Fort Wayne Observed

Best Music Today: North Side Jazz Festival

The best live music venue today in Fort Wayne is North Side High School. It is the site of the annual North Side Jazz Festival. There are many high school musicans from around the area playing this afternoon. Tonight's show with guest artist Scott Cowan starts at 5:30 PM.=

The Blue Blog: Media Will "find a new natural order"

Jim Blue, the incoming anchor and news director of WFFT FOX 55, has set up a new weblog specific to his new post in Fort Wayne.   He thanked the Toledo Free Press in his first and, so far, only post.  In a recent Toledo Free Press story by Barrett Andrews, Mr. Blue spoke of the decline of traditional media and his goal for the new WFFT news operation :

“It’s going to be a different world. Print, broadcasting and the Web — we’ll all find a new natural order,” Blue said, explaining how newspapers are now posting video online, and television reporters are learning how to write in print format for Web publishing.

Blue was recently hired as the news director and primary anchor of WFFT FOX Fort Wayne in Fort Wayne, Ind.

“Our goal will be to meld the Web and on-air coverage into a unique source for local information,” he said.

Expectations of the media industry getting out of the current rut are unrealistic, he said.

“I think to expect to get out of it, or to return somehow to what was once the way it once was — that’s just not going to happen.”

From the Jim Blue Blog:

My thanks to the many folks who have offered their congratulations. It is truly an honor to be chosen to lead the first news startup in the country in months. I can’t even remember the last time a station anywhere in the US has put on a brand new news product.

I also must thank Michael Miller, the Editor in Chief at the Toledo Free Press for allowing me to write my column during the last several months. Michael is an amazing journalist who is re-defining print media in Toledo.

The story of my hiring has apparently broken in Fort Wayne. A fellow blogger took note of my experience shooting the first broadcast video of the wreck of the steamship Gen. Anthony Wayne in Lake Erie. The General Wayne connection with Fort Wayne was apparently too good to pass up.

Is Having a Two-paper Town Part of the Fort Wayne "Psyche"?

This was part of today's Wall Street Journal story on the death of the Rocky Mountain News:

Founded in 1859, the Rocky is the more conservative of the two Denver newspapers, and the rivalry between the two has become part of the fabric of the community. Some local politicians concluded that an endorsement by one newspaper would inevitably be canceled out by fierce criticism from the other.

When the newspapers did agree, "Oooh. That was big stuff," said John Brackney, president of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce. "Having a two-paper town has been part of the psyche of Denver for generations," he added.

Is having two daily newspapers something that has been part of Fort Wayne's "psyche" for generations? Is it part of this generation of Fort Wayne residents? Your comments are invited and welcomed.

Newspaper "JOAs a Dying Breed"

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer has just published an article about the demise of newspaper "joint operating agreements."   The article by Cathering Tsai mentions that the Fort Wayne JOA under which the News-Sentinel and the Journal-Gazette operate their business functions is one of just a handful that are left.

The subhead of the article in the Seattle P-I:

The joint operating agreements that were meant to save dying publications in two-newspaper cities like Denver are themselves dying off.

Ms. Tsai writes:

JOAs were supposed to give struggling newspapers a shot at survival by letting them share business operations and costs with their in-town rivals while keeping separate, competing newsrooms. There have been more than two dozen JOAs.

But in recent years, newsroom and newsprint costs have risen, and the Internet has siphoned advertising dollars and readers, making JOAs increasingly unprofitable.

[ ... ]

By Jan. 1 of this year, the Denver JOA was among just nine remaining - but barely.  [ ... ]

JOAs in Detroit, Seattle and Tucson, Ariz., are limping too: Hearst Corp. says it may close the Seattle Post-Intelligencer if it can't find a buyer, and newspapers in Detroit are cutting deliveries to three days a week to slash costs for the agency that handles their business operations.

Gannett Co. will close the Tucson Citizen if it does not find a buyer for certain assets owned by the paper by March 21.

Other JOAs are in Charleston, W.Va.; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Las Vegas; Salt Lake City and York, Pa.

"Having two separately owned and operated newspapers, even under a JOA, just doesn't make economic sense anymore," said Michigan State University journalism and communication professor Stephen Lacy.

Newspapers in Albuquerque, N.M., formed the first JOA in 1933. By 1970, newspapers in other cities like San Francisco and Miami had deals to share certain business operations.But the courts weren't convinced they were legal.

The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, signed into law by President Richard Nixon despite concerns from the Justice Department, gave the deals a break from antitrust regulations and cleared the way for more.

