Today, we talk about the Tribune Company's spinoff and what it means for readers of papers like the LA Times. We also discuss earthquake early warning systems, Gaza's displaced residents, the search for the missing Malaysia flight, California's rise in food stamp usage and much more.
What the Tribune Co. spinoff of the LA Times means
As of Monday, it is official: The Tribune Co. spins off its print newspapers into a separate company.
The Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and other media properties that Chicago-based Tribune Co. once owned will now form Tribune Publishing, a multimillion dollar deal that comes in the wake of bankruptcy proceedings for the Tribune Co.
The remaining Tribune Co. becomes Tribune Media and will operate 42 TV stations, including KTLA.
Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst with the Nieman Journalism Lab, told Take Two that the move could be bad for newspapers such as the Times, because they used to rely on Tribune's broadcast entities as a cushion for potential losses.
"We're seeing improvements in the Times — new website, new apps, some really good hires. They're going to try to hold the line, but unless they can find some new revenue sources, they're going to have to continue to cut, and, unfortunately, I think the readers will see that."
Tribune has said the move — which was announced a year ago — will let one company take advantage of growth in broadcasting and allow the other to focus on print, although revenue in the newspaper industry has been declining for years.
The Times reports Tribune Publishing CEO Jack Griffin will seek to grow and diversify digital revenue across all eight of the new company's newspapers:
“Our job is to manage (revenue declines) judiciously over time while we pursue the growth areas of our business, which are increasingly digital growth areas … so that in the aggregate, we’re a growth business,” Griffin said.
Eddy Hartenstein will step down Monday as publisher and CEO of the Los Angeles Times to become non-executive chairman of the Tribune Publishing board. Griffin and Hartenstein will serve on the board along with four outside directors.
The New York Times offered this background on Griffin:
Mr. Griffin’s career is a mix of success and stumbles. He fared well at the magazine company Meredith, where he served as president of the national media group from 2004 to 2010. Lauren Wiener, who worked as Meredith’s senior vice president for digital, said Mr. Griffin helped brands like Better Homes and Gardens find ways to make money beyond the print magazine and built up services to help companies with social media. Meredith’s revenues grew from $808 million in 2003 to $1.27 billion in 2008 before the recession hit, said Barry L. Lucas, senior vice president for research at Gabelli & Company.
In Gaza, few options for those seeking safety from violence
Within minutes of a partial ceasefire today, an Israeli strike hit a refugee camp in Gaza City. An eight-year-old girl was killed and more than two dozen people were injured. Israel said it was investigating the incident and that rockets from Gaza had also been fired into Israel.
Israel declared the partial ceasefire in Gaza earlier. It was to last seven hours and apply only to parts of the region where its military was not operating. It was intended as a humanitarian gesture, to give relief groups time to deal with the ongoing devastation.
However, one major consequence of some five weeks of shelling is the widespread displacement of residents in Gaza.
Today, more than a quarter of Gazans have fled their homes and nearly 260,000 have gone to shelters run by the UN.
But Gaza is a crowded area and those shelters are turning out to be far from safe, after Israeli strikes hit close to several sites where civilians were taking refuge. Israel's military has maintained that no UN shelter has been directly targeted and that Hamas has used UN schools to hide rockets.
"This is one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth," Elizabeth Ferris, senior fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution and an expert in internal displacement, told Take Two. "People are trapped. There's no place to go except with friends and relatives or these UN facilities that are less and less safe for people."
Gaza spans about 28 miles by 7 miles wide and is home to about 1.8 million people, almost one-fourth of whom are now displaced, said Ferris. However, Ferris also notes that many of the displaced have been refugees for a long time, describing the scene in the area as one of the world's longest refugee situations, dating back to conflict in 1948 between Israel and the Arab states.
"These are people who have long-term refugee status, their kids are considered refugees, they felt like they've been displaced their whole lives ... who are now experiencing another wave of displacement," she said.
There are also limited options for those living in the small area when word arrives of an incoming strike, and the situation is compounded due to Gaza's mostly closed borders.
"In Gaza, people are trapped, there's no place to go except with friends, relatives or these U.N. facilities that are less and less safe for people," Ferris said, adding that another impediment to people fleeing the area is the Israeli blockade that's existed for years.
Can a privatized earthquake warning system be cheaper, faster?
A few seconds of warning before a major earthquake could save lives. That's why state legislators passed a bill last year asking for a seismic early warning system. Federal geologists have a prototype in place, but it would cost tens of millions of dollars to scale up.
Now, a private company says it could get the job done for a lot less. Southern California Public Radio’s Sanden Totten says that claim is causing somewhat of a rift in the quake community.
Second U.S. aid worker who contracted Ebola set to arrive in Atlanta
An American infected with the deadly Ebola virus is being closely monitored in a hospital in Atlanta, home to the Centers for Disease Control. A second American aid worker, also infected, is expected to arrive soon.
The two were working with American charities at an Ebola treatment center in Liberia when they contracted the virus. And their transfer back to the U.S. has caused a lot of concern and questions about how the decision was made to bring Ebola to American shores for the first time in history.
Doctor Ford Vox, journalist and physician based at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, joins Take Two to talk more about this. He teaches at Emory University Hospital, where these patients are being treated.
Jailhouse informants: Judge won't rule out death penalty in Dekraai case
Earlier this year, 44-year-old Scott Dekraai pleaded guilty to killing eight people, including his ex-wife, three years ago at a hair salon in the city of Seal Beach in Orange County. However, his lawyer argued that he should not get the death penalty because prosecutors used jailhouse informants to build their case.
Following a months-long investigation into these allegations, a Superior Court judge ruled this morning that prosecutors did engage in misconduct, but that those findings should not affect DeKrai's sentencing.
