I got a call today from an old colleague who took the hint last summer and departed The Baltimore Sun when I did — with the aid of a decent buyout.

“Still have any regrets about leaving?” he asked.

“If I did, I’m over it now,” I said. We both chuckled, but the humor was bitter.

The reason for his call was news of the latest purge at The Sun. More than 60 staffers bought it this time, including many of the paper’s most experienced editors — not the big salaries at the top, but hard workers who knew their jobs, knew their community, and knew how to cover it responsibly. My friends and colleagues.

Nor was this a buyout — it was out-the-door-Charlie, with extra security guards manning the entrances. A few of the surviving managers delivered the news with some grace, but two sports writers and a photographer learned they had no jobs when they got heave-ho calls in the pressbox at an Orioles game. Members of the copy desk learned about it when they showed up for work and couldn’t sign on to their computers. Dilbert in real life.

Sure, I know that The Sun’s parent Tribune Co. is in bankruptcy, but would it have cost the creditors a penny to show even a smidgen of class?

Or was it true that Tribune had to fire people before May 1 because that was the start of the vacation season, and they would have owed everyone another week’s pay? That will really bail the company out of a $13 billion hole.

Anyway, with the staff at less than half the size it was a few years ago — and shrinking every day — it’s hard to see anything more than a death spiral for The Sun — and other papers in the same fix. The less news you print, the less reason people have to read you — online or in hard copy.

My new boss at MedPage Today asked me where I thought newspapers were headed. I wish I knew. Specialized news and education sites like ours may thrive in the new order (and I have to say it feels good, for the first time in years, to be part of a business that’s growing, not shrinking). But for old fashioned, general circulation news organizations, the future looks bleak.

For the gory details about the latest goings-on at The Sun, I recommend The Real Muck, by my ever-feisty colleague David Michael Ettlin. For a frightening glimpse of Tribune’s plans to homogenize local newspapers from the tower in Chicago, visit Charles Apple’s blog.

It’s been quite a while since I posted here, but now I can assure you that I haven’t (a) retired or (b) been kidnapped by aliens. I’ve just been getting settled in an exciting new gig.

For those who haven’t followed these posts, I joined a mass exodus from from The Baltimore Sun last August after 38 years in newspapers, and began looking for, shall we say, new career opportunities. Meaning new job.
It took a while, but I finally found one in daily journalism: this time in a medium that’s strictly online. I’m deputy managing editor of MedPage Today, a site that brings the latest breaking medical news to an audience of doctors and other medical professionals, as well as ordinary folks who want straight, accurate, informed reporting that hasn’t been dumbed down.

Although I was medical and science editor of The Sun before my departure, MedPage Today is a lot more intense. First, there’s the subject matter, which is more technical and focused than our coverage at The Sun. Second, there’s the Beast That Always Needs Feeding. I’m talking about The Web. Instead of fixed deadlines, the Web demands constant updating — which really brings me back to my roots at the late and lamented Evening Sun, an afternoon paper with five editions that we fed all day. It was fun then, and thanks to the talented people I work with, it’s fun now.

I am also a real telecommuter for the first time. World Headquarters of MedPage Today is a skyscraper in Little Falls, N.J., a New York suburb off the Garden State Parkway with a spectacular view of the Manhattan skyline (if you ride one of the glassed-in elevators or you’re the boss and have a corner office). While a hard core of news, production and business staffers work there, other reporters and editors are scattered around North America — from Toronto to Cleveland to Wheeling to Houston to Washington to San Jose. And of course, in Baltimore, where my commute consists of heading downstairs to my office in the basement.

Telecommuting definitely has its ups and downs. On one hand, I miss the cameraderie of the newsroom; on the other, I don’t miss spending two to four hours a day commuting by car or rail, like a lot of folks who live in Baltimore but work in the Washington area (where the jobs are these days). What has amazed me is how well a small but complex news operation — one that posts lots of audio and video recorded by a far-flung staff — can operate using the Internet and telephones.

This missive is to let you know that I haven’t given up on technology — I’ve been writing about it for a quarter of a century and don’t plan to give up now. It just took me a while to switch gears and get comfortable in a new setting. Henceforth, I will do my best to keep up the same flow of misinformation, disinformation and bad advice das readers have enjoyed so much over the years.

I get yet another chance to say I-told-you-so. A couple of years ago, when I first started writing about this subject, I predicted that Congress wouldn’t have the guts to go through with a scheme it approved in 1996 to replace analog TV broadcasts with new digital technology. At least not with the kind of underfunded, rinky-dink program lawmakers concocted to allegedly protect the poor and elderly viewers who have the most to lose from the switchover.

