SEMICOLON

The punctuation mark used to indicate a major division in a sentence where a more distinct separation is felt between clauses or items on a list than is indicated by a comma, as between two clauses of a compound sentence.

Use the semicolon to link independent clauses not joined by a coordinating conjunction. Semicolons should join only those independent clauses that are closely related in meaning.

Abdominal exercises help prevent back pain; proper posture is also important. The auditors made six recommendations; however, only one has been adopted so far.

Respondents making more than $100,000 annually said their average hours online had grown to 22.1 each week from 10.7, while the time they said they spent watching TV sunk to 18.6 hours from 23.7 in the 2003 survey. And they said their time spent listening to the radio had declined slightly. But they said they're regularly reading an average of 15.3 print publications, a notch above 15.1 five years earlier. Readers making more than $250,000 said they read just as many publications, 23.8 now, as they did in 2003.

"The conventional wisdom for print is 'Woe is me,'" said Bob Shullman, president of Ipsos Mendelsohn. "But if you look at this, at least among the affluent population, readership of issues per capita, it's staying constant."

The magazine business has its worries, to be sure: High gas prices are reducing drives to the supermarket while the broader economic slump makes readers think twice before buying new magazines. Newsstand sales, as a result, are looking grim this year. Ad-page sales are equally dour, down 7.42% across the monthlies through September, according to the Media Industry Newsletter. Newspapers, for their part, are fighting far darker demons.

But these problems don't affect the affluent market the same way as they do everyone else, said Ted D'Amico, senior VP-research, Ipsos Mendelsohn. "Readership has held its own among the affluent segment," Mr. D'Amico said. "Why is this the case? There are two factors. One, education. And they can afford magazines."

How bad is the business outlook for Tribune Co.'s newspapers? Bad enough for the company to take a $3.8 billion goodwill write-down on the value of its newspaper assets, which include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and Orlando Sentinel.

In all, Tribune is reporting a $4.5 billion loss in its second-quarter, according to figures released Wednesday. The red ink was fueled by the newspaper write-down, costs associated with its sale of the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday to Cablevision, and an 11% decline in revenues in its publishing division, or an $83 million drop from the same period last year to $701 million.

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Tribune's TV stations fared better than the newspapers, but the overall market woes were a drag on stations as well. Revenue at its 23 stations was up 2% from the same period in 2007 to $292 million. However, TV operating expenses climbed 7%, which cut into the stations' operating cash flow. In that important measure, operating cash flow dropped 8% to $92 million.

The New York Times' news room is bracing for a bloodbath in the next 10 days. The word from inside is that approximately 50 unionized journalists have accepted the buyout proposal, and only another 20 non-union editorial employees have gotten on board. That means the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history.

Executive Editor William Keller had said originally that he was looking to cut 100 people from the Times staff in response to the dismal newspaper advertising environment. But then a week ago Assistant Managing Editor William Schmidt issued a memo saying it was almost certain that the company would be forced to make involuntary cuts, and he urged more volunteers to come forward. The plea apparently fell on deaf ears.

With just 70 people stepping forward for buyouts, it is very likely that 30 newsroom staffers will be forced out in coming days. "We're bracing for it," said one insider with some knowledge of the developments. "There's a lot of anxiety." With competitive threats looming from The Wall Street Journal, which like The Post is owned by News Corp., sources said the business desk and national desk will be spared and will absorb only token cuts.

The week before, two longtime critics at Newsday - Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour - took buyouts, along with their editor. And at Newsweek, David Ansen is among 111 staff members taking buyouts, according to a report in Radar. They join critics at more than a dozen daily newspapers (including those in Denver, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale) and several alternative weeklies who have been laid off, reassigned or bought out in the past few years, deemed expendable at a time when revenues at print publications are declining, under pressure from Web alternatives and a growing recession in media spending.

