It was a bad week for newspapers, radio, and TV

Suburban News Files Bankruptcy – Business First
Baltimore Sun cuts third of newsroom – Baltimore Sun
Slouching Towards Oblivion – Maureen Dowd, NY Times
Tribune slashes 18 senior editors and newsroom managers – Poynter
Newspaper Death Foretold by Warren Buffett!!! – Slate Magazine
Who Will Survive? – According To Vanity Fair
Even Radio Takes A Hit – Yahoo Finance

What’s Next For News
Useful predictions about American journalism to 2020. [ Xark.com ]

Ratings Don’t Tell the Whole Story in Broadcast Anymore
With less than a month left to go before this season ends, four of the five major networks find themselves attracting fewer viewers than this time last year. It’s a particularly disappointing state of affairs because many observers thought it would be easy for the networks to improve over last season, when repeats and reality shows replaced original episodes of shows whose seasons were shortened by the writers’ work stoppage. [ TVWeek.com ]

Video continues to change the game

Hulu.com, the Web site that offers TV shows and movies, was the third most-watched Internet video destination last month, overtaking Yahoo! Inc.
Hulu, whose owners include News Corp. and General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal, showed 380 million videos in March, compared with Yahoo’s fourth-place 335 million. [ Bloomberg News ]

ABC to Add Its Shows to Videos on Hulu
Three of the four big broadcast networks now own stakes in Hulu, the popular video Web site. Under a deal unveiled Thursday with the Walt Disney Company, Hulu says it will add ABC shows like “Desperate Housewives” to its Web site by late summer, pending regulatory approval. ABC Enterprises, a unit of the Walt Disney Company, announced Thursday that it would join NBC Universal, which is owned by General Electric and Vivendi, and the News Corporation, owner of Fox, as a partner in the joint venture. [ New York Times ]

Old Master’s Mexican Suitcase Photos Reveal New Insights
When the three weathered cardboard boxes — known collectively, and cinematically, as the Mexican suitcase — arrived at the International Center of Photography more than a year ago, one of the first things a conservator did was bend down and sniff the film coiled inside, fearful of a telltale acrid odor, a sign of nitrate decay. [ New York Times ]

"I don’t believe there would have been a Copyright Act if there hadn’t been a Barbara Ringer"
Barbara A. Ringer had just graduated from Columbia University law school in 1949 when she joined the Copyright Office at the Library of Congress. Within a few years, she set about revising an archaic set of laws that had been in place since 1909 — before the invention of television or commercial radio, before copying machines and the modern recording industry, let alone cable TV, home computers and the Internet. [ Washington Post ]

Photo News

Rediscovering Marilyn Monroe

There are photos of Arnold amd Maria here

Here is NOT Air Force One Statue of Liberty New york Photo

White House Now On Flickr

Esquire Mag Cover From Video Shoot

Twitter News & Tweets

What is #followfriday?

Numbers Can’t Begin To Describe Twitter’s Impact

MTV Gets Social Networking

Sarah Palin begins to Twitter

Creatively Minded Branding On Twitter

Facebook News

Facebook executive considers California Attorney General campaign

Over 35 and on Faceboook

What better way to capture the charm and innocence of a child than to plunk him down amid the coarse trappings of a life lived in pursuit of wealth [ Link ]

The Friday Photo

This communication is from Gary Gardiner of Gardiner NewMedia. It’s a freebie. Enjoy it but remember where it came from. Gary wants to be your friend.

– Dorothea Lange

Three-quarters of a century has passed since Dorothea Lange looked into the eyes of a migrant mother and captured the despair and determination of a depressed nation.

Today, Lange will become the second photographer inducted into the California Hall of Fame at the California Museum for History, Women and the Arts in Sacramento.

Lange will join contemporaries Ansel Adams and writer John Steinbeck in the hall established in 2006 to honor legendary people who embody California’s innovative spirit and have made their mark on history — inductees as diverse as Ronald Reagan, César Chávez, Jonas Salk, Amelia Earhart, Walt Disney and Willie Mays.

