Gatehouse Media

Please, Mr. Patrick, get your schedulers to get on the ball so you can see the reporters and editors at GateHouse New England before March 9:

Alleges copyright infringement for posting whole copies of articles from GateHouse sites.

Dan Kennedy posts a memo from GateHouse Media New England CEO Rick Daniels announcing the end of cuts put into place over the summer:

... We are in a position to restore the cuts because GHMNE is again generating sufficient cash flows to be clearly and safely in the black. ...

However, he cautioned the chain is not out of the woods yet because the economy continues to suck.

The Globe reports the Dedham newspaper is going from five days a week to one in October.

Dan Kennedy reports the suburban media chain is cutting staff salaries by an average of 7.75% (with the cuts increasing up the corporate ladder) and dramatically reducing the number of towns the Quincy Patriot-Ledger covers (including Plymouth where, ironically, the chain's Wicked Local strategy was born).

The Somerville Journal accuses the Somerville News of plagiarism. And the News wonders just how low the Journal can get - in a comment on the Journal post.

Dan Kennedy provides initial sketchy reports, including the end of free obits - and the people who used to typeset them.

Chad Finn reports among those let go: Longtime MetroWest Daily News sportswriter Lenny Megliola.

Dan Kennedy posts a memo from GateHouse New England Rick Daniels to his troops: On the one hand, GateHouse will fight, fight fight; on the other hand, GateHouse has seen its revenue plunge as well.

Rekha6 gets pulled into an infinite vortex of frustration when trying to get a new password to comment on a Wicked Local story about T fare increases.

Howard Owens, no longer GateHouse Media's online strategist, explains why GateHouse felt it had to sue the Times over boston.com's Your Town sites.

Dan Kennedy gets the scoop: Howard Owens, who built the chain's Wicked Local Web presence, has left the virtual building.

If you publicly refer to a Globe reporter's story as the sort of crap that would entitle one of your own readers to kick your sorry behind, don't be surprised if the Globe reporter fires back (click for the media insults, but stay for Geoff Edgers's mea culpa on the second half of the story).

UPDATE: Thanks to Ron Newman, there are now plenty of details, in the comments.

But other than that, we have no details on the GateHouse link suit, which was due to go to trial today.

If true, then I'll stop my own personal embargo on links to GateHouse articles.

Order dismissing the case, which, like the Globe story, has no details.

Dan Kennedy posts a copy of the Times' 100-page answer to the GateHouse link lawsuit, explains why both sides are wrong and should settle before they both manage to break the Internet.

Randy Turner reports that new GateHouse Media president Kirk Davis, formerly of the Massachusetts GateHouses, will earn $461,260.80 this year - way more than the guy he replaced at the helm of a company with stock now going for about 7 cents a share. And yet, that's nothing: You should see what the company CEO earns.

Via Dan Kennedy, who writes:

... I think Davis is fundamentally a good guy, and that GateHouse can only benefit from having him run its day-to-day operations. But this is terrible symbolism.

Earlier:
GateHouse stops 401(k) contributions.

Company CEO delivered the news yesterday - no more contributions until the economy gets better.

Chuck Tanowitz, who lives and blogs in Newton and who does public relations and marketing for a living, considers the Gatehouse-vs-Globe issue, concludes there's less to the Globe's efforts than meet the eye and that what's at issue is really GateHouse's survival under an attack from an organization using its own content against it.

After finally reading GateHouse's complaint and editor Greg Reibman's affidavit, I'm not worried about finding some guy at my door with a document in a blue jacket (speaking of documents, here they all are).

OK, truth be told, I wasn't really worried about that to begin with, so, yes, I was getting all drama-queenish on Monday (see Adam Reilly's take). But the GateHouse suit still bothers me. Read more

Dan Kennedy breaks the news that GateHouse Media will sue the New York Times Co. over the way the Globe's Your Town sites (starting with Newton) allegedly violate GateHouse's intellectual property rights by selling ads on pages with links to GateHouse articles.

Whoa. I make money from ads on pages with links to GateHouse articles, so effective immediately, I won't be linking to any more articles on GateHouse sites. It's a shame, GateHouse papers do some good work and they seemed to understand how the Web is built, but the last thing I need is to defend myself from a lawsuit over hyperlinks (and yeah, I'm probably being melodramatic; GateHouse could have sued me long ago, but their links aren't worth that much trouble to me). So, GateHouse, how come you haven't sued Google yet?

I suppose there's a reason boston.com has posted a GateHouse video about how great the Newton Tab is. Maybe it's the ads they've wrapped around it.

GateHouse Media honcho Kirk Davis stops just short of threatening a lawsuit, but tells Boston Daily he'll be watching the Globe's impending Mega-micro-hyperlocal Newton site with two eagle eyes, to make sure boston.com doesn't try to stomp on his Wicked Local territory. He even gets off a good crack about the 800-pound gorilla now being more like a 200-pound gorilla, which is kind of funny in an ironic sort of way, coming from a guy whose own employer's stock is now worth like negative 3 cents a share, but whatever.

And here I sit, wondering if the issue is simply one of scale. I link to and quote from Wicked Local sites all the time. While my motives are pure as the driven snow, (of course!), I do make money from this site. But I'm no financial threat to GateHouse, whereas the Globe, yeah, a bit of a different issue. Still, Google makes money from putting ads next to GateHouse content on its pages, too.

Dan Kennedy analyzes the brewing battle in more detail.

GateHouse had been using YouTube to post news videos, but now the video service that lets teenagers post videos of themselves stomping on other teenagers has decided to pull Wicked Local's video of the Beverly Gloucester-sucks floats, not because of the eight-foot long spurting penis, but because one person in the video complained to YouTube. Of course, you realize, this means war:

If YouTube is unwilling be a true media partner, then, at least for GateHouse, we will need to seek alternative means of distribution of our videos.

Of course, that assumes there will still be a GateHouse to fight YouTube.

Wicked Local to add social networking.

Via MetaBoston.

Dan Kennedy discusses how the stock of their parent company is plummeting and how Pat Purcell is looking pretty smart for having sold them all off.

DougH was amazed to see the Newton Tab headlined a story about a science group for middle-school girls:

Girls Gone Wild

He notes the headline was changed a tad for the online version.