Only than a week after House Republicans blocked a four-month delay in the nation’s switch from analog to digital TV broadcasts, Democrats revived the measure Wednesday and pushed it through the lower chamber, assuring that millions of analog TVs will not go dark on Feb. 17.

By a 264-158 vote, largely along party lines, the House enacted a Senate-passed measure extending the deadline until June 12. The Obama administrations supports the bill and the President is expected to sign it quickly.

The wording allows local broadcasters to turn off their analog transmitters before June 12 if they notify the FCC and the public well in advance. Most have been broadcasting on both analog and digital transmitters for more than a year now, at considerable expense, and few have budgeted for the extra kilowatts they’ll need to keep both signals going through the extension.  But it’s doubtful many stations will jump in advance of deadline and risk losing a chunk of their audience to competitors who keep both transmitters humming. › Continue reading…

If your grandma’s TV goes dark on Feb. 17, you can thank Republicans in the House of Representatives, who have effectively killed off an attempt to postpone the switch to all-digital television by four months.

The measure, already approved unanimously by the Senate, had plenty of votes to pass in the House under normal circumstances. But yesterday’s  215-to-168 margin, largely split along party lines, was shy of the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill immediately as a special measure.

If House Democrats backed by the Obama administration decide to try again, the measure delaying the switchover till June 12 could come up again next week as a regular bill – with passage virtually assured. If it doesn’t, the analog TVs in an estimated 6.5 million households will become doorstops on Feb. 17 when broadcasters turn off their analog transmitters in favor of a new generation of digital broadcasts.

Congress set the official Feb. 17 deadline back in 2005, when it also established a $1.34 billion program to provide $40 coupons to help Americans offset the cost of converter boxes that will allow  existing analog TVs to receive digital broadcasts.

This was not exactly an act of largesse, considering that the entire switchover scheme was forced on an unsuspecting public in 1996 by a bipartisan cabal of lawmakers, bureaucrats, cell phone companies, broadcasters and overseas TV equipment makers who saw an opportunity to pick our pockets in the name of technological progress. There was virtually no consumer demand for digital TV, and the most of the billions of dollars consumers have spent on new digital equipment to deal with the switchover have gone to bolster the bottom lines of foreign manufacturers — and increase an already staggering U.S. trade deficit.

Making a bad situation worse, the coupon program ran out of money — or depending on how you look at things, the program can’t use a big chunk of the money appropriated for it until unused coupons it has already issued reach their 90-day expiration date. New coupons can then be sent to millions on of Americans who found themselves on a waiting list, but few are likely to get them by the Feb. 17 cutoff.

Most of the 6.5 million households that will go dark are occupied by the poor and elderly. These constitutencies haven’t exactly turned out in droves for Republicans in recent elections, which may explain the GOP’s willingness to cut them off. In fact, Republicans opposed Democratic attempts to provide more money back in 2005 when the transition legislation was enacted. So it seems ab it strange that a group of GOP lawmakers has sponsored a bill providing an extra $250 million for converters now that it’s too late. Conscience money? Or am I just a cynic?

On the other side of the issue are most of the nation’s commercial broadcasters, who have been transmitting on both analog and digital systems for years and are anxious to turn off their expensive, power-hungry analog equipment. Many haven’t budgeted money to continue dual transmissions after Feb. 17 (although a lot of skeptics like me have predicted just the kind of imbroglio that’s now occurring).

Caught in the middle are the nation’s public television stations. Like their commercial counterparts, they’re spending big bucks they’d rather use elsewhere on electricty to keep both broadcast systems running. But since the elderly make up a disproportionate chunk of their audience (they love PBS news and watch it over analog TVs with antenannas), public stations are likely to suffer the largest proportional loss of viewership when the switchover actually occurs.

Meanwhile, no one knows how many millions of sets — either native digital models or analog sets with converters — will lose at least one of the stations its owners now receive. When you get to the bottom line, digital signals aren’t as powerful as analog broadcasts — and they’re more subject to crosstalk and interference from hills, towers and tall buildings. In my tests with a variety of equipment in several locations around Baltimore and Washington, I couldn’t find a single combination of TV, indoor antenna and coverter box that consistently brought in all the digital stations that were available in analog. That may generate even more complaints than the lack of converter boxes.

Stay tuned!

The Washington Post had an interesting piece about disarray in the Digital TV transition program – it’s a good primer about what can go wrong when the government decides to dictate what should be decided in the marketplace.