Modesto Bee Story by Ted Benson

Blog Guy, please continue answering questions about photojournalism. I was wondering, what do photographers do when people they cover are out of sight?

Good question! They shoot pictures of each other trying to shoot pictures, like these guys trailing President-elect Barack Obama. These are always popular shots.

But why are they trying so hard?

I gather there’s a serious shortage of Obama photos, despite the fact that we’ve taken roughly 720 million pictures of him this month alone. See, there is always a chance he’s changed his appearance. You know, a mullet haircut, a tattoo, a handlebar mustache, some of those plastic hillbilly teeth…

You spend millions of dollars just waiting for Barack Obama in plastic hillbilly teeth?

Hey, pal, back off! When YOU’RE the shooter who gets those hillbilly teeth in your zoom lens, you’ll understand what it’s all about!

Even if you grew up in the decades when magazines like Life or the British Picture Post brought the world into your home each week by way of powerful photo essays, you may have long since forgotten the sweet anticipation that accompanied the moment when you opened up an issue and began to page through it to see what surprises it contained. Walking through the small Dekel Pavilion at the museum, where the Salomon show will be up until the end of the year, you may feel a similar feeling of excitement, and also participation, as still photographs – especially when they come without the texts that originally accompanied them – often demand the active use of the viewers’ imagination, if they want to understand the story being told.

GA Magazine | Eretz Israel Museum | Haaretz.com

The staff at The Beaumont Enterprise collected its photos from the impact of Hurricane Ike into the book “In Ike’s Wake” with a portion of the profits to benefit relief efforts from the September 13, 2008, hurricane that caused heavy damage in southeast Texas.

Ike, the costliest storm to hit Texas, slammed coastal areas from Houston to Louisiana, sending storm surge through communities in southern Orange and Jefferson counties and felling trees and damaging homes throughout East Texas.

The first printing of the book is more than 11,000 copies. Customers who pre-ordered the book will also receive a companion DVD with hundreds of additional photos and video shot by The Enterprise’s staff.

In September, Elsea’s daughter Vicki was given a clipping announcing her grandfather’s new honor, but the family had never heard anything about it.

“I didn’t know that they had a photojournalism hall of fame,” Elsea said.

She called the Missouri Press Association, she said, and found out that they had tried to contact Godsey’s family months before but had only gotten in touch with a nephew.

[ Details ]

Citing worsening financial conditions, the E.W. Scripps Co. said it will weigh any offers through mid-January. If no buyer emerges, it will consider shutting down the newspaper.

Rocky Mountain News for sale

Mark Hancock transitioned from being a staff photojournalist for for The Dallas Morning News (1996 – 2004) and The Beaumont Enterprise (2005 – 2008) to freelancing in Dallas. His work is distributed by Zuma and his blog shows he continues to work the the Dallas Morning News shooting a variety of news and sports.

Type photojournalism into Google and Mark’s blog comes up just after the Wikipedia entry. Not bad for an old Texas boy. His subjects range from Texas religion, that is, the lastest in football action, to how-tos on photojournalism. An update to his original Nov. 22, 2005 entry is a simple guide to reading his blog. The “Get stringer gigs” reminds me of an old ratty printout I have of “The Stringer Bible” by Kurt Muchler, a former stringer in Columbus, Ohio.

His latest venture is the soft launch of a non-profit publishing project hoping to “recover the media’s institutional knowledge resulting from an unprecedented loss of jobs.” Promising to assist freelancers and working journalists, Mark is creating a social group of photographers, editors, artists, and business people to build a network that fulfills the needs of creator, distributor, and reader. Take the time and read through his descriptions and expectations at Pro Freelancers Wanted.

A frequent contributor to the Black Star Rising blog, Mark’s most recent piece is helpful for people just beginning freelance careers or hoping to expand from semi-pro to full time work.

He recently took on work as an associate editor of books at Squadron Signal Publications, a publisher of military oriented books especially prized by modelers. Perhaps some of this new knowledge and work will enhance the chances for success of his non-profit adventure.

You can see some of his work at NewsEagles.