Washington Post Ranks McCaskey Among State’s “Most Challenging” Schools

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Lancaster County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Student test scores are often used to evaluate schools, but The Washington Post thinks test participation is also worth measuring.

The national newspaper last month published its list, “America’s Most Challenging High Schools,” which scores schools based on the number of students who attempt college-level exams.

McCaskey High School in the School District of Lancaster ranked 20th on the listing of the most rigorous high schools in Pennsylvania.

No other Lancaster County schools made the list. The nearest school that did was Lower Dauphin High School in Hummelstown.

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/news/local/washington-post-ranks-mccaskey-among-state-s-most-challenging-schools/article_098fc76a-d949-11e3-9a57-0017a43b2370.html

Rival Owners Of Philly Newspapers Pledge $77M Bids

The Philadelphia Inquirer-Daily News Building in Philadelphia, PA. Taken from North Broad and Callowhill Streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Rival owners fighting for control of Philadelphia’s two largest newspapers have each pledged $77 million to take control of the company.

The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News are being sold as investors who bought them in 2012 argue over newsroom management and corporate strategy.

Wealthy businessmen George Norcross and Lewis Katz lead the rival factions, and testified at a hearing underway in Delaware this week to determine who can bid at the planned auction.

“There are people interested in this newspaper,” Katz testified Tuesday. “Whether or not they will come forward to bid is, in my mind, still problematic.”

Read more: http://lancasteronline.com/news/pennsylvania/rival-owners-of-philly-newspapers-pledge-m-bids/article_7565e20e-ce5a-5bfa-9d30-9b3473304f9a.html

NJ’s Largest Paper, Star-Ledger, Cuts 40 News Jobs

The Star-Ledger (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) – New Jersey’s largest newspaper is cutting about 170 jobs, including 25 percent of its newsroom positions, as it moves to consolidate operations and cut costs.

The Star-Ledger reported Thursday on NJ.com that the cuts will mean the loss of 40 of the 156 newsroom staffers at the paper.

Other journalists at the newspaper are being offered jobs at NJ Advance Media, a new company being created by parent company Advance Publications to provide content, advertising and marketing services to all of its papers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20140403_ap_bcb3f7ff38f04519b9d0130680554985.html#yfmrwV6huUd6q3Sx.99

Coatesville Schools Don’t Provide Requested Information

Map of Pennsylvania highlighting Chester County (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The clock expired Thursday for the Coatesville Area School District to respond to three Right-to-Know requests submitted last month by the Daily Local News, a sister paper of The Times Herald.

The newspaper made the requests in response to the abrupt departures of former Superintendent Richard Como and former Director of Athletics and Activities Jim Donato.

Those requests, because the district hadn’t replied within 30 days of when it first said it needed more time to check on the legality of releasing the information, were deemed denied Thursday.

On Sept. 10, school board solicitor and attorney James Ellison advised the Daily Local the district needed an additional 30 calendar days beyond the usual five business days public entities have to respond to the newspaper’s Right to Know request.

Read more: http://www.timesherald.com/social-affairs/20131014/coatesville-schools-dont-provide-requested-information

Times Leader Readership Sees Largest Annual Increase In State

The Times Leader has the second highest percentage growth rate in the nation — and highest in the state — for its total online and print audience, according to figures tracked by a newspaper auditing group.

The Times Leader ranked second among U.S. newspapers of any size participating in the most recently released report issued by the Alliance for Audited Media.  The company used total online and print reader numbers available at the end of March to create its rankings of the top 25 papers.

The Times Leader’s audience of 219,656 was up 19.4 percent from the year prior figure of 184,037.

Read more: http://www.timesleader.com/news/local-news/747370/Times-Leader-readership-sees-largest-annual-increase-in-state

Reading Eagle Named Top Newspaper In State For Its Size

The Reading Eagle was named the top newspaper of its size in the state, and the newsroom won 20 awards in the Pennsylvania News Media Association’s annual Keystone Press Awards for work published in 2012.

The Eagle was the sweepstakes winner in Division 2, which is for daily newspapers with circulation between 40,000 and 74,999. Each newspaper is awarded sweepstakes points based on the number of awards its staffers won in the contest.

The awards will be presented during a program May 18 in Harrisburg.

