May 2002, News Briefs |
Lytle weekly gets new owners
LYTLE — Reagon Clamon and Julie Myers recently became the sole owners of Impressions Publishing after buying two-thirds of the business from Julie Broekhove. They already owned a third.
The company publishes the weekly Lytle Leader-News.
Broekhove and former co-owner Lou Ann Butler founded the company in July 1999 with $5,000. Clamon and Myers bought into the company four months later, but left in August 2000.
Clamon worked for American Consolidated Media during the past year, most recently as publisher of the Highland Lakes Newspaper group, which includes The Highlander in Marble Falls. Myers has held a variety of reporting, editing and management positions at various Texas newspapers over the past 10 years.
ACM buys 5 newspapers
American Consolidated Media has purchased The Llano Buzz, a new newspaper that a local real estate agent launched more than a year ago.
The company also purchased Robertson County Newspapers from Mr. and Mrs. Chap Harriman.
The sale includes the Hearne Democrat, Franklin Advocate and Calvert Tribune as well as the free Robertson County Booster.
The Harriman family had owned the newspapers for almost 20 years. Rickenbacher Media represented them in the sale.
Dallas-based ACM, headed by Jeremy Halbreich, now owns four dailies, seven weeklies and several other free circulation newspapers in Texas.
2 weeklies fold
The startup The Post Writer in Raymondville ceased publication last month. The newspaper launched in 2000 and joined TPA last year.
The Terrell County News Leader also ceased operations after four years. The free newspaper began shortly after the Sanderson Times closed when J.A. Gilbreath retired. The large West Texas county is once again without a newspaper.
Newspapers earn citations
As thunderstorms, hail and a tornado pelted parts of Texas on March 19, the San Angelo Standard-Times was a big help to the Associated Press with reports on weather damage in San Angelo, where one witness reported seeing a funnel cloud.
The paper provided terrific color and quotes, including one from a man who told the paper, “God was good to us. The tornado was just skipping and hopping around, and went right by us. It was not even a football field away from me.”
For its efforts, the Standard-Times received an APME instant citation from national president Caesar Andrews. Other newspapers receiving citations recently include TPA members Corsicana Daily Sun, Pecos Enterprise, the Herald Democrat in Sherman, The (Bay City) Tribune and Midland Reporter-Telegram.
Narrow web covers majority of state’s papers
Sixty percent of Texas’ 535 paid newspapers now publish on a narrow web width or are considered non-SAU newspapers.
The Amarillo Globe-News was the latest to complete the switch last month, bringing the total in Texas to 320 newspapers. Only 23 of the states 91 dailies are still considered SAU newspapers.
J school reverses dismissal of newspaper adviser
TYLER — The University of Texas reinstated the student newspaper adviser and changed its media policy after public outcry only a few weeks earlier.
The university announced in February that it would not renew the contract of Vanessa Curry, a longtime journalist who came on board as the Patriot adviser in 1999.
Curry learned that some administrators thought the newspaper had become too aggressive and were upset over the newspaper’s opinion piece on one of the school’s major donors.
The college also unveiled a new student media policy that would return more power to the adviser to appoint the newspaper editor.
The college had approved a new policy that gave that decision and newspaper oversight to administrators.
The controversy brought strong opposition from the Southwest Education Council for Journalism and Mass Communication, which covers eight states, and other journalism organizations.
Cyber-surfers turn to newspaper Web sites
WASHINGTON — Sixty-five percent of newspaper Web site visitors read or looked into a weekday newspaper, according to a Minnesota Opinion Research Inc. survey conducted for the Newspaper Association of America.
Of these online users, 59 percent picked up the most recent Sunday newspaper, and 78 percent read or looked into the Sunday paper during the last four weeks. The research is based on Web surveys of 12,429 newspaper-site visitors in eight U.S. markets.
Men and women visit newspapers’ Web sites in equal numbers.
Thirty-nine percent of newspaper site visitors report a household income of $50,000 to $99,000, and 23 percent enjoy a household income of $100,000 or more.
The viewers tell MORI Research that the site published by their favorite newspaper is their prime online resource for news.
Eighty-six percent say that online newspapers are No.1, well ahead of competing online news sites (29 percent), Yahoo! (24 percent) and America Online (11 percent). They also click to the newspaper’s site for local event information more often than any other online provider.
For more log onto www.naa.org click on Electronic Publishing.