As we head into the weekend, some grim newspaper numbers make all the more important the results of yesterday’s hushed-up meeting among major industry leaders. That news and more in our daily roundup.
• The Newspaper Association of America has reported sinking newspaper revenues, a totally predictable symptom of the print crisis we may have mentioned. “The total revenues for papers in the U.S. dropped 28.3 percent during the first quarter of the year, down to $6.6 billion from $9.2 billion during the same period last year.” [FishbowlNY/Mediabistro]
• Let’s make this brief: Yesterday we reported that reps from major newspapers were meeting to discuss monetizing content, Gawker said it could “easily be construed as illegal,” and the blog world watched and wondered. Today, after Slate investigated the legality of the collusion, Gawker conceded that the “private meeting … was probably legal, allegedly.” Still undecided: Was the meeting secret? Slate called the meeting “hush-hush,” but today the Times Co.’s Michael Golden told Editor & Publisher that there was “nothing secretive about it.” Then he declined to comment on “the specifics of what occurred at the gathering” or “any specific plans for charging online.”
• The editor of Granta, a literary magazine, has resigned after less than a year. [ArtsBeat/NYT]
• CNN entertainment correspondent Lola Ogunnaike hasn’t had her contract renewed and is leaving the network. [TVNewser/Mediabistro]
