Media Monitor: Global news org touts print’s health, local orchestra disagrees

Strib reaches agreement with union: A little leery going into it, the Minnesota Newspaper Guild chapter reached a tenative contract agreement with management at the Star Tribune last night. The three-year deal does include $2.5 million in newsroom cuts that owners Avista Capital Partners is seeking, which will include the elimination of six newsroom jobs. Full union membership will parse the details of the agreement today; if ratified, it goes into effect August 1.

Not drowning, just waving: The World Association of Newspapers (WAN) is tackling what it considers "myths" about the impending demise of print news. It’s created ads for newspaper to use as part of its "global initiative to promote the power of the newspaper and to rectify some of the absurd and damaging claims being made about its imminent demise." One headline reads, "The Good News — guess who gets 1.6 billion hits a day?" The Guardian’s Roy Greenslade asks a good question: "If newspapers are enjoying robust health, then what’s the point of hitting back at those who argue otherwise?" [via]

Orchestra: Print news is dead: Those in the arts might disagree with WAN. Good arts coverage is hard to find locally, after City Pages axed its film critic and nixed its gallery listings and the Star Tribune let go its top architecture and classical music critics (a moved noted by national culture pubs). The Minnesota Orchestra’s Sam Bergman writes an astute blog post on the subject, noting that mainstream papers have "converted the arts section into something like what used to be called a ‘women’s section.’" While a paper might remark on how well the orchestra played at a given concert, he adds, "larger analytical pieces are as likely as not to reflexively refer to classical music as a dinosaur, posit (generally without any real substantive evidence) that the entire business model of a symphony orchestra is outdated and unworkable in a modern economy, or to bemoan the local band’s insistence on continuing to play Beethoven and Brahms when there’s a whole raft of thorny stuff by Stockhausen that we could be torturing the audience with."

AdKare gets low marks: Ad industry insiders are slamming the just-announced AdKare 10-week training program by Fallon Minneapolis. MediaBistro’s Agency Spy blog says charging young would-be art directors and copywriters to come in and train is a "move reminiscent of an old, stodgy agency that can’t hope to reinvent itself," while Adfreak wonders if AdKare will give out grades, pointing out Fallon’s recent C- grade on Adweek’s annual report card.