Stock | Twitter busts into the billion-dollar club

Twitter's stock soared 80% to $47 a share this morning on its first day of public trading, giving the seven-year-old San Francisco company a $25 billion market value after debuting its closely watched initial public offering at $26 a share.

Market capitalizations for Twitter, Gannett and other companies:

$341.8 billion

Google

$163.0 billion

Amazon

$119.6 billion

Facebook


$68.9 billion
eBay


$25.5 billion
Twitter


$19.9 billion
Netflix

$6.7 billion
Groupon

$6.4 billion

Gannett

$2.0 billion

New York Times Co.

$1.4 billion

Belo Corp.

The truth about USAT's big new circulation pitch

USA Today just made a dramatic change in the way it reports circulation, adding free digital app users to paid sales so it could once more claim the No. 1 circulation spot among U.S. newspapers. The move boosted USAT's total as of Sept. 30 to a record 2.9 million from 1.7 million a year ago -- a 68% increase.

USAT's free iPad app

The two other national newspapers left their formulas unchanged. That resulted in a smaller 14% annual gain for The New York Times, to 2.1 million. The Wall Street Journal saw a 1% decline to 2.3 million. (See this spreadsheet for a complete breakdown.)

But comparing the three papers' figures is hardly apples-to-apples. The NYT's iPad app lets users read only three articles daily for free; after that, they must pay for a digital subscription. The WSJ app also gives readers limited access for free before requiring a paid account.

Not so with USAT, which gives readers free access without any limits. That means more than half the paper's circulation is now unpaid digital. And that doesn't begin to count all those copies provided gratis by hotels, airlines and other bulk buyers.

Why this matters 
Historically, the industry told advertisers paid circulation was more valuable than free because readers were more engaged with something they'd spent money on. Indeed, when USAT lost the top circulation spot in 2009, it downplayed the shift by emphasizing that it remained the top selling print paper, partly as a result of its big single-copy sales.

"Single copy newsstand sales," the paper said in a press release, "reflect customers who actively seek out the newspaper each day and pay full newsstand price, which is widely considered the most valuable circulation by advertisers."

Starting next spring, USAT plans to change its strategy again under the Butterfly Project. It will start including potentially millions of circulation when it likely expands distribution of its new daily local edition to about three dozen of Gannett's community dailies.

In announcing that change last week in a memo to staff, Publisher Larry Kramer didn't say whether those editions would be counted as paid.

But to do so, Gannett effectively would be counting each of those dailies twice. For example, The Indianapolis Star would count as one. And the USAT edition -- which is now the Star's second section -- would also get counted as one.

Related: Poynter Institute says USAT's news coverage is "misleading."

Earlier: Find your newspaper's newest circulation figures.

USA Today will count Butterfly edition circulation; move comes as it once more claims No. 1 circ rank

With print circulation tumbling again, USA Today Publisher Larry Kramer confirmed in a memo today that the struggling paper plans to include in its future circulation reports the new daily section inserted in four community dailies in the Butterfly Project trial that began this month.

USAT's honor box

That would add 360,000 in print weekday circulation and 579,000 on Sundays, for the first time giving the 31-year-old paper weekend circulation data to pitch to advertisers.

Until today, the paper had not said publicly whether it would include the standalone news section published at those papers in Indianapolis; Fort Myers, Fla.; Appleton, Wisc., and Rochester, N.Y.

The decision means USAT could expand circulation even more if the Butterfly Project is extended to perhaps three dozen of the largest 81 community dailies. They have a combined print circulation of 2.3 million on weekdays and more than 3.5 million Sundays. Corporate hasn't said how long the Butterfly test will be run.

Kramer's memo came as the paper disclosed it is once more claiming the No. 1 spot in newspaper circulation by counting free tablet and mobile phone use data on top of print edition sales. In doing so, the paper would overtake the current leader, The Wall Street Journal, and the second-ranked New York Times.

Muddying circulation waters
But the move makes it even harder to do an apples-to-apples comparison among papers, because the tablet and mobile phone users aren't paying readers. The WSJ and NYT figures are for their more valuable paid print and digital circulation.

