Newspapers

Barney Frank is in love. This is not exactly news — he's getting married in July — but it's still striking, the way a congressman who has cultivated a reputation for prickliness can be so publicly, sweetly sentimental. "It's funny," Frank said last week, musing about his relationship with his fiance, Jim Ready. "I used to listen to these songs about love and . . . they didn't mean anything to me. I would almost be kind of annoyed by them, you know — it's like I was left out. The whole thing takes on a meaning it didn't have.

The Times-Picayune, one of the nation's oldest newspapers, will no longer offer print editions seven days a week and instead plans to offer three printed issues a week starting in the fall. The change means New Orleans would become the largest metro area in the nation without a daily newspaper in the digital age. The changes announced Thursday were combined with similar moves at three major Alabama daily newspapers also owned by the Newhouse family group's Advance Publications.

For Michelle Kane, it's one of the best parts of her job. A woman at a nursing home in Needham contacted Kane, saying she had been saving newspaper articles of historic events for more than 40 years. The woman was afraid the same fate might befall her collection as that of a neighbor's: thrown out after her passing. When Kane and Kathy Cormier "went to see her in the nursing home, she was so happy to know that we were going to do something wonderful and rewarding with her papers," Kane said.

Warren Buffett says his company is likely to buy more newspapers in the next few years, and Berkshire Hathaway will not try to influence the editorial policies of any of them. Buffett wrote a memo this week to the editors and publishers of all of Berkshire's daily newspapers. That group is about to get significantly larger because Berkshire announced last week that it plans to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million. The letter was posted online Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald, which is a Berkshire newspaper.

NEW DELHI -- Obituaries for newspapers are already being written in the United States and much of Europe, with the rise of the Internet and shrinking attention spans listed as the causes of death. But the news hasn't made it to India. Here, more than 150 million people read a newspaper every day -- compared with 97 million Americans and 48 million Germans. Circulation numbers in India are soaring, and advertising is expected to grow by 15 percent this year. The crowded Indian newsstand is a cacophony of scripts: In New Delhi, papers are published in 15 languages, from English and Hindi to...

Using funds from a $9,000 Community Preservation Committee grant, the Georgetown Peabody Library has begun scanning back issues of newspapers including The Georgetown Enterprise, The Georgetown News, and the Georgetown Weekly. So far, the library has scanned and digitized papers as far back as 1962. Scanning makes back issues of the papers searchable online by date or keyword. More papers will be added as available. - David Cogger

OMAHA - Warren Buffett says newspapers need to stop giving away their product free online, but will have a decent future if they continue delivering information that can't be found elsewhere. Buffett talked about the news business on CNBC yesterday because his Berkshire Hathaway owns two newspapers and has a sizable investment in the Washington Post Co. Newspapers face challenges because of competition from Internet news sources and the rising cost of newsprint. Buffett said newspapers need to make sure they remain the primary source of information about subjects readers are...

MINSK — Belarus’s authoritarian government further tightened the screws on dissent yesterday by shutting down two independent newspapers and sending another opposition leader to prison for two years. The Information Ministry said the daily newspapers Nasha Niva and Narodnaya Volya were closed after receiving two or more warnings in the past year over their political coverage. Opposition leader Dmitry Bondarenko was found guilty in court of organizing an election-night rally in December to protest the results of the vote that extended the rule of President Alexander Lukashenko.

NEW YORK - Four major US daily newspapers sported makeovers yesterday as they grapple with life in a world of digital news. Some of the biggest changes were happening in Detroit, where the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News offered free copies of their newly slimmed-down Monday editions. The newspapers now will be delivering to homes just three days a week - Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays, the most popular days for advertisers. The newspapers also were promoting electronic versions that are laid out like the print editions.

Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell no longer leads an investment group hoping to buy Philadelphia's two largest newspapers. Businessman and philanthropist H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest told The Philadelphia Inquirer that Rendell asked him to take over as chairman of the group bidding on the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News. The group includes former New Jersey Nets owner Lewis Katz, New Jersey Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III and Philadelphia philanthropist Raymond Perelman.

