History > 2006 > USA > Journalism, media (II)

Magazines drop print for Web

to reach teens

Updated 8/29/2006 6:50 PM ET
By Anne D'innocenzio, Associated Press
USA Today

NEW YORK — This fall, teens who want the 411 on skinny jeans will have fewer teen monthly fashion bibles to flip through. But the moves by Elle Girl and Teen People to pull the plug on their publications and focus on their websites don't seem to bother 14-year-old Devon Brodsky.

"There are so many other ways to read about fashion," said the Harrison, N.Y. resident. Aside from Teen Vogue, Brodsky gets her fashion fix from entertainment weeklies like In Touch, the Internet and television's E! Entertainment.

Such a blase attitude contrasts sharply with the heated interest among teens back in 1998, when Teen People catapulted on the scene, spawning a new genre of teen fashion magazines like CosmoGIRL!, Teen Vogue and Elle Girl . But as teens are finding new alternatives in other media, the teen magazine market is undergoing an adolescent crisis.

YM magazine, whose assets were purchased by Conde Nast Publications, closed in early 2005; Hachette Filipacchi Media's Elle Girl and Time's Teen People both announced this year they will suspend publication to focus on their websites. Executives at Hearst's CosmoGIRL! and Seventeen as well as Conde Nast's Teen Vogue all vow they'll continue publishing, but all are reinventing themselves to follow where teens are going. That means relaunching their websites to make them more interactive as well as offering fashion and beauty information through teens' mobile phones.

Meanwhile, Conde Nast's Internet division CondeNet will be unveiling a teen content website in early 2007, though company officials declined to comment further.

Officials at Teen People, which is suspending its publication after the September issue, declined an interview.

"You can't just be a magazine editor sitting in your office. You can no longer dictate. It is a two-way street," said Atoosa Rubenstein. Since joining Seventeen as editor-in-chief in July 2003, she has been spearheading a revival of the once-tired 62-year-old publication, which still leads in circulation among teen rivals. Rubenstein had helped to launch CosmoGIRL! as editor-in-chief back in 1999.

Last fall, Rubenstein produced and starred in a reality show called Miss Seventeen, which aired on MTV. Another television project will be announced soon with a major network, she said. Seventeen is also relaunching its website later this fall that will further develop it as a social networking site.

Some analysts are not upbeat about the overall teen magazines' outlook, given competition from online social network sites like MySpace.com. Editors at teen magazines argue that their authoritative voice in fashion sets them apart from other sites out there.

"I think they're overplaying their authority card," said Jon Gibs, director of media analytics at Nielsen/NetRatings Inc., an Internet research company. "As consumers generate media themselves, the idea of an authoritative voice becomes more diluted. What is an authoritative voice? Is it a popular teenager, a brand, a magazine, a journalist or best friend? The whole thing is very fudgeable."

Brodsky noted that while she still loves magazines, she would be more open to getting her fashion information from interactive teen magazine sites than a community site.

Consumers' migration to the Web has hurt overall magazines, but teen publications have been the first group of major consumer publications that have "fallen by the wayside," said Martin S. Walker, chairman of Walker Communications, a magazine consulting firm.

While the overall magazine industry is suffering, industry observers note that teen magazine publishers have their own unique challenges.

First, with their readers outgrowing the magazines every couple of years, publishers have to spend money to replenish their subscriber base.

The fragmented pop culture has also hurt, according to Anne Zehren, who helped launch Teen People as publisher in 1998 and left in 2003. In the late 1990s, the hot teen music idols were few, like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. But teens now have more varied musical tastes, from hip hop to heavy metal, a trend that has diluted magazine newsstand sales.

Moreover, in recent years, kids are spending less time reading magazines, as chatting with their friends on their cellphone or on the Internet have taken center stage in their lives.

"Magazines are part of this one-way media," said Anastasia Goodstein, a San Francisco-based writer who publishes Ypulse, a blog about Generation Y for media and marketing professionals. Media is now about teens "being in touch with their friends all the time.... We have to follow where teens are hanging out."

Experts say the first big test online comes when Ellegirl.com relaunches its website this fall. Anne Sachs, executive editor of Ellegirl.com, reports the website has seen traffic increase in July, the month the magazine disappeared from the newsstands.

With the relaunch, the online community will take center stage, Sachs said. Teens can customize parts of the site and stories online will be more focused on their comments, she said. Ellegirl.com is also creating a mobile site called ellegirlMobile.

Other rivals aim to further integrate their publications with the online world.

Seventeen magazine will feature pop star Hilary Duff as a guest editor on its October issue, and will show videos of her putting the issue together on AOL's RED and KOL interactive service for teens and kids, respectively, as well as selective versions on Seventeen.com. Teenvogue.com will feature video podcasts on its site and clips of an October event where about 700 teens will learn about the fashion business from seminars with designers and executives.

CosmoGIRL!'s website, which is set to relaunch this year, will air a reality-based "Webisode," featuring graduating college seniors starting Sept. 19. It's also considering offering video based on such magazine fixtures as Project 2024, which spotlights celebrity interviews by college students whose career aspirations match their subjects'.

"Of course we do makeup... but we really do respect our reader," said Susan Schulz, editor-in-chief of CosmoGIRL! "She has bigger plans for herself and we want to feed that part of her soul."

    Magazines drop print for Web to reach teens, UT, 29.8.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2006-08-29-teen-mags-net_x.htm

Fox News Journalists Free

After Declaring Conversion

August 28, 2006
The New York Times
By STEVEN ERLANGER

JERUSALEM, Aug. 27 — Two journalists kidnapped in Gaza were released unharmed on Sunday after being forced at gunpoint to say on a videotape that they had converted to Islam.

The two journalists for Fox News — Steve Centanni, 60, an American correspondent, and Olaf Wiig, 36, a freelance cameraman from New Zealand — were held for 13 days in an abandoned garage in the Gaza Strip as hostages of a previously unknown group calling itself the Holy Jihad Brigades.

“I’m really fine, healthy in good shape and so happy to be free,” Mr. Centanni told Fox News. He said the two had been forced at gunpoint to say that they were converting to Islam and had taken Muslim names. “I have the highest respect for Islam,” he said. “But it was something we felt we had to do because they had the guns, and we didn’t know what the hell was going on.”

Earlier on Sunday, their captors delivered a video showing the two men in Arab robes reading from the Koran to indicate their conversion.

After their release, the two men were brought to a hotel in Gaza to be greeted by colleagues. They then met with the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Ismail Haniya of Hamas, who had called for their captors to free them.

He dismissed suggestions that any Qaeda-associated group was in Gaza and said of the kidnappers, “These are young men who carried out the action out of private beliefs.”

But the identities of the group were a puzzle, and there were no immediate arrests. Nor was there any immediate indication of a ransom payment. The kidnappers demanded that the United States release all Muslim prisoners, but they threatened no particular consequences.

In Gaza, there was speculation that the group consisted of angry or disaffected members of various militant groups trying to embarrass Mr. Haniya and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah. Others suggested a private grievance.

In a brief news conference, Mr. Wiig said he hoped the kidnapping would not prevent foreign journalists from covering Gaza. “That would be a great tragedy for the people of Palestine and especially for the people of Gaza,” he said.

Mr. Wiig’s wife, Anita McNaught, a television journalist, thanked Palestinian officials and Fox News for their efforts. The men refused to take questions, then traveled to the Erez border crossing and entered Israel.

Mr. Centanni told his network that he and Mr. Wiig had been blindfolded, handcuffed and taken to the abandoned garage with a generator. “I was thinking, ‘Oh God, O.K., so a remote warehouse with a big noisy generator. I’m toast,’ ” Mr. Centanni said. “They could simply shoot me in the head, and no one would hear it.”

He said he and Mr. Wiig had been forced to make videotapes denouncing American policies as well as saying they had converted to Islam.

Also on Sunday, the leader of Hezbollah, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said in an interview with a private Lebanese television station, New TV, that the group “would ignore” what he called Israel’s provocations.

He said Hezbollah had not expected even “1 percent” of Israel’s response to its July 12 cross-border raid, which provoked the conflict. “If I had known that the operation to capture the soldiers would lead to this result, we would not have carried it out,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

Sheik Nasrallah said Italy was trying to play a role in a prisoner exchange between Hezbollah and Israel, to be carried out under the auspices of the Lebanese parliamentary speaker, Nabih Berri. Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12; Israel has two prominent Lebanese prisoners from years before and an unknown number of captured Hezbollah fighters and bodies.

Israeli officials say they believe that Sheik Nasrallah does not want the fighting to begin again, that he was shocked by Israel’s response and that he is concentrating on the rebuilding to retain political leverage.

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said at the Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday that the world should move quickly to prevent Sheik Nasrallah from taking credit for Lebanese reconstruction and that Israel expected an expanded United Nations force in Lebanon to monitor its borders and ensure that Hezbollah is not resupplied.

The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, has said the new force will not monitor the borders; the Security Council resolution that ended the war said the force should do so only if Lebanon requests it. Syria has threatened to close its border with Lebanon if “foreign forces” patrol it.

In Gaza early Sunday, Israeli forces rocketed an armored car belonging to Reuters, wounding five people. The car was clearly marked on the sides and roof and was being used to cover an Israeli raid.

Capt. Noa Meir, an Army spokeswoman, said that the vehicle was in a combat area during a night raid and that the Army had not seen the markings.

The Foreign Press Association of Israel rejected the army’s “excuses” and called for a full investigation.

    Fox News Journalists Free After Declaring Conversion, NYT, 28.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html

CBS Weighs Indecency Rules

for "9 / 11" Documentary

August 10, 2006
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:19 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - CBS will air an updated version of the ``9/11'' documentary about the attacks at the World Trade Center and the firefighters who responded that September day five years ago.

The Emmy- and Peabody-winning documentary, produced by brothers Gedeon and Jules Naudet and retired firefighter James Hanlon, will air September 10.

Airing the documentary represents something of an act of courage by CBS, given the gritty language that ``9/11'' contained in its two previous airings and the chill that is going through the airwaves over federal efforts to curb broadcast indecency. CBS has made no cuts to the language for this telecast. CBS sources said the documentary, which is the true-life portrait of what happened that day, is bound to generate controversy in some quarters.

``It's important to take note of the event as it happened,'' CBS executive producer Susan Zirinsky said. ``And (the filmmakers) have done an amazing job in staying with these guys over five years and evolving with them. You will feel at the end that we've taken a journey again.''

The French filmmakers had planned to make a documentary about a year in the life of a rookie firefighter. It became a gripping record of one of the most important days in U.S. history as Jules Naudet went out on a call with the firefighters on September 11, 2001, and filmed American Airlines Flight 11 slamming into the North Tower. What transpired was a transfixing portrait of the firefighters dealing with the crisis that became more dire by the minute. The updated version, which has been in the works for a year, will include interviews with 20 of the firefighters from the downtown Manhattan firehouse where the Naudets had been filming for months. Robert De Niro, who narrated the film, will tape new portions next week. More than 39 million people watched the documentary during its first airing in March 2002.

