Daily News

McClatchy Co. is selling the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News to a group of local investors who hope to reverse circulation declines by emphasizing local news and doing more with the Internet. McClatchy will receive $515 million in cash, and the investment group, Philadelphia Media Holdings, will assume $47 million in pension liabilities.

Helen Brush Jenkins got her start in newspapers by showing off photos of snakes. And no, they weren't slithering around the newsroom. Jenkins was a Los Angeles newspaper photographer well before women had secured a place in the media. She didn't take society-page pictures of celebrities dripping in diamonds, either. She elbowed her way to the front to photograph oil and chemical explosions, sensational trials, presidential campaigns, a nuclear blast, notables and nobodies.

Citing FBI sources, the New York Daily News reported on its website Saturday that Mark McGwire's name came up in a steroids investigation in the early 1990s. McGwire was not a target of the investigation, but two steroid dealers caught in the probe told the Daily News that another dealer provided McGwire and Jose Canseco with illegal steroids.

George Moore, the grand Irish writer, described the novels of his contemporary Henry James this way: "Right in front of you, bang, nothing happens." I give the first George Moore nonfiction award to Seth Mnookin. "Hard News," his book about the Jayson Blair scandal that destroyed the careers of the top two editors at the New York Times, has no news that should get you running to the bookstore.

Fox11 and KMEX were the big winners Saturday night at the 56th Los Angeles Area Emmy Awards. Each station won seven statuettes at the ceremony presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences at the academy's Leonard H. Goldenson Theatre in North Hollywood. The Governors Award went to Noticias Univision 34's "A Su Lado," which runs within Univision's KMEX newscast and provides information to the Latino community.

Leaning over a rooftop railing of the Chicago Sun-Times building, retired newspaper reporter Justin Fishbein gazed sadly at the majestic downtown skyline that surrounded the tired, gunmetal-gray building. Some people will cheer when real-estate developer Donald Trump knocks it down this fall and begins building a luxury 90-story skyscraper in its place. Fishbein, however, will mourn.

A judge has ordered the city to pay $46,817 to cover court costs and attorney fees for the Red Bluff Daily News. The newspaper had filed a lawsuit to force the city to fully disclose its retirement agreement with former Police Chief Robert Petitt. A portion of the information requested by the newspaper was released after a September 2003 court ruling, which allowed the Daily News to request payment, said Daily News attorney Rachel Matteo-Boehm of San Francisco.

Tracy Rafter was named publisher and chief executive of the Daily News of Los Angeles on Monday. Rafter, 39, replaces John Schueler, who recently was promoted to president and chief executive of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group, a division of Denver-based MediaNews Group. Since 2001, Rafter had been senior vice president for advertising and marketing at Los Angeles Newspaper Group.

Scott Schmidt, a top editor at two Chicago dailies and the publisher who transformed the Daily News of Los Angeles from a suburban shopper into a metropolitan newspaper, has died. He was 66. Schmidt died at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday at his Westlake Village home of apparent heart failure, said his son, John, of Rancho Palos Verdes. He had not had any recent health problems, his son said. "He lived and breathed the newspaper business," John Schmidt said.

Kobe who? That's what readers of the Aspen Daily News may well ask in the weeks and months to come. Fed up with the relentless, increasingly lurid media coverage of the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case playing out 75 miles away, the paper recently told the world -- or at least its 15,000 readers -- enough is enough. No more stories of sex over chairs, legal gamesmanship or alleged promiscuity.