Brazilian newspapers are speculating that the country's most beautiful export - supermodel Gisele Bundchen - may be pregnant with her second child. Tom Brady 's wife has not commented on the reports, and her assistant would not confirm or deny anything when contacted. Citing people who recently dressed Bundchen and said her size has changed, the newspaper Agora Sao Paulo speculates that Mrs. Brady is a few months pregnant. She and the three-time Super Bowl champ already have one son, 2-year-old Benjamin . (Brady also has a son, Jack , with ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan .)

NEW YORK — Billionaire Warren Buffett's company is making another foray into newspapers, agreeing to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is also extending a loan to Media General and taking a 19.9 percent stake in the company, which still owns TV stations. Media General said the deal includes all of its newspapers except the Tampa Tribune of Florida and smaller newspapers in that market. The deal includes the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia and the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina.

Billionaire Warren Buffett's company is making another foray into newspapers, agreeing to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is also extending a loan to Media General and taking a 19.9 percent stake in the company, which will still own 18 TV stations. Media General also owns some websites, such as coupon provider DealTaker.com. Media General on Thursday said the deal includes all of its newspapers except the Tampa Tribune of Florida and smaller newspapers in that market.

An official in northern Mexico says a group of gunmen have opened fire on a newspaper building in the border city of Nuevo Laredo. Tamaulipas state Interior Secretary Morelos Canseco says no one was injured in the 5-minute-long attack at El Manana daily but the structure and some vehicles were damaged when the bullets impacted from outside. Canseco did not say whether the newspaper was the target of the shooting Friday night. Its offices however occupy more than half a block with no adjacent buildings in the city right across Laredo, Texas.

The UMass Lowell Connector has published an end-of-the-year satirical issue, typically dubbed the Disconnector, for a number of years. But this year, some are saying the student-run newspaper took the joke too far. "It is their annual satire edition, which has been coming out for years, and up until this year it really hadn't crossed the line," Dean of Student Affairs Larry Siegel said. "This year, almost the entire university community, and predominantly our student leaders, believe that it crossed that line.

U.S. newspapers reported a slight increase in circulation the past year as more readers purchased digital subscriptions, according to a media industry group. Average daily circulation in the six months that ended on March 31, rose nearly 1 percent for the 618 newspapers that participated in the Audit Bureau of Circulations semi-annual study, which was released Tuesday. Digital circulation, which includes subscribers who access content on tablet computers, smartphones, e-readers and websites, accounted for 14.2 percent of overall circulation.

NEW STUDY: The Pew Research Center says newspapers need to prioritize digital advertising sales if they expect to thrive. THE BACKDROP: As advertisers shift spending from traditional print media to the Internet, newspapers are failing to make up for the decline in print advertising revenue with gains in online ads. Pew studied 38 newspapers and found that for every $7 in print ad revenue declines, the companies generated only about $1 in new...

Warren Buffett says his company is likely to buy more newspapers in the next few years, and Berkshire Hathaway will not try to influence the editorial policies of any of them. Buffett wrote a memo this week to the editors and publishers of all of Berkshire's daily newspapers. That group is about to get significantly larger because Berkshire announced last week that it plans to buy 63 newspapers from Media General Inc. for $142 million. The letter was posted online Thursday by the Omaha World-Herald, which is a Berkshire newspaper.

ABUJA, Nigeria - A suicide bomber and a man armed with explosives attacked two newspaper offices on Thursday, killing seven people and wounding at least 26. The radical Islamic sect Boko Haram said it coordinated the attacks on Nigeria's major daily newspaper ThisDay in the capital, Abuja, and an office building it shares with two other newspapers in the city of Kaduna. It threatened to target other journalists in the future. In Abuja, the suicide bomber rammed his car through the gates of the ThisDay office and drove into the reception area before the explosion, said Nwakpa O. Nwakpa,...

A suicide bomber detonated a car loaded with explosives Thursday at the office of a major Nigerian newspaper in the country's capital and another man threw a bomb near another newspaper office in Kaduna, killing at least six people in the attacks, witnesses said. The attack in Abuja struck the offices of ThisDay, an influential daily newspaper. The bombing in Kaduna struck a building housing offices for ThisDay, The Moment and The Daily Sun newspapers, witnesses said. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attacks, though they mirrored...