The act assumed that the costs of putting out a newspaper every day were so high that two newspapers wouldn't be able to survive in the same town, Lacy said. But the real issue, he said, has been ad sales.

[ ... ]

"The idea over time didn't work out as hoped and planned," said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst with The Poynter Institute, a journalism think tank in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"In their heyday, it seemed like they were providing quite a few cities with two papers, but over time some of the flaws became pretty apparent, particularly now with economic situations being what they are," Edmonds said. "It's relatively difficult to run a single paper successfully in a metro market."

Fort Wayne Observed on Publr

Fort Wayne Observed just told you about Publr.com, the Fort Wayne based micro-blogging platform.

FWOb has given it a test drive. Now you can see what it looks like at http://fortwayneobserved.publr.com/. Right now, we're not yet sure what use FWOb may make of this FWOb related website. It may be for the purpose you see here - publishing photographs that haven't otherwise been published on the main site.

You can also follow Fort Wayne Observed on Twitter.com where tweets keep you up-to-date when new content has been posted. That address is http://twitter.com/FtWayneObserved.

Tumblr? Twitter? Heck, Publr is a New Micro-Blogging Platform Based Right Here in Fort Wayne

There are weblogs. Then there are social network sites like Facebook and MySpace. Then there are sites like Flickr and Vimeo which combine photos and video with elements of social networking.

The hot new thing has been "micro-blogging" platforms like Twitter and Tumblr.

Publr is a micro-blogging platform developed and based right here in Fort Wayne.

Tommy Cutter of Fort Wayne has just relaunched a new version. He is the developer of Publr while also maintaining another job with a major Fort Wayne advertising and graphics firm.

Rocky Mountain News to Publish Its Last Paper on Friday

The Rocky Mountain News has announced it is turning off the presses after its Friday run.

There is a particular appreciation for the Rocky Mountain News. It was the first publication to pick up and republish the very first post I made on Fort Wayne Observed. 

The Rocky Mountain News reported this afternoon:

Rich Boehne, chief executive officer of Scripps, broke the news to the Rocky staff at noon today, ending nearly three months of speculation over the paper's future. He called the paper a victim of a terrible economy and an upheaval in the newspaper industry.

"Denver can't support two newspapers anymore," Boehne told staffers, some of whom cried at the news.

On Dec. 4, Boehne announced that Scripps was looking for a buyer for the Rocky and its 50 percent interest in the Denver Newspaper Agency, the company that handles business matters for the papers, because it couldn't continue to sustain its financial losses in Denver. Scripps said the Rocky lost $16 million in 2008.

[ ... ]

The Rocky has been in a joint operating agreement with The Denver Post since 2001. The arrangement approved by the U.S. Justice Department allowed the papers to share all business services, from advertising to printing, in order to preserve two editorial voices in the community.

Since then, Scripps said, it has been working with Post owner MediaNews Group to come up with a plan to allow it to exit Colorado. It also shares 50-50 ownership with MediaNews of Boulder's Daily Camera and a handful of other smaller papers in the state.

[ ... [

Today's announcement comes as metropolitan newspapers and major newspaper companies find themselves reeling, with plummeting advertising revenues and dramatically diminished share prices. Just this week, Hearst, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, announced that unless it was able to make immediate and steep expense cuts it would put the paper up for sale and possibly close it. Two other papers in JOAs, one in Seattle and the other in Tucson, are facing closure in coming weeks

Fort Wayne is in rather rarefied company these days as a city which still has two daily newspapers. Count yourself lucky to have two print editorial voices in the Summit City.

RELATED:  Denver News Agency just reached agreement yesterday with unions on a large wage and benefits giveback.

Denver Post coverage of the Rocky Mountain News announcement.

St Francis Out 73 - 68

St Francis lost to Spring Arbor and is out of the NAIA's MCC tournament. The game was marked by what many St Francis fans regarded as controversial officiating.=

MCC Tournament Game

St Francis trails Spring Arbor 32 - 37 at the end of the first period.=

Light Lease Trust Fund Board Meets Today; Hoping for More Meat

There is a requirement that the City of Fort Wayne's Community Trust Fund Board (aka Light Lease Fund) have an annual meeting in February.  Last year, the date of the annual meeting got pushed back to June.

One of the purposes of the meeting is to review the financial condition of the fund.  The information presented at last year's review by the city's investment managers consisted of two pages - actually one page printed double-side.

Other financial reports I receive from private trust fund managers go into great detail in regards to the performance of the investments.  The public standard should be the same.

Attached please find the notice of the meeting of this public body: