* Lee Enterprises (which publishes the Post-Dispatch, the Pantagraph and the Southern, among others) reported its third profitable quarter in a row this week. Gannett’s first quarter profits jumped 51 percent. McLatchy and the New York Times also had some good news to report.

Part of the reason for this apparent comeback is that the companies have so aggressively cut staff that their spending is now more in line with the revenues they can reasonably generate. Also, newsprint prices have fallen dramatically, as papers have slimmed way down or gone out of business. The ad revenue depression appears to be slowing, if not exactly bottoming out. And at least one analyst is pleased…

I’ve always stressed that print won’t die though it will shrink and radically change. The problem is the inertia and denial which leads many executives to think that these revolutionary changes won’t affect them but the next generation of leaders at magazine and newspaper companies.

Ironically, the recession accelerated history and the main trends and that forced some print companies to shape up. We saw Conde Nast lay off a lot of people, for example, despite historically having a lot of overhead. We also saw both Gannett (GCI) (parent of USA Today) and McClatchy (MNI) go through some painful steps that explain why in Q1 2010 both companies reported profits. […]

All print companies need more than the iPad to save their bacon. As I’ve long argued, if they really want to come back with a vengeance they would look at how they can leverage video online, which is totally incremental revenue for them (unlike TV and film companies).

He’s mostly right, but there’s still the big problem of reporting staffs stretched to the limit of breaking. What newspapers ought to be doing is clearing out their front offices of the expensive dead weight. It’s the content, stupid. Better content will drive more - and better - eyeballs. Bells and whistles are fine, but strong, timely content is king, baby. The Tribune is probably doing the best job of this of any media company in Illinois. They’ve shown a remarkable willingness to experiment with new ideas, and some of their reporters are eagerly embracing the new online news venues.

But newspapers ain’t out of the woods yet. They are, for the most part, still far too stuck in the past. The State Journal-Register, for instance, hired Ryan Keith away from the AP and gave him the task of handling the paper’s new media duties. Ryan initially did things like live-blog political events, debates, etc. He also created and staffed its aggregator page. But the paper has seemed to be returning to more traditional stuff in recent months. Ryan was reportedly frustrated with the mindset and announced today that he’s leaving the SJ-R for a career in public relations. From a press release…

Veteran statehouse reporter Ryan Keith is leaving as bureau chief for The State Journal-Register/GateHouse Media to join the public relations/public affairs firm of Mac Strategies Group, led by Ryan McLaughlin. Keith will head Springfield operations for the firm. This expansion will provide a day-to-day presence for the firm, strengthening its ability to service client both before the Chicago and Springfield press corps. Keith worked in the Springfield press room for 10 years, previously working for the Associated Press and starting as an intern with the Chicago Tribune in 2000.

I’m really sorry to see Ryan go. He was a huge asset to that paper, but he was woefully underutilized. Mac Strategies will be a good fit for him, though. Best wishes, man.

* As we’ve discussed before, newspapers make a nice chunk of change off publishing official legal notices. State law requires local and state government notices to be published in newspapers, and the papers charge for the privilege. So it’s no surprise that a bill that cleared the Senate this year which would allow fire protection districts to post a couple of types of notices on their own websites has the Illinois Press Association up in arms.

The IPA has published a “guest editorial” by its own executive director on their site, and you may see it in your local papers soon…

This proposal is the quintessential reason why government should not be allowed to report on itself and clearly demonstrates why government needs to remain transparent and not try to serve as both judge and jury in the business of public notices. Aside from the inherent conflict of interest, this legislation makes little sense for a state that is trying to rid itself of an image of pay-to-play politics, public corruption, unbridled graft and imprisoned governors.

Um, “report on itself”? If this was “reporting,” then why do newspapers want to be paid to run the notices?

The bill does have an obvious flaw…

For example, guess what was conveniently left out of the legislation? You guessed it, any frequency or time requirements that would mandate how long or how often government must post this vital information on their Web site. Under the proposed legislation, it could be 10 days, 10 hours, or even 10 minutes. It is alarming that however long the notice remains publicly available would be solely at the discretion of the public body posting its own notices.

Just because newspapers have been publishing notices since “before the days of Abraham Lincoln,” as the IPA exec director writes, that doesn’t mean we should be continuing to do it now. Instead of this flawed little bill, the GA ought to be thinking about setting up a central online clearinghouse for these notices which could be easily accessed and navigated by the public. Money could be saved and the public might be better served. It’s worth a debate, anyway.

* Meanwhile, there was a bit of a behind-the-scenes blowup yesterday over a claim by NBC 5 that they had the “exclusive” story about how the redacted material on a filing by Rod Blagojevich’s attorneys could be seen by simply copying and pasting the pdf file into a text file.

The station blasted out a mass e-mail late yesterday afternoon announcing their exclusive. But they made the mistake of not blind-copying the recipients. So, I hit the “reply to all” button and pointed out that I published the story hours before they did. They apologized profusely and corrected the story.

This is truly not a big deal, although I must admit that I did enjoy dinging the NBC guys a bit.

More importantly, though, I didn’t even realize that my own story actually appeared nine minutes after Natasha Korecki published the entire, unredacted document yesterday. Natasha should get credit for the scoop.

Things move fast in this business. When I was focused on writing my piece on the redaction problems, I didn’t even bother looking around to see if anyone else had it. I imagine that the same thing happened with others as well. Heck, I just realized that my Giannoulias story headline is almost identical to NBC5’s. I honestly don’t know if I saw their hed and it stuck in my mind, or if I came up with it on my own. Weird.

Also, I didn’t figure out this redaction thing on my own. CBS2’s Internet guru is the one who mentioned it to me. Information sometimes moves in unusual ways.

…Adding… I started to write this piece because the IlliniPundit blog has been shut down. And then I forgot to post the darned story. Sheesh.

From Gordy Hulten, the IlliniPundit’s longtime publisher…

Last night, I was appointed to the Champaign City Council, representing District 5. This is an enormous honor and an even larger responsibility. The time constraints of serving as a Council member (and running for election!) while balancing everything else in my life led to me to pledge during the application process that I would set aside IlliniPundit.com. I am doing so now, and I will no longer administer the site or participate on it. Reaching that decision was very difficult for me as IlliniPundit.com has been an overwhelmingly a positive experience for me, but I am confident that it is the correct decision. There just simply isn’t enough time to do both things well.

Gordy will continue blogging at his campaign website, which is here. I’m hearing that he’s accepting offers to buy the IlliniPundit blog. Good luck, Gordy, with everything you’re doing!

* Related…

* Former sports editor Bill Adee steers Chicago Tribune’s online strategy: Mr. Adee is working with the Tribune’s technology experts on new applications for the iPad, Kindle and other devices. The goal is to create newspaper downloads that readers will pay more for than they do currently.

* Adventures in Google Ads: Roskam might want to target better

* Obama’s 2008 internal report doesn’t mention call to Balanoff about Jarrett

* Lawyers summoned to court after Obama filing accidentally made public