From the NYT:

CNN says it wants newspaper feedback as it creates a news wire service to compete with The Associated Press and other services. At a meeting last week, one newspaper staff member offered his advice — and shared the framework of CNN’s plans — in real time on the social messaging Web site Twitter.

“Still definitely a work in progress,” Ryan Pitts, the online director for The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., wrote on Twitter last Tuesday, while expressing enthusiasm about the wire service’s potential.

CNN, a division of Time Warner, invited several dozen newspaper editors to Atlanta last week for a summit about its forthcoming news wire. Gatherings of journalists aren’t usually off-the-record affairs, but CNN probably didn’t expect each segment of the summit to be shared with the Web. Then again, the increasingly popular Twitter, which allows users to share short messages with others, sometimes acts as a wire service as well. (CNN declined to comment.)

From the NYT:

The New York Times Company plans to borrow up to $225 million against its mid-Manhattan headquarters building, to ease a potential cash flow squeeze as the company grapples with tighter credit and shrinking profits.

The company has retained Cushman & Wakefield, the real estate firm, to act as its agent to secure financing, either in the form of a mortgage or a sale-leaseback arrangement, said James M. Follo, the Times Company’s chief financial officer.

I would note that in a previous, more innocent time, you would think the NYT would be amongst the most rock-solid and blue-chip of newspaper companies.

My post below is obsolete.

From the NYT's DealBook blog:

Updated: The Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware on Monday, as the owner of The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Cubs baseball team struggled to cope with rising debt and falling ad revenue.

The Tribune Co., groaning under a huge debt load, could go into default under terms of agreement with its bondholders. But is this an indictment against newspaper-dominated companies, or a cautionary tale about the dangers of highly leveraged financing?