Media Monitor: Cuts to hit Strib newsroom, judge to hit City Pages owner in suit

Strib newsroom “decimated”: The Star Tribune newsroom, which has already lost around 100 staffers in the past year, must cut its budget by ten percent — and layoffs aren’t off the table. As MinnPost’s David Brauer reported, the paper must show its investors how it can cut $20 million, and the newsroom has to come up with around $2.5 million of it (another $12.5 million will come from non-newsroom union positions, mainly Teamster locals in printing and related departments). Management won’t say much as they’re in negotiations with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild; the current contract expires at the end of July.

Another blow for City Pages owner: San Francisco Judge Marla Miller has said she’ll likely set penalties in the predatory ad pricing lawsuit against City Pages owner Village Voice Media on the high side of the stated range, which nears $16 million, and force VVM’s SFWeekly to stop selling ads below cost. SF-ist has the he-said she said: VVM’s Andy Van De Voorde says the San Francisco Bay Guardian, who filed the suit, is making a “grab for cash”, while SFBG calls SFWeekly a bunch of whiners. Miller’s ruling is expected today. VVM’s next step may be to “try to overturn the 1913 California law that protects small businesses against big predatory competitors.”

Senate votes to overturn FCC rule: On Thursday night, the Senate voted to overturn a recent Federal Communications Commission ruling that’d reverse a ban on companies owning both a TV station and newspaper in the country’s top 20 markets. The FCC measure said that, according to Editor & Publisher, the “TV station may not be among the top four in the market, and post-transaction, at least eight independent media voices must remain. The rule replaced an outright ban on cross-ownership.” The Senate resolution, however, has little chance of standing; George W. Bush is expected to veto it.

Awards roundup: Two local media outlets took home prizes in the EPpy Awards for online media: American Public Media’s American RadioWorks won “Best Network or Syndicated Radio-Affiliated Web Site” and the Strib got accolades for its “13 Seconds in August” web project on the 35W collapse. And City Pages is up for three Association of Alternative Newsweeklies awards, one for “Innovation” (kudos to art director Nick Vlcek, artist Kevin Cannon, and former CP writer Peter Scholtes), one for Nick Vlcek’s photography of a man with anorexia, and one for Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl, food writer extraordinaire who has since left the paper.