Newspapers

The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing softly into tissue after tissue, a leg bouncing nervously under the table. In the first pew of spectators sat his wife, looking stricken, absently twisting her wedding band. The room was a sepulcher. Witnesses spoke softly of events so painful that many lost their composure. When a hospital emergency room nurse described how the defendant had behaved after the...

BEIJING — A popular Communist Party-backed newspaper urged China's leadership to milk a former U.S. contractor for more information rather than send him home, saying his revelations about secret American surveillance programs concern China's national interest. Friday's Global Times editorial follows Snowden's allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency hacked 61,000 targets, including hundreds in Hong Kong and mainland China, in an interview published in the Hong Kong-based South...

In 1961, Phyllis Richman applied to graduate school at Harvard. She received a letter asking how she would balance a career in city planning with her "responsibilities" to her husband and possible future family. Fifty-two years later, she responds. June 9, 2013 Dear William A. Doebele Jr., I'm sorry it has taken me so long to respond to your letter from June 1961 . As you predicted, I have been very busy. Recently, as I was cleaning out boxes of mementos, I came across your letter and...

RIO DE JANEIRO — Gunmen have killed the financial director of a Brazilian newspaper known for its denunciations of corruption and organized crime groups, police said Thursday. Four hooded gunmen shot Jose Roberto Ornelas de Lemos of the Hora H newspaper 44 times as he was drinking beer in a bakery shop on Tuesday in the town of Nova Iguacu near Rio de Janeiro. "The newspaper is known for its combative stance against corrupt politicians and policemen, but I don't know if that is why they killed him,"...

In " Demon Denim " [op-ed, April 16], columnist George F. Will's cultural references were to James Dean, Fred Astaire and Grace Kelly. And the newspaper industry laments its inability to connect with a new generation of readers. VICTOR CAPECE Bowie

Few industries in this country have been as coddled as newspapers. The government doesn't actually write them checks, as it does to farmers and now to banks, insurance companies and automobile manufacturers. But politicians routinely pay court to local newspapers the way other industries pay court to politicians. Until very recently, most newspapers were monopolies, with a special antitrust exemption to help them stay that way. The attorney general has said he is open to additional antitrust exemptions to lift the industry out of today's predicament.

In his Feb. 19 letter [" Amazon's Lesson for Newspapers "] William C. Burton suggested replacing the newspaper with "large-screen, lightweight, Kindle-like devices that receive each edition wirelessly. " Perish the thought! Could I carry that large-screen device into the kitchen to read with my breakfast, onto Metro to read during my journey, to the doctor's office to read while I wait or to Starbucks to enjoy along with my iced coffee? Reading The Post is one of my pleasures.

Funny observation made by The Times-Tribune newspaper editor and Internet content director Jeff Sonderman , especially given the seemingly never-ending quarrels between newspaper publishers and the search giant. At least two of the search suggestions still indicate newspapers are important and 'not dying'. Update: I'm definitely following Autocomplete Me from this point forward. (Via TwitPic and a hat tip to @Wallie ¿ you were right)

SAN FRANCISCO -- Ever wonder where newspapers and blogs get some of their tantalizing tidbits? The online document-sharing service Scribd Inc. is trying to make it easier to find out by giving away a piece of its technology to major newspapers such as The New York Times and Los Angeles Times. The tool is designed to supplement news coverage by making it easy to display court documents, corporate memos and other written material that reporters mine for vital information and the occasional bombshell.

CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this story incorrectly said that the New York Times Co. borrowed $250 billion from Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu. The company borrowed $250 million. This version has been corrected. When Arthur Sulzberger Jr. refused to talk to his own reporter about the financial condition of the New York Times Co., it was the latest sign of an industry in deep trouble. After all, the Times is not only the nation's top-selling metropolitan daily but also boasts the top newspaper Web site, averaging 19.5...

Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad: June 11 New York Times on an important victory on morning-after pills: Reluctantly yielding to a federal-court decision, the Obama administration announced on Monday that it will take steps to allow a version of the so-called morning-after pill, known as Plan B One-Step, to be sold over the counter to girls and women of all ages. They will not need a prescription, nor will they be required to show any...

KENSINGTON, Calif. — Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg calls the revelations by a government contractor on U.S. secret surveillance programs the most "significant disclosure" in the nation's history. In 1971, Ellsberg passed the secret Defense Department study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam to The New York Times and other newspapers. The 7,000 pages showed that the U.S. government repeatedly misled the public about the war. Their leak set off a clash...

WASHINGTON — Newspaper identifies source of US surveillance programs as intelligence agency contractor. Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

WASHINGTON — A 29-year-old contractor who claims to have worked at the National Security Agency and the CIA allowed himself to be revealed Sunday as the source of disclosures about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs, risking prosecution by the U.S. government. The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a...

LONDON — The U.K. has been secretly gathering communications data from American Internet giants with the help of fellow spooks at the U.S. National Security Agency, the Guardian newspaper reported Friday, a demonstration of the international scope of America's top-secret espionage program. The Guardian said it had seen documents showing how the British signals intelligence agency GCHQ has had access to America's "PRISM" electronic eavesdropping system since at least June...

Reed Hundt was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993 to 1997. This is adapted from a speech he gave Wednesday at UCLA. A widespread though unverified rumor had it that President Bill Clinton did not want the newspaper-broadcast ownership rule repealed as part of the 1996 Telecommunications Act because he did not want the owner of the Little Rock newspaper to be the same person who owned the dominant Little Rock television...

There's a certain irony that, as the spectacular Newseum opens on Pennsylvania Avenue to celebrate the accomplishments of American journalism, within the media there is growing concern that our best days may have come and gone. That's bound to be Topic A among the newspaper editors and publishers holding their annual meeting in Washington this week against a backdrop of accelerating declines in circulation and advertising revenue. These declines have contributed to a noticeable erosion in the quantity and quality of journalism in...

Thomas Jefferson famously said that if asked to choose between "a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. " The leading lights of the current Congress evidently have a different view. The House Judiciary Committee called a hearing yesterday to study the decline of the newspaper business, but it quickly deteriorated into a press-bashing session. Ideologues of the left and right made no effort to conceal their yearning for a day without...

LA PAZ, Bolivia — Bolivian tax authorities have seized the office and printing press of the country's oldest newspaper, El Diario. The tax agency's legal director Carlos Herrera says the paper owes $18 million dating back to 2006. He says its assets don't cover 10 percent of that. The paper's offices, printing press, furniture and computers have been taken over until it pays the taxes. But Herrera says the paper can still circulate and El Diario director Jorge Carrasco says it will...