Ten of the Eagle’s awards were for first place. Winners were reporters Dave Mekeel, Jamie Klein and Bruce Posten; sportswriter Mike Drago, Assistant Photo Editor Ben Hasty; graphic designers Tad Ronnie and Craig Schaffer, Assistant Metro Editor Bill Reber and the staff of Voices, which is edited by Stacie Jones.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=463196

Nearly 5,000 Pennsylvania State Workers Paid $100,000-Plus

HARRISBURG – Nearly 5,000 Pennsylvania state employees earned at least $100,000 last year, and more than one-third worked for one of the 14 state-owned universities or the system that oversees them, a newspaper reported Monday.

The number of employees with six-figure earnings has more than quadrupled since 2002, when 1,176 people fell into that category, The Patriot-News said in stories posted on its website.

“What you see is pretty much how recession-proof that (state government) sector may be,” said Lonnie Golden, a professor of economics and labor studies at Penn State University‘s Abington campus.

In the newspaper’s analysis of data from the state-government transparency website PennWATCH and the state courts, payouts for severance and unused leave time as well as job-related, non-salary income were counted as part of employees’ earnings.

Read more:  http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=458306

Harrisburg Newspaper To Publish 3 Days A Week

Editor’s note:  According to Wikipedia, in 2011 The Patriot-News averaged over 492,000 readers per week between their print edition and Pennlive.com.  The newspaper was ranked in the top 100 in daily/Sunday circulation (United States) in 2005.

HARRISBURG, PA — The daily newspaper in Pennsylvania’s capital city is switching to a three-days-a-week publication schedule in January, in what it calls an adaptation to the changing world.

John Kirkpatrick, publisher of The Patriot-News of Harrisburg, announced the changes Tuesday in an email to friends of the newspaper.

The email didn’t say which days the paper will be published. It says the change will be accompanied by an expansion of the paper’s around-the-clock news coverage online.

“We are not making this move lightly,” said Kirkpatrick. “We understand how important the daily paper is to a large number of people in our region. However, this is a major step to make sure we are leading, not trailing, in the world of innovation and solutions.”

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-patriot-news-20120828,0,7285933.story

Easton Newspaper’s Owner Losing Faith In Print?

English: The Express-Times building in Easton, Pennsylvania. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The New Orleans Times-Picayune‘s planned move to a three-day-a-week newspaper could signal that its sister papers in the Lehigh Valley and region — the Easton Express-Times, Harrisburg Patriot-News and Newark Star-Ledger — will eventually do the same, industry analysts say.

Advance Publications, which owns the Times-Picayune, has not announced plans to scale back at its three publications in this region, but one expert said conversations about taking that step already are happening at a time when newspapers across the country continue to grapple with declining advertising revenue and print sales.

“I think it will happen,” said former Knight Ridder executive Ken Doctor, who writes the Newsonomics blog. “The question is time. I know there are discussions within [Advance Publications] about how quickly to proceed with its other newspapers. I don’t know if a timeline is set, but there have been discussions on how and when to do this.”

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-advance-publications-cuts-20120525,0,338158.story

New Orleans Newspaper Cuts Print Edition To Three Days A Week

A true-color satellite image of New Orleans taken on NASA’s Landsat 7 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

NEW ORLEANS, La.  (Reuters) – The 175-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper will reduce the number of days it publishes a print edition to three a week, making the Louisiana city the largest in the United States without a daily newspaper.

Advance Publications, which owns the Times-Picayune, said on Thursday it made the change because of the upheaval in the newspaper industry and the necessity to focus on its digital publications.

The company said three of its newspapers in Alabama – the Huntsville Times, Mobile Press-Register and Birmingham News – would also cut back their print editions to three days a week.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/sns-rt-us-media-neworleans-newspaperbre84o03e-20120524,0,1798086.story

Morning Call’s Sunday Reach Expands

Editor’s note:  Some interesting facts about print media – local and national.

Sunday circulation of The Morning Call, the Lehigh Valley‘s largest news organization, is growing.

Average Sunday circulation for the six-month period ending March 31 was 125,549, up 3 percent compared to the same period a year earlier, according to figures released Tuesday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations, a media industry group. Sunday is the most important day for newspapers since it brings in the bulk of advertising revenue.