Given that movie blogs are strewn about the Web like popcorn on a theater floor, there are those who say that movie criticism is not going away, it's just appearing on a different platform. And no one would argue that fewer critics and the adjectives they hurl would imperil the opening of Iron Man in May. But for a certain kind of movie, critical accolades can mean the difference between relevance and obscurity, not to mention box office success or failure.

"For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation, we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested," said Mr. Rudin, who produced No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, two Oscar-nominated and critically championed films last year. "All of the talk about No Country, all of the argument about the ending, kept that film in the forefront of the conversation" and helped it win the best picture Oscar.

CEO Crispin Davis says "its advertising revenue model and the inherent cyclicality fit less well with the subscription-based information and workflow solutions focus of Reed Elsevier's strategy." He also said "broadly, print publishing is flat while online is growing at around 11 percent a year." Reed Exhibitions--currently a division of the RBI, which operates BEA and the London Book Fair--will be retained by the company.

While the company timed their sale of Harcourt assets perfectly last year, the RBI sale faces a far different marketplace. Davis acknowledged in a conference call that the sale may take some time, saying "Our approach is that we're not going to be rushed into it." He told analysts, "We don't have any particular buyer in mind, we do think there will be a wide and strong level of interest in this business both from strategic and private equity buyers, we are very open minded on who and when." Reuters says that Numis Securities estimates the division could sell for $2 billion.

After years of resisting the newsroom cuts that have hit most of the industry, The New York Times will bow to growing financial strain and eliminate about 100 newsroom jobs this year, the executive editor said Thursday. The cuts will be achieved by "by not filling jobs that go vacant, by offering buyouts, and if necessary by layoffs," said the executive editor, Bill Keller. The more people who accept buyouts, he said, "the smaller the prospect of layoffs, but we should brace ourselves for the likelihood that there will be some layoffs."

The Times has 1,332 newsroom employees, the largest number in its history; no other American newspaper has more than about 900. There were scattered buyouts and job eliminations in The Times' newsroom in recent years, but the overall number continued to rise, largely because of the growth of its Internet operations. Shares in The New York Times Company rose almost 5 percent Thursday after the newsroom staff reductions were reported, closing at $18.84, up 86 cents.

The Times Company has made significant cuts in the newsrooms of some of its other properties, including The Boston Globe, as well as in non-news operations. Company executives say the overall head count is 3.8 percent lower than it was a year ago. But with the industry's economic picture worsening, the company is under increased pressure from shareholders -- notably two hedge funds that recently bought almost 10 percent of the common stock -- to do something dramatic to improve its bottom line.

For 2007, it recently reported earnings of $209 million on revenue of $3.2 billion. Newspaper industry ad revenue fell about 7 percent last year, and 4.7 percent at The Times Company, and executives around the industry have projected that 2008 will be equally bad. Other large newspapers have made much bigger cuts, proportionally, than those The Times is planning; some newsrooms are more than 20 percent smaller than they were early in this decade.

Even so, eliminating jobs has grown harder "because the low-hanging fruit is gone, and so is some of the higher-hanging fruit," Mr. Keller said. And he suggested that the cuts could not help but affect the newspaper's journalism. "To meet our budget goals, we will have to do a little less, and every time we do less, we cede a bit of advantage," he said. "Our challenge will be to set our priorities in such a way that we do less in the areas that damage our competitiveness least."

The ripe rumor going through the rafters at the Louis Vuitton show Sunday night was that company chief Yves Carcelle had called journalist Dana Thomas personally to inform her that she would never be invited to another Vuitton show or event as long as he was still in charge. It was apparent that Carcelle was miffed by the veteran fashion industry reporter's new book, Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster, and in particular by how she called LVMH Moët Hennessey's crown jewel brand "the McDonald's of the luxury industry: it's far and away the leader, brags of millions sold, has stores at all the top tourist sites--usually steps away from a McD's--and has a logo as recognizable as the Golden Arches." During the brief phone conversation, Thomas was said to have replied, in a cordial yet terse manner, "Thank you very much."

