Results matching “the san jose mercury”

The San Jose Mercury News and The San Mateo Daily Journal dominated the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club's 31st annual awards ceremony Thursday, winning 31 and 23 awards respectively.

According to the Peninsula Press Club's website, the Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards honor Bay Area print journalists, photographers, radio and television personnel, and public relations professionals, with 224 awards of excellence in 94 categories.

Newspapers were divided into groups based on circulation. The San Jose Mercury News, in the largest group (circulation over 75, 000), won awards for "General Excellence," "Feature Column," "Breaking News," and "Page Design."

The San Mateo Daily Journal won several of the same awards in the smaller category (circulation under 75, 000), including "Feature Column" and "Breaking News."

Click here to view the complete list of winners.

Source: penpressclub.org

Last week we shared the emotional photo documentary from Martin Gee of the San Jose Mercury News. Visual journalism is a powerful tool for conveying the impact and scope of the downsizing that has been happening in U.S. newsrooms. 

Sometimes the hardest pictures a newspaper journalist makes are the ones they take of themselves during hard times. San Jose Mercury News designer Martin Gee has posted a photo documentary of the effects of several rounds of layoffs and buyouts in his California newsroom. You can feel his heart breaking in captions as he recalls former colleagues and the spirit they brought to the newsroom.

Gee writes:

The last round of layoffs and buyouts really hurt me. i mean, each one does but this one especially. This place feels like a morgue. an abusive relationship. remnants everywhere. Empty cubicles. Empty chairs. Abandoned office equipment. goodbye emails. Besides looking for a new job and building a massive assemblage, this is a way for me to deal. There will be more photos...

On a photo of an empty nameplate holder Gee writes: "Rich Ramirez committed suicide during the last round of layoffs at the Mercury News."

Bad news for US newspapers: a wave of layoffs has hit many newsrooms in the beginning of 2008.

The Boston Globe, owned by The New York Times Co., announced it plans to cut 60 jobs by offering voluntary employee buyouts - these won't affect the website, Boston.com. The Worcester Telegram & Gazette will cut 20 jobs.

Tribune Co.-owned Newsday publisher Tim Knight announced that the newspaper will cut about 120 jobs across the company, representing about 5% of the workforce. 25 of the layoffs will be in the newsroom. The pressroom will cut 24 union positions.

Other Tribune Co. newspapers including the Los Angeles Times (where 100 to 150 jobs are to be eliminated, 40-50 of them in the newsroom), The Baltimore Sun and the Chicago Tribune Media Group announced about 300 layoffs two weeks ago. The Los Angeles Daily News laid off 22 editors and reporters on Feb. 29.

At the San Jose Mercury News, reporters have been told to stay at home until the morning of March 7, when they will or will not receive a phone call telling them they've lost their job. The Mercury News' staff has shrunk to about 200 from twice that number in 1999.

The problem is that newspapers have yet to find a way to compensate print declines with online revenues. Part of the solution is citizen journalists, unpaid volunteers with some expertise in a field who can complement coverage. But most content produced by citizen journalists is commentary rather than news coverage.

According to Graphic Designr, there were more than 2,000 layoffs and buyouts in the newspaper industry in the last half of 2,007. In the first two months of February, the count is over 1,000.

Sources: Los Angeles Times - Yahoo News - Newsday - Graphic Designr through I Want Media and Poynter Romenesko

Puzzled staffers are trying to figure out the reasons for the surprise departure of San Jose Mercury News editor Carole Leigh Hutton last week, which may have been due, among other things, to her boss’ refusal to structure the paper around three sections.

The Miami Herald has said it is outsourcing part of its copy editing and layout design work to Mindworks, a prepress production firm based in New Delhi, India.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA) has identified eight trends to keep track of in 2008 for news organizations, including audience measurements, hyperlocal coverage, outsourcing and multimedia branding.

Carole Leigh Hutton, executive editor of the San Jose Mercury News since May, is being replaced by David Butler, VP for news for owner MediaNews. The Mercury News is in the process of rethinking its role in the digital era. "I think we can create a new business model," says CEO Dean Singleton in a Mercury News story. The leadership change comes as the paper struggles to reinvent itself for the high-tech Silicon Valley crowd.

(Source: San Jose Mercury News)

Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post examines Faye Anderson, a prominent citizen journalist, in order to examine citizen journalism, what exactly it is, the credibility issue, and where citizen journalism stands in the future.

The reinvention of the San Jose Mercury News is still moving along with its plans for a smaller and very different product. However, some staffers and readers are concerned with the fact that "the very top of the organization is saying, blow up the newsroom," says Chris O'Brien, a reporter for the Mercury.

Jay Rosen has been recruiting 12 beat reporters from different news organizations for his beat reporting with social network experiment. He said, “Maybe a beat reporter could do a way better job if there was a “live” social network connected to the beat, made up of people who know the territory the beat covers, and want the reporting on that beat to be better.”

The San Jose Mercury News continues their ‘rethinking’ project with a main goal of involving the readers and the community to make changes. In a recent Q&A, Matt Mansfield, visual expert for the newspaper, reveals, “We want our rethinking process to be as transparent as possible. And we wanted to begin sharing with our staff and our community the ideas we’re considering, why we’re doing it, and the progress we’re making.”

The San Jose Mercury News has announced a Rethinking the Mercury News program that lays out the problems of the newspapers and invites readers from the community to join the effort to improve the paper.

Must-read. The American Journalism Review takes a look at the reinvention of the newsroom and editorial process through the eyes of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s (AJC), Politico, and others.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune is outsourcing production of all its display ads to the Indian firm Express KCS.

The Hindustan Times is in the process of integrating its operations, and will be moving into new premises to facilitate this change. Pankaj Paul became the HT’s managing editor this summer, after having worked in the US at several papers including the San Jose Mercury News and Wilmington News Journal. It seems newspapers enjoy talking about ‘their successful road to integration’, but this is always in retrospect. Here Paul gives the insider’s view of an editor in the middle of the hectic transition, and how he plans to lead his staff.

USA Today is to offer news widgets to online users. The widgets can be tagged on to a personal page or a social networking profile and display news updates from the paper, while also generating ad revenue for the title. The Washington Post also launched a political widget.

In an excellent article, Editor & Publisher’s (E&P) Joe Strupp gathers 12 important lessons learned from online flops and failures, such as…