The stakes are higher for CBS this time around. With potential indecency fines increasing from $32,500 per utterance per outlet to $325,000 each, the multitude of expletives heard in ``9/11'' could quickly run CBS and its affiliates into serious money. CBS has been the most aggressive of the networks in this regard and has paid the price with fines ranging from the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show to a ``Without a Trace'' repeat last year. But the network isn't standing on such principles now: Sources said the network briefly discussed potential FCC issues before deciding that ``9/11'' wasn't indecent and also that it was too important to ``sanitize'' by toning down the language.

But CBS is taking steps to make sure that no one is caught by surprise, including informing affiliates of its plans to air the broadcast and, like the previous two telecasts, including strong warnings in the promos before the broadcast and at various points during the two-hour telecast.

``It's so important to the story to let the reality exist,'' Zirinsky said. ``We did that for the previous times it has aired -- we put an advisory out, and we have De Niro responding to it. But it's important to take in the reality in what is the most horrific terrorist attack in our country's history. . . . The men had never been tested like that. It was important to allow this to be what it was, for all its sensibilities.''

There are no graphic images in the film, save for firefighters carrying out the body of FDNY chaplain Mychal Judge. Jules Naudet said he censored himself on the spot, not filming the horrible images he had seen from the moment he walked into the lobby of the North Tower.

``I was just protecting myself, in a way,'' he said. ``I remember the first time I was confronted with that -- there were three people burning alive, I got a glimpse of it, and unfortunately these images are seared into your brain. I was thinking (then) that nobody should see that.''

The update keeps much of the core of the original documentary, particularly the harrowing journey with the firefighters as they battle to save lives and fight the fires high above them and then fight to save their own. Three hundred forty-three firefighters, including several the film, were among the 2,700 people who were killed in the Manhattan attacks.

``We've been in constant contact with the men (of the firehouse) after making this documentary,'' Hanlon said. ``We were really a part of that family; we've stayed in touch with everyone. And a year ago, we realized that a lot of the guys had never spoken about it after that day and would really only talk about it in a closed circle of firefighters.''

The filmmakers also have seen the firefighters at several department functions annually throughout the years, Jules Naudet said. He was married at the firehouse about a year after the attacks.

Several of the firefighters have transferred, and others have retired. At least two, though, are still on the job: Joseph Pfeiffer, the battalion chief who lost his brother, Kevin, at the World Trade Center, is now FDNY's chief of counterterrorism and preparedness. Rookie firefighter Tony Benetatos is now on the haz-mat squad.

While some of the interviews were done at the Engine 7/Ladder 1 firehouse, others were done at the Naudet parents' house on 73rd Street in Manhattan. Hanlon said that many were initially apprehensive about talking, and they always had a lunch first without cameras, then caught up with many moments of silence before the interviews begin. At the core, the filmmakers say, it's a story not just about heroes but ordinary men who went through extraordinary times.

Gedeon Naudet worked on an international version of the update, which will run in 112 countries as a separate half-hour show after the original ``9/11'' documentary runs. The Naudets have other projects they're working on, as does Hanlon. And ''9/11'' hasn't run its course either. Evoking Michael Apted's landmark documentary series that began in 1964 with ``7 Up,'' Hanlon and the Naudets plan to keep checking in with the firefighters. Some of the ones who declined to talk to them this time around have promised to sit down in front of the camera at the 10-year anniversary.

``We've bonded with those men, and we will be forever,'' Hanlon said. ``To revisit them every five years is something that we have discussed. I think the American people want to know what happened to these men.''

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

    CBS Weighs Indecency Rules for "9 / 11" Documentary, NYT, 10.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/arts/entertainment-cbs.html

U.S. Wins Access

to Reporter Phone Records

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A federal prosecutor may inspect the telephone records of two New York Times reporters in an effort to identify their confidential sources, a federal appeals court in New York ruled yesterday.

The 2-to-1 decision, from a court historically sympathetic to claims that journalists should be entitled to protect their sources, reversed a lower court and dealt a further setback to news organizations, which have lately been on a losing streak in the federal courts.

The dissenting judge said that the government had failed to demonstrate it truly needed the records and that efforts to obtain reporters’ phone records could alter the way news gathering was conducted.

The case arose from a Chicago grand jury’s investigation into who told the two reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take against two Islamic charities, Holy Land Foundation in Texas and Global Relief Foundation in Illinois. Though the government contended that calls from the reporters tipped off the charities to impending raids and asset seizures, the investigation appears to be focused on identifying the reporters’ sources. No testimony has been sought from the reporters, and there has been no indication that their actions are a subject of the investigation.

“No grand jury can make an informed decision to pursue the investigation further, much less to indict or not indict, without the reporters’ evidence,” Judge Ralph K. Winter Jr. wrote for majority, in an opinion joined by Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse. “We see no danger to a free press in so holding. Learning of imminent law enforcement asset freezes/searches and informing targets of them is not an activity essential, or even common, to journalism.”

George Freeman, vice president and assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company, disputed the majority’s characterization. Ms. Miller and Mr. Shenon, he said, “were conducting their journalistic duties by getting reaction to an ongoing story.”

Mr. Freeman added: “The move against the charities was not a surprise. No one has ever alleged that any federal agent was hindered or hurt or didn’t succeed.”

Mr. Freeman said The Times had not decided whether to pursue an appeal, either to the full appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, or to the United States Supreme Court.

Ms. Miller, who retired from The Times last year, said she was very disappointed. “That this was 2-to-1 showed how close these issues are and the need for a federal shield law to protect journalists, their telephone numbers and hence their sources,” she said.

In an unrelated case last year, a federal appeals court in Washington ordered Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper, then of Time magazine, to testify before a grand jury about conversations with their sources. They did so after receiving their sources’ permission, though not before Ms. Miller spent 85 days in jail.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald was the prosecutor in both cases, though he acted as United States attorney in Chicago in the charities case and as special counsel in the Washington case. His spokesman, Randall Samborn, declined to comment yesterday.

While yesterday’s decision represented a clear loss for The Times, the majority ruled for the paper on several subsidiary points and left open the possibility that it would protect reporters’ sources in cases involving other kinds of reporting.

The majority said, for instance, that the paper had been entitled to bring a civil suit in New York to challenge a grand jury subpoena in Chicago. It also said that whatever protections the reporters had against being called to testify about their sources also extended to their phone records. And it said that “courts can easily find appropriate means of protecting the journalists involved and their sources” where “government corruption or misconduct” is involved.

But the court rejected The Times’s central argument, saying that neither the United States Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Branzburg v. Hayes, which considered the scope of the protections offered by the First Amendment, nor later developments in other areas of the law provided the paper with the ability to protect the phone records at issue in the case.

The majority ruled that the government could overcome any privilege that even a broad reading of the Branzburg decision allowed. It also declined to adopt a so-called common-law evidentiary privilege based on the shield laws almost all states have adopted, saying the government could similarly defeat any plausible version of such a privilege.

In seeming to acknowledge the existence of privilege, though one subject to a balancing test, the decision differed from the one issued by the federal appeals court in Washington last year that sent Ms. Miller to jail.

“There is a lot more to be heard from the courts before this issue is resolved one way or the other,” said Floyd Abrams, who represented The Times in both cases.

In his dissent, Judge Robert D. Sack said the government had not shown that the phone records contained important information that could not be obtained elsewhere. Judge Sack added a cautionary note about the consequences of unfettered access to reporters’ phone records.

“Reporters might find themselves,” he said, “as a matter of practical necessity, contacting sources the way I understand drug dealers to reach theirs — by use of clandestine cellphones and meeting in darkened doorways. Ordinary use of the telephone could become a threat to journalist and source alike. It is difficult to see in whose best interests such a regime would operate.”

Judge Winter was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, Judge Kearse by President Jimmy Carter and Judge Sack by President Bill Clinton.

    U.S. Wins Access to Reporter Phone Records, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/washington/02phones.html

E-Commerce Report

Newspapers to Use Links

to Rivals on Web Sites

July 31, 2006
The New York Times
By BOB TEDESCHI

Want the latest news on Floyd Landis’s positive drug test from The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times or USA Today?

Soon, it will all be on Washingtonpost.com.

The Washington Post, The New York Sun and The Daily Oklahoman, in Oklahoma City, have contracted with an online news aggregator, Inform.com, to scan hundreds of news and blog sites and deliver content related to articles appearing on their Web sites, regardless of who published those articles. Links to those articles will appear in a box beside the site’s original article or within the text of the story.

Newspaper Web sites, which commonly post articles from sister publications, wire services and even blogs, have typically stopped short of providing generous doses of news from competitors. The move made by these papers is not a result of cooperation across the industry as it is a counterattack by publishers against Google and Yahoo, which have stolen readers and advertisers from newspapers in recent years, both with their search engines and their own news aggregation services.

“This lets us be a search engine,” said Kelly Dyer Fry, director of multimedia for Opubco Communications Group, which publishes the Oklahoman and its Web site, NewsOK.com. “We look at it like we just hired 30,000 journalists, because now we can give you our story and what the rest of the world is saying about it.”

The site’s roughly 700,000 registered users view about 36 million pages online each month, with each user viewing three to five pages per visit. And that is not enough to satisfy the demands of advertisers. Because Inform gives readers an easy way to find related stories that were published earlier on NewsOK.com, Ms. Fry said she expected the number of page views on the site to increase by at least threefold.

“People aren’t just reading one story,” she said. “They’ll click deeper because of this, and I can load ads deeper into those pages. It really beefs up the site.”

For a newspaper industry that has watched its advertisers flee to cable television, junk mail and Web sites like Google, Yahoo and Craigslist, online advertising revenues have become Topic A in boardrooms and newsrooms alike. While growing, these Web sales have not been enough to offset the cash lost to other media.

Online media outlets like Slate or Salon prominently feature their links to other sites and some, particularly blogs, are built around the strength of their links. But newspapers have been reluctant to direct readers outside their own gates. These deals with Inform are but one indication that newspapers may be reconsidering long-held beliefs about how to compete, and cooperate, with other publishers.

“Five years ago, everybody said you have to keep readers on your site, with no links out to other sites,” said Caroline H. Little, chief executive and publisher of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, the online division of the Washington Post Company. “But ultimately, people will go where they want to go.”

“To the extent we can provide them more Washington Post video or more information from around the Web, we’re all for it,” Ms. Little added. “And we get the benefit of that, too, because we get a lot of referrals from the Web, also.”

Inform, which is privately-held and based in New York, would not say how much revenue these deals were expected to generate. The company says it was able to convince publishers to try its linking service because newspapers had already seen success in putting up related content, but found no reliable or easy way to automate the process.

This, analysts say, is the selling point of services like Inform, which costs between a few thousand and tens of thousands of dollars monthly. A site like NewsOK.com attracts frequent users, but they only read a few pages per visit, hardly the kind of audience that will help newspapers replace revenues from their shrinking paper editions.

The amount of revenue gleaned from a newspaper’s Web site varies widely depending on the publication, but according to the Newspaper Association of America, 5.5 percent of the newspaper industry’s revenues come from their online divisions.

