New Orleans Times-Picayune to cut staff, may reduce publication schedule The Newhouse family-owned New Orleans Times-Picayune plans to cut staff and may reduce its daily publication schedule to two or three times a week. Reports of Times-Picayune restructuring started circulating last night. My tipster — a former staffer at that paper — heard that they’re “going to an all-online site with a print edition maybe just a few times a week, getting rid of a bunch of top editors … [and] staffers must reapply for jobs at drastically reduced salaries averaging $30K to $35K.” David Carr posted his story at 11:33 p.m., and New Orleans alt-weekly Gambit got its report up at 2:40 a.m. It says: Carr’s report comes after a tumultuous week in the ... Continue reading →
DUNEDIN — One Friday afternoon in December, leaders of a tax-funded elementary school called Life Force Arts and Technology Academy shepherded students into a Scientology church in Tampa's Ybor Square.The children were fed candy and pizza, given Scientology books and DVDs, and shown a performance of a play written by Scientology's late founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Some posed for photos with Santa Claus in front of a silver Scientology cross. It was, as Life Force leaders had promised, a Christmas party, the school's first since a small Clearwater company called Art of Management had been hired to reorganize the school as it filed for bankruptcy.Though company president Hanan Islam was also executive director of the World Literacy Crusade, a California organization that promotes Scientology study ... Continue reading →
The Society for Features Journalism has recognized the Tampa Bay Times with its 2012 award for Best Section.The Times entry in the national organization's Excellence in Features Writing Competition included issues of Floridian, Latitudes, Taste and Weekend. The stories and photographs in these sections included "If I die young" and "The gift of Florida" in Floridian; "The land Salvador Dalí never forgot" in Latitudes; the all-vegetarian issue of Taste; and Legoland in Weekend.Times staff writer Ben Montgomery won first place in SFJ's annual contest in the series category for "Spectacle" about the 1934 lynching of Claude Neal in Marianna.Other Times winners were Bay magazine, second place in the Niche Product category; staff writer Michael Kruse, third place in General Feature and an honorable mention in ... Continue reading →
By Robbie WhelanFor the last year or so, real-estate listing and valuation service Zillow has been overhauling its methodology for determining how many homes out there are �under water,� meaning their owners owe more in mortgage debt to lenders than the value of their properties. Today, it rolls out its new negative equity report, which shows, among other things, that nearly 16 million U.S. homeowners, or 31.4% of all homeowners with a mortgage, were under water in 2012. They owe $1.2 trillion more than the value of their homes. And though the negative equity share has fallen since last year�s tally of 32.4% (Zillow also revised its data based on the new methodology going back five quarters), it�s still higher than previous negative equity estimates, ... Continue reading →
The U.S. Housing Crisis: Where are home loans underwater? With U.S. home values falling by nearly 25% since peak in 2007, many homeowners are now underwater in their mortgages, meaning they owe more than their home is worth. Search our interactive map to discover what percentage of homes in your county or ZIP code are in negative equity, based on Zillow's first quarter 2012 data. About the map: Negative equity is calculated by matching the estimated value of a home to all outstanding mortgage debt and lines of credit associated with the home, including home equity lines of credit and home equity loans, supplied by TransUnion, a global leader in credit and information management. All personally identifying information ("PII") is removed from the data by ... Continue reading →
