Roll Call and CQ Today to Merge Into One Paper

By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

As many Washington-area news outlets continue their hiring sprees to feed the appetite for political news, two political newspaper stalwarts, Roll Call and CQ Today, are following what recently has been a far more common path in journalism. They are cutting back and merging.

Starting Nov. 13, Roll Call and CQ Today will become a single daily newspaper called Roll Call and will merge both newsrooms, which have already been working alongside each other. Executives say the new publication will combine the kinds of gossipy items that Capitol Hill experts rely on Roll Call for with the deeper policy reporting and legislative schedule printed in CQ Today.

“Roll Call will become the news of Capitol Hill, but also have that policy element,” said Beth Bronder, publisher of Roll Call.

The move is the final step in a three-year plan by the papers' owner, the Economist Group, to blend many elements of the two papers , except their names.

The Economist, which bought Roll Call in 1992, created a company called CQ Roll Call in 2009 with its purchase of Congressional Quarterly.

At the time, Keith White, managing director of CQ Roll Call, said “the plan was not to merge into a daily newspaper” because both newspapers were holding their own.

“They were both in good financial shape,” he said. “They were growing. They were doing well.”

It made sense to print two papers, he said, because while young Capitol Hill staff members shifted to reading online more, silver-haired legislators liked to read print. Peter A. Anthony, senior vice president and publisher for CQ Roll Call's Advocacy and Engagement, said that he often spotted legislators carrying the paper editions under their arms and that older lobbyists wanted paper.

But CQ Roll Call executives noticed a shift in January 2011 when the House allowed tablets onto the floor . Soon even the biggest holdouts had moved to reading the news digitally.

When print advertising shrank to 10 percent of revenue in 2012 from 25 percent in 2009, CQ Roll Call executives were convinced it was time to merge the papers.

“The question came up whether it's worth it to print and deliver these copies every day,” Ms. Bronder said. “Everything pointed to migrating the CQ Today folks to an online environment.”

Interactive One\'s Site for Latinos

September 9, 2012, 9:16 pm

By TANZINA VEGA

Interactive One, a digital media company best known for creating content for African-Americans, is set to announce on Monday that it has started a Web site aimed at urban Latinos.

The site is called Zona De Sabor, which, roughly translated, means Flavor Zone.

It is in English and is geared to American Latinos ages 25 through 37 with entertainment news and other content. Smokey D. Fontaine, the chief content officer for Interactive One, said he wanted to create content for that audience after the success of MiGente.com, the company's Latino-themed social network, which had 316,000 unique visitors in August.

“It will be written with a voice that comes from a place of cultural awareness, that c omes from a place of having a shared experience,” Mr. Fontaine, above, said. “How we discuss Sofia Vergara, how we discuss Julián Castro and how we discuss the Video Music Awards may come from a different place” than content written for a general market audience, he said.

Mr. Fontaine described the audience as “English-speaking Latino adults who are well educated, have a high consumption of entertainment, but want it in a way that's slightly different from how they see it in the general market.”

The site follows those from other media companies catering to the Hispanic market in the United States, like NBCLatino, Fox News Latino and HuffPost Latino Voices.

Mr. Fontaine said that while he welcomes the competition, Interactive One has a unique advantage. “We pride ourselves on understanding audiences of color,” he said. “We are focused on the African-American and Latino and urban communities online. That is the DNA of our company.”

La st year, NBC News and Interactive One announced a partnership that combined editorial and sales resources for NBC's African-American news site, TheGrio.com, and Interactive One's news Web site, NewsOne.com. Other Web sites under the Interactive One brand with an African-American focus include The Urban Daily, for entertainment; BlackPlanet.com, a social network; and HelloBeautiful, for women; and other news properties like Radio One and TV One.

Documentary Takes a Business View of Street Drug Trade

September 9, 2012, 6:39 pm

By MICHAEL CIEPLY

TORONTO - Films that take an outsider's view of business are routine at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2010, for instance, financial corruption was in vogue, as “Inside Job,” “Client 9,” and “Casino Jack” all exposed the seamy underside of Wall Street and the lobbying business.

But at least one picture turned the tables this year, by taking a businesslike look at an outsiders' world: street drugs.

In fact, “How to Make Money Selling Drugs, ” a documentary directed by Matthew Cooke and produced by Bert Marcus and Adrian Grenier, pushed the boundaries of alternative economics by examining those who sell drugs and those who prosecute the dealers as parts of the same busin ess.

And a big business it is.

The film pegs the annual income of an accomplished domestic drug importer - a notch or two below those who operate international cartels - at $100 million a year or more. It puts what it terms yearly revenue for the related prison industry at $50 billion - about five times the annual movie box-office sales in the United States and Canada. “This was born out of an economics class,” said Mr. Cooke, who spoke outside a screening Sunday. During a summer session at Harvard, he explained, a professor analyzed the war on drugs as an instance of huge business failure, not unlike the airline and auto industries of a few years ago. Some years later, Mr. Cooke connected with Mr. Marcus, a former radio producer who now makes movies through his own production company and film finance fund. With Mr. Grenier, the actor best known for “Entourage,” they decided to spin the professor's notion into something of their own.

“How to Make Money Selling Drugs” starts at the bottom, giving professional advice to, and assessing the prospects of, street-level dealers who, by Mr. Cooke's reckoning, make minimum wage or less when they enter the business. But some quickly climb the ladder, organizing customer networks, supply chains, security apparatus and financial controls.

Prison is described as a cross between business school, where you get an education in market dynamics, and a giant job fair, where prospects are recruited for positions on the outside. Property forfeitures are examined as a financing mechanism for law enforcement. At the retail level, customer service is said to be paramount.

“Treat them like regular people,” advises one former dealer who is interviewed in the film. He appears with stars like Susan Sarandon and Woody Harrelson, who oppose what they view as overly stringent drug laws, and famous drug figures like Freeway Rick Ross, who went to prison after building a robust co caine trade in Los Angeles.

The film finds plenty of profit in the drug war. Yet fighting drugs is failing as an industry, the movie argues, because it requires a growing taxpayer subsidy, year after year.

As for the movie business, Mr. Marcus said he is weighing offers for distribution rights to the film, which is being represented by ICM Partners. It may be in commercial theaters this year, he said.