“Newspaper sites have a lot of rich content, but they have trouble helping people see all that’s there on their sites,” said Greg Sterling, an online media analyst. “This creates many more opportunities for readers to drill down on a topic, and that means more opportunities for advertising revenue.”

Web sites that already work with Inform, like the Daily Oklahoman’s Web site, surround stories with related links from the newspaper’s current edition and its archives, as well as links to related stories, videos, blogs, slide shows and podcasts from other sites. Links also appear in the text of stories.

For instance, a story last week about an injured Marine returning home to the state was mostly bordered by links to stories from the Daily Oklahoman about the war in Iraq. But links on the left of the story and highlighted words within the story also led to a list of articles from Newsweek, The New York Times and smaller regional publications, as well as blog postings.

These links did not whisk readers away to another site. They instead opened a new window in the browser with the new story so readers could keep their original NewsOK page up.

Ms. Little said the Washington Post Web site would begin using Inform’s service in September or October, and would initially surround its stories with related content from other Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive sites, like Slate.com, Newsweek.com and BudgetTravelOnline.com. After that, it would include links to stories from around the Web, possibly from other nationally-oriented newspapers.

There are instances where the Post’s Web site already links to stories from these competitors. For instance, in the online version of his “White House Briefing” column last week, Dan Froomkin included a link to a New York Times story from the previous week. According to Jim Brady, the executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, reporters or Web producers can insert links to another paper’s site when they see fit.

“We think it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Brady said. “It seems limiting to tell people about something another news organization has reported and not point them to it. It goes against the Web’s DNA.”

But the Inform service will generate links automatically. To put a link within or near a story now (as Mr. Froomkin’s did), most publications must do so manually or at least review the link that its technology system has suggested. Inform’s technology scans each story from a client’s Web site as well as other content from the Web, then automatically inserts links on the client’s site. Inform also updates the links continuously to point readers to more recent content.

Inform’s executives said that competing publishers are generally pleased to be linked to, given that it helps attract readers they might not otherwise find.

The New York Times has no plans to use Inform, according to Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman. Ms. Mathis said the Web site planned to link to bloggers on various topics in the future, using technology from Blogrunner, which the Times bought last year for an undisclosed sum.

“So we have both of the elements of Inform,” Ms. Mathis said. Not only does the company link to related stories from within the Times organization, but “we have the ability to go outside and grab other high-quality information on related topics that would be useful to a reader.”

    Newspapers to Use Links to Rivals on Web Sites, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/technology/31ecom.html

Developer’s Son

Acquires The New York Observer

July 31, 2006
The New York Times
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Jared Kushner, the 25-year-old son of a wealthy New Jersey developer who was sentenced to prison last year, has bought The New York Observer, paying what one person familiar with details of the sale said was nearly $10 million for a majority stake in the weekly newspaper.

“I own The New York Observer,” he said yesterday.

Mr. Kushner said that he bought the newspaper because it was a marquee property in the media capital of the world, and that the opportunity to buy a newspaper did not come around very often. The paper’s relatively small circulation — 50,000 — belies its influence, particularly in New York’s media, political and real estate circles.

He also said The Observer was a good brand that could one day make a lot of money, though it now loses about $2 million a year.

Because every side of the transaction is private, it is difficult to precisely determine the financing behind the deal. It is not clear how much of a stake Mr. Kushner bought, but Arthur Carter, the current publisher of The Observer, is retaining some interest and will be offering the new owner strategic advice.

The Kushner name is well known to readers of The Observer and other media outlets, which have given thorough coverage to federal charges against his father, Charles B. Kushner, who was a major Democratic fund-raiser and contributor to James E. McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey.

Charles Kushner was sentenced last year to two years in prison after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign donations. He also admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and having a videotape of the encounter sent to his sister, the man’s wife, in an attempt to get back at her for cooperating with a federal investigation into his business activities.

The elder Mr. Kushner now lives in a halfway house in Newark run by the Department of Corrections and is expected to be released in late August. A spokesman for his real estate company, Kushner Companies, said that the son, Jared, had worked for the company until recently.

Jared Kushner said he was proud of his father, but that he was his own man.

“I love my father,” Mr. Kushner said, “but I have worked to develop a separate and distinct identity in different projects I have worked on. The only difference is that this is far more public,” he said of his purchase of The Observer.

Mr. Kushner pledged to stay out of the editorial process and focus instead on improving the paper’s bottom line.

“I am here to help build the paper in a way that will lead to the best and most honest reporting, regardless of who is involved,” he said. “It is up to the editors and reporters to decide what should be in the paper. The headline in everything we do should be integrity.”

Peter W. Kaplan, the editor of the paper, said that Mr. Kushner had no agenda, adding, “He told me that he will not interfere with the paper, that editorially, the paper is ours.”

Mr. Kaplan said Mr. Kushner had told him that he had three objectives: to market the brand name of The Observer; to build its Internet traffic; and to provide resources for more news beats so that the paper could have what Mr. Kaplan called “a stronger paper with more constituencies and more advertising.”

He said that Mr. Kushner represented the 21st century in the newspaper industry. “In that sense,” Mr. Kaplan said, “his 25-ness is a huge asset. He is not weighed down by the debris of conventional wisdom.”

Mr. Kaplan said yesterday that he would be confirming the news of the sale to the newspaper employees on Sunday night and Monday.

“It’s a large part of my task to convey to them that Jared is very much a guy building a new business,” he said. “I’m not going to put the weight of any history on his shoulders.”

At least one staff member, Tom Scocca, a senior editor and the Off-the-Record columnist, said he was sanguine about Mr. Kushner owning the paper. “I don’t think that there’s any great sense of dread or fear about this,” he said. “I think Arthur has had the paper these many years because he cares about it, and I’d be very surprised to discover that he had sold it in a way that’s rash or ill-considered.”

Mr. Scocca also said that Mr. Kushner was not particularly tainted because of his father.

“Every pile of money that is enough to buy a newspaper is disturbing if you look closely enough at it,” he said. “But I don’t think he has any reason or need to protect the existing press barons from scrutiny. This is an exciting move.”

    Developer’s Son Acquires The New York Observer, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/business/media/31observer.html

A Language

to Air News of America to the World

July 31, 2006
The New York Times
By HOLLI CHMELA

WASHINGTON, July 29 — Voice of America, the government-sponsored news organization that has been on the air since 1942, broadcasts in 44 different languages — 45 if you count Special English.

Special English was developed nearly 50 years ago as a radio experiment to spread American news and cultural information to people outside the United States who have no knowledge of English or whose knowledge is limited.

Using a 1,500-word vocabulary and short, simple phrases without the idioms and clichés of colloquial English, broadcasters speak at about two-thirds the speed of conversational English. But far from sounding like a record played at the wrong speed, Special English is a complicated skill that takes months of training with a professional voice coach who teaches how to breathe properly and enunciate clearly.

Mario Ritter, a Special English writer and producer, arrived at Voice of America five years ago with many years of experience. Mr. Ritter has been training for six months to be a Special English broadcaster. In August, he said, he will be ready to go on the air live.

“It’s kind of ironic that I normally speak slowly, but it doesn’t give me a leg up in being a Special English broadcaster,” Mr. Ritter said.

Shelley Gollust is chief of Special English at Voice of America. “People in this country have likely never heard of Special English,” Ms. Gollust said, “and, if they have, they often don’t understand the significance of it to people in other countries. They hear it and make fun of how slow it is.”

A 1948 law prohibits Voice of America from broadcasting in the United States, but audio and text files of Special English are on the Voice of America Web site, www.voanews.com/specialenglish.

Students and teachers in other countries say Special English is a good learning tool. “I like that the program is based on 1,500 words,” Sarah Paulsworth said in an e-mail message from Azerbaijan, where she works as a journalist and a volunteer English teacher. “It is a very tangible goal for students. I can literally see some of my students counting the words they know.”

A vocabulary of 1,500 words is adequate for news reporting, but for features and biographies, more words are allowed if they are explained in the context of the sentence.

Words can be added or dropped from the vocabulary. “Sabotage,” a word used often in the World War II era, may be dropped because it is rarely used in news stories today.

Jim Huang Jiwen, a 69-year-old mechanical engineer from Hangzhou, China, said he had listened to Special English on the radio for more than 20 years and, more recently, on the Internet. He said it had helped him improve his ability to write and understand English.

“The pronunciation is beautiful, the sentence is sweet and short, and the content is interesting and friendly to our daily life,” he said in an e-mail message, adding that he particularly liked technical programs.

François Rennaud, 56, a teacher at a vocational school in Paris, has found Special English useful in his business and economics classes. “It closes the gap between textbook English and traditional broadcasts such as BBC or CNN, which are too difficult for the average student,” Mr. Rennaud said.

A Special English editor at Voice of America, Avi Arditti, said: “There is a fine line between simplifying and simplification. It’s not so much simplifying, but clarification. Simplifying can seem somewhat demeaning. You’re not dumbing it down, but you’re making it understandable to your audience whether they have Ph.D.’s or are in middle school.”

But some listeners, like Ali Asqar Khandan, 36, an assistant professor from Tehran, said Special English seemed like “a special program for advertising American life and culture, not a simple radio station for broadcasting news or teaching English.”

“We hear this message everywhere: not even in education reports and culture reports, but in science reports and agriculture reports,” Mr. Khandan wrote in an e-mail message.

The link between learning English and learning about America has been a constant thread in the debate in Congress this year about revising immigration policy.

But at home, the Special English branch at Voice of America would support the use of its programming for recent immigrants in a bilingual model if the law did not prohibit it.

“If new immigrants could turn on their radios at 8 o’clock and listen to a half-hour of Special English to listen to the news, it would be very beneficial,” Ms. Gollust said.

Mr. Ritter added, “That would be a great use of a resource that already exists.”

    A Language to Air News of America to the World, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/31/washington/31voice.html

Soldiers’ Words

May Test PBS Language Rules

July 22, 2006
The New York Times
By ELIZABETH JENSEN

The PBS documentarian Ken Burns has been working for six years on “The War,” a soldier’s-eye view of World War II, and those who have seen parts of the 14-plus hours say they are replete with salty language appropriate to discussions of the horrors of war.

What viewers will see and hear when the series is broadcast in September 2007 is an open question.

A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10 p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language, to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal Communications Commission.

Most notably, PBS’s deputy counsel, Paul Greco, wrote in a memo to stations, it is no longer enough simply to bleep out offensive words audibly when the camera shows a full view of the speaker’s mouth. From now on, the on-camera speaker’s mouth must also be obscured by a digital masking process, a solution that PBS producers have called cartoonish and clumsy.

In addition, profanities expressed in compound words must be audibly bleeped in their entirety so that viewers cannot decipher the words. In the past, PBS required producers to bleep only the offensive part of the compound word.

Since May 31, bits of dialogue have been digitally obscured about 100 times in four PBS programs, most often in two episodes of the music documentary “The Blues.”

Mr. Burns, in an interview, said he was not worried that his work, which he called a “very experiential take on the Second World War,” would be affected by the policy, noting that while the series includes some “very graphic violence,” there are just two profanities, read off camera.

