New Yorker writer and former Washington Post managing editor Steve Coll, who has been on Facebook since 2008, has decided to sign off. One reason:

Facebook is an unprecedented synthesis of corporate and public spaces. The corporation’s social contract with users is ambitious, yet neither its governance system nor its young ruler seem trustworthy.

He also points out:

[Mark] Zuckerberg’s business model requires the trust and loyalty of his users so that he can make money from their participation, yet he must simultaneously stretch that trust by driving the site to maximize profits, including by selling users’ personal information.

People who quit Facebook have to give a “reason for leaving” before getting the social media site’s official OK to cut ties. “Unfortunately, ‘inadequate citizen rule’ or ‘doubts about corporate governance’ are not among the choices,” writes Coll. “From the available list, I went with ‘I don’t feel safe on Facebook.’”

You’ll notice at the end of the story that it has over 2,000 Likes on Facebook.

* Leaving Facebookistan (New Yorker)

RT @MAJ_Chicken: @PamSiddall : At the end of the day, each employee has to decide if they believe in the new direction.”

— Marty Swant (@martyswant) May 24, 2012

Like the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Newhouse’s Alabama newspapers will only be printed on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays starting this fall. “The change in organizational structures across all departments will lead to a reduction in the overall size of the workforce. Details are still being worked out.”

Cindy Martin, president of the new digitally focused company, says: “There are always painful choices when you begin a process that will lead to people losing their jobs. But at the same time, we must position ourselves to be sustainable businesses going forward. The new companies we launch in the fall, we believe, not only achieve that, but will serve our growing audiences and advertisers better than ever before.”

Newhouse’s Alabama Media Group includes the Birmingham News, the Press-Register of Mobile, and the Huntsville Times.

Birmingham News business reporter Marty Swant is live-tweeting the newsroom meeting.

* Newhouse’s Alabama papers to publish three days a week, cut staff (Al.com)
* Earlier: New Orleans Times-Picayune to cut staff, publish three days a week

The Ohio University student newspaper reports that Fox News feared that people would record Roger Ailes’ campus talk this week and post out-of-context clips on websites. But “we couldn’t have stopped people from taking video,” notes event coordinator Robert Ingram. “It’s a public space.”

Ailes at Ohio U. (Credit: Jason Chow)

Ingram, however, abided by Fox News’ request not to video record the discussion. Typically, event organizers put videos of the George Washington Forum discussions on the university’s website.

During the discussion, Ailes mentioned that he personally did not mind if someone recorded the forum.

The Post reports that the Fox News chief — a 1962 Ohio U. grad — is the second George Washington Forum lecturer to request no recording. The first was a history professor who was going to give the same talk a few weeks later at another school.

* University was reluctant to grant Ailes’ no-filming request (Ohio U. Post)
* Head of Fox News struts his right stuff at OU (Athens News)
* Ailes returns to OU campus to discuss bias, business of media (Ohio U. Post)
* What Ailes said during his Ohio University talk (JimRomenesko.com)

Warren Buffett’s letter to his newspaper editors and publishers (via Omaha.com):

May 23, 2012

To the Publishers and Editors of Berkshire Hathaway’s Daily Newspapers:

Until recently, Berkshire has owned only one daily newspaper, The Buffalo News, purchased in 1977. In a month or so, we will own 26 dailies.

I’ve loved newspapers all of my life — and always will. My dad, when attending the University of Nebraska, was editor of The Daily Nebraskan. (I have copies of the papers he edited in 1924.) He met my mother when she applied for a job as a reporter at the paper. Her father owned a small paper in West Point, Nebraska and my mother worked at various jobs at the paper in her teens, even mastering the operation of a linotype machine. From as early as I can remember, my two sisters and I devoured the contents of the World-Herald that my father brought home every night.

In Washington, DC, I delivered about 500,000 papers over a four-year period for the Post, Times-Herald and Evening Star. While in college at Lincoln, I worked fifteen hours a week in country circulation for the Lincoln Journal (earning all of 75? an hour). Today, I read five newspapers daily. Call me an addict.

Berkshire buys for keeps. Our only exception to permanent ownership is when a business faces unending losses, a remote prospect for virtually all of our dailies. So let me express a few thoughts about what lies ahead as we join forces.

Though the economics of the business have drastically changed since our purchase of The Buffalo News, I believe newspapers that intensively cover their communities will have a good future. It’s your job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town./CONTINUES Read More

“Press reports have necessitated our giving you this news now,” says a memo to Times-Picayune staffers. “We realize it will make people anxious, but we do not know enough today to be able to announce how the changes will affect individual employees. We will move as quickly as possible in the coming weeks to make that determination and to inform each of you personally.”

* Times-Picayune will move this fall to three printed papers a week

From: Ashton Phelps Jr
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:21 AM
To: All Exchange Users; staff@nola.com
Subject: Announcement

To all employees:

We wanted to make you aware of a news story that will be posted on NOLA.com regarding the future of the company, and to alert you that we will be scheduling meetings to discuss it with groups of employees today.

