Chicago Sun-Times Restructure Means 300 Lost Jobs

The Chicago Sun-Times will eliminate about 300 jobs in a reorganization designed to combine and coordinate the various production plants, distributing operations, human-resource offices, and other similar infrastructure with the Sun-Times News Group, the Chicago Tribune reports.

This will improve productivity and the quality of products and services, as well as helping remedy the disappointing financial performance of 2005, the company said. Newsroom jobs are not the focus of the reorganization.

‘Sporting News’ Agrees to $7.2 Million Settlement with U.S. Gov

The Sporting News has agreed to a $7.2 million settlement with the U.S. government to resolve claims that it illegally promoted gambling via radio, print, and the internet, the San Diego Union Tribune reports. According to Catherine Hanaway, U.S. attorney for eastern Missouri, the Sporting News ran the ads for six months after the Justice Department sent a letter in June 2003 to the Magazine Publishers of America saying that ads for internet gambling were illegal.

Search Auctions Flawed, Researchers Say

Under current auction models, paid search advertisers tend to end up paying more than they should if they bid what they’re actually willing to pay, according to scholarly research that places the blame both the artlessness of bidders and the “generalized second price” auction mechanisms that Google and Yahoo use, writes ClickZ (MarketingVOX reports). “Under the current mechanism, if they don’t think carefully about their bidding strategies, they can end up paying a lot more to the search engines than they need to,” according to assistant professor of economics at Stanford Michael Ostrovsky, who authored the study along with doctoral candidate in economics at Harvard Ben Edelman and RWFJ Scholar at UC Berkeley Michael Schwarz.

Toyota Preps Bilingual Super Bowl Ad

Toyota’s 2007 Camry Hybrid Super Bowl ad will feature both English and Spanish. The spot, developed by Conill, Toyota’s Hispanic ad agency, features a Hispanic father and his son driving in their new Camry Hybrid.

Coke, Fox, ‘Sporting News’ Launch Football Guide

Sporting News and Fox Sports Net have teamed to create the Best Damn Guide to Football, sponsored by Coca-Cola North America’s Full Throttle Energy Drink, Adrants reports. Starting this week, three million copies of the 12-page, 4×6-inch guide will be distributed for free at convenience stores across the country when customers purchase Full Throttle. The guide will also be inserted in Sporting News magazine’s February 3rd Super Bowl preview issue, hitting newsstands on January 25th.

Heatwave Mobile: 27,560 Mobile Billboards Available

A new billboard venue is touting itself as one that is “turning heads on the major highways in cities across the country” thanks to its mobile billboards. Heatwave Mobile Billboards has 27,560 mobile billboards currently available in the top 150 U.S. markets. The billboards are printed at a minimum of 300 dpi. Original productions costs are slightly higher than stationary billboards, the company acknowledges, but is offset by the fact that the cost per thousand impressions is only slightly over one dollar.

‘Washington Post’ Editor Shuts Down Blog after Controversy

Jim Brady, executive editor of washingtonpost.com, decided Thursday to temporarily take down a blog popular with readers after hundreds of hateful comments, profanities and personal attacks directed at Ombudsman Deborah Howell inundated the blog, reports Editor & Publisher (via MarketingVOX). The Post staff was apparently unable to keep up with having to sift through the torrent of comments. In a controversial column on Sunday, she stated (incorrectly) that notorious lobbyist Jack Abramoff had given money to Democrats, too, not just Republicans.

NY Times Enters Member Rewards Business

The New York Times has launched a free subscription rewards program, TimesPoints, that allows members to earn points for purchases at restaurants, hotels and online retailers.

American Idol Syndication Could Mark Beginning of End

As rumored last week, with only four complete seasons in the bag, American Idol is going into syndication, MediaPost reports. The first season of the show, dubbed American Idol Rewind, has already been cleared on Tribune and Sinclair stations covering 55 percent of U.S. TV homes and nine of the top 10 markets.

The announcement comes just as Fox has launched the show’s fifth season. It also follows a Magna Global USA report that found that just over three-quarters of all shows that went into syndication since 1987 - 51 shows - witnessed immediate ratings declines on their network runs the next season.

1 in 3 Report Marketing Emails as Spam

According to a ReturnPath survey, 44 percent of consumers said they received more email than they expected when they registered with a Web site this holoday season, DMNews reports. And 34 percent said they reported marketing emails to be spam just because they did not want to receive the emails any longer.