Post show, Carcelle confirmed to Fashion Week Daily that he had spoken to Thomas and decided it would not be appropriate for her to attend Sunday's show, but echoed a clearer thought. "We think she [Dana] wrote some things that were just not true; for example, how Vuitton marks up products 13 times what it costs us to produce," he explained. "I called her to express my unhappiness with the book. But if she would like to come to the show next season, she is welcome to." His wife, Rebecca, added, "You don't have the reputation Yves has by speaking to people in a derogatory manner." Wanting to move on from the subject, Carcelle concluded, "She complained to The Washington Post and The New York Post; if we're the McDonald's of luxury, then she is the McDonald's of press!"

Negotiations are under way for Clooney to follow in the footsteps of rock star Bono and fashion designer Giorgio Armani and guest edit an edition of the paper for the Africa charity Product Red. If talks bear fruit, Clooney, whose high profile campaigning against the genocide in Darfur chimes with the Independent's own editorial stance, would edit the paper for a day next year, possibly in March. Clooney and his journalist father, Nick, have lobbied the UN about the violence in the region and travelled to Sudan in a bid to stop the killings.

The actor, who won his best supporting actor Academy Award for Syriana, has described his Darfur campaign as an attempt to "use the credit card that you get for being famous in the right instances whenever you can". Over the past year the Independent and Independent on Sunday have run 294 articles about Darfur, including a front-page article in August by actress Mia Farrow about how she had witnessed suffering in the region at first hand. The paper also ran an interview with Clooney about Darfur when Armani "guest designed" the paper in September last year. The actor's Hollywood press agent denied that the paper had been in talks with Clooney. However, MediaGuardian.co.uk understands that PR agency Freud Communications, which handles the Product Red campaign, is negotiating on behalf of the paper.

The Independent was unavailable for comment and a spokesman at Freud said that the agency was not currently planning anything with the Independent. The paper secured Bono as its guest editor in May last year in a blaze of publicity. At the time the Independent said the Bono edition sold about 70,000 extra copies; one industry source said the increase was closer to 50,000 copies.

It didn't take long for the Pulitzer Prize finalist lists to begin leaking out. Within hours of the 14 Pulitzer juries packing up to go home on Wednesday after three days of judging at Columbia University, the names of this year's alleged finalists began to spread.

So far, E&P has compiled a likely list of nine of the 14 journalism finalist groups. These are compiled from multiple sources -- based on chats with some judges and editors at some newspapers that received firm word -- with at least two confirming their accuracy. E&P has been publishing these leaked lists for five years and they have proven to be very accurate in the past. However, as we always note: This is NOT official and mistakes can happen.

The niche is in, the mass media is out.

The people The [New York] Times champions, by and large, do not read the newspaper and, for the most part cannot afford the goods and entertainment products it hawks to its audience. I keep wondering how many of the folks they root for can afford a $10 thousand bracelet from Bulgari or a hundred dollar ticket to a Broadway show, zealously and repeatedly advertised within its pages. Indeed, how many of the people who would be the recipients of the largesse it supports for the underclass can even afford a subscription to the paper.

This disconnect seems to afflict the news magazine business as well, which is another dinosaur headed for extinction along with other general interest magazines. Content aside, the proliferation of television channels, and the overwhelming competition from other amusements like computer games and other exploding advances in technology will eventually force one’s attention to niche areas of interest, making it impossible to reach a wide audience with a one size fits all message.

Advertisers are busy looking for other spots to hawk their messages. We wear their logos on our clothes without charge. Buildings, stadiums, parks and other visible public edifices are now being named after businesses and products. Expect more and more venues to sport business’ logos and product names. Not an inch of public space will be safe from advertisers, including airplanes and all forms of public transportation.