But several other senior public broadcasting executives said “The War” was likely to become a test case for PBS and the F.C.C.

The series includes language for which the F.C.C. has previously issued fines, said a PBS spokeswoman, Lea Sloan. “At this point, the only thing we can do, and fit the guidelines as they are laid out, is to make sure the series airs after 10 p.m,” outside the F.C.C.’s “safe harbor” zone of 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., when children are most likely to be watching, Ms. Sloan said.

Mr. Burns, perhaps best known for his prize-winning series “The Civil War,” insisted that “The War” would be shown in the preferred time slot of 8 p.m. He said he was “flabbergasted” that F.C.C. policy was being applied to documentaries, particularly when President Bush himself was inadvertently heard using vulgar language, broadcast on some cable newscasts, at the recent Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia.

He added that he hoped PBS and public television stations could unite and “stand our ground” in opposing the self-censorship sought by F.C.C. policy, but he noted that “we’ve also experienced as a family the devastating consequences, and it is not something that any station or any executive wants to see repeated.”

In March, the PBS station KCSM in San Mateo, Calif., was fined $15,000 over profanities in “The Blues.” That fine is being appealed.

Ms. Sloan said PBS had to institute the policy after successive F.C.C. rulings steadily narrowed what is permissible. Moreover, legislation signed into law last month by President Bush increased by a factor of 10 the fines for broadcast indecency, to $325,000 a station for each instance.

That was “a real deal breaker,” Ms. Sloan said. “For many of our stations, a single fine of that magnitude would put them into bankruptcy.”

PBS plans to ask the F.C.C. to re-examine its policies regarding documentary programming. “We believe that there is a place for documentary filmmaking that uses language in context,” Ms. Sloan said.

The F.C.C. declined to comment. An F.C.C. official, who did not want to be named because the issue is the subject of litigation, noted that “there aren’t any cases where the commission has fined a broadcaster when an obscenity has been inaudible” but not digitally obscured, adding that “the commission’s analysis always takes context into account.”

Margaret Drain, the vice president for national programs at WGBH in Boston, said her station was already examining how it would probably have to edit references to sexual activities in a coming “Masterpiece Theater” production, “Casanova.”

She said that while she understands how PBS arrived at its policy for documentaries, the station might not adhere to it for series like “Frontline” and “The American Experience,” particularly when tackling war topics where strong language reflects reality.

“The decisions we make in the future, to pixelate or not, may put us in the position of negotiating with or telling PBS about our position,” she said.

Ms. Sloan of PBS said, “This is an unhappy situation for all of us and we’re very concerned about the situation,” but added that producers are required to submit F.C.C.-compliant material.

In mid-June, shortly after the PBS edict, “Frontline” scheduled a last-minute rebroadcast of an episode on the Iraqi insurgency and digitally obscured the mouth of a soldier. Ms. Drain said that the same decision might not be made today, “now that we’ve had time to absorb everything.”

Producers are in a difficult position, she said. “What we’re trying to do is do our work and bring the same kind of high-quality broadcast programs to the public. We don’t want to overreact, and we don’t want to self-censor.”

As for “The War,” Ms. Drain called it “the perfect test case for the F.C.C., because who’s going to take on veterans of this country who put their lives at risk for an honest, just cause?”

“It’s not pornographic; it’s not scatological,” she said. “It’s an emotional expression of a reality they experienced, and it’s part of the historical record.”

    Soldiers’ Words May Test PBS Language Rules, NYT, 22.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/arts/television/22pbs.html

Expletive not deleted

by all media outlets

Updated 7/17/2006 9:21 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Peter Johnson

News outlets were divided Monday over whether to air or post an expletive used by President Bush during an unguarded moment at the G8 summit in Russia.

CNN broadcast and posted unedited video. The New York Times and The Washington Post reported the word in Web stories. On CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox News, MSNBC and USA TODAY, the word was excised in videos and Web stories (though an audio clip with a warning at USA TODAY included it). The Times and the Post said they'd publish the word today; USA TODAY will not.

CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson says: "The word is not one we would normally air on CNN, but when said by the president in this context, we thought it was appropriate.

"The expletive ... was reflective of how these two world leaders talk with each other."

But David McCormick, NBC News standards chief, says NBC was able to "communicate the spirit of the conversation without actually broadcasting the word."

Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism says he isn't sure whether "hearing or not hearing the word changes our understanding of the event."

But Bob Steele, who teaches journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, says news organizations were right to use the word.

"You don't have to spend very long in a barber or beauty shop or on the golf course or in the locker room to hear this word," he says. "It may be tough on some people's ears, but this word is not one that is high on the scale of offensiveness."

    Expletive not deleted by all media outlets, UT, 17.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-07-17-bush-expletive_x.htm

Novak Told Prosecutor His Sources

in Leak Case

July 12, 2006
The New York Times
By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, July 11 — The journalist who first identified the intelligence officer at the center of the C.I.A. leak case says he later voluntarily identified three sources to the prosecutor in the case, who, he says, had already learned of his conversations with each of the three.

In his syndicated column being published Wednesday, the journalist, Robert D. Novak, confirms that two of his sources were Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and Bill Harlow, then a spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, both of whose roles in the case are already widely known. Mr. Novak does not disclose his primary source, saying this official has not come forward publicly.

Mr. Novak’s column of July 14, 2003, identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. That column focused primarily on a trip that Ms. Wilson’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, took to Africa at the C.I.A.’s request in 2002 to check reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium there. Mr. Wilson found no evidence of such a purchase and subsequently became a critic of the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

The 2003 column had far-reaching consequences, leading to a criminal inquiry that began as an effort to determine whether Ms. Wilson’s identity had been disclosed by someone in the government as retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the administration. Last October the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, obtained an obstruction and perjury indictment of I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Mr. Libby, who has pleaded not guilty, is to be tried early next year. Judith Miller, a former New York Times reporter, was jailed for 85 days for refusing to testify and reveal her confidential source in the case, Mr. Libby.

In the column, which circulated over the Internet on Tuesday evening, Mr. Novak said his decision to discuss his sources with Mr. Fitzgerald had been made reluctantly, after he realized that the prosecutor had learned independently of those sources and his lawyers had advised him that he faced a costly and probably unsuccessful legal fight if he refused to cooperate.

“I have been subpoenaed by and testified to a federal grand jury,” Mr. Novak wrote. “Published reports that I took the Fifth Amendment, made a plea bargain with the prosecutors or was a prosecutorial target were all untrue.”

Mr. Novak said he had previously avoided discussing the case at the request of Mr. Fitzgerald. He said he was doing so now because Mr. Fitzgerald had advised Mr. Novak’s lawyers that the inquiry related to him had ended. Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald informed Mr. Rove, who had testified before the grand jury five times, that he would not be charged. That step would appear to have given Mr. Novak impetus to seek the prosecutor’s permission to discuss matters related to the columnist, who did not return a telephone call to his office on Tuesday evening.

Mr. Novak said he refused to reveal his sources when F.B.I. agents first interviewed him about the 2003 column that fall. During that interview, he said, he discussed in general how he had learned that Ms. Wilson might have had a role in the C.I.A.’s assigning her husband to the Africa trip. But he did not disclose his sources then, he said, and was not asked by the agents to identify them.

Then, he said, on Jan. 14, 2004, at his first interview with the prosecutor, Mr. Fitzgerald made it clear that he already knew the identity of the sources, having brought with him three legal waivers, each signed by one of the three, relieving Mr. Novak of any confidentiality pledge.

Mr. Novak said he had a second session with Mr. Fitzgerald on Feb. 5, 2004. He was then subpoenaed, he said, and testified to the grand jury three weeks later.

“In my sworn testimony,” he wrote, “I said what I have contended in my columns and on television: Joe Wilson’s wife’s role in instituting her husband’s mission was revealed to me in the middle of a long interview with an official who I have previously said was not a political gunslinger. After the federal investigation was announced, he told me through a third party that the disclosure was inadvertent on his part.”

After his interview with that primary source, Mr. Novak sought out Mr. Rove at the White House and Mr. Harlow at the C.I.A. for confirmation, he wrote.

His new column confirms what he hinted at in a previous one: that although he had been told that Mr. Wilson’s wife was a C.I.A. officer, he learned her name from reading the former ambassador’s entry in Who’s Who in America. It identified her as Valerie Plame.

    Novak Told Prosecutor His Sources in Leak Case, NYT, 12.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/12/washington/12leak.html

The TV Watch

President Has a Smooth Ride

on 'Larry King Live'

July 7, 2006
The New York Times
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

Two kinds of celebrities go on "Larry King Live" on CNN: those with something to sell and those with something to hide.

Al Gore and Brandon Routh, the young star of the newly released "Superman Returns," recently appeared on the show to promote their new movies. The second category includes guests like Star Jones Reynolds, Mary Kay Letourneau, and, right after his indictment in 2004, Kenneth L. Lay of Enron. "Larry King Live" is the first stop in any damage control operation — a chance to explain oneself to the least contentious journalist in the land.

And that is why President Bush invited the CNN talk show host to the White House on his 60th birthday. The standoff with North Korea over its missile tests, the war in Iraq and ever-sliding ratings in the polls have given the president little reason to celebrate. Mr. King gave the president a chance to defend his policies without risk of interruption or follow-up.

At times, Mr. King even provided the president with answers. "You've always had a lot of compassion for the Mexican people," the interviewer interjected in a discussion of the president's immigration bill. Mr. Bush seemed a little surprised, but grateful. "Yes, sir!" he replied.

The hourlong interview was taped Thursday in the Blue Room of the White House with Mr. King crouched in the foreground across a small round table from the president and Laura Bush, dressed in his trademark suspenders and cowboy boots.

After a brief, good-humored exchange about how the president felt about turning 60, Mr. King asked Mr. Bush about North Korea vaguely enough for the president to repeat what he said earlier in the day in an appearance with the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, about the need for a united stand to bring the North Korean president to reason.

Other than the fact that Mr. Bush promised not to lecture President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia before the Group of Eight meeting next week in St. Petersburg, Mr. King did not elicit news or curveballs from the president.

Even when he ventured into areas like the war in Iraq, public opinion polls or the president's past friendship with Mr. Lay, Mr. King looked less like an interrogator than a hotel concierge gently removing lint from a customer's coat. Mr. King's questions rarely rile his guests; instead, his cozy, incurious style encourages them to expose themselves.

And just as Liza Minnelli seemed to come unglued all on her own in her appearance on the show last March, Mr. Bush at times seemed tense and defensive even without needling from his host. "I've been popular before, as president," Mr. Bush said tightly. "And I've been — people have accepted what I've been doing." He added: "Sometimes things go up and down. The best way to lead and the best way to solve problems is to focus on a set of principles. And do what you think is right."

The president appeared on Mr. King's show twice before, in 2000 and in 2004, but those were campaign interviews. On Thursday, the president was fighting to improve his battered image.

When he was at a loss for words, Mrs. Bush stepped in to speak on his behalf, sometimes with more dexterity than her husband. "Well, sure, you know, we worried about it, obviously," Mrs. Bush replied when asked whether she was rattled by the North Korean missile tests. "But what I spent the day doing actually was watching our shuttle take off from Florida."