We talked to Alexandra Natapoff, professor at Loyola Law School, about the case.
Shuttered abortion clinics affect women on Texas border
The fight against stricter regulations on Texas abortion clinics goes to court again today. Lawyers will argue on behalf of two clinics near the U.S./Mexico border. Those clinics have shut their doors, unable to meet new rules passed by state lawmakers last year.
As a result, Mónica Ortiz Uribe reports that women who seek an abortion may have to travel hundreds of miles.
MH370: Search for plane reveals how little we know about deep-sea
It's been months since Malaysia Flight 370 disappeared en route to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur. The plane likely went down in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Australia, but not a trace of it, or any of its 239 passengers, has been found.
As the search continues in the open water, it's become clear how little we know about the landscape of the deep ocean floor. The Wall Street Journal's Daniel Stacey has been writing about the challenges of finding the wreckage and he joins Take Two to talk more about it.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
On why there's not more information about the search area:
"Most of the floor of the ocean has only really been estimated using a kind of satellite science called satellite altimetry. People fire radar from satellites and it bounces back and gives them a picture of the surface of the sea.The surface of the sea fluctuates over mountains and valleys, it has a viscosity to it, it sort of isn't just uniformly flat. From that, you can determine some basic features at the bottom of the sea, but only within the accuracy you say of, you know, the height of the Eiffel Tower. So, we don't know that much about it."
On the technology that could be used in the search
"They need to get under the water with sonar and get within, let's say, 100 feet of the bottom of the sea. They either tow sonar devices on long, long cables that could be 10 kilometers long or they send down what they call autonomous vehicles -- they're basically undersea drones which swim around themselves and they bounce sonar off the bottom of the sea and look for debris."
On the most impressive wreck recovered in the deep sea:
"There was a really deep shipwreck located in 1996. It was what's called a blockade runner, a German ship that was loaded up with tin, copper and cobalt and was trying to get back to Germany during the latter stages of the second World War. It sunk in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at almost 19,000 feet. It's the world record for the discovery of a shipwreck. That's just an astonishing depth to find something at, we're talking almost six kilometers, I think, under the sea."
On the difference between finding planes and finding ships underwater:
"The hull of most ships, when they sink, might snap in half or get a big hole and just sort of sinks to the bottom in one piece. A plane hits the water at very fast speed, even if it's gliding, and usually it fragments. There are a few bits of the plane which I guess typically from experience, remain intact. The engines are very robust, the front of the plane is really strengthened to deal with headwinds. The tail usually takes the impact last and retains its form. When this sinks to the bottom of the sea, it can just look like rocks, and you have to be really careful not to miss it. When you do a search like this, you only go over a lot of the areas once. If you didn't see it, you may be searching months and months, and you've passed it by."
Report: California's food stamp use is up, rest of U.S. is down
Recent data about the U.S. government food-stamp program showed an interesting trend: A decline.
Between 2009 and 2013, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the largest nutritional program rose from 33.5 million to 47.6 million participants.
But the newest report from the United States Department of Agriculture shows an actual decline for the first time in several years - down a million participants from 2013. While advocates say the trend indicates an improvement in the overall economy - California seems to not be following that trend. According to experts – the state is actually increasing the number of people receiving aid.
We spoke to Alexis Fernandez, the director of legislation with the California Food Policy Advocates, a group that works with the state and federal government dedicated to improving the health and well being of low-income Californians.
On the Lot: 'Guardians' rockets box office, female 'Ghostbusters' and the Dude at the Dodgers game
Guardians of the Galaxy goes stratospheric at the box office ...
James Cameron goes deep...
And we coud be seeing an all-female Ghostbusters.
Who you gonna call?
of course. She writes about film for the Los Angeles Times and she joins us each Monday for "On the Lot," our weekly discussion of the entertainment industry.
'Art Everywhere' showcases American art on bus stops, billboards and subway ads
Prepare for the largest art show ever conceived. Starting today, more than 50 great works of American art are coming to a billboard, city bus, bus stop, or subway ad near you.
It's all part of the "Art Everywhere" exhibition, featuring reproductions of American art from five major U.S. museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, or LACMA.
LACMA CEO and director Michael Govan joins Take Two to explain more about "Art Everywhere."
City of Bell to keep paying 'Rizzo Tax' after corrupt officials are sentenced
All seven former Bell officials convicted on public corruption charges have been sentenced, but their financial crimes have left the small town deep in debt.
The City of Bell still owes $74 million dollars in Rizzo-era debt, six times the city's annual budget, that's about $2,000 dollars for every single Bell resident. KPCC's Sharon McNary toured Bell's downtrodden business district.
A walk through California's assisted living facilities
A lot of us have this idea that when we get really old, we'll die with our boots on. But just as likely there will be a long, slow journey between here and there, one that could take years.
Many of us start to realize that's true for our parents when we notice mom is walking with a new shuffle, or dad is mixing up his meds. In the first of a four-part series, we turn to the California Report's Rachael Myrow to look at the state of assisted living in California.
How one musician crowdfunded her music career from Kansas
For years, Hawaiian-born artist Kawehi struggled to succeed in the LA music scene, so eventually she moved to Kansas with her husband. Surprisingly, that's when her music career took off.
She started posting videos of herself covering famous songs with an acoustic guitar, a laptop and loops of her own voice. She even built her audience enough to where they wanted to fund five different musical projects of hers on Kickstarter.
Now, she has a new crowd-funded EP out called "Robot Heart."
Kawehi recently joined A Martinez in studio to talk about the art of looping, crowdfunding her success and why she took a chance on Kansas. You can hear the full interview at the "Listen Now" icon in the left.