirited debate. But if government intrusion into the media?s rights isn?t receiving the attention it deserves, the press has only itself to blame, with leading outlets like The New York Times weighing in on the subject inconsistently and in a way that seems to be motivated more by political ideology than institutional self-interest.


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British Tabloid Apologizes for Errors in Prince Harry Story
Guardian: The Sun has today published an apology for wrongly dating and locating the story it ran yesterday showing photographs of Prince Harry groping a girl's breast. News International's flagship daily tabloid also apologized to the girl in question, Natalie Pinkham, for publishing the pictures, which belonged to her, without her permission. The apology, on page six of today's Sun, reads: "We accept that the nightclub was the Purple Nightclub and not Boujis as we said and the photographs were taken in autumn 2003 and not summer 2006. We apologise for the error."


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Peltz Stake Boosts Tribune Co.
Wall Street Journal: Signaling the entry of a new player in the battle over Tribune's future, Nelson Peltz, who is in the midst of a proxy battle with H.J. Heinz Co., disclosed in a regulatory filing that an investment fund he partly owns had bought a 1.2% stake in Tribune as of June 30. Given Mr. Peltz's history of shareholder activism, his emergence as a stakeholder could complicate what has been a bitter boardroom fight at Tribune.


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Product Placement Increasing (NYT)
Stuart Elliott in The New York Times: Those consumers who prefer their entertainment unbranded -- that is, without the products, logos and other trappings of advertisers embedded in the content -- are in for a disappointing decade, according to a new report. The report, scheduled to be released today, predicts that marketers will remain enamored with placing products wherever they can: in movies, television and radio shows; on Web sites; in video games; in lyrics; in newspaper and magazine articles; and even in the plots of novels.


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Web Searches Go Low-Tech: You Ask, a Person Answers
Washington Post: Yahoo Inc. wants people to turn an ordinary online search into a place to find answers to life's pressing questions: What's the best way to vanquish a spaghetti stain? How do I know if it's true love? To answer those questions and millions of others, Yahoo Answers depends on thousands of volunteers, including Jonathan Schlaffer, an Aberdeen, Md., student who toils for five or six hours a day, fielding technical questions about software or explaining how to transfer music from cassettes to digital files. For Yahoo and a handful of other companies trying to harness knowledge from a vast corps of users, such projects raise their own big questions: Will users trust the advice of volunteers, and is this new form of sharing information online useful and accurate?


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'NY Times' Goes Hollywood: Gives Content Work to Beverly Hills Group
In June of this year, The Times chose thed Broder-Webb-Chervin-Silberman Agency, a small but prestigious Beverly Hills firm, to represent the paper in negotiations for film and television rights to its content. Prior to this summer, The Times handled requests for film and television rights through its own legal department. In the agenting world, Broder-Webb was a dignified, literary choice. Then, just a month after signing on The Times, that agency was gobbled up by a giant rival, International Creative Management.