The Palladium-Item announced today that it will be moving its printing operations to Indianapolis, eliminating 60 positions from its local staff.  According to the article, the decision comes after an evaluation of the capital investment that would be required to maintain the local press equipment, and other factors resulting from the "difficult economic environment."

The local press not only prints the Palladium-Item itself, but also serves as a printing center for USA Today, The Earlham Word, and several other publications.  While the article notes that delivery times for the Pal-Item are not expected to change, it doesn't discuss the future of these other publications.

The move comes as one in a series of changes scaling back the paper's operations, including staff cuts and an increased focus on online offerings that aren't tied to local offices.  While nothing is certain, those watching the newspaper industry in general and Gannett's practices in particular know that this trend could eventually spell the end of the Palladium-Item's publication altogether.

An article on the Palladium-Item website today announced the first live chat hosted by the paper's online presence, scheduled for 9 PM this Thursday to coincide with the Vice Presidential debate.  The chat service is powered by the site CoverItLive.com, used by a number of other prominent media outlets for chat services, including Newsweek Magazine.

The chat offered by the paper appears to be tied to event-specific, pre-determined time periods instead of available on an ongoing basis.  We've covered the availability of the always-available and free Live-Richmond.com chat room here, including in episodes 14 and 24.

If you try out this new offering on Thursday night, let us know what you think by posting a comment below!

The Gannett Corporation has announced that it will be cutting about 1,000 positions at its newspaper properties across the U.S. The Palladium-Item noted today that four of those positions will be lost here in Richmond. It's not clear if the positions being eliminated are related to news-gathering and reporting, circulation, or other parts of the paper's operations. It's also not clear if the cuts will result in existing staff losing their jobs, or if they will come in the form of position elimination after resignations/retirements.

The cuts will be happening on a fairly short timeline after the announcement, with notification to employees happening by today and the reductions in place by August 31st. According to a Reuters story, publishers across the country continue to cite decreasing revenues with no end in sight, as readers increasingly turn to the Internet for their news and information.

Update on 9/10: The Pal-Item.com website today carries a story noting that five positions have been eliminated instead of the originally reported four.

Earlier this week, WMUB, the NPR station located at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio and that serves the Richmond listening area, announced some significant changes to its programming.  The changes include:

• All jazz programming including Mama Jazz will move to their HD2 channel, and will be streamed from their web site
• Each day’s Diane Rehm Show will be repeated at 8pm
• Each day’s Talk of the Nation will be repeated at midnight
• The BBC World Service will be heard at 10pm-midnight and 2-5am on weekday mornings
• The BBC World Service will also air from 8pm to 8am weekends
• Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me will repeat Sunday at 1pm, after Car Talk. Tavis Smiley moves to Sunday 2-4pm

The most noticeable impact for many will the be replacement of the sounds of jazz on weekday evenings with all news/talk content.  Given that the Mama Jazz show is a highly visible part of the station's offerings and that HD radio is still not widely adopted, it may change the station's listener profile significantly.

The changes are certainly generating lots of feedback on the station's weblog, and you add your own comments by e-mailing WMUB.

Palladium-Item Online Editor Jason Truitt has announced that as of today, the paper will be holding the comments posted in its online discussion forums to the same standard it uses for letters published in its print edition, at least when it comes to personal attacks:

"We've been having discussions at the P-I for a little while now about what changes we might want to make to the way we run these forums. We've heard the feedback from some of you as well as other people in the community about the level of conversation in the forums, and quite frankly, our own concerns have been growing...

Content for letters to the editor is held to a much higher standard in order to be published than forum posts have been. As of today, that will no longer be the case. From now on, whenever we have a question about whether a comment should be allowed to stand, the question we'll ask is, "Would we allow this to be printed in a letter to the editor?" If the answer is "no," the comment will be deleted from these forums. If the answer is "yes," the comment stays."

You can read Jason's full announcement and the discussion/reaction that follows. We interviewed Jason about this issue and others facing the paper in RNR Episode #22.

As a part of our end of year episode coming up in December, we're going to do a segment that looks back at the year's news coverage, and we need your help!

The topic is the city's Top 10 Most Under-reported or Under-covered News Stories in 2007.

(Read the rest of this entry...)

In Sunday's paper, the Palladium-Item endorsed Sally Hutton as its candidate of choice for Mayor, saying that candidate Rick Thalls had "demonstrated an insufficient grasp of the issues most germane to Richmond's future." Later that same day, Rick Thalls` campaign apparently withdrew from the blogging experiment on the paper's website (discussed in our most recent episode), removing all of his postings from the blog without any explanation. When contacted about the withdrawal, "Thalls said he moved his posts to his Web site because of the conduct of one of our forums users," according to Online editor Jason Truitt. As yet, we have not been able to confirm that the text available on the Thalls campaign website is an unaltered version of what appeared on the Pal-Item site; such verification may be difficult without an archive for comparison.

(Read the rest of this entry...)

Last week, regional NPR affiliate WMUB in Oxford, Ohio announced that the Miami University committee appointed by President David Hodge to make recommendations on WMUB's future has completed its report.  Of the four options laid out in the report, the push seems to be toward "developing the regional connections with existing noncommercial radio stations and adding significant connections with appropriate Miami University academic programs."  The subtext may be additional consolidation and merging of public radio resources in the area.

Also, Palladium-Item online editor Jason Truitt announced that several new features have been added to their online presence, allowing readers to submit stories and photos in a new way, subscribe to online news focused on a particular geographical area in town, and view state and national databases of various statistics.

Palladium-Item Viewpoints Editor Dale McConnaughay announced today that the Pal-Item is ending its "open-invitation format" for the public to attend its editorial board meetings. McConnaughay cites the difficulty in keeping the group on track within an allotted time period when the meetings have to accommodate sometimes lengthy and unplanned discussions with those who happen to attend in a given week.

As a part of the announcement, McConnaughay clarifies that anyone who wishes to attend can still contact him to schedule a visit, and the group's agenda will still be sent out in advance as it has been. The board is also expanding the number of community members on the board to eight. Read McConnaughay's full announcement.

A follow-up on a previous story covered by the RNR: in March we interviewed WCTV station director John Dalton and talked with him about the problems with the station's live broadcasts of events around town - poor quality signal and eventually no signal at all. Because WCTV depends on infrastructure managed by Insight Communications to air these live broadcasts, the station has been optimistic in working with the company to see that the issues are addressed. But in a message to WCTV viewers today, Dalton indicated that Insight has been dragging their feet in making the needed repairs, and as a result, the station won't be able to broadcast Richmond High School, Indiana University East, Earlham College and Ivy Tech graduations ceremonies.

"On March 1, we were told by Insight techs that the live system was no longer usable because of changes in Insight’s network. In layperson’s terms, the growth of Insight’s telephony service has more or less crowded out our capacity for live broadcasts...On April 16 we were able to return to live broadcasts from the City and County Buildings courtesy of a new fiber run by Insight. However, we have yet to learn from Insight their intentions for repairing the rest of the system. I was told by Insight that they would have a timeline in place for me to present at the April 2 City Council meeting, but that timeline has yet to appear...As I have no further information from Insight, I feel as if I have no choice but to announce that these live broadcasts will not go forward this year."