Mrs. Bush even managed to politely set Mr. King straight when he somewhat puzzlingly described Mr. Putin as "very Western."

"Well, I don't know if I would say that," she said gently. "I think he's very Russian. But I like him a lot."

It wasn't live, but it was classic Larry King: a warm bath, not a hot seat.

    President Has a Smooth Ride on 'Larry King Live', NYT, 7.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/07/washington/07teevee.html

House Assails Media Report

on Tracking of Finances

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By CARL HULSE

WASHINGTON, June 29 — The House of Representatives on Thursday condemned the recent disclosure of a classified program to track financial transactions and called on the media to cooperate in keeping such efforts secret.

Lawmakers expressed their sentiment through a resolution that was approved on a largely party-line 227-to-183 vote after days of harsh criticism by the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans aimed at The New York Times and other newspapers for publishing details of the program, which the government said was limited to following possible terrorist financial trails.

The vote followed a bitter debate in which Republicans said news accounts had jeopardized the effort, and Democrats accused Republicans of trying to intimidate the press.

Republicans criticized news organizations, and The Times in particular, saying they had not considered the potential damage of revealing the program. "The recent front-page story in the aforementioned New York Times cut the legs out from under this program," said the resolution's author, Representative Michael G. Oxley, Republican of Ohio. "Now the terrorists will be driven further underground."

Mr. Oxley and other Republicans said The Times deserved particular scorn as the first to make public the details of the administration's effort to try to identify and apprehend terrorists by tracing financial transactions processed through an international cooperative called Swift. The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal published similar accounts soon after The Times. "If you are Al Qaeda, the appropriate response to this publication is, 'Thank you,' " said Representative Spencer Bacchus, Republican of Alabama.

Democrats accused Republicans of engaging in media-bashing for political gain while practicing selective outrage since, they said, Republicans stayed largely silent on the White House disclosure of the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Wilson. They also said the administration had repeatedly disclosed its determination to track money moving to terrorists.

"We are here today because there hasn't been enough red meat thrown at the Republican base just before the Fourth of July recess," said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.

The House vote followed denunciations by President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney of the disclosure, a request for prosecution of the sources of the article and Times employees and calls to revoke their press credentials.

The Republican-written resolution did not identify any publication by name. But many of the resolution's backers said The Times had acted irresponsibly.

Representative David Dreier, Republican of California, said The Times had led other news outlets in deciding to publish classified material. He dismissed arguments that the disclosure served a public interest, saying the public would rather be safe from terrorists than "all-knowing" about antiterror efforts.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, disputed the idea that the had paper acted cavalierly in its decision to reveal the program.

"If the members who voted for the resolution believe the press is insensitive to the risks of reporting on intelligence programs, they could not be more wrong," he said in a statement. "We take those risks very, very seriously." He said the paper had agreed in the past to withhold information when lives were at stake.

"However, the administration simply did not make a convincing case that describing our efforts to monitor international banking presented such a danger," he said. "Indeed, the administration itself has talked publicly and repeatedly about its successes in the area of financial surveillance."

Democrats complained that Republicans refused to allow a vote on a Democratic alternative, which supported tracking terror financing and raised concern about leaks of classified material, including the "names of clandestine service officers of the Central Intelligence Agency," a clear reference to the Valerie Wilson case.

Democrats said the Republican proposal made assertions about the antiterror effort that could not be known since Congress had conducted little or no oversight of it. The resolution declared that it "has been conducted in accordance with all applicable laws, regulations and executive orders, that appropriate safeguards and reviews have been instituted to protect individual liberties and that Congress has been appropriately informed and consulted."

The resolution said the House "expects the cooperation of all news media organizations in protecting the lives of Americans and the capability of the government to identify, disrupt and capture terrorists by not disclosing classified intelligence programs."

Representative John D. Dingell, Democrat of Michigan, said Republicans were trying to stifle criticism of the administration, which he described as the most deceitful he had seen in his 50 years in Congress. Others said the administration was promoting democracy abroad while challenging a free press at home. "If anyone wants to live in a society where journalists are thrown in prison, I encourage them to move to Cuba, China or North Korea to see if they feel safer," said Representative Jane Harman, a California Democrat.

    House Assails Media Report on Tracking of Finances, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/washington/30cong.html

Bush Says Report on Bank Data

Was Disgraceful

June 27, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, June 26 — President Bush on Monday condemned as "disgraceful" the disclosure last week by The New York Times and other newspapers of a secret program to investigate and track terrorists that relies on a vast international database that includes Americans' banking transactions.

The remarks were the first in public by Mr. Bush on the issue, and they came as the administration intensified its attacks on newspapers' handling of it. In a speech in Nebraska on Monday, Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly criticized The Times by name, while Treasury Secretary John W. Snow dismissed as "incorrect and offensive" the rationale offered by the newspaper's executive editor for the decision to publish.

"Congress was briefed," Mr. Bush said. "And what we did was fully authorized under the law. And the disclosure of this program is disgraceful. We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America, and for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it, does great harm to the United States of America."

The New York Times, followed by The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, began publishing accounts of the program on Thursday evening.

In his remarks during a brief photo session in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, Mr. Bush appeared irritated, at times leaning forward for emphasis, though he did not mention any newspaper by name.

Mr. Cheney, who had earlier said he was offended by news accounts of the financial tracking program, on Monday went a step further, singling out The Times for criticism in a separate appearance at a fundraising luncheon for a Republican candidate for Congress, Adrian Smith, in Grand Island, Neb.

"Some in the press, in particular The New York Times, have made the job of defending against further terrorist attacks more difficult by insisting on publishing detailed information about vital national security programs," the vice president said, adding that the program provides "valuable intelligence" and has been "successful in helping break up terrorist plots."

The executive editor of The Times, Bill Keller, said in an e-mail statement on Monday evening that the decision to publish had been "a hard call." But Mr. Keller noted that since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has "embarked on a number of broad, secret programs aimed at combating terrorism, often without seeking new legal authority or submitting to the usual oversight."

He added, "I think it would be arrogant for us to pre-empt the work of Congress and the courts by deciding these programs are perfectly legal and abuse-proof, based entirely on the word of the government."

Representative Peter King, Republican of New York and the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, released a letter on Monday in which he called on the attorney general to investigate whether The Times's decision to publish the article violated the Espionage Act.

In a television interview on Sunday, Mr. King described the disclosure as "absolutely disgraceful" and said he believed that the newspaper's action had violated the statute.

In Nebraska on Monday, Mr. Cheney reminded his audience that The Times had also disclosed the National Security Agency's secret program of monitoring international communications of suspected terrorists without court warrants. Mr. Cheney said it was "doubly disturbing" that The Times printed the article and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, journalism's highest honor, for it.

"I think that is a disgrace," he said.

Administration officials had argued strongly that in reporting on the financial tracking operation, The Times would endanger national security by prompting the Belgian banking consortium that maintains the financial data to withdraw from the program. On Sunday, Mr. Keller, the paper's executive editor, posted a letter on The New York Times Web site saying that the newspaper "found this argument puzzling," partly because the banking consortium is compelled by subpoena to comply.

Treasury officials did not seek individual court-approved warrants or subpoenas to examine specific transactions, instead relying on broad administrative subpoenas for millions of records from the cooperative, known as Swift.

Mr. Keller said in the letter that the administration had made a "secondary argument" that publication of the article would lead terrorists to change tactics, but he said that argument had been made "in a halfhearted way."

Mr. Snow, the Treasury secretary, challenged that view in strong terms in a letter to Mr. Keller, saying, "Nothing could be further from the truth." Mr. Snow said that he and other high-level officials, including Democrats, had made "repeated pleas" in an effort to dissuade The Times from publication. The letter was made public by the Treasury in a news release on Monday evening.

In explaining the newspaper's rationale for publication, Mr. Keller also wrote that it was not the newspaper's job "to pass judgment on whether this program is legal or effective" — an explanation that drew pointed criticism from Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, during a televised briefing on Monday.

Mr. Snow, who is not related to the Treasury secretary, said journalists made such judgments all the time, and accused The Times of endangering lives and departing from what he said was a longstanding tradition by news organizations of keeping government secrets during wartime.

"Traditionally in this country in a time of war, members of the press have acknowledged that the commander in chief, in the exercise of his powers, sometimes has to do things secretly in order to protect the public," Mr. Snow said. "This is a highly unusual departure."

Mr. Snow said there was no coordinated effort by the White House to ratchet up pressure on journalists, or The Times in particular. But he said the president seemed eager to have a chance to express his views about the issue, and decided at the last minute to take reporters' questions at Monday's photo session, after a meeting with supporters of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"If you want to figure out what the terrorists are doing, you try to follow their money," the president said. "And that's exactly what we're doing. And the fact that a newspaper disclosed it makes it harder to win this war on terror."

On Capitol Hill, the financial-tracking program itself has not generated much criticism, even from Democrats, since its existence was disclosed. A spokesman for Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, said Mr. Reid was briefed on the program several weeks ago and had concluded that "it does not appear to be based on the same shaky and discredited legal analysis the vice president and his allies invoked to underpin the N.S.A. domestic spying program."

An exception has been Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, who has made privacy a signature issue and who said in an interview Monday that the Bush administration was adopting a strategy of "shoot the messenger" in trying to avoid Congressional oversight of the financial tracking program.

"There are very serious constitutional and legal questions that have been raised," Mr. Markey said, "and they're being obscured by this almost ad hominem attack on The New York Times."

Administration officials have held classified briefings about the banking program for some members of Congress and the Sept. 11 commission, intelligence and law enforcement officials said, and more lawmakers were briefed after the administration learned that The Times was making inquiries for an article about the program.

    Bush Says Report on Bank Data Was Disgraceful, NYT, 27.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/washington/27prexy.html

Cheney Assails Press on Report

on Bank Data

June 24, 2006
The New York Times
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, June 23 — Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday vigorously defended a secret program that examines banking records of Americans and others in a vast international database, and harshly criticized the news media for disclosing an operation he said was legal and "absolutely essential" to fighting terrorism.

"What I find most disturbing about these stories is the fact that some of the news media take it upon themselves to disclose vital national security programs, thereby making it more difficult for us to prevent future attacks against the American people," Mr. Cheney said, in impromptu remarks at a fund-raising luncheon for a Republican Congressional candidate in Chicago. "That offends me."

The financial tracking program was disclosed Thursday by The New York Times and other news organizations. American officials had expressed concerns that the Brussels banking consortium that provides access to the database might withdraw from the program if its role were disclosed, particularly in light of anti-American sentiment in some parts of Europe.

But the consortium, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, published a statement on its Web site on Friday, saying its executives "have done their utmost to get the right balance in fulfilling their obligations to the authorities in a manner protective of the interests of the company and its members."

A representative for the cooperative, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk about its internal discussions, said that he knew of no discussions about withdrawing, adding that the group was "very resolute" in its commitment to the financial tracking operation.