The whole issue could turn into a nasty, partisan political battle if Republicans continue to oppose an increase in funding for a program that provides coupons worth $40 each toward the purchase of converter boxes that allow traditional analog sets to receive digital broadcasts. GOP lawmakers blocked attempts by Democrats to fund the program at higher levels when the established it several years ago. Now that money has run out (after coupons worth $1.34 billion were been distributed), millions of applicants who want them are stuck on a waiting list. There’s almost no way Congress can act in time to get coupons to them before America’s TV stations turn off their analog transmitters and switch to all-digital broadcasts on Feb. 17.

 That’s one reason why the Obama transition team has asked Congress to delay the transition past Feb. 17:  lawmakers established that deadline with legislation back in 2005 when plans for the switchover were finalized. So far, ABC is the only network to ask for a reprieve, but with the prospect of millions of sets going dark next month, they’re likely change their tune soon.

Here are the latest converter stats from the National Telecommunications Infrastructure Administration:

 Approved households that have applied = 25,332,945
Coupons requested = 47,412,320
Coupons mailed = 43,052,609
Coupons expired = 13,394,773
Coupons redeemed = 18,858,516
Coupons on wait list = 948,657
Coupons active = 10,799,320
Average daily orders last 30 days = 265,507
Average daily orders last week = 360,759
Participating retailers / Locations = 2,366 / 34,417

Meanwhile, the government and broadcasters are quietly stepping up attempts to convince viewers to consider buying new antennas to use with digital TVs and converter boxes that get signals over-the-air. The government offers no help for that, even though it may cost vany viewers hundreds or thousands of dollars for an outside antenna they’ll need to bring in the same channels they got before.

 The weekly DTV transtion press release I get from the National Association of Broadcasters offers this suggestion: “By moving your antenna to a spot just three feet away from where it currently sits can greatly improve your DTV reception.” It didn’t work in my trials. A lot of people are going to be very upset when they turn on their converters or new digital sets and realize that a lot of their old channels have disappeared. That’s because digital signals get bent out of shape by hills, buildings, towers, high bridges and other manmade objects. If you get signals over-the-air,  with an antenna, check out www.antennaweb.org for advice on buying a new one. Stay tuned (if you can).

Will you lose your signal?

Yes, I told you so. If you’ve followed my rants on the subject, you’ll remember my prediction at the transition to digital TV – just five weeks away as I write this – would be a disaster in the making. Well, that prediction is coming true.

After months of assurances from government agencies and industry flacks that plans for the DTV transition were going great guns, President Elect Barrack Obama has asked Congress to delay the switchover, now scheduled for Feb. 17.

The reason: millions of perfectly good analog TVs will go dark because they can’t receive the new transmissions and won’t have converter boxes attached. Those are boxes the American public has to pay for – and a $1.34 billion subsidy program to help viewers buy them has run out of cash with more than 7 million households still at risk.

› Continue reading…

If you subscribe to PC Magazine, hold onto the January issue: some day it may show up on Antiques Roadshow as a collector’s item. After 27 years of producing what was once the Bible of the microcomputer industry — a rag so dense with advertising that mailmen dreaded the day it showed up in their pouches — PC Magazine is giving up its printed edition and switching entirely to online publication.

First issue of PC Mag

Sadly, this scenario is likely to play out more often as time goes by. With advertising fragmented by the Internet  and cable TV channels, with young readers abandoning print for online publications, and with the cost of paper and distribution increasing too fast to be offset by online revenues, it’s a wonder that only a handful of magazines and newspapers have abandoned dead trees altogether so far.

As an editor whose former newspaper is a shadow of itsself these days, but at least still available in print, I bleed a little every time I read one of these stories. True, I am a wired guy — moreso than most people my age — and I read more news online than I do in print these days. But there’s still something satifsfying about sitting down with a real, honest-to-goodness printed paper or magazine and enjoying it with a cup of coffee at the breakfast table, or in my easy chair at night. I’m sure I could do the same thing with a tablet PC, but I still like the feel of paper. Various studies also show that people read faster in print than online, and retain more of what they’ve read.

But it doesn’t matter, because for many publications, the economics of print just don’t work out any more. Over the years I watched PC Magazine slowly waste away as advertisers and readers dropped out. It cut back publication from twice a month to once, and its final issue was just under 100 pages.

