Newspapers

Newspapers serving military bases in San Diego County are the latest victims of the economic woes afflicting the industry. The Navy Compass, the Flight Jacket at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station and the Scout at Camp Pendleton have stopped publishing, shifting to websites. The papers closed after the private company that published them, Oceanside-based TFM Inc., ran into financial problems because of the decline in advertising. The Navy and Marine Corps hope to find a new contractor so the papers can resume publication, officials said.

In a novel alliance between a major newspaper and a telecommunications company, the Los Angeles Times and Pacific Bell Internet Services will jointly offer an Internet access service specifically designed for Southern Californians beginning today. The service aims to attract new users to the Internet, the global computer network that enables people to send e-mail, search databases, participate in online discussions and view multimedia documents via a personal computer and a phone line.

The inaugural issue of the Beverly Hills Chronicle, a new monthly newspaper, was distributed throughout the city this week. The Brentwood Media Group Inc., which owns and operates four other Westside papers, publishes the tabloid-size newspaper. The Chronicle will be "half newspaper, half magazine," said Jeff Hall, its editor and publisher.

Two national Catholic newspapers published in Encino moved this week to Connecticut offices owned by the Legionaries of Christ, a rapidly growing but little-known priestly order that was involved in the sale of the weeklies last year. But the new owners of the National Catholic Register and Twin Circle have declined to spell out the relationship between the publications and the tight-knit religious order that some term "mysterious" in its dealings with outsiders.

The Los Angeles Times won two first-place awards in the National Headliners journalism competition, it was announced Tuesday by the Press Club of Atlantic City, which administers the prizes. The Times metropolitan staff was honored for its spot news coverage of the O.J. Simpson murder trial verdicts, and sportswriter Bill Plaschke won the individual sports writing contest for a story chronicling the trials and triumphs of the Garfield High School football team in East Los Angeles.

The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for meritorious public service Tuesday for articles exposing the health and environmental risks of waste disposal in hog farming. The New York Times won three Pulitzers, the third time it has done so since the awards were established at Columbia University in New York in 1917. The New York newspaper has won 73 Pulitzers in that time, far more than any other newspaper.

In newspapers all around Britain, sportswriters are sounding a recurring complaint about NBC's coverage of the Atlanta Games. They describe it as highly partisan, even jingoistic, and charge that most of the non-American participants are ignored. But those who switch on the British Broadcasting Corp.'s Olympic coverage find programming that is almost totally focused--with equal patriotic fervor--on British participants in the Games. Before an event, commentators pump up the British contestant.

Michael Lacey snorts at the thoughts. That the fire in his belly is now from Irish whiskey, not journalistic passion. That a Cadillac and a home in Paradise Valley--a Bel-Air with saguaros--means he has slipped from enfant terrible to an eminence grise sucking on the establishment he once bashed. And that buying Los Angeles View and importing his feisty New Times organization to diverse, overgrown L.A. is a 3.5-million-person bite even this executive editor won't be able to chew.

For print journalists, and especially for those of us at big, mainstream daily newspapers, there's an ever-present paradox in reporting and writing about the information revolution: It appears oftentimes that we are chronicling the forces that will bring about our demise.

The long days started when Grandma didn't bring Zackaree home as she was supposed to. Michelle Hatch knew that her mother-in-law blamed her for the recent suicide of Hatch's husband. Now, Barbara Mann had taken a $300 advance on her paycheck, said mysterious farewells to friends--and slipped into nowhere with her 4-year-old grandson. For 1 1/2 years, Hatch searched for them. She contacted police and missing-children's groups. She passed out pictures. She waited for the phone to ring.