The program, run out of the Central Intelligence Agency and overseen by the Treasury Department, has allowed counterterrorism authorities to gain access to millions of records of transactions routed through Swift from individual banks and financial institutions around the world. The data is obtained using broad administrative subpoenas, not court warrants.

Investigators have used the data to do "at least tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of searches" of people and institutions suspected of having ties to terrorists, Stuart Levey, an under secretary at the Treasury Department, told reporters at a briefing on Friday. Officials say the program has proven valuable in a number of foreign and domestic terrorism investigations, and led to the 2003 capture of the most wanted Qaeda fugitive in Southeast Asia, known as Hambali.

News accounts of the program appeared just as President Bush returned from a two-day trip to Europe, where he met in Vienna with leaders of the European Union. Neither that organization nor any of its member states commented Friday, but one advocate for civil liberties in London said the program could create new tensions in Europe just as Mr. Bush was trying to smooth trans-Atlantic relations.

"Our data has been effectively hijacked by the U.S. under cover of secret agreements and entirely undisclosed terms," said the civil liberties advocate, Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, a London-based organization focused on the intrusion on privacy by governments and businesses. "There will be a snapping point, and this may be it."

Initial reaction from global banks was muted, with one executive saying that while the privacy of information was a contentious issue within the industry, the Swift operation had so far generated few complaints.

In Washington on Friday, privacy groups and civil liberties advocates were critical of the program, as were some Democrats and one prominent Republican on Capitol Hill.

The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony D. Romero, condemned the program, calling it "another example of the Bush administration's abuse of power."

Lauren Weinstein, the head of the California-based Privacy Forum, an online discussion group, raised concerns about lack of independent review of the operation. "Oversight is the difference between something being reasonable and something being abuse," he said.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he had sent letters on Friday to both Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales on the issue. While he declined to release the letters, he said he was concerned about the legal authority for the operation.

Mr. Specter has been at odds with the administration over another previously secret counterterrorism operation, the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program. The senator said he was particularly troubled that the administration had expanded its Congressional briefings on the financial tracking program in recent weeks after having learned that The New York Times was making inquiries.

"Why does it take a newspaper investigation to get them to comply with the law?" the senator asked. "That's a big, important point."

In explaining the program, Mr. Levey, the Treasury under secretary who oversees the program, said in an interview earlier in the week that "people do not have a privacy interest in their international wire transactions." But Mr. Specter was skeptical.

"I'm not surprised that a Treasury official would take that position, but I'm not so sure he's right," the senator said. "I don't think it's an open-and-shut question."

Representative Edward J. Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat who has made privacy a signature issue, said, "I am very concerned that the Bush administration may be once again violating the constitutional rights of innocent Americans as part of another secret program created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks."

But Mr. Cheney was emphatic on Friday in arguing the program is necessary, and predicted that the Bush administration might be criticized over it in much the same way that critics have assailed the National Security Agency eavesdropping, which has been done without warrants.

"The fact of the matter is that these are good, solid, sound programs," the vice president said at the fund-raiser in Chicago for David McSweeney, a Republican who is running against Representative Melissa Bean, a freshman Democrat.

"They are conducted in accordance with the laws of the land," Mr. Cheney continued, adding, "They're carried out in a manner that is fully consistent with the constitutional authority of the president of the United States. They are absolutely essential in terms of protecting us against attacks."

Mr. Cheney's sentiments were echoed Friday by two other top administration officials, Treasury Secretary Snow and the White House press secretary, Tony Snow.

The two men, who are not related, defended the program in separate news conferences on Friday. The Treasury secretary called the operation "government at its best," and the press secretary derided criticism of it as "entirely abstract in nature."

The Treasury secretary called the program "an effective weapon, an effective weapon in the larger war on terror."

Administration officials spoke to various reporters about the financial tracking program Thursday night after The New York Times published an article about the program on its Web site. Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, has said the newspaper decided to publish the story because "we remain convinced that the administration's extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest."

Swift has said that its role in the program was never voluntary, but that it was obligated to comply with a valid subpoena, and had worked to narrow the range of data it provided to American officials.

But the Treasury secretary, Mr. Snow, said Friday that after the Sept. 11 attacks, Treasury Department officials initially presented the cooperative with what he described as "really narrowly crafted subpoenas all tied to terrorism." Officials at Swift responded that that they did not have the ability to "extract the particular information from their broad database."

"So they said, 'We'll give you all the data,' " Secretary Snow said.

Craig S. Smith contributed reporting from Paris for this article, Eric Dash from New York and Laurie J. Flynn from San Francisco.

    Cheney Assails Press on Report on Bank Data, NYT, 24.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/24/washington/24swift.html

CBS News Says Dan Rather Is Leaving

June 20, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:05 a.m. ET
The New York Times

NEW YORK (AP) -- Dan Rather, the hard-charging anchorman who dominated CBS News for more than two decades but whose final months were clouded by a discredited story on the president's military service, is leaving CBS after 44 years, the network announced Tuesday.

The 74-year-old Rather has complained of being virtually forgotten at CBS Corp. since his exit as anchor last year, six months after the story on President Bush's military service aired. He has said he is considering an offer to do a weekly show at the HDNet high-definition network.

''There will always be a part of Dan Rather at CBS News,'' said Sean McManus, CBS News president. ''He is truly a `reporter's reporter,' and he has helped to train several generations of broadcast journalists. His legacy cannot be replicated.''

Rather, whose final CBS News report aired on ''CBS Sunday Morning'' this weekend, will be the subject of a prime-time special on his career this fall, CBS said.

The network also said it had made a contribution to Rather's alma mater, Sam Houston State University.

The Texan has worked at CBS News since 1962, covering stories ranging from the Kennedy assassination to the 2001 terrorist attacks. He was the ''CBS Evening News'' anchor who replaced Walter Cronkite in 1981 until signing off with the admonition ''courage'' on March 9, 2005.

Rather apparently hadn't even seen the report questioning Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service before introducing it on the air in September 2004. When CBS News couldn't substantiate the story following questions about its sources, Rather became a symbol of the incident even as he escaped official blame.

Since then, Rather's on-air appearances have been infrequent. He contributed eight stories to ''60 Minutes'' this season, about half the airtime of most full-time correspondents there. His most recent ''60 Minutes'' story, a profile of Whole Foods Market, aired June 4.

In interviews last week, Rather made clear the professional divorce was imminent. He told The New York Times that he wanted to stay with ''60 Minutes,'' but that CBS News had offered him a contract with no specific affiliation to any program.

For more than two decades, Rather dominated broadcast news along with NBC's Tom Brokaw and the late Peter Jennings of ABC. They were the faces seen every evening and whenever big news broke.

Rather always considered himself a reporter first, and the habit of news anchors to travel to the scenes of big stories is largely his legacy. His interview with Saddam Hussein in 2003 was the last given by the Iraqi leader before he was toppled.

With his intense on-air demeanor, Rather also had his detractors, and his broadcast was a distant third in the evening news ratings at the time he stepped down. CBS News' ratings have rebounded under short-term successor Bob Schieffer; Katie Couric will take over the broadcast in September.

    CBS News Says Dan Rather Is Leaving, NYT, 20.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/arts/AP-TV-CBS-Rather.html

Moving Ahead,

Rather Throws Sad Look Back

June 17, 2006
The New York Times
By JACQUES STEINBERG
 

The 74-year-old man with the Mets cap pulled far down on his forehead slid into a booth at a diner on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and ordered a glass of milk without so much as turning a head — so quietly, in fact, that it was hard to believe it was Dan Rather.

In place of the swagger that had served him so well throughout his 44-year career at CBS News was an obvious sadness that his tenure at the network was ticking down to an inglorious end. Mr. Rather complained that since stepping down as anchor of the " CBS Evening News" last year, in the aftermath of a reporting scandal, he had been ill used as a correspondent on "60 Minutes" and had been given virtually nothing at all to do for the previous six weeks.

Among the places he had sought solace, he said on a recent afternoon, was in "Good Night, and Good Luck," George Clooney's homage to Edward R. Murrow and the CBS News of old, a film that Mr. Rather said he had seen five times in theaters, most recently alone.

Mr. Rather's contract with CBS, and "60 Minutes," is not scheduled to expire until late November. But he said yesterday that he and the network were close to an agreement that would end his tenure early, and that he was seriously mulling a new venture that, at least initially, relatively few viewers would be able to see: he would develop and be the host of a weekly interview program on a high-definition television channel known as HDNet.

The offer, he said, had come directly from Mark Cuban, the unbridled owner of the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks, who was a co-founder of HDNet in 2001.

Mr. Rather said he had been weighing several other offers for work, including two from what he described as major broadcast or cable networks. But as of yesterday, Mr. Rather said, "what I expect to do, what I hope to do, is bring this HDNet thing to fruition."

Mr. Rather, who was anchor of the "CBS Evening News" for nearly a quarter-century and who, at one point also served as a correspondent on the news magazines "60 Minutes II" and "48 Hours," acknowledged that it would "take some adjustment" for him to get used to being seen by perhaps tens of thousands of viewers in a week, as opposed to millions.

But he added that "the opportunity to build something from the ground up, I think, will have its own satisfactions."

Mr. Rather also said that in April, in anticipation of what seemed to be his imminent departure from CBS, he had formed a company — he named it News and Guts, in a nod to what he considers the pillars of his professional life — through which he plans to create several other journalism ventures, including, perhaps, a blog. (Though he has not yet settled on a title, he says he has ruled out one: "I'd Rather Say This.")

Mr. Rather said he first met earlier this year with Mr. Cuban, who made hundreds of millions of dollars in the high-tech boom of the 1990's. Mr. Cuban's team is now tied, two games to two, with the Miami Heat in the National Basketball Association finals.

When a reporter joked about whether Mr. Rather would also weigh in on the management of the Mavericks, Mr. Rather responded, seriously, that he had already provided Mr. Cuban some unsolicited advice during the team's recent playoff run, suggesting that one particular player be given more minutes on the court. "I'm not going to tell you who he is," Mr. Rather said. "But they're using him more."

Mr. Rather also recounted that Mr. Cuban, a producer of "Good Night, and Good Luck," had told him that as part of the deal he expected to ask Mr. Rather for informal advice on future film projects. There, too, Mr. Rather said he was game.

In addition to the one-hour interview program, which could eventually include "60 Minutes"-style investigative reports that he would prepare, Mr. Rather said he had been asked to commit to deliver at least two documentaries a year to HDNet. The channel is available to subscribers with high-definition access — it was available in about three million homes last year, according to Kagan Research, an independent firm — either on a handful of cable systems, including Time Warner, or through satellite operators, including DirecTV and Dish. The channel currently carries both original news and music programming, as well as reruns of series like "Hogan's Heroes" and "Charlie's Angels."

Asked in an e-mail message yesterday to confirm Mr. Rather's description of the offer, Mr. Cuban sent back the following response last night: "All I can tell you is that we have had some conversations to do some very exciting things. Unshackled from the talking head world where earnings per share mean more than finding the truth, the opportunities for HDNet and Dan are unlimited."