The story, which can be accessed through this link details the formation of NOLA Media Group, a digitally focused company that will launch this fall and that will develop new and innovative ways to deliver news and information to the company’s online and mobile readers. NOLA Media Group will be led by Ricky Mathews. Also this fall, The Times-Picayune will begin publishing a more robust newspaper on a reduced schedule of Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays only.

We will also be forming a new company, Advance Central Services Louisiana , which will be led by Ray Massett. ACS will produce and distribute the newspaper as well as provide critical support function for the NOLA Media Group.

Many current employees of The Times-Picayune and NOLA.com will have the opportunity to grow with the new organizations, but the need to reallocate resources to accelerate the digital growth of NOLA Media Group will necessitate a reduction in the size of the workforce.

Press reports have necessitated our giving you this news now. We realize it will make people anxious, but we do not know enough today to be able to announce how the changes will affect individual employees. We will move as quickly as possible in the coming weeks to make that determination and to inform each of you personally.

We will meet with department heads at 9 a.m. today in the 2nd-floor conference room. Staff meetings will be scheduled during the day. We will not be able to answer all of the questions you have, but will
address as many as possible.

Ashton Phelps, Jr.

Publisher

WWL-TV did a four-minute report on the Times-Picayune news this morning:

CONFIRMED: The Times-Picayune says it will move to three printed papers a week beginning this fall.

With a reduced printing schedule starting in the fall, [editor Jim] Amoss said, plans call for the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday editions of The Times-Picayune to be in many ways more robust than each of the daily newspapers is currently. They will contain a richer and deeper news, sports and entertainment report, as well as a full week’s worth of features such as society coverage, puzzles and comics.

* Read the memo to the Times-Picayune staff

—————

The Newhouse family-owned New Orleans Times-Picayune plans to cut staff and may reduce its daily publication schedule to two or three times a week.

Reports of restructuring at the Pulitzer-winning paper started circulating last night. My tipster — a former Times-Pic staffer — heard that they’re “going to an all-online site with a print edition maybe just a few times a week, getting rid of a bunch of top editors … [and] staffers must reapply for jobs at drastically reduced salaries averaging $30K to $35K.” (Current staffers are skeptical about those numbers. “People aren’t going to work for that. Who are they going to get — 2012 LSU grads?”)

David Carr posted a story at 11:33 p.m., and New Orleans alt-weekly Gambit got its report up at 2:40 a.m.

From Carr’s story:

[Jim] Amoss, the longtime editor, will assist in the transition before leaving. Two managing editors, Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, both of whom were reportedly excluded from all meetings in recent weeks about the developments, will be leaving as well.

The leak about restructuring “comes after a tumultuous week in the T-P newsroom, which began after incoming publisher Ricky Mathews came to New Orleans last week and held meetings with some — but not all — Times-Picayune executives off the building’s premises,” reports Gambit. It continues:

Multiple sources have told Gambit that editor Jim Amoss and city editor Gordon Russell were in the meetings, as were sports editor Doug Tatum and features editor Mark Lorando. Managing editors Peter Kovacs and Dan Shea, the No. 2 lieutenants to Amoss, were excluded.

As for what the newsroom itself will become, the outlook is still unclear, though everyone expects significant layoffs to occur soon. As Carr wrote, “the newspaper will likely cease to exist as a daily newspaper, and will publish two or three times a week.”

A Gambit source hears “the staff will immediately be whacked by at least a third (from 150 to 100 or fewer reporters).”

The level of disrespect for T-P employees by upper management was the main topic of conversation tonight. All employees with whom Gambit spoke — even longtime senior writers and editors — said they learned of their fates from The New York Times report.

“My supervisor didn’t even fucking know,” said one reporter. “My supervisor.”

“I had to find this out by Twitter,” said another. “Do I go in to the office tomorrow? Do I even have a job to go in to tomorrow? I don’t know. No one has called me. No one has said anything.”

Carr tweeted a link to his story at 11:35 p.m. last night, and wrote: “A great town deserves a great paper.” That’s been retweeted over 50 times.

A COUPLE OF OBSERVATIONS:

– Newhouse is doing the same thing simultaneously with its papers in Alabama, I’m told.
– The Times-Picayune remains profitable. As recently as the beginning of this year, the paper was paying bonuses. Staffers got bonuses at the end of 2010 and 2011 as the result of unexpected profitability.
– Some staffers figured bad news was coming when Ashton Phelps decided to retire after 32 years with the paper. They guessed he didn’t want to be around for whatever Newhouse had planned for the T-P. Some are surprised that Amoss is staying to carry out Newhouse’s plans.

* New Orleans paper said to face deep cuts, may cut back on publication (NYT)
* Times-Picayune employees in shock as extent of cuts begin to emerge (Gambit)
* What New Orleans can expect when its paper goes away (Forbes)

EARLIER STORIES:
* March 27, 2012: Mobile Press-Register publisher Ricky Mathews named Times-Picayune publisher (Al.com)
* January 4, 2006: Times-Picayune publisher Jim Amoss, a voice for New Orleans (NPR)
* September 12, 2005: Newhouse knocks down rumor about T-P folding because of Katrina (NY Observer)