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NEWSROOM OF THE FUTURE?

Even as media companies try to figure out how to make money online, newspapers are belatedly beginning to merge their cyber and dead-tree operations. USA Today recently announced it was bringing its 75 Web employees into its newsroom and creating what editor Ken Paulson called "a single 24-hour news organization."

This summer, New York Times executive editor Bill Keller authored a watershed memo announcing plans to integrate the online and traditional newsrooms. "We plan to diminish and eventually eliminate the difference between newspaper journalists and Web journalists," he declared. "Our readers are moving and so are we."

Over at the Christian Science Monitor — which has been running in the red and bleeding circulation — new editor Richard Bergenheim wrote an editor’s note in which he characterized the fact that the paper has less than 60,000 subscribers but more than 1.8 million visitors to the Web site each month as "probably the most significant development in the history of the Monitor." Bergenheim added, "This does not translate ... into ceasing to print our paper." But he clearly hopes that online traffic will save the Monitor’s unique brand of journalism.

BOSTON’S NEWS BLUES

Despite a spirited campaign by the Boston Herald to get the Justice Department to call a foul, the Boston Globe managed to further tip the competitive balance in the city’s newspaper wars by grabbing 49 percent of the daily commuter freebie tabloid, the Metro.

By year’s end, both Boston dailies were preoccupied with economic pain and serious uncertainty. Seeking $7 million in savings, the Herald bid adieu to about 45 newsroom veterans. Publisher Pat Purcell acknowledged that the company was on the market, leaving open the possibility of new owners by early this year.

Over on Morrissey Boulevard, the Globe disbanded its national desk and had to slice about three dozen newsroom jobs, largely through buyouts that hit the features and arts department the hardest. The best line from any departee came from veteran Globe obit writer Tom Long, a job in which it pays to have a sense of humor.

"I’m not retiring," Long cracked. "I’m just passing on to another dimension."

WBUR, PBS, AND S.O.S

After an ugly management scandal that ended the 25-year reign of Jane Christo as WBUR general manager, the BU-owned public-radio station did some serious housecleaning, canceling The Connection and bringing in long-time Channel 5 executive Paul LaCamera to shore up fundraising and local-news coverage. Perhaps the neatest trick of all was that BU managed to largely avoid blame in the station’s long-festering problems while playing the role of white knight to the rescue.

On the TV side, PBS had its own scandal to cope with as overzealous Corporation for Public Broadcasting chairman Kenneth Tomlinson launched a jihad to rid the system of what he saw as rampant liberal bias, targeting most notably former Now host Bill Moyers. Eventually, Tomlinson resigned amid allegations he overstepped his bounds. With a new PBS president slated to succeed the beleaguered Pat Mitchell in 2006, the question is whether anyone out there can keep public broadcasting from being treated as a political football.

ORDER IN THE COURT

The big libel verdict of 2005 came in February when a jury awarded Judge Ernest Murphy $2.1 million after concluding the Herald defamed him with stories that alleged he said of a 14-year-old rape victim: "Tell her to get over it." The tabloid also lost a $225,000 case when another jury decided it libeled a veterinarian in a 1995 story. The Globe had a mixed record, winning a suit brought by a Stoneham lawyer, but losing when the SJC upheld a $2.1 million judgment awarded in 2002 to a doctor involved in coverage of an overdose at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

But the big battle may lie ahead. In October, the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) filed a libel conspiracy suit claiming the Herald, Channel 25, and their sources all joined together to block construction of a new mosque by falsely linking the ISB to terrorism. (The defendants say the ISB is trying to deter people from asking questions about their activities.) Worthy of note: ISB lawyer Howard Cooper defied the odds by winning Murphy’s case against the Herald.

BOSTON COMMON COMES, THE ATLANTIC GOES

Even before it arrived in September, Boston Common magazine was good for local lawyers. Initially calling itself Boston Commonwealth, the publication got sued for trademark