Overall, this means circulation data will become even less meaningful to advertisers. USAT has long been dogged by critics who questioned the integrity of the paper's print circulation data because so much of it was to business travelers who got free copies given to them by hotels, airlines and other institutional buyers who bought in bulk at a steep discount.

With its new formula, USAT now says it has 2.9 million in circulation vs. 1.7 million in its March 31 report to the Alliance for Audited Media. That compares with 2.3 million for the WSJ and 1.9 million for the NYT, according to a report today in Capital New York.

However, USAT's new count masks another stunning loss of print circulation for the six months ended Sept. 30. It plunged 19% from a year ago, according to a Poynter Institute report today.

USAT's decision to count tablet and mobile data will help soften the blow of steep circulation losses the paper has forecast as a result of doubling its single-copy price to $2 on Sept. 30.

Digital age challenges
Kramer's memo arrives as the AAM (formerly the Audit Bureau of Circulations) released its Sept. 30 report to members this morning. Effective today, the AAM is no longer making public its top-25 circulation reports, however.

The industry has been wrestling with how to count circulation in the digital age, where papers have gained millions of readers who access websites for free. Historically, the industry had always counted paid circulation as most valuable. The shifting accounting has been a particular challenge for USAT, which doesn't charge readers for digital access to its website and digital apps -- unlike the WSJ and NYT.

AAM Executive Vice President Neal Lulofs told Poynter that the group's traditional method of counting circulation is no longer a meaningful metric for advertisers in today’s "complex multichannel, print/digital, paid/free, branded edition, bundled/paywalled, you-name-it environment."

The Butterfly Project, which has been in the works for more than a year, was seen as another way for USAT to regain traction in circulation and advertising while also giving an editorial boost to Gannett's community dailies. The standalone USAT section provides another platform to sell national advertising and adds dozens of pages of additional foreign and national news to the smaller community papers every week. The section is produced by USAT at its main office in McLean, Va.

USAT first lost the No. 1 spot in the September 2009 when the WSJ started included paid digital subscribers. USAT then fell to No. 3 when the NYT launched its paywall and also counted digital subscribers.

Kramer

Kramer's new tactic
Counting tablet and phone app usage is a new marketing strategy for the paper under Kramer, the paper's first publisher with a deep digital background. He founded the widely read financial news site MarketWatch before coming to USAT in May 2012. His mandate: to turn around the paper, which had been losing multimillion dollars in advertising amid steep circulation declines as the paper's bread-and-butter customers, business travelers and hotels, abandoned print newspapers.

Four years ago, USAT had downplayed its drop in the rankings by emphasizing that it remained the top selling print paper, partly as a result of its big single-copy sales.

"Single copy newsstand sales," the paper said in a press release, "reflect customers who actively seek out the newspaper each day and pay full newsstand price, which is widely considered the most valuable circulation by advertisers."

USAT | As eBay's founder joins digital news scrum, competition grows for Gannett's national franchise

Three techies: Omidyar, Bezos and Kramer

Pierre Omidyar has suddenly emerged as the latest technology titan bankrolling 21st century journalism, a move that could add to the challenges struggling USA Today already faces in its ongoing turnaround.

The eBay founder has agreed to pour perhaps $250 million into launching a digital-only mass-market news provider whose first star hire is Glenn Greenwald, the American journalist famous for reporting on U.S. electronic surveillance programs for Britian's Guardian newspaper.

An investment that size would be one of the largest for a digital news start-up. The closest parallel I can think of is Rupert Murdoch's The Daily, an iPad-only national publication that lost a reported $30 million annually during the two years it published before Murdoch shut it down last December.

Omidyar, 46, and retired from eBay, was offered a chance to buy The Washington Post, a deal that ultimately went to another techie in August: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. That experience, plus his longstanding focus on social entrepreneurship, led Omidyar to Greenwald, who was already planning to set up an independent media outlet.

Omidyar's principal journalism interest is the kind of investigative watchdog journalism Greenwald does. He was among the first to report information provided by one-time U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

But, blogger Jay Rosen writes this morning, "Omidyar believes that if independent, ferocious, investigative journalism isn’t brought to the attention of general audiences, it can never have the effect that actually creates a check on power."

