Gannett

J. DONALD BRANDT, 78 Delaware journalist J. Donald Brandt, a veteran Delaware journalist and former editor of The News Journal of Wilmington, died Thursday in the West Indies after being hospitalized on Montserrat with a collapsed lung, said his daughter, Robin L. Brandt. In 1961, Mr. Brandt joined The Morning News, which later merged with The Evening Journal into The News Journal, as a copy editor. He went on to serve as garden columnist, assistant city editor, editorial writer, editorial editor, public editor and managing editor.

Ann Devroy, 49, who covered the White House for the Washington Post, died of uterine cancer yesterday at her home in Northwest Washington.Born and raised in Green Bay, Wis., she worked for a Gannett newspaper in Bridgewater, N.J., before she was transferred to Gannett's Washington bureau in 1977.She covered the New Jersey and Vermont congressional delegations, the Supreme Court and the Carter and Reagan administrations before she joined the Post as political editor in 1985. She began covering the White House at the beginning of the Bush administration in 1989.

Phelps' mother signs deal with clothier Women's retailer Chico's said yesterday that it has signed an endorsement deal with Debbie Phelps, the mother of gold medalist Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps. The Florida-based retailer approached Phelps after seeing her wearing their clothes while watching her son swim during the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Phelps bought her entire Beijing outfit from a Chico's in Towson. Chico's did not disclose financial details of the deal. Baltimore to condemn 89 lots in Fairfield The city of Baltimore moved yesterday to condemn and take possession of 89 lots in Fairfield, a spit of land in Curtis Bay near the Harbor Tunnel.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. pulled the plug yesterday on a plan to sell three Midwestern television stations for $81 million. Cockeysville-based Sinclair acquired the three stations -- WICS-TV of Springfield, Ill.; WICD-TV of Champaign, Ill.; and KGAN-TV of Cedar Rapids, Iowa -- during the summer as part of a $310 million transaction with Guy Gannett Communications. In July, Sinclair entered into an agreement to sell the assets of the three stations to Sunrise Television Corp. of St. Petersburg, Fla. The sale was conditioned on the receipt of Justice Department approvals necessary for Sunrise to acquire the three stations by today.

SANTA MONICA, Calif. -- Newspapers, despite all the commentary and seeming evidence to the contrary, are good buys. They are the biggest purveyors and producers of content, and their profit margins are big. Yes, you read right: It's this last piece of information that is often lost in their business-model critiques. Newspapers have profit margins that average between 20 percent and 30 percent. A report by the Newspaper Association of America points out that those numbers are "a bit less than Microsoft and Dell but higher even than pharmaceuticals."

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. continued its slim-down yesterday, selling three Midwestern television stations to Sunrise Television Corp. for $81 million in cash.Baltimore-based Sinclair is trying to get rid of some of the radio and TV stations that it picked up during a recent acquisition binge that turned the company into an industry heavyweight but also saddled it with some holdings that it couldn't afford to keep.The stations it is selling to Sunrise -- KGAN-TV of Cedar Rapids, Iowa; WICS-TV of Springfield, Ill.; and WICD-TV of Champaign, Ill. -- were obtained in one of those purchases, a $310 million multi-station deal with Guy Gannett Communications.

Former Baltimore County Executive Theodore Venetoulis has purchased the Bowie Register and Crofton Register, adding the sister publications to a growing network of small, troubled weeklies and biweeklies heowns in the Washington area.Venetoulis began reorganizing the papers "away from the breaking news format" on Friday, laying off the papers' entire news staff and leaving only the sports editor, the ad director and the marketing director to restart operations.He said the free weekly papers, with a circulation of approximately 25,000, will become bimonthly Feb. 7."

Profits are flowing at newspaper companies like a river of black ink. Why, then, are investors treating these stocks like they are worthless fish wrap? Shares of the New York Times Co. are down 16.2 percent in the first seven months of the year; Gannett Co. has slipped 33.9 percent; Dow Jones & Co. is down 3 percent; and Tribune Co. is off 41 percent. "This is sort of a riddle," says Howard Ward, portfolio manager of the Rye, N.Y.-based Gabelli Growth Fund. "The news has been actually pretty good for newspaper stocks this year.

Most major daily newspapers continued to lose circulation in the six-month period ending March 31, though readership of some papers is increasing because of their growing online audiences, according to industry reports released yesterday. Average daily circulation at 770 of the nation's newspapers fell 2.6 percent for the six-month period ending March 31, about the same percentage as for the last reporting period in November, according to a report released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations and analyzed by the Newspaper Association of America.

Louisville impressed the Bowl Championship Series computers with last week's 44-34 victory over West Virginia. But the pollsters? Not so much. Louisville came in one spot behind third-ranked Texas in the latest USA Today coaches poll. And the Harris poll gave the unbeaten Cardinals just a six-point edge over the 9-1 Longhorns. But Louisville climbed from ninth to third in the BCS computers, vaulting to a solid No. 3 in the latest BCS standings. That means, in theory, that Louisville is poised to play the winner of the Michigan-Ohio State game for the national title.