Rapidly shriveling stock prices have produced a new misery index for the nation’s beleaguered newspaper industry: sky-high stock dividend yields. So high, some observers believe, that some cash-strapped companies will soon have to cut dividends, putting even more pressure on their stock prices.

Tribune Company owner Sam Zell may be entertaining bids for Newsday, the company’s Long Island paper, amid mounting financial pressures.

You’re in trouble. You want a lawyer. And not just any lawyer. You want a scary lawyer. Pick up the phone and call Bertram “Bert” Fields, who is known as “L.A.’s scariest lawyer.”

Judith Regan may have published a book with no last chapter. It doesn’t make for good reading, but it would seem worth her while.

There’s no question that the $100 million defamation lawsuit filed Tuesday by former books publisher Judith Regan has news value.

But the 70-page complaint also has literary value, as well.

Though it’s bogged down in places with legal terms, it’s still a Judith Regan style page-turner, complete with scenes of betrayal, confrontation and deception.

Natalie Bancroft, meet Viet Dinh.

Proving it can cover its own corporate owners with energy, the Wall Street Journal yesterday gave a full account of the latest bumbling and stumbling of the Bancroft family.

Earlier this year, the family, after great indecision and internal debate, agreed to sell Dow Jones & Co., which owned the Journal, to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.

Awkward. That’s the best way to describe John Bowman’s position in the writers strike that began today. He is chairman of the negotiating committee for the Writers Guild of America, but also executive producer of the new series, “Frank TV,” starring comedian Frank Caliendo.

By striking, Bowman is walking away from his producer job.

This is the first industrywide writers strike since 1988. About 12,000 movie, TV, radio and animation writers are involved.

Bad times for newspapers can be good times for newspaper lobbyists.

Major publishers, which often cover K Street as a hotbed of corruption, spend thousands each year to advance and protect their own interests.

Yet one issue that has fueled the Washington media lobby for years may soon disappear. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin has drafted a plan that would abolish rules forbidding companies from owning both a newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same city.

CEO Rupert Murdoch earned a salary of $8.1 million in
News Corp.’s most recent fiscal year and total compensation of about
$25 million, according to the company’s proxy statement issued Thursday. That total jumps to $32 million if you count the “theoretical” increase in the value of his pension.

But perhaps the most interesting item in the document is shareholder proposal No. 4, expected to be introduced at News Corp.’s annual meeting next month.

Stephen Mayne of Templestowe, Austrailia, holder of 150 “B” shares, wants the company to create a single class of stock, possibly giving holders of “A” shares full voting rights. The move, the proposal estimates, would reduce the Murdoch family’s holdings from 39 percent of voting stock to less than 15 percent.

It’s not a good time to be a member of the board of directors of Dow Jones & Co., owner of The Wall Street Journal.

One director resigned Thursday because of the board’s decision to
approve a $5 billion buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. A second director is under investigation by the SEC because of insider
trading allegations related to that buyout offer.