Mr. Rather said he had been given assurances by Mr. Cuban, should he accept the offer, that he would have complete, unfettered control of his program. "It's a situation," he said, "where there are not very large — let me put it this way — corporate and political complexities."

In those comments, and others, Mr. Rather was referring, however obliquely, to his displeasure with the leadership of CBS. He appeared, for example, to fault the network for eventually withdrawing its support for the "60 Minutes II" report that would, in turn, unravel his career. In the segment, he had sought to raise new questions about President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, using memorandums that the network, and later a panel of outside investigators, said they could not authenticate.

Asked yesterday about Mr. Rather and his status at the network, a CBS News spokeswoman, Sandra Genelius, said she had no comment.

Mr. Rather expressed some disappointment with Leslie Moonves, the president and chief executive of CBS. In late 2004, Mr. Rather announced he would step down as anchor in March 2005. In the interim, Mr. Moonves told a gathering of television critics in California that he hoped to blow up the program's "voice of God, single anchor" format. (After exploring the notion of an ensemble, CBS announced this spring that it was hiring Katie Couric as the program's sole anchor.)

Asked in the interview about Mr. Moonves's remarks, Mr. Rather said, "My problem with the 'voice of God' thing was that it was meant disrespectfully."

"They talk about wanting a break with the past," he added. "Look at the Murrow film. I don't want to break with that past."

Mr. Rather said that the 15 months since he had left the evening news, and joined "60 Minutes," had been among the most frustrating periods of his career. To an outsider, the eight segments he had had broadcast on the program since November — including reports that had taken him to North Korea, China and Beirut — would appear to represent a good year's work.But Mr. Rather said that other correspondents had more than twice as many reports appear on the program, and that two reports he had been particularly proud of (those originating in Beirut and China) had been effectively buried, on the program's Christmas and New Year's Day telecasts.Of being kept idle these last two months, Mr. Rather said, "Anybody who knows me knows that's not the way I like to work."

Asked if the network had sought to marginalize him over his role in the disputed Guard report — including his spirited defense of the segment, for more than a week after it was broadcast — Mr. Rather said, "There's a lot I have yet to figure out."

Mr. Rather, who has been employed by CBS since he was 30, said that his first choice would have been to remain a correspondent on "60 Minutes." But the network, he said, was uninterested, offering him only a contract that would have entitled him to an office and assistant, but no affiliation with any CBS program.

"I am as hungry for important stories as I've ever been," he said. "In fact, I think my hunger might be, if anything, greater. I guess I'd like to think that's saying something."

Once it was made clear to him that there was no longer a role for him, he said, he began to warm to the idea of working for someone seeking to explore television's next frontier, in much the way William S. Paley had blazed the trail of the modern CBS, and as Ted Turner had done for CNN.

"I may not have found them," Mr. Rather said of Mr. Cuban and a partner, Todd Wagner. "But I found as close as I think anyone is likely to find. And I like the chances."

It was not possible yesterday to determine which other outlets may have had conversations with Mr. Rather about future work. Representatives from Fox News, CNN and NBC said their organizations had made no offers to him, and an ABC executive said he knew of no discussions with Mr. Rather.

When asked if there was any advice he would give to Katie Couric — who, in September, succeeds Bob Schieffer, the interim anchor of the "Evening News" since Mr. Rather stepped down — Mr. Rather said: "If she comes to CBS and demonstrates that she loves the news, and demonstrates leadership skills — and I do think both those things are true — then I think she will do well."

Asked if he might be tempted to change the channel and root for one of Ms. Couric's chief competitors, Charles Gibson on ABC and Brian Williams on NBC, Mr. Rather was unequivocal in his response.

"I'm always pulling for CBS News," he said.

    Moving Ahead, Rather Throws Sad Look Back, NYT, 17.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/business/media/17rath.html

Hearst's New Home:

Xanadu in Manhattan

June 5, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD SIKLOS

Frank A. Bennack Jr., the former chief executive of the Hearst Corporation, was recently touring the resplendent new headquarters the company has erected at Eighth Avenue and 57th Street in Manhattan.

What would William Randolph Hearst, the company's legendary founder, have thought of this glass and steel monolith? he was asked. "He only wanted to own his own land and all the land that joined it," Mr. Bennack replied. Gazing around the lobby, he added: "He would have loved it."

Chances are that the Chief, as Mr. Hearst was known to his minions, would be as pleased with the seemingly flush condition of the empire he left behind on his death 55 years ago. Indeed, the company paid for the gleaming headquarters with $500 million in cash.

Among the media giants, the privately held Hearst has been a famously buttoned-up organization. It is gaining a higher profile at a time when publicly traded companies like Time Warner and the Tribune Company are under mounting pressure from disappointed investors. Now, Hearst's ability to move in any direction it chooses without having to explain itself to Wall Street is looking more like a strategic advantage.

The company has been able to go stealthily about its business of running media assets that include newspapers like The San Francisco Chronicle and The Houston Chronicle; scores of magazines, including Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping and Esquire; television stations; investments in cable channels; digital start-ups; and much else. It even publishes Floor Covering Weekly and sells ketchup and grass-fed beef under the Hearst brand from ranches it owns in California.

"Since I became C.E.O. of Hearst, people have said: 'Do you like running a private company?' and I've said 'Yes,' " said Victor F. Ganzi, who succeeded Mr. Bennack in 2002. "Now I say, 'No. I love running a private company.' "

Mr. Hearst might also be surprised by the unexpected and ambitious directions Mr. Ganzi has lately taken the business. In March, for instance, Hearst signaled a move away from traditional media by buying a 20 percent interest in the Fitch Group, which operates the Fitch bond rating service, from its French owner, for $592 million.

A month after the Fitch deal — as if to show the company had not given up on its ink-stained roots — it announced a complex deal with the newspaper publisher William Dean Singleton, which would effectively result in Hearst owning a 20 percent to 30 percent stake in Mr. Singleton's company, the MediaNews Group, at a cost of $263 million.

Typical of the inscrutable Hearst style, both of these recent deals make the company appear to be a passive, patient investor in a larger entity. But Mr. Ganzi revealed in an interview that both arrangements carry rights of refusal and other provisions that would allow Hearst to increase its stake in Fitch and MediaNews (excluding a group of California newspapers it owns) and potentially acquire control of both businesses down the road.

"We are comfortable with our minority stake in all these cases and if it never changes we are comfortable with that," Mr. Ganzi said. In the case of MediaNews, Mr. Singleton, 54, and another investor, Richard Scudder, who is 93, each currently own 45 percent of the group of 55 daily newspapers. "Ultimately, I think there will be opportunities," Mr. Ganzi said. Mr. Singleton did not return calls seeking comment.

It is probably no accident that the new 46-story headquarters, with its geometric form, latest technology and green design elements, stands atop the medieval-style cast-stone husk of a six-story Hearst Magazines office built in the 1920's. The profile-raising new tower, like its occupant, is a melding of newfangled and nostalgic — a throwback to the future.

"As a business, it's a bit of an amalgam," said Richard D. Parsons, the chief executive of Time Warner and a friend of Mr. Ganzi. "They're able to think beyond quarter-to-quarter and my sense is they've been very deliberate and thoughtful about building a business that will be around for a long, long time."

Indeed, only one of the company's main business units, Hearst-Argyle Television, is publicly traded — and, as it happens, it has not been much of an investment in recent years. While acknowledging that his company is not immune to the challenges of the Internet or slowing growth at some businesses, such as newspapers, Mr. Ganzi said the company was loath to sell assets.

Private but Tough

And while the company is assiduously private in nearly every sense of the word, it is not shy. Mr. Ganzi, 59, is known as a tough negotiator who recently took a personal role in tackling disputes with strong-minded media figures like Charles W. Ergen chief executive of EchoStar, which briefly took the Hearst-affiliated Lifetime Television channel off its satellite service, and Frank A. Blethen, a Seattle publisher trying to disentangle a partnership with The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a Hearst newspaper.

Mr. Ganzi, a civic-minded accountant and Harvard-trained lawyer, joined the company as its general counsel in 1990. He was brought up in Queens, and his family has owned half of The Palm chain of steakhouses for close to 80 years. Colleagues say Mr. Ganzi is possessed of a photographic memory, and he speaks in precise rapid-fire bursts.

He agreed to a rare interview, given all the curiosity about the company's new tower, yet he declined to meet in person or to pose for a photo. When asked why, he quickly replied into the telephone: "It's quite simple. Don't take this the wrong way: I've enjoyed talking to you but it doesn't make the Hearst Corporation another dollar."

Mr. Ganzi said Hearst executives did not take their private status for granted, and regularly benchmarked their performance against other publicly traded companies. Despite the company's heritage — dating back to 1887, when young William took over The San Francisco Examiner — Mr. Ganzi said that 85 percent of the company's profits came from businesses that were built, started or acquired in the past 30 years.

Through acquisitions, new publications and the nearly obsessive pursuit of brand extensions, the company says it has increased profits in 13 of the last 14 years, and last year raised net income by 10 percent, to about $850 million on revenue of more than $7 billion. (Hearst declined to share more detailed financial information.) By comparison, in 1951, the year Mr. Hearst died, the company had earnings of around $2.6 million, or $20 million in 2005 dollars.

Hearst has been known mostly for its magazines but, while the company generates nearly 60 percent of its revenue from advertising, magazines are expected to represent only 16 percent of its after-tax cash flow this year. Its 12 newspapers and 28 television stations contribute similar cash-flow numbers. According to the company, Hearst generates nearly half of its cash flow from having invested wisely in cable TV channels alongside the Walt Disney Company.

In fact, much of its business is conducted in a maze of partnerships and investments more typical of European family media dynasties than American media conglomerates. For instance, Hearst publishes Smart Money with Dow Jones, runs a magazine distribution business with its publishing rival Condé Nast, and in cable channels holds 50 percent of Lifetime, one-third of A&E and 20 percent of ESPN.

All three of those cable holdings are close partnerships with Disney, which also uses Hearst to distribute its ESPN Magazine. Hearst-Argyle Television, meanwhile, is the largest operator of affiliates for Disney's ABC network.

In a similar vein, NBC Universal owns another third of the cable channel A&E, and Hearst-Argyle is the second-largest operator of NBC affiliates. NBC Universal also recently acquired the Web site iVillage.com, in which Hearst was a 25 percent shareholder.

The ESPN stake, acquired for around $170 million in 1990, has been especially lucrative. Hearst's investment is now worth as much as $3.5 billion, estimates Laura Martin at Soleil Securities. And Robert A. Iger, Disney's chief executive, says: "In many respects we're joined at the hip. We don't really intersect with any other company in the world the way we do with Hearst."

Hearst's marquee magazine business has long bumped up against the fancier Condé Nast Publications and the Time Inc. juggernaut — both of which outstrip Hearst's stable of 20 magazines in terms of ad pages and revenue in the United States. But Hearst has fought for a place in the top rank of publishers under the direction of Cathleen Black, its magazine president for the last decade.

