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News organizations continue to struggle under extremely difficult and unpredictable economic conditions. There is ample distressing data but one number seems especially shocking – Since the year 2000, newspapers’ classified advertising revenue has dropped from nearly $20 billion to $6 billion in 2009. Other numbers are equally disturbing – Total print advertising revenue dropped by nearly half from 2005 to 2009, from almost $50 billion to $26 billion. About 41,000 journalism jobs have been lost in only the last two years. Paid circulation continues to decline – by 5 percent in the most recent reporting period. The PriceWaterhouseCoopers accounting firm forecasts a painful time ahead for U.S. newspapers. Through the year 2012, it predicts another 19 percent decline in print advertising revenue and a 9 percent drop in circulation revenue. One bright spot is digital advertising revenue growth, though it is a small piece of the pie. Digital advertising rose sharply from 2005 to 2009, but will decline through 2011, according to the accounting firm. Still, it will represent only about 11 percent of total advertising revenues through 2014. It is against this backdrop that many major media companies are struggling to survive. The largest -- Tribune Company based in Chicago, with newspapers in Los Angeles, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Baltimore and 23 TV stations -- announced in late October that it had filed a reorganization plan to settle claims reducing its debt and transfer ownership of the company to its primary debt holders. In total, nine newspaper companies including Tribune had filed for bankruptcy protection primarily due to high debt obligations. They include Freedom Communications, Philadelphia Newspapers Co., MediaNewsGroup, Morris Communications and Minneapolis Star Tribune. In late October, the world’s largest news gathering organization, the Associated Press, announced it is freezing pensions of employees who are still guaranteed a monthly benefit when they retire. Future retirement contributions for current and new employees would go to a new plan giving them a greater role in their pension planning but will not guarantee a specific amount of money based on years of service. Other items of interest and press freedom developments in the U.S. in recent months: Time is running out for adoption of a federal shield law by the U.S. Congress. For three years, the shield law, formally called the Free Flow of Information Act, has proceeded through the legislative process. It passed the U.S. House but continues to languish in the Senate. If it is not adopted by the end of this year, it must return to the starting point when the new Congress convenes in January. More than 70 media groups continue to push for adoption of the law to protect journalists from identifying confidential sources in federal cases. A new law, the Daniel Pearl Freedom of Press Act, honors the Wall Street Journal reporter killed in Pakistan eight years ago. The legislation encourages the State Department to identify countries that censor journalists and subjects them to physical attacks and imprisonment. The State Department is also charged with deciding if foreign governments are condoning mistreatment of journalists. In late October, a federal appeals court in Atlanta heard arguments from lawyers for four girls aged 13 to 17 who had been subjects in “Girls Gone Wild” beach party videos. They are suing the videos’ producer and seek to testify anonymously in a closed courtroom. A lower court rejected their request after press groups argued that open courts and public trials lie at the heart of the First Amendment right to public access to the courts. The editor of an online news site in Mexico, Jorge Luis Aguirre, was granted asylum in the U.S. following claims of death threats from drug cartels. It is thought to be the first time such a request has been granted and it could open the door for other Mexican journalists covering the war on drugs. Aguirre fled to El Paso in 2008 and has lived there ever since. A New York Times editorial in September castigated both the U.S. and the Mexican governments for failing to protect journalists and public officials. The editorial said the Mexican government “needs to do more to aggressively investigate and prosecute violence against the press…and do more to protect judges, mayors civil servants and human rights workers and police…” And it added: “The United States also has a clear responsibility to rein in the guns and money that allow the cartels to spread this reign of terror. What is at risk here is nothing less than the survival of Mexico’s democracy.” The Obama Justice Department’s position on pursuing those who leak classified information is troubling to many journalists. According to Editor and Publisher magazine, the Obama administration has prosecuted more suspected leakers of classified information than any other presidency in history. Among others, New York Times reporter James Risen has been subpoenaed by the Obama Justice Department to disclose how he obtained allegedly classified information for his book on the Central Intelligence Agency. In April, the website Wikileaks released a video of an attack by a United States military helicopter in Baghdad from three years ago that killed several people, including a photographer from Reuters and his driver. At that time, Reuters had made a request based on the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for the video, but it was never granted. The group Reporters without Borders, which defends freedom of the press, said that “if the Obama government does not grant its request based on the FOIA, it will be once again ignoring its promises of greater transparency and accountability. It would be a blow to freedom of the press and to the principle that the government is not to determine what is or is not of journalistic interest.” (In October, Wikileaks released 40,000 pages of confidential information about the war in Afghanistan, after a similar large release in July, resulting in extremely critical comments by spokespersons from several governments, including the United States.) The London Telegraph reported, and the Pentagon confirmed, that the Pentagon purchased 10,000 copies of a book in September to destroy it. The book – Operation Dark Heart by Army Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer -- is about Shaffer’s time in Afghanistan as an Army intelligence officer. The book had been cleared earlier by Shaffer’s superiors. Industry observers will be closely watching plans by the Boston Globe and New York Times to start charging for access to their websites next year. The specifics remain sketchy but requiring readers to pay for access to online news content is a hotly debated topic among U.S. media executives. The Times is scheduled to launch its new system in January, while the Globe’s will be later next year. This trial of three men accused of killing Oakland Press Editor Chauncey Bailey was scheduled to begin this month. The men are accused of killing the California editor three years ago to stop him from writing an investigative story about their family business. Defenders of freedom on the Internet are watching very closely a new bill submitted by senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch which would demand that domain-registration services based in the United States and Internet service providers remove from their servers the addresses of websites that violate copyrights or trademarks. The Obama government is also considering the possibility of allowing government agencies to intercept users’ communications. There is concern that measures such as these may hamper the idea of a “single Internet” and give governments a green light to maintain surveillance of Internet communications without restriction.

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