A mass-media site
So, Rosen says, Omidyar's new venture "will have to serve the interest of all kinds of news consumers. It cannot be a niche product. It will have to cover sports, business, entertainment, technology: everything that users demand."

For his part, Omidyar wrote today that it will be "a new mass media organization. I don’t yet know how or when it will be rolled out, or what it will look like. What I can tell you is that the endeavor will be independent of my other organizations, and that it will cover general interest news, with a core mission around supporting and empowering independent journalists across many sectors and beats."

Greenwald says the venture will have branch offices in New York, Washington and San Francisco. Its name has been chosen, but not yet made public, according to Rosen.

Forbes says Omidyar is worth $8.5 billion, ranking him No. 47 on the magazine's list of wealthiest Americans. Bezos, 49, is No. 12, with $27.2 billion.

Omidyar and Bezos are entering the business as USAT attempts a turnaround under another technology entrepreneur: Publisher Larry Kramer. Before coming to the daily in May 2012, Kramer had founded the financial news site MarketWatch.

News Corp. chairman Murdoch isn't the only Old Economy billionaire investing in journalism. Consider another Forbes 400 member: No. 2 Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway. Worth $58.5 billion, Buffett snapped up dozens of print newspapers in recent years, even as he dumped all his Gannett stock.

Related: I interviewed Omidyar for a USAT story in 2005.

Newspapers' revenue dive enters 8th straight year; for Gannett, analysts forecast a bleak second half

As digital advertising sales soared 18% to a record high in the first six months of this year, publishing revenues of the publicly traded newspaper companies slipped an average of 5.5% to enter an eighth year of unabated decline, according to industry blogger Alan Mutter.

In the absence of information formerly reported by the industry's trade association, Mutter said yesterday, the 5.5% decline is based on an analysis of the financial statements of the 10 publicly traded companies that own domestic newspapers. Those include Gannett.

In fact, Gannett's revenue decline was much smaller than the average for the 10 companies. During the first half, combined advertising and circulation revenues fell just 1.1% to $1.7 billion. Although advertising fell 5%, circulation jumped 7.3% after Corporate jacked up subscription rates an average 25%.

Gannett doesn't break out digital advertising revenues, lumping them in with overall digital results, so it's impossible to know how GCI's digital ad sales compare to the 18% figure cited by Mutter.

We'll see how the third quarter fared a week from Monday, when Corporate reports financial results. Analysts are already braced for bad news. They forecast overall revenue will dive 2.9% to $1.27 billion. For the current, fourth quarter, they expect the situation to only worsen: Revenue will plunge 7.5% to $1.4 billion, according to consensus estimates in a Thomson Financial survey.

Missing: TV results
Those quarterly declines are because the company doesn't have last year's political and Olympics advertising in the broadcasting division to prop up results. Also, the big newspaper subscription rate hikes have now fully cycled through. And growth in the Digital Segment is threatening to flat line.

Finally, GCI's takeover of TV company Belo isn't expected to close before the New Year -- and that's assuming the federal government reopens in time for regulators to sign off on the deal. Any revenue gains from Belo won't occur into sometime next year.

Bottom line: CEO Gracia Martore and her team have their backs to the wall. Unless they can pull a revenue rabbit out of their hat, the outlook is grim.

New publisher says 'stop chasing the digital ghost'

One of the two investors who bought The Orange County Register last year says publishers shouldn't focus on digital entirely at the expense of print. (And he definitely doesn't recommend shrinking staff -- just the opposite.) In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today (subscription may be required), Eric Spitz says:

In the past 12 months we hired 350 people, built 25 new sections, revamped all of our weekly community papers (even making two of them into dailies) and launched a weekly set of magazines. Beginning in the first quarter of 2013 we have seen year-over-year increases in both subscription revenue and in advertising revenue. In other words, it's time to stop chasing the digital ghost.

Related: Al Jazeera America hires 400 journalists, debuts tomorrow.