Print and Online

Most notably, Hearst Magazines has pursued an aggressive international expansion of its titles (Cosmopolitan alone has 56 separate editions) and enjoyed breakout success with O, The Oprah Magazine, a partnership with Oprah Winfrey, started in 2000. But a Lifetime magazine fizzled and other recent lifestyle ventures such as Shop Etc., Quick & Simple and Weekend appear, at first blush, more cautious than revolutionary.

But Ms. Black — a champion of print for whom, it seems, the glass is not half-full but overflowing — said the company was constantly looking at ways to introduce and extend brands. "It's got to be something that parts the waters," she said.

Her current focus is online. IVillage, before being sold, was the exclusive Web home for women's publications at Hearst. Now, the company is hustling to create its own digital sales division and pursuing new Web distribution deals like one Ms. Black announced last month with MSN.

Elsewhere, Hearst's approach to the Internet has been typically idiosyncratic. Rather than running Web businesses, it has made some 35 investments in interactive start-ups that have included Netscape and XM Satellite Radio. Some of the company's recent bets — including the companies Sling Media, Brightcove, USDTV and Current Communications — reflect Mr. Ganzi's interest in capitalizing on new forms of distribution for Hearst's video businesses.

Since a vast majority of Hearst's 20,000 employees are outside New York, magazine staff members will fill most of the new tower's floors. Corporate executives and some other divisions will take what is left. The original magazine building, completed in 1928, was part of a plan the Chief hatched in his heyday — when he owned three New York dailies — for a gigantic media plaza. Indeed, its structure was built to support additional floors. Realizing Mr. Hearst's dream of a Midtown skyscraper has been under study for decades.

In his will, Mr. Hearst left an estate in trust valued at roughly $51 million to his wife, five sons and two charities (around $400 million in today's dollars). One provision of the will was that nonfamily members occupy 8 of the 13 slots on the board of trustees. Another was that the trust would dissolve on the death of the last grandchild living on the day Mr. Hearst died. Mr. Ganzi said actuaries estimated that to be some time around 2045 — too far into the future to affect the company's strategic planning.

The Hearst Heirs

Despite their codified independence, several people close to Hearst said Mr. Ganzi and other executives take pains not to be seen as getting in front of the Hearst heirs who are its shareholders. Today, some 60 descendants of Mr. Hearst's sons are among the owners and "remaindermen" (those who will inherit an interest) of the trust. Many of them meet once a year for a picnic in Northern California where, among other activities, bocce is inexplicably a favorite, said George R. Hearst III, a great-grandson of the founder.

George Hearst III is associate publisher of The Albany Times Union, a Hearst paper, and one of several family members who work in the business. His father, George R. Hearst Jr., the oldest surviving heir, is Hearst's chairman. The February issue of the company's Town & Country magazine was uncharacteristically familial: it featured the model Amanda Hearst posing at San Simeon, her great-grandfather's storied castle, in a cover spread.

While there have been tremors of unrest among family members over the years — not uncommon in wealthy dynasties—George Hearst III said in an interview that the family had been uniformly supportive of the new tower.

While it is not exactly Xanadu, Hearst Tower is certainly a major upgrade for many of the company's rank and file. With its soaring entry and French Balzac limestone lobby floor, the building sets a Four Seasons tone for a magazine business that rivals have viewed as more of a Sheraton.

"I've always felt that that is not fair," Ms. Black said. "What I do believe is fair is we've been a very profit-driven company forever. But there's a big difference between being profit-driven and being cheap."

Regardless, the company's image seems certain to change. The complex, designed by Norman Foster, features a 168-seat theater with top-end acoustics, a shimmering crystal waterfall, and Café 57, a staff commissary clearly intended to vie with Condé Nast's renowned cafeteria. (In a nod to the past, the company has also rebuilt the Good Housekeeping dining room from the former building.)

The building has a gymnasium with fancy Italian equipment, which both supplies and launders workout clothes for employees. "I have to say that it's a lot more luxe than I expected," said David Granger, the editor of Esquire, whose staff is among 700 employees who have moved in as of last week.

Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan and now head of its international editions, said she was delighted to be moving to a corner office with sweeping views on the 37th floor, leaving the fourth-floor space she occupies in Cosmo's current Midtown Manhattan offices. "I exercise after lunch every day on the floor of my office and I don't want to go clear down to the gym," Ms. Gurley Brown said. "But I think, on the 37th floor, if I stay down on the floor, no one is going to see me."

Hearst's executives say the best part is the culture that will emerge from gathering so many of their employees under one roof for the first time. Thus, for Mr. Ganzi, there is no contradiction in a media company whose bosses eschew public attention erecting a gleaming, translucent landmark.

"I'm less concerned about a statement to the world," he said. "I'm more concerned about a statement to my colleagues. It's a statement about our future as well as, I think, a statement and commitment to our past."

    Hearst's New Home: Xanadu in Manhattan, NYT, 5.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/business/media/05hearst.html

News Media Pay in Scientist Suit

June 3, 2006
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

Wen Ho Lee, an atomic scientist once suspected of espionage, yesterday settled an invasion of privacy lawsuit against the government for $1,645,000.

Five news organizations are paying almost half that sum to avoid contempt sanctions against their reporters.

In the suit, Dr. Lee said the government had violated privacy laws by telling reporters about his employment history, finances, travels and polygraph tests. The settlement followed seven months of unusual negotiations among Dr. Lee, the government and lawyers for the news organizations.

The five reporters were not defendants, but had been held in contempt of court for refusing to testify and ordered to pay fines of $500 a day for refusing to disclose the identities of their confidential sources.

The news organizations — ABC News, part of the Walt Disney Company; The Associated Press; The Los Angeles Times, part of the Tribune Company; The New York Times; and The Washington Post — agreed to contribute $750,000 to the settlement.

Specialists in media law said such a payment by news organizations to avoid a contempt sanction was almost certainly unprecedented. Some called it troubling.

In a joint statement, the five organizations said they made the payment reluctantly.

"We did so," they explained, "to protect our confidential sources, to protect our journalists from further sanction and possible imprisonment and to protect our news organizations from potential exposure."

A senior vice president of ABC, Henry S. Hoberman, said the decision to settle was made after a long, hard legal fight.

"The journalists found themselves between a rock and a hard place after years of seeking relief from the courts and finding none," Mr. Hoberman said. "Given the absence of a federal shield law and the consistently adverse rulings from the federal courts in this case, the only way the journalists could keep their bond with their sources and avoid further sanctions, which might include jail time, was to contribute to a settlement between the government and Wen Ho Lee that would end the case."

Federal courts have been increasingly hostile in recent years to assertions by journalists that they are legally entitled to protect their confidential sources. Last year, Judith Miller, who was a reporter for The New York Times, spent 85 days in jail before agreeing to testify to a grand jury investigating the disclosure of the identity of a C.I.A. operative.

Dr. Lee, who worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, brought his case against the government in 1999, the year federal investigators accused him of giving nuclear secrets to China.

Dr. Lee spent nine months in solitary confinement awaiting trial. Ultimately, he pleaded guilty to one felony count of illegally gathering and retaining national security data, and he received an apology from the judge in the case.

A lawyer for Dr. Lee, Brian A. Sun, said the settlement furthered two goals.

"We wanted to send a message to the government that leaking information protected by law is not justified, even if they think it's politically expedient to do so," Mr. Sun said. "And the fact that the journalists contributed to the settlement recognizes the role they played in the series of unfortunate events that surrounded Dr. Lee's case."

The settlement included an unusual condition, Mr. Sun said.

"The government didn't want any of the money going into his pocket," Mr. Sun said of Dr. Lee.

In the end, Dr. Lee agreed to apply the government's payment to lawyers' fees, litigation costs and taxes. The money from the news organizations was unrestricted.

The fines against the reporters — Robert Drogin of The Los Angeles Times, H. Josef Hebert of The A.P., Walter Pincus of The Washington Post, James Risen of The New York Times and Pierre Thomas, formerly of CNN and now of ABC News — were suspended while they appealed.

The judge in the case, Rosemary M. Collyer of Federal District Court in Washington, vacated the contempt sanctions as part of the settlement. The settlement also moots a pending appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

Though Mr. Thomas covered Dr. Lee for CNN, part of Time Warner, it did not participate in the settlement.

"CNN paid over $1 million toward Pierre's defense in this matter," a spokeswoman, Laurie Goldberg, said. "We parted ways because we had a philosophical disagreement over whether it was appropriate to pay money to Wen Ho Lee or anyone else to get out from under a subpoena."

The five other organizations made roughly similar contributions to the settlement, lawyers in the case said.

The government has settled similar privacy suits in the past. In 2003, it paid Linda R. Tripp, a central figure in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, $595,000 to settle a suit that accused it of leaking employment information about her.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said she viewed the settlement in Dr. Lee's case with mixed emotions.

"It's a huge disappointment, and it's certainly not an ideal resolution," Ms. Dalglish said. "But it's probably as good as we could have expected under the circumstances."

The New York Times has long maintained that it will not settle libel suits in the United States for money. Its lawyers said the payment to Dr. Lee did not violate the principles behind that policy.

"It's apples and oranges," George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company, said. "That principle remains. In libel suits, people aren't sent to jail."

The Times covered the charges against Dr. Lee aggressively. But in September 2000, it published a lengthy note "from the editors" saying that despite "careful reporting that included extensive cross-checking," there were "some things we wish we had done differently in the course of the coverage to give Dr. Lee the full benefit of the doubt."

The note said The Times should have pushed harder and sooner "to uncover weaknesses in the F.B.I. case against Dr. Lee" and to assess the scientific, technical and investigative assumptions behind the case.

In their statement yesterday, the news organizations said the settlement was not connected to their coverage of the case against Dr. Lee.

"The journalism in this case — which was not challenged in Lee's lawsuit — reported on a matter of great public interest," the statement said. "And the public could not have been informed about the issues without the information we were able to obtain only from confidential sources."

Jane E. Kirtley, a professor of media law and ethics at the University of Minnesota, said she found the news organizations' decision to participate in the settlement "profoundly disturbing."

"These are very strange times in which we are living," Professor Kirtley said, "and it does appear that sometimes decisions have to be made that would have been unthinkable five years ago. But to make a payment in settlement in this context strikes me as an admission that the media are acting in concert with the government."

Ms. Dalglish of the Reporters Committee disagreed.

"I view it," she said, "purely as, 'What can we do to get the least damaging result?' "

Mr. Freeman, the lawyer for The Times, also rejected Professor Kirtley's characterization.

"We acted in the best interests of our reporters and our news organizations to protect our sources and protect our journalists," he said. "We were not acting in concert with anyone. The three parties managed to resolve the matter."

News media lawyers said they hoped that the settlement would help prompt a change in federal law. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment offers reporters no protection, at least in the context of grand jury subpoenas.

Though most states have so-called shield laws that protect journalists' confidential sources, those laws are usually irrelevant in cases brought in federal court.

The settlement in Dr. Lee's case, Professor Kirtley said, "certainly underscores the need for meaningful journalists' shield laws, now."

    News Media Pay in Scientist Suit, NYT, 3.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/03/washington/03settle.html?hp&ex=1149393600&en=f1e6f4e36274d372&ei=5094&partner=homepage