FOER RETURNS TO TNR
Franklin Foer, who exited the editor post at The New Republic in 2010, has returned to the magazine that is now owned by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes.
He replaces Richard Just at the high-brow magazine that has a circulation of nearly 30,000.
Foer first joined TNR in 2000, and edited the magazine for five years. He has been working on book projects, such as “Jewish Jocks,” which is slated for publication in the fall.
Hughes, who is worth about $700M, has doubled TNR staff to 30 people since he bought the magazine earlier this year.
He considers TNR a long-term investment.
CONDE NAST'S ROMER MOVES TO THE ATLANTIC
Hayley Romer, executive director of corporate sales at Conde Nast Media Group, takes the associate publisher post at The Atlantic on May 30.
She will work with publisher Jay Lauf to lead sales across the Atlantic platforms.
Lauf said Romer “has a stellar reputation from all corners of the publishing landscape—from our peers, clients, and partners on the agency side.”
At Conde Nast, she handled magazines such as Vanity Fair, New Yorker and Wired.
Earlier, Romer was handled luxury accounts at Forbes Media.
TIMES-PICAYUNE SCALES BACK
The Times-Picayune is moving to a three days a week publishing schedule in the fall, making New Orleans the largest American city without a daily newspaper.
Publisher Ashton Phelps put a positive spin on the cutback, saying the Advance Publications unit will now container richer and deeper coverage of events than what the daily currently offers.
The paper will come out Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. The T-P has a Sunday circulation of 155K and weekday readership of 134K.
In conjunction with the reduced printing schedule, Advance is setting up NOLA Media Group, a digitally focused operation to deliver news online and mobile readers.
The T-P revamp will result in job cuts.
DOW JONES UPS LATOUR
Almar Latour, editor-in-chief of the Wall Street Journal’s Asia edition has been given expanded duties as e-i-c of Dow Jones Newswires in that region. The move comes with the combination of the editorial operation of those entities.
Robert Thomson, e-i-c of Dow Jones and managing editor of the WSJ, credits Latour for growing WSJA into a media powerhouse that reaches more than 10M readers across various platforms and languages including Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Hindi.
Latour reports to Thomson for overall strategy, new initiatives and the WSJ, and to Neil Lipschutz, managing director of DJN.
NPR HAS MOST INFORMED AUDIENCE
Americans’ media sources have a significant impact on their knowledge of current events, according to a study by Farleigh Dickinson University and PublicMind.
NPR educates its audience the most while more partisan outlets like Fox News and MSNBC have a negative impact on people’s knowledge of current events, the study found.
“The most popular of the national media sources – Fox, CNN, MSNBC – seem to be the least informative,” said poll analyst Dan Cassino. [view report, PDF]
More than 1,100 respondents were asked a variety of questions about political and economic events in the U.S. and overseas on topics like presidential primaries, the Keystone XL pipeline and Congress. Respondents on average answered 1.8 out of 4 questions on international topics, ranging from Greece to Syria, and 1.6 of 5 questions on domestic issues.
Fox News had the largest effect on its audience as its viewers could only answer an average of 1.04 domestic questions correctly, worse than if they had not watched any media outlet at all, the study noted.
Respondents in NPR’s audience topped the list at 1.5 correct answers on domestic issues and “Daily Show” viewers were right on 1.4 questions. NPR listeners registered a 1.98 for international current events, while “Daily Show” watchers hit 1.6 and viewers of Sunday morning shows answered 1.52 correctly. That compares with only 1.08 correct answers from Fox News’ audience.
Cassino noted that while the differences may appear small, “even small differences are important when we’re talking about millions of people.”
The study noted the easiest question asked which party controlled the House of Representatives – 65% knows it is the GOP. On the flip side, only 9% knew the payroll tax cut extension was tied to the Keystone pipeline deal.
PEW: AMERICANS ZERO IN ON ELECTION NEWS
The presidential election tops the interest of Americans and sits atop media outlets’ agendas, according to a poll by Pew Research Center released May 22.
Pew also found the public views the increased political coverage to be “fair” between President Barack Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney. Forty-one percent said coverage Obama has been fair, while 47% gave the same assessment of Romney’s press. Twenty-percent said the press is going too easy on Obama, while 21% say media are pulling punches on Romney.
The presidential campaigns are the most-watched news topic among those surveyed.
Twenty-eight percent said the election is their top story, trailed by 16% who said the economy is their primary interest in the news, said Pew’s News Interest Index gauged from May 17-20.
Pew said Democrats, Republicans and Independents are about even in saying they are following the campaigns “very closely” at 33%, 32% and 30%, respectively.
Election news accounted for 17% of the so-called “newshole” last week, reports Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, trailed by the economy and J.P. Morgan Chase’s woes at 7%.
Aside from the economy and election, recent stories which Americans said they are following “very closely” include Facebook’s IPO (14%), J.P. Morgan (21%), Greece’s economic woes (15%) and the race shift in U.S. births (15%).