'Era of public newspaper company winding down'

"That logic falls most heavily on Gannett," according to the Poynter Institute's Rick Edmonds, who does an especially good job of sifting through the economics of The Washington Post's sale to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (And I'm not saying that just because I appear in his analysis.) Here's the top of it, which focuses on Gannett, but read it to the very end.

Bezos

Before the Post spun off its newspaper holdings, Media General, Belo and Scripps had already. As noted in my first comment on the sale, you cannot justify to shareholders pouring money into a long and uncertain digital transition for newspaper organizations when other businesses (cable, broadcast and for-profit education for the Washington Post Co.) offer better return now and in the next several years.

That logic falls most heavily on Gannett, whose newspaper division is a drag on earnings and share price (though not a money loser like the Post). Gannett is much bigger, booking more than $700 million in revenue annually from freestanding digital businesses and expanding a big local broadcasting division with the recent acquisition of Belo’s stations.

Still, as Jim Hopkins’ Gannett Blog has been reporting, the company is quietly cutting several hundred newsroom jobs this month as 2013 shapes up as yet another year of significant advertising revenue contraction. The downsizing scenario will likely play out at other public companies (and some private ones too) who are running out of things like buildings and land to sell and don’t have the deep pockets of a Jeff Bezos.

Bezos' motivation? Here's a contrarian's view

Bezos

A lot of the news coverage of Jeff Bezos' $250 million purchase of The Washington Post has been rah-rah. The Amazon founder is painted as a white knight riding a high-tech horse to the newspaper's rescue.

But of everything I've read, the most compelling is by John Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Here's the money graph from his new post:

"I have a nagging, if possibly unfounded, suspicion that his primary motivation in buying the Post is to protect Amazon’s interests in the political battle, which is sure to come, over the company’s monopolistic tendencies. Why do I suspect that? In part, because I am a skeptic. But also because it’s just about the only explanation that makes sense."

Amazon founder buys Washington Post for $250M; flurry of recent deals spurs question: Who's next?

[Screenshot of homepage shows Post Co. CEO Donald Graham]

The Washington Post Co. has agreed to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations, the company said in a surprise announcement this afternoon.

The deal, coming on the heels of Saturday's fire sale of The Boston Globe to another wealthy individual, is the latest evidence the market for newspapers is heating up after years of plummeting revenue.

Bezos, 49, is paying $250 million in cash, and is investing on his own; Amazon is not a part of the acquisition. His purchase will likely renew interest in other newspapers -- including the spinoff or sale of Gannett's 100-plus U.S. and U.K. newspapers, plus USA Today.

Martore

Asked about that possibility two weeks ago, CEO Gracia Martore offered only a measured response, as she often does in such situations, in a conference call with Wall Street analysts. She didn't completely close the door on the idea, however. After referencing GCI's recent plans to buy TV company Belo, Martore said:

"We always, at the board level, are looking every time we meet and in between meetings, we are looking at opportunities to increase shareholder value. We never rule anything out, but our focus right now is a transaction that has created a lot of value for the company and will create even more into the future. So we're focused on that in the short term, to have a successful integration."

Still, Martore was similarly noncommittal when she was asked about the possibility of TV deals three months before. Unbeknownst to analysts, however, she was already just four days away from making an offer to Belo of $2.2 billion in cash and assumption of debt.

Post investors snapped to the news. In after-hours trading, WPO's stock jumped $28.30, or 5%, to $597 a share. In the regular session, it closed at $568.70, up 1.6%. GCI's shares were flat in late trading after closing at $25.81, down 1.8%.

Amazon shares closed at $300.99, down 1.1%. They were unchanged after hours.

How deal came down
Early this year, Washington Post Co. CEO Donald Graham brought in investment bank Allen & Co. to begin looking for someone to buy the paper, The Wall Street Journal says in a report about today's deal.

Bezos

He spoke with many prospects directly, drawing on his extensive network in Silicon Valley. Graham, who has been an adviser to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, has spent years building relationships with technology titans, including Bezos.

