NY Times: Ah, actually we won't be going paid
New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger's minor comment in Business Week magazine that the paper could take its web site to an all-paid format started some major speculation last week, so much so that the company Friday said it has no plans to do so anytime soon. Sulzberger told Business Week that the paid format was something that "gets to the issue of how comfortable are we training a generation of readers to get quality information for free. That is troubling." But he laid out no timetable for the switch. The Wall Street Journal’s WSJ.com currently charges visitors for complete access to the site, and the company says it would have been delighted if NYTimes.com started charging online readers as well. Dow Jones senior vice president Gordon Crovitz, who runs the electronic publishing group that controls WSJ.com, says in a Dow Jones report this morning that he and his company don’t understand why a publisher would charge for its news in one medium yet give it away free in another. NYTimes.com did charge foreign visitors for access a few years ago, but for now is comfortable offering its content free of charge. New York Times Digital, which also includes Boston.com, earned $17.3 million on $53.1 million in revenues during first-half 2004. Nytimes.com has 18 million unique users per month.

Rupe buying out fellow Fox shareholders
Rupert Murdoch is doing his part for media consolidation. The News Corp. head plans to consolidate ownership of Fox Entertainment Group, which includes companies like 20th Century Fox studios and satellite provider DirecTV. For a reported $7 billion, the company will buy out shareholders of Fox, giving each 1.90 shares of News Corp. stock. The move essentially makes life easier for Murdoch and News Corp., giving the company stability and leverage for future deals with full ownership of Fox properties. Currently News Corp. owns about 82 percent of the equity and 97 percent of the voting power of Fox. The move comes curiously soon after Liberty Media raised its investments in News Corp. to 17 percent in November, making Murdoch, who owns 30 percent of News Corp., nervous about a possible hostile takeover. The company almost immediately instituted a plan to foil any such attempts, ensuring Murdoch will be able to hand the company over to sons Lachlan and James.

Columnist Williams sacked for gov't shilling
Armstrong Williams apparently skipped the day in journalism school when they covered monetary ethics. Williams accepted $241,000 from the Education Department to push the No Child Left Behind law via his radio and newspaper commentaries, an agreement Williams now credits to bad judgment on his part. The money was siphoned through Ketchum public relations company. Williams presumably used some of it to produce and air a No Child Left Behind ad featuring Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige that aired on his syndicated radio and TV shows. Williams also praised Bush’s education policy and encouraged others to interview Paige. Tribune Media Services has since canceled Williams’ column, and at least one TV network has dropped his show pending an investigation. Democrats eagerly began accusing the Bush administration of bribing journalists as a result of the scandal. The Education Department has reportedly paid Ketchum $700,000 to rate how journalists are reporting on No Child Left Behind.

Fox nixes Rooney moony in Super Bowl 
Janet Jackson's Super Bowl striptease may have saved the public from viewing Mickey Rooney’ 84-year-old rear end. Fox has rejected a 15-second ad for cold medicine Airborne that briefly shows Rooney’s backside, which was to air during the Feb. 6 Super Bowl. The decision was likely made because of all of the negative attention, not to mention fines, associated with last year’s Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction in which she flashed her breast to millions of Americans. Fox, which faced a Federal Communications Commission inquiry recently over last year's "Married by America," says the Rooney ad was deemed inappropriate for broadcast TV. The network claimed last year’s Janet Jackson incident played no role in its decision not to run the ad, but it’s likely the $550,000 fine thrown at CBS by the FCC helped Fox realize it had better not take any chances. Among other things, an upset Rooney has been quoted as saying about his bare bottom: “The public deserves to see it.”

Women: Clear Channel not breast in show
Last year Clear Channel deemed Howard Stern too racy for its affiliates. But apparently giving away breast jobs is not. Clear Channel stations in Tampa, St. Louis, Jacksonville and Detroit have come under fire from women's groups for sponsoring the "Breast Christmas Ever" contest, which granted breast enhancement surgery to 13 winners who wrote essays about why they deserved it. It may have been intended as fun, but the National Research Center for Women & Families and the National Organization for Women are urging members to file complaints with the Federal Communications Commission and send email complaints about what they term the degrading and unethical contest. As of last week almost 4,000 complaints had been filed. Neither women’s group said the contest violated decency standards, tempting as it might have been, but instead claim it promoted dangerous surgery with no legal protection if it went awry. Clear Channel said local station managers choose to run the contests and the company had nothing to do with it. Listeners apparently had few qualms. The Tampa station claimed to receive 91,000 entries.