Movie theaters are forcing their customers to watch endless commercials. Cell phones will soon explode with text, moving pictures and jingles hawking products. News sites will give you a TV report live or canned but first you will have to watch a commercial. Expect ads to appear on prescription drug labels, on doctor’s prescription forms, on alarm clocks, and proliferate on old standbys like food packages, book pages, school supplies.

Cynthia Littleton, who was promoted to editor at the Reporter last March, will become deputy editor for news development, Daily Variety reported on its Web site. She previously worked at Daily Variety as a TV writer. Deputy film editor Anne Thompson, who joined the Reporter two years ago, becomes deputy editor at Variety.com. They will write and edit for both the print and online versions of Daily Variety, the paper said.

In a memo to colleagues, Thompson said "the opportunity to expand and grow on the online side is irresistible." Littleton declined comment. A spokeswoman for the Reporter's immediate parent, VNU Business Media, did not return a call. Both Littleton and Thompson were still working in the Reporter's newsroom on Monday night.

It's not that e-mail, blogs, IM-ing, message boards, and texting have spawned a litter of brand-new interjections. (I don't count emoticons because you can't utter them, and I don't count acronyms like LOL and CU because they represent phrases with grammatical standing.) Rather, they have given lots of marginal ones, like awwa, a spelled-out form and thus a major shot in the arm. A personal favorite is meh, which (of course) has no definition in the OED but 737 separate ones on urbandictionary.com, including: "A random word when people either don't know what to say, don't care, can't answer a question or are too drunk to form a coherent english phrase." Meh—which can also be used as an adjective, e.g., "I felt kind of meh about the whole thing"—had the ultimate honor of being featured in a Simpsons exchange.

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Feh, a venerable Yiddish term indicating disgust or dismissal, has ridden to popularity on meh's coattails. "Flameviper," an urbandictionary.com contributor, explains some of feh's fine points: "When it is the answer to a question, it usually means 'no.' It is also used to calmly dismiss insults without resorting to a direct comeback (which could lead to a confrontation). Also used to dismiss orders. Sometimes (rarely) used in frustration."

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Interjections are suitable for online writing, as I say, because of the way online writing mimics speech. But newspaper and magazine writers who spell out interjections and other vocalisms run the risk of coming off as cute—as in yucky ew rather than adorable awwa. Most egregiously abused are what linguists call "discourse markers"—short sounds (it seems a stretch to call them "words") that speakers use to register hesitation, agreement, encouragement, ambivalence, and other responses. Uh, er, and um, in particular, have been flagrantly overused by feature writers and columnists to signal an impending attempt at irony or humor; the maneuver is now well beyond cliché, somewhere in the neighborhood of desperation.

Given the constant erosion of the printed press, do you see the New York Times still being printed in five years?

"I really don't know whether we'll be printing the Times in five years, and you know what? I don't care either," he says. Sulzberger is focusing on how to best manage the transition from print to Internet. "The Internet is a wonderful place to be, and we're leading there," he points out.

The Times, in fact, has doubled its online readership to 1.5 million a day to go along with its 1.1 million subscribers for the print edition. Sulzberger says the New York Times is on a journey that will conclude the day the company decides to stop printing the paper. That will mark the end of the transition. It's a long journey, and there will be bumps on the road, says the man at the driving wheel, but he doesn't see a black void ahead. Asked if local papers have a future, Sulzberger points out that the New York Times is not a local paper, but rather a national one based in New York that enjoys more readers from outside, than within, the city.

Classifieds have long been a major source of income to the press, but the business is moving to the Internet. Sulzberger agrees, but what papers lose, Web sites gain. Media groups can develop their online advertising business, he explains. Also, because Internet advertising doesn't involve paper, ink and distribution, companies can earn the same amount of money even if it receives less advertising revenue.

Really? What about the costs of development and computerization?

"These costs aren't anywhere near what print costs," Sulzberger says. "The last time we made a major investment in print, it cost no less than $1 billion. Site development costs don't grow to that magnitude."