Weekday circulation was down 5 percent, to 100,196. The Morning Call attributed the decline to “the impact of the single issue price increase to $1.50” and “repositioning … to grow Sunday and other key advertising days of the week.”

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-newspaper-circulation-20120502,0,7656401.story

Newspaper Barons Resurface

The Philadelphia Inquirer-Daily News Building in Philadelphia, PA. Taken from North Broad and Callowhill Streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Editor’s note: If you have followed the sale of the Philadelphia newspapers, this article gives some perspective on what that might mean for Philadelphia from an out-of-town perspective.

Is there anything more forlorn than the American metropolitan newspaper? First readers began deserting in droves, then the advertisers followed. Family owners headed for the exits and then hedge funds and other financial players scooped up newspapers thinking they were buying at the bottom of the market. Greater fools came and went, each saying they could cut their way to former glory and renewed profitability. They got a haircut instead.

Many smaller community newspapers remain stable and newspapers with a large national footprint have generally done better. But quite a few of the midsize regional and metropolitan dailies that form the core of the industry have gone off a cliff: over all, the newspaper industry is half as big as it was seven years ago.

So if most newspapers are an uneconomical proposition incapable of sustaining profits, let alone pay off the debt so many buyers have larded on them, who is left to own them?

Rich guys.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/business/media/the-return-of-the-newspaper-barons.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&src=dayp

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Local Investors Buy Philly Newspapers For $55 Million

The Philadelphia Inquirer-Daily News Building in Philadelphia, PA. Taken from North Broad and Callowhill Streets. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

PHILADELPHIA, PA —  A group of powerful local business leaders announced Monday that they have purchased Philadelphia‘s two largest newspapers from hedge funds for approximately $55 million, a fraction of what investors paid for them in 2006.

It is the fifth time in six years the newspapers are being sold.

The buyers, who include influential New Jersey Democrat George Norcross III, former New Jersey Nets owner Lewis Katz and cable TV mogul H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, said they plan to keep the newspapers’ tradition of strong journalism alive in the digital age.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-philadelphia-newspapers-sold-20120402,0,5831712.story

Wilkes-Barre Times Leader Newspaper Sold

Impressions Media, owner of The Times Leader newspaper in Wilkes-Barre, has been acquired by a Philadelphia private equity firm, The Times Leader announced on its website.

Read more: http://www.mcall.com/business/mc-times-leader-sold-20120306,0,6696191.story

 

Fast Eddie Part Of Group Looking To Buy Philadelphia Inquirer

Image via Wikipedia

Looks like Fast Eddie’s back in the saddle again!

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Former Gov. Ed Rendell and Philadelphia Flyers owner Ed Snider are leading a “civic-minded” effort to buy Philadelphia’s two largest newspapers, Rendell said Friday.

The six-person group submitted a non-binding “letter of interest” Thursday in Philadelphia Media Network, which operates The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News.

News reports surfaced this week that two hedge funds with major stakes in the company want to sell. The firms, Alden Global Capital and Angelo Gordon, had led the creditors’ $139 million takeover of the company at a September 2010 bankruptcy auction.

Rendell could not confirm their intentions, but said a third party has been reaching out to potential investors in recent weeks. The media company would be bought outright, he said.

Read more: http://www.dailylocal.com/articles/2012/02/04/news/doc4f2d48b30ba13550941899.txt

What Exactly Is The Mercury’s Agenda These Days??

It is not just me noticing this stuff!  Please check out the latest article from SavePottstown! regarding the Mercury:

http://savepottstown.com/2010/07/the-mercury-promotes-hatred-and-violence/

Please click on these posts of mine regarding the same issue from April:

https://roysrants.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/sound-off-2/

https://roysrants.wordpress.com/2010/04/19/sound-off/

Showdown At The OK Corral – Pottstown Mercury vs. Pottstown Herald

Interesting article regarding our online newspaper the Pottstown Herald versus local print publication The Mercury.  Sparked by our recent announcement to hold a Pottstown mayoral debate and a recent SEO battle, this blogger gives his take on the news media slug-fest here in Pottstown.

http://sanatoga.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/mercury-competitor-schedules-mayoral-debate/