Media Monitor: PiPress owners to withhold financials, City Pages owner withholds self-criticism

File under: No news is good news: MediaNews, the Denver-based chain that owns the Pioneer Press, has devised a way to deal with tanking financial figures: stop publicly reporting them. The privately held company decided to stop filing reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission, effectively hiding juicy facts like earnings, the salary of CEO William Dean Singleton, and info on legal cases.  (Via Romenesko.)

VVM ignores Lacey quip: The Arizona Republic has a good question about the story of Village Voice Media’s Michael Lacey using the n-word (coincidentally, on the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination): “[W]hy has his publication, which frequently calls others racist, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas, chosen to ignore this situation?”

“Hurtful” gossip: Strib editor Nancy Barnes apologized for C.J. yesterday, but not for the sustained existence of a gossip columnist in the paper’s recently downsized newsroom. She called the columnist to task for a “voyeuristic” and “unintentionally hurtful” piece, described by City Pages here: C.J. spotted conjoined twins Abigail and Brittany Hensel at the Mall of America and started following them. While she notes that her conscience prompted her to stop the pursuit, it didn’t stop her from writing about the publicity-shy girls in her column. One offending quote was when C.J. recounted Fox 9′s Todd Walker describing her reaction: “You just shrugged your shoulders and said, Yeah, well, as if somebody walked by wearing pink shoes on the wrong feet. You were quite funny, your cavalier attitude, about the whole thing.”