But I also have to note that the magazine’s reason for existence is less compelling than it was. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was a responsible voice of expertise in a technology industry that was exploding with new applications for the new IBM Personal Computer and its clones (IBM actually coined the term “personal computer,” quite accurately). PC’s reviews were throrough and rigorous; the magazine’s labs developed benchmark tests for hardware and software that became industry standards. So influential was the magazine that some hardware vendors rigged their circuit designs to detect when PC Labs tests were running and produce faster results than they ever could in real world applications. Catering to a variety of audiences, the magazine provided programming tips for geeks, sound tech advice for general users, comparison grids for corporate purchasing agents, and yes, a lot of hype about a lot of products that turned out to be vaporware or just plain duds.

Unfortunately, the industry isn’t nearly as exciting as it was 15 or 20 years ago. For most users, PC’s have become near-commodities. In the says when a computer cost $3,000, consumers were likely to look a lot harder before they leaped. Today, $500 buys you a solid computer and $1,000 buys you a great one. Factor inflation into the equation and today’s PC is only a step above an impulse buy. The only people who really care about what’s in them are gaming enthusiasts who need the performance and corporate IT types who have to support and repair them. When Dell, HP, Sony or Lenovo come out with a new model, it’s about as exciting as Whirlpool announcing a new dryer. The real action today is in online software (Facebook, cloud computing applications and illegal file sharing), and in mobile devices like the iPhone and Blackberry. Indeed, read a recent print issue of PC Magazine and you’ll find an inordinate amount of space devloted to to phones, large screen HDTV sets, and digital cameras. So moribund is the PC market that the magazine has taken to reviewing Macs.

Online outlets (Including pcmag.com, the company’s excellent Web site) also offer something print editions can’t — instant access to late-breaking news. Printed magazines have lead times measured in weeks and months.

Enough of this tale of woe. For PC Magazine subscribers who love print, there’s one bright spot — PC Magazine will deliver a print-formatted electronic copy to your e-mailbox every month. So you can read it on your PC,print all of it, or just the handful of articles you want. To misquote the great John Updike, it’s “progress with an escape hatch.” Visit http://go.pcmag.com/subscriberservices/

Worried about the details of making your ancient analog TV receive those new digital signals? So are lots of of other people. One of them is Spike Feresten, host of the eponymously named “Talk Show with Spike Feresten.” Particularly concerned with the effect of the transition on the elderly — who will bear a disproportionate share of the hassle and expense  — Spike produced this inspirational video on installing a DTV converter box. He only thought it was a parody.

Happy Holidays to all!

Not long ago, a friend was surfing the Web when he got a pop-up message like this one, warning him that his computer was infected with a virus. Not surprisingly, the message offered him a chance to download a program to root out this evil.

Now Richard isn’t a fool — he’s a retired financial executive for a big computer outfit – so he clicked on the “No” button. But that wasn’t good enough. He soon found his machine slowing down to a crawl, infected with a piece of slimeware now known as Antivirus 2009.

This is one of the nastiest little bugs I’ve seen, for a couple of reasons. First, it’s distributed as “scareware,” a term describing the pop-up “warning” boxes that lure Web surfers into downloading the malicious software by telling them their machines are infected.

These warnings are almost always bogus. If you already have an antivirus program installed, don’t worry - chances are very good that it’s taking care of business. It will generate legitimate warnings from time to time, but they will always look the same, and they certainly won’t appear as chintzy Web windows.  Antivirus 2009 is particularly insidious because its name sounds legit - in fact, it’s meant to be confused with the legitimate and popular Norton Antivirus 2009.

Another problem: clicking anywhere in the popup warning screen, even on a “No” or “Ignore” button, will often download the malicious program. You won’t even be aware of it. Typically the click will transport you to a Web page advertising antivirus software. Merely visiting the Web page can trigger the dirty download - without any further action on your part. › Continue reading…

It’s hard to avoid Digital TV Transition ads these days. With less than two months till the nation’s TV stations switch to a new, all-digital transmission scheme, broadcasters and government officials are running thousands of public service advertisements warning viewers that unless they take action, millions of sets may turn into doorstops on Feb. 17.

Some stations are even running half-hour shows discussing the DTV transition and telling viewers how to buy and install converter boxes for their existing analog sets. Others are telling people how to find new digital TVs with tuners that can receive the new signals on their own.

All these ads make the process look deceptively easy, but unfortunately, it won’t be easy for everyone. In fact, after Feb. 17, a small but significant minority of viewers will never again be able to get the same variety of programming they get now. Some will have to spend hundreds of dollars for rotating outdoor antennas to match the reception they get today from the $3 rabbit ears that came with their old analog TV sets. Even then, the dirty little secret of digital broadcasting is that it won’t reach as many TV sets as the analog system we’ve used for the better part of seven decades.

› Continue reading…