The Wisconsin man who has owned Newspapers.com is selling the domain name and hoping to get up to $1 million for it. “[Francis Diederich] bought the domain back in 1994 or 1995 and always thought he would do something with it, but he never developed it,” says broker John Cribb, who is handling the sale. (The site is currently a newspaper website directory.) “He turned down big money for it in the old days — he had offers of $750,000 and $1 million,” says Cribb. “My guess is that somewhere between $400,000 and a million is what he’d like to get now.” Cribb says newspapers.com appears as the first or second result in a Google search for newspapers. (The New York Times, he notes, owns newspaper.com.) || The press release is after the jump. Read More

What would you do if you ran a newspaper and half of your employees didn’t bother to read your product? That’s the question I asked on my Facebook page when I linked to John Robinson’s “What Would You Do? blog post. Here are some comments from my Facebook friends and subscribers:

Martin L. Cahn
First: not all writers in a newsroom fit the paper’s demographic. I know our newspaper skews higher than the mid-20s staff reporters we have. That’s neither an indictment of them or the paper; just reality. Second: not everyone that works for a paper has time to read the very paper they work for. I’m the associate editor of my paper and goodness knows I don’t always have the time to read every single word in it.

Tony Marcano
Many many years ago on “The Odd Couple,” the Oscar Madison character said, “I don’t have to read the paper. I write the paper.” I’ve known many reporters and editors with the same view.

James Brinton
Whether one subscribed or not, everybody in our place was expected to read the pub cover to cover. It was surprising how many half-baked, and already-covered stories went away when they did. Always stay up to date on what your pub has covered.

Peter Ashkenaz
i was a TV assignments editor in the late 70′s and none of my reporters (all in their 20′s) or shooters even watched our newscast if they didn’t have a story in the rundown. Most had no idea what anyone else was working on, which resulted in a lack of context. I wanted to give them a quiz on local news on Fridays but my news director wouldn’t let me.

Amy DeVries Calder
Would a restaurant fire employees who didn’t eat there? I don’t understand why a person who works for any company should be expected to pay to use their services./CONTINUES Read More

“It’s a fake,” writes Charles Apple. “A pretty funny one. But a fake nonetheless. One that a lot of people today have assumed was real.” He posts solid proof that it’s a mock-up.
* No, this is NOT a real front page from the Washington Post

David Carr explains why Esquire’s formula works:

“Esquire looks and feels like something a bunch of guys put together for a bunch of other guys, not a glossy widget produced by a big corporation.

“There is a bawdy sensibility, partly lifted from lad magazines before they lost their heat, but there’s not a lot that’s dumb or rank. Esquire is something a regular guy can open up without feeling like a frat boy or a fop.”

The magazine’s ad pages were up 13.5% last year, while GQ and Details showed declines. “Esquire is not dying — it is killing it,” notes Carr.
* How Esquire survived publishing’s dark days

Tom Curley

Associated Press president and CEO Tom Curley says he will retire this. The 63-year-old newsman, who went to the AP in 2003 after serving as USA Today publisher, will stay the job on until AP’s search committee finds a successor. Your thoughts on his tenure and who might succeed him? Please post them in comments.
* AP CEO Tom Curley to retire; board launches search for successor