links for 2008-10-28

Newsroom staffing at the Los Angeles Times is shrinking again.

Newspaper spokeswoman Nancy Sullivan said Monday that 75 staffers are being laid off in the latest round of cuts.

She declined further comment and would not disclose how many journalists will remain at the paper.

The Times, which is owned by Chicago-based Tribune Co., reduced its overall staff by 250 people last summer, including 150 from the newsroom.

Editor Russ Stanton blamed the cutbacks on the economic slowdown.
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Yawn…….What doe the editors of the LAT expect? I mean really…..

McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls — recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent — "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.

A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.

"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," this McCain adviser said. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.

"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."
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Being considered a Diva with the inept McCain campaign is really a badge of honor, no?

So let’s get this straight: decisions on where and how much NRCC money is deployed are made not by the committee or its chairman or staff but by a “unit” of political consultants who operate outside the realm of the committee and may very well have their own interests in certain candidates who do get money.

And we won’t know who they are until after the election?
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Is there any doubt why the GOP is losing?

By a California elementary school teacher about Proposition 8 – protect traditional marriage.

Here are the top 25 newspapers ranked by Sunday circulation for the six-month period ending September 2008, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. The percent change compares this period to the same period a year ago.
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the Sunday circulation decline

Here are the top 25 daily papers ranked for the six-month period ending September 2008 based on a Monday-through-Friday average, according to the new FAS-FAX from the Audit Bureau of Circulations released today. The percent change compares this period to the same period a year ago.
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the decline continues

The traditional media are playing a very, very dangerous game — with their readers, with the Constitution and with their own fates.
The sheer bias in the print and television coverage of this election campaign is not just bewildering, but appalling. And over the last few months I've found myself slowly moving from shaking my head at the obvious one-sided reporting, to actually shouting at the screen of my television and my laptop computer.

But worst of all, for the last couple weeks, I've begun — for the first time in my adult life — to be embarrassed to admit what I do for a living. A few days ago, when asked by a new acquaintance what I did for a living, I replied that I was "a writer," because I couldn't bring myself to admit to a stranger that I'm a journalist.
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When the bloom falls off the Obama Messiah rose there will be a difficult time of intraspection by the MSM while their sales continue to crater.

The man the GOP loves to hate tiptoed out of hiding Sunday – if only to blast Fox News and the rest of the media for his predicament.
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Note the press was barred from attending the event.

William Ayers, the '60s radical who is one of John McCain's talking points in his criticism of Barack Obama, told a Manhattan panel discussion audience he was tired of being used as cannon fodder in America's political wars.

Daily circ at The New York Times fell 3.5% to 1,000,665 copies.

The Wall Street Journal (as we reported last week) was virtually flat, up about 1,800 copies on a daily basis to 2,011,999. USA Today was also up a fraction of a percent to 2,293,310 copies.

But The Washington Post's daily circulation declined 1.9% to 622,714. Sunday was down 3.1% to 866,057. At the Los Angeles Times circ decreased a little more 5% daily and on Sunday to 739,147 and 1,055,076, respectively. Daily circulation at the Chicago Tribune was down 7.7% to 516,032. Sunday declined 5.7% to 864,845 copies.

The San Francisco Chronicle lost 7% of its daily circulation to 339,430 copies while Sunday was down a hair more, 7.4% to 398,116. The San Jose Mercury News was down slightly, 1.9% to 224,199 and Sunday was down much more, 4.3% to 241,518.

On the East Coast, daily circulation at The Boston Globe plummeted 10.1% to 323,983 copies. Sunday circ was down 8.4% to 503,659.
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The end of the print newspaper?