Graham personally reached out to Bezos early, according to a person with direct knowledge of the deal cited by the WSJ. "Initially, Bezos held back, citing a lack of time to properly deal with a transaction," according to the WSJ. Then, in July, Bezos wrote an e-mail to Graham saying, "If you're interested, I am."

Bezos, who launched Amazon in 1995, is worth about $26 billion via his stake in the e-commerce giant. As part of a planned stock sale, he took in $185 million this month, representing less than 1% of his holdings. Forbes ranked him as the 19th most-wealthy man in the world, just ahead of Google's Larry Page.

Related: Graham family's fourth generation takes charge.

Pop Quiz | Hint: It's certainly not Gannett Blog

USA Today media columnist Rem Rieder says one of these is "widely regarded as the world's premier news organization." Which one?

1. Financial Times
2. Fox News
3. Gannett Blog
4. Hello! magazine
5. The Huffington Post
6. The New York Times
7. L'Osservatore Romano
8. PBS NewsHour
9. USA Today
10. The Wall Street Journal

NYT Co. to sell Boston Globe for just $70 million

The all-cash deal announced early today with principal Red Sox owner John Henry would represent a stunning drop in the Globe's value. The New York Times Co. paid $1.1 billion for the daily 20 years ago, the highest price for an American newspaper. Adjusted for inflation, that would be even higher: $1.7 billion.

The NYT Co. has been selling assets to focus on its core holdings: The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune. The plan to sell the Globe, plus the affiliated Worcester Telegram & Gazette, returns the dailies to local ownership for the first time in two decades, the NYT reported early this morning.

Today's deal comes amid a wave of other newspaper sales nationwide, many at heavily discounted prices, as rich individual investors once more test the still financially unsettled media world.

The NYT Co.'s Globe acquisition in 1993 was part of the company’s strategy to solidify its grip on the eastern corridor advertising sector and to have a presence that stretched from Maine to the District of Columbia. At the time, in addition to its flagship New York newspaper, the company owned 31 regional newspapers, 20 magazines, five television stations, two radio stations and other businesses.

Henry, 63, made his fortune in investment funds and has built a sports empire that includes the Red Sox and New England Sports Network, as well as the Liverpool Soccer Club and Roush Fenway Racing, a NASCAR team, the Globe says in its own story about the deal.

He bested a field of more than a half dozen bidders, including members of the Taylor family who sold the Globe to the NYT Co. Other bidders included local business people and West Coast investors.

[Image: today's front page, Newseum]

TV market consolidates further with Tribune deal

Less than three weeks after Gannett announced a $2.2 billion acquisition of Belo, the Tribune Co. this morning agreed to buy 19 stations for about $2.7 billion, making it one of the nation’s biggest owners of commercial local TV outlets amid a groundswell of consolidation in the industry.

The stations are in 16 regions, including Denver, Cleveland and St. Louis, and many of their local news broadcasts are ranked first or second in their markets, according to The New York Times. They will complement Tribune’s 23 existing stations and its WGN America cable channel. Tribune is buying the stations from Local TV Holdings, a company owned by the investment firm Oak Hill Capital Partners.

The deal ratchets up the competition with GCI, because four of the stations are in markets where GCI also owns stations: Denver; Cleveland; Greensboro, S.C., and St. Louis. In a fifth market, Des Moines, GCI owns a newspaper.

GCI's Belo deal covers 20 stations, five of which are being spun off to a new third company; GCI will provide advertising sales and other services to those five under a contract. Including all 20, GCI would nearly double its station ownership to 43. The $2.2 billion price includes assumption of $700 million in debt.

Here's Tribune's press release describing the deal. And here's a list of the stations Tribune is buying.

TV networks face falling ratings and new rivals

As Gannett's 23 broadcasting stations come off a record year for advertising revenue after the summer Olympics and general election, prime-time ratings for the Big Four broadcasters -- ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox -- together are dropping more precipitously than ever.

"Even their biggest hits, like 'American Idol' and 'Dancing With the Stars,' are fading fast," The New York Times reports this morning. "Advertisers are moving more cash to cable, cutting into the networks’ quarterly profits. New technologies are making it easier to skip those ads, anyway."

The NYT story continues: "The many pressures bearing down on the industry are casting a shadow over this week’s 'upfronts,' an annual tradition in New York in which the new sitcoms, dramas and reality shows are previewed at splashy, open-bar events and the networks try to capture their portion of an estimated $9 billion in advertising commitments."

The 23 hookups
Gannett's TV stations include 12 affiliated with NBC; six with CBS; three with ABC, and two MyNetworkTV.

The broadcasting division played an outsize role in GCI's finances last year: It accounted for 17% of the $5.4 billion in companywide revenue vs. 14% of $5.2 billion in 2011.

Related: Corporate hosts its first digital upfront

Why Gannett won't be bidding for the Boston Globe

A day after the New York Times Co. announced plans to put The Boston Globe up for sale, there's plenty of speculation about possible bidders -- including Boston-connected moguls such as Mitt Romney and former General Electric CEO Jack Welch.

But Gannett isn't on anyone's list. Larger chains are reducing their newspaper holdings, the Poynter Institute's Rick Edmonds told the Globe, making it more likely a buyer would emerge from the Boston area. Although Edmonds only called out GCI by name, other big chains absent from today's speculation on potential buyers include McClatchy Co. and Lee Enterprises, plus Tribune Co. and Journal Register, both of which are just now emerging from bankruptcy.

One exception might be News Corp., which is about to spin off its newspaper holdings including The Wall Street Journal and a group of small New England dailies. CEO Rupert Murdoch has a soft spot for print that might make him a more emotion-driven bidder. Another exception could be Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett, who has recently been adding papers to his portfolio.

GCI's investments recently have been relatively small, and focused on digital ventures that complement existing businesses, such as in sports media.

New York Times watchdog Ira Stoll lists 25 potential buyers on his Smarter Times blog; GCI isn't among them. The competing Boston Herald has a shorter list. And the Globe story includes some of the same names floated by Stoll and the Herald.

The Globe's weekday circulation is 230,351; Sunday is 372,541, according to the Sept. 30 ABC report. Those figures are less than half what they were in 1993, when the NYT Co. paid $1.1 billion for the Globe plus other businesses.

Today, after the industrywide depression, the Globe and its sister daily, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, might fetch only $100 million to $150 million, according to industry consultant Ken Doctor. And that's assuming pension obligations aren't part of the deal.

Warnings in '93 prescient
But that would be a significant improvement over the puny $35 million offered four years ago, when the NYT Co. last entertained bids.

Even in 1993, when the deal was announced, some Wall Street analysts wondered whether it made sense for the NYT Co. to invest so heavily in the newspaper business, which was already growing slowly even as it still produced substantial profits, the NYT reported at the time.

Sulzberger

But the late Arthur Sulzberger Sr., the NYT Co.'s board chairman at the time, told his paper he believed analysts who predicted the death of the newspaper business were wrong. He said the Globe could become an attractive part of the company's offerings to advertisers and that there could be joint advertising sales.

Even if newsprint is eventually replaced by electronic delivery of information, Sulzberger said, businesses like the Times and the Globe would remain viable because of their information-gathering abilities.

Viable, yes. But nowhere near as profitable.

Stock | GCI scores No. 2 performance of 2012

[Updated at 4:25 p.m. ET with final closing prices.]

Gannett's stock finished 2012 up 42%, the second-best performance of seven major U.S. newspaper publishers, according to Yahoo Finance data that reflects dividend payments. (Spreadsheet gives figures for all seven companies.)

GCI closed the year at $18.01 a share, up 40 cents for the day, as markets rallied on prospects for a deal in Washington to avoid full effects of the deep spending cuts and steep tax rate increases known as the fiscal cliff.

No. 1 among the seven publishers was Lee Enterprises, which ended the year up 63%, at $1.14.

Closely watched stock indexes finished the year higher, too. The Dow Jones average of 30 industrial stocks rose 6.9%, ending at 13,061. The S&P 500: up 13% at 1,422. And the tech-heavy Nasdaq had the best performance, jumping 16% to 3,012.

GCI's strong year reflects optimism over the newspaper paywalls erected across the 81-title U.S. community newspaper division. Management is forecasting $100 million in operating income from average 25% print subscription price increases imposed with the paywalls.

Gains also stem from a moderating in the decline of advertising revenue, plus a strengthening in the job market, which benefited CareerBuilder, the GCI-controlled employment site.

As well, 2012 was the first full year since Gracia Martore was promoted to chief executive officer, in October 2011, after Craig Dubow's early retirement for medical reasons.

Ad giants reduce 2013 global spending forecasts

Three big ad companies are revising down their projections for 2013 global ad spending growth, citing economic troubles in Europe and lackluster conditions in the U.S., among other factors.

WPP PLC, Publicis Groupe SA and Interpublic Group of Cos. are each due to release updated forecasts tomorrow, projections that will likely be closely watched by Wall Street as an indication of expected conditions for next year. Just a few weeks ago, the ad companies cited the same macroeconomic factors for weak third-quarter ad spending, which hurt their latest quarterly results.

The companies' forecasts are due at the start of UBS Securities' annual media investment conference in New York. Most major media companies will also be presenting during the event. Gannett's presentation is scheduled for Wednesday.

Marlene Dietrich said hello: How to write an obit

From The New York Times' obituary for Gray Foy, the artist, tastemaker, bon vivant, salonnier, partygoer, party-giver, genteel accumulator and perennial fixture of New York cultural life:

For decades, Mr. Foy was a quiet if supremely capable avatar of the city’s gracious, aesthetically minded, boldface-named social milieu, a latter-day Gilded Age that flourished in New York in the years before the Stonewall uprising and for some time after, of which Truman Capote was perhaps the best-known embodiment.

WLBZ | Rival stations' news anchors quit on air

Citing a longstanding battle with upper management over journalistic practices at their Bangor TV stations, news co-anchors Cindy Michaels and Tony Consiglio announced their resignations at the end of last night’s 6 p.m. newscast.

Michaels and Consiglio have worked the past six years at WVII and sister station WFVX. Their joint resignations shocked staff members and viewers, according to the Bangor Daily News.

The stations compete with Gannett's NBC affiliate WLBZ.

Owned by Rockfleet Broadcasting of New York, WVII is an ABC affiliate, and WFVX is with Fox.

By the numbers | Chief executives on the hot seat

[CEOs: Whitman, Pérez, Martore]

Another Old Line company lurched toward oblivion today when Hewlett-Packard stunned investors with a nearly $7 billion loss, writing down a software division named Autonomy that it bought just over a year ago and citing accounting irregularities. HP's stock is down more than 10% on the news.

Meg Whitman has been struggling to turn around the Silicon Valley giant since being named CEO in September 2011. In that unenviable task, she joins Antonio Pérez, CEO of Eastman Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy protection in January.

Under CEO Gracia Martore, however, Gannett investors have enjoyed a much better year. Change in companies' shares from a year ago, based on recent trading prices today:

+59%

GCI

-58%

HP

-84%

Kodak

[Data: Google Finance]

All eyes on today's October employment report

The federal government's monthly employment report, to be released at 8:30 a.m. ET, is the most closely watched barometer of the nation's economic health -- by consumers, investors and corporations.

Just two weeks ago, for example, CEO Gracia Martore reminded media stock analysts that newspaper advertising in the most recent quarter continued to be hit by weak job growth.

The labor market's impact wasn't limited to advertising. Gannett-controlled employment site CareerBuilder, which is a big driver of GCI's digital operations, contended with the "anemic" job market through product innovations, Martore said.

For today's employment report, economists surveyed by MarketWatch are looking for about 120,000 more jobs in October, with the unemployment rate ticking back up to 7.9% from 7.8%, according to the financial news site.

The report often drives stock prices. Since the U.S. Labor Department published the last one, on Oct. 5, Gannett's stock has fallen 6% from $18.41, closing yesterday at $17.26 a share. That was worse than the S&P 500's 2.3% decline during the same period, according to Google Finance data.

To be sure, the October report will get even greater scrutiny because it's the last one before Tuesday's presidential election, when many voters are ranking the economy as their No. 1 concern.