Media future

The New York Times weighs in today on the fear and loathing among some in Southern California over the possibility that the libertarian Koch brothers might buy the Tribune company's newspapers, gaining control of the Los Angeles Times. "No formal bids have been submitted," the story notes.

The Riverside Press-Enterprise is the latest California newspaper to decide that it no longer needs the cost and hassle of its own building. Riverside County has agreed to buy it for about $30 million.

The merger last fall of Los Angeles public television station KCET with Link Media became more real on Friday. CEO Al Jerome, who took KCET out of PBS a few years ago, appears to remain.

KCET says that while it doesn't look good for a sixth season of "SoCal Connected," it still might happen. "SoCal Connected depends on public funding and we don't know at this time what that funding will be."

The jury is very much out on whether all this new investment at the Register is sustainable. But for now, the happy times continue. Owner Aaron Kushner will be on 'SoCal Connected' on Friday.

Derek Thompson, the business editor at The Atlantic, gleaned this from today's Pew report on the State of the News Media. In 2012, newspapers lost $16 in print ads for every $1 earned in digital ads. And it's getting worse not better.

Aaron Kushner, the hands-on owner of the Orange County Register, is still embroiled in conversation over his comment that the old quip about a newspaper's role — to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable — is out of step with his vision of the paper. The latest exchange is with Marc Cooper, the longtime alt-weekly and The Nation rabble-rouser who has been a journalism prof for several years at USC Annenberg.

Last night's Zócalo Public Square panel took up the question of what celebrity-driven news and websites like TMZ are doing to news reporting. And oddly enough there was a top producer from TMZ on the panel.

How's this for strange: Michael Kurcfeld was checking out an exhibition on imaginary languages in the Pompidou Museum in Paris recently when he came across a story he wrote in 1979 for the long-dead Los Angeles mag Wet: The Magazine of Gourmet Bathing.

The Online Journalism Review fell off my radar, and I suspect that of other news types, a few years ago. Now USC Annenberg has given it a new look and a new view of its role.

The other shoe fell today in the evolution of Hollywood trade Variety under new owner Jay Penske. One of the new co-editors is Claudia Eller, a 20-year veteran of movie coverage at the LA Times. Nikki Finke says Penske lied to her.

The LA Times has been warning readers for more than a week that the daily primetime television schedule will disappear from the Calendar section next Tuesday. Now comes a memo explaining significant cuts in the space devoted to sports.

Longtime Orange County Register editor Chris Smith tries to make sense of the Aaron Kushner phenomenon that is making over the OC newspaper and giving hope to unemployed journalists across the LA area. Smith writes in the new issue of Orange Coast magazine.

Regrettable news from Donna Myrow, who founded L.A. Youth as a newspaper written by and for Los Angeles teenagers 25 years ago. It has been a struggle to keep the paper going in recent years. A desperate fundraising pitch last year bought some more time. But a note in the upcoming February issue will announce that L.A. Youth is closing down. Here is Myrow's note in the final issue.

Aaron Swartz, who as a teenager helped create RSS, then went on to become a folk hero for Internet users who believe information should be free online, was found hanged in his New York City apartment. He had faced a federal trial on charges of wire fraud and computer fraud in connection with the downloading of millions of documents from an MIT database.

Al Jazeera on Wednesday completed a deal to take over Al Gore's seven-year-old Current TV, which is based in San Francisco. A new channel, Al Jazeera America, will be based in New York, the NYT says. "Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms."

The New York Times package reconstructing the stories around an avalanche in the Cascades has been called by some the best designed big web story ever. That encompasses a lot of great work, with much competition, but let's agree it's in the conversation and may be the best thing the NYT has ever done on the web.

In a post rife with punnery, celebrity gossip site TMZ says that contrary to a report that originated in the San Francisco Chronicle, it has no interest in using airborne, unmanned drones to gather news.

Federal regulators gave the go-ahead for Tribune Corp. to continue operating TV stations and newspapers in five markets where it holds both, removing a major obstacle to the Chicago company...

The Los Angeles Times went to the red ink on Sunday's front page for the opening story in a series on prescription drug overdose deaths.

Murdoch isn't alone: Austin Beutner, the Register's Aaron Kushner and San Diego partisan Doug Manchester all are expressing interest in the paper, which could be sold soon after bankruptcy ends.

I'm not sure I get the full impact of this, but KCET has announced what it's calling a merger with Link Media, the non-profit media company in San Francisco that produces LinkTV. Their new non-profit creation will be called KCETLink. No big changes on the air for now.

In reporting that his employer has now acquired his former journalism home at Variety, Deadline film editor Michael Fleming took a moment for some personal words. Plus: The Wrap claims Finke 'having a major tantrum.'

Mark Medina has been overseeing the Lakers blog at LATimes.com, one of the site's biggest draws, for the last couple of years.He will now be covering the Lakers as a best writer and multimedia reporter for the Los Angeles News Group and its papers.

For them it's about the quality of the content, the most precious commodity in the competition for readers' brains.