Newspapers

Economic pressures have led many metropolitan newspapers to reallocate more resources to topics of local interest, leaving most national and international coverage largely to wire services. In Baltimore, a city less than an hour's drive from Congress and the White House, the shift in emphasis has in fact produced journalistic dividends for Sun readers. While many larger newspapers have sharply reduced or eliminated their Washington bureaus, The Sun has chosen to retain reporters in the capital to cover subjects and institutions of keen interest to Maryland - the National Security Agency, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Pentagon.

Residents of downtown Annapolis have long hated those newspaper racks and boxes of free publications, those perceived insidious eyesores that clutter their beautiful historic district.Like mushrooms, they pop up. Three, five, 22 in a row on the city's narrow sidewalks. Last summer, Alderman Louise Hammond, a Ward 1 Democrat who represents downtown, was so frustrated that she counted all the boxes within the city dock area.She counted 98. In an area just about the size of three city blocks.

Newspapers throughout the country sacrificed delicacy for historical completeness yesterday, deciding it was better to print the exact text of independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's report on President Clinton's extracurricular sex life -- graphic details and all -- than to protect readers' sensibilities."

PARIS -- The Starr report on President Clinton dominated news reports in Europe on Friday night and yesterday."The Clinton affair creates a climate of crisis in the world," the leading French daily Le Monde reported yesterday, linking the crisis in Russia, the collapse of Latin American stock markets and the presidential scandal.Chancellor Helmut Kohl of Germany, a close friend of Clinton's, repeated his earlier fear that the world situation was too complicated and dangerous for the presidency to be paralyzed over a sex scandal.

CHICAGO -- Hollinger International Inc., a newspaper conglomerate that owns the Chicago Sun-Times, said yesterday that it is selling 45 of its small U.S. papers to an Alabama company for approximately $475 million.The Chicago chain, which owns newspapers in the United States, Canada, Britain and Israel, also said it would buy the Effingham Daily News, a 13,300-circulation daily in Illinois. Terms of that purchase were not disclosed.Twenty-eight of the newspapers are dailies, most in Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama.

Stop the mouse presses!One of the hottest topics at this week's Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications conference in Baltimore was the fledgling online news business. Six years ago there were no newspapers on the World Wide Web -- indeed, there was hardly any Web at all. Today, more than half of U.S. newspapers publish an Internet edition, and studies show that more people are turning to the Web to read the news.Newspapers and other traditional media outlets, journalists and scholars say, are still struggling to grasp what it means to provide news in the Internet Age -- and to figure out how to make a buck doing it."

THE ONLY CERTAINTY for the next 160 years is change. We will still have news and people reporting the news. But 22nd-century news outlets may not be recognizable to us as newspapers, as newcasts or even as Internet services.Think back to the year The Sun was founded: Still ahead were the telegraph and its ability to transmit news instantly; photography and its ability to capture an event almost as the human eye, and the steam-powered press that fostered the rise of mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The definition emblazoned by the doorway informs visitors to the Newseum that news is "1. A report of recent events, especially unusual or notable ones."This report concerns such an event: The world's first interactive museum of news and the newest attraction in metropolitan Washington, opened Friday across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.Vice President Al Gore was on hand for opening day festivities and President Clinton telephoned his good wishes."We are here to celebrate the press," Gore said.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The definition emblazoned by the doorway informs visitors to the Newseum that news is "1. A report of recent events, especially unusual or notable ones."This report concerns such an event: The world's first interactive museum of news and the newest attraction in metropolitan Washington, opened Friday across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial.Vice President Al Gore was on hand for opening day festivities and President Clinton telephoned his good wishes."We are here to celebrate the press," Gore said.

HAVRE de GRACE -- When I go out Sunday to buy the copy of The Sun that is supposed to have these words in it, I won't be going to McLhinney's News Depot any more, because McLhinney's is closed. Havre de Grace's life is the poorer for that, and so's my own.Charles McLhinney's father started the business in 1923, and Charles grew up in it. It was both a store and a newspaper-delivery service. If you wanted a newspaper, whether it was the Racing Form or the New York Daily News, The Sun of Baltimore or The Record of Havre de Grace, around here you probably got it through McLhinney's.

- June Sawyers, Tribune Newspapers

We are in the process of changing the size of our newspapers in order to be more efficient. As we adjust our presses, the left and right margins will be slightly larger on some newspapers. We trust that you will find the new size more portable and easier to use. Thank you for reading The Baltimore Sun.

We are in the process of changing the size of our newspapers in order to be more efficient. As we adjust our presses, the left and right margins will be slightly larger on some newspapers. We trust that you will find the new size more portable and easier to use. Thank you for reading The Baltimore Sun.

Here's a funny question: Did you pay to read this? It's funny because it has two obvious and opposite answers. If you're at your kitchen table holding the paper, then, of course, you paid. On the other hand, if you're reading this on your home computer or office workstation, then, of course, you didn't pay. Everyone knows reading news online is free. It's so rigidly free, in fact, that most newspapers that have tried to charge for their content have found such efforts to be a bit like pulling the sword from the stone.

Dispute over Kashmir key to region's peace It is not enough for Pakistan to move against its militants and their supporters ("Pakistan moves against charity tied to attacks," Dec. 12). To prevent future attacks like Mumbai in India and bombings in Peshawar, Pakistan, these two neighbors must settle the Kashmir dispute. The two nations cannot possibly have normal relations without first resolving this 60-year-old, festering sore. Without the strong involvement of the United States leading the international community in helping to resolve that issue, very little will be accomplished.

Baltimore Sun parent Tribune Co. filed for voluntary bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 yesterday, in a bid to restructure crippling debt that the company said became unsustainable in a recession and the worst advertising climate in decades. The media giant, owner of The Sun and community newspapers that make up the Baltimore Sun Media Group, said it has sufficient cash to keep operating its group of newspapers and television stations, among them the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group announced yesterday an agreement to print The Washington Times newspaper, starting in September, in a move that helps The Sun offset some of its declines in advertising revenue. The Times, which produces 100,000 copies a day, plans to close its printing plant in Washington and give all of the work for 10 years to The Sun's Port Covington printing plant, known as Sun Park. It will be Sun Park's biggest commercial customer and boost production there by 25 percent, said Judy Berman, BSMG's senior vice president of marketing.

Tribune Co.'s top executives said yesterday that the company's newspapers, including The Sun, will be reduced in size and redesigned by the end of September as part of further cost cutting amid continued declines in advertising revenue. Randy Michaels, the Chicago company's chief operating officer, disclosed Tribune's plans in a conference call with the company's creditors. Among other things, he said the company intends to move its newspapers to a 50-50 mix of news content and advertising.

The Sun's daily circulation rose slightly during the six months that ended March 31, bucking a trend of continued falling circulation at most major metropolitan newspapers, according to industry numbers released yesterday. It was the first daily circulation gain in 41/2 years for The Sun. The newspaper's paid daily circulation for Monday through Friday averaged 232,360, up from 232,138, a 0.1 percent gain, The Audit Bureau of Circulations reported. That was in contrast to an industrywide decline of about 3.5 percent, according to an analysis of the ABC's numbers by trade journal Editor & Publisher.

Blogs are easy to conceive, difficult to nurture. Or to paraphrase a popular TV commercial from years ago: It's 10 a.m. Do you know where your blog is? Just ask Alan Jacobson. A newspaper design consultant from Norfolk, Va., Jacobson launched a blog last year to critique the design of the front pages of American newspapers. "BFD," he called the blog - for "best front design." Like many blogs, it wouldn't interest a mass audience, but was quite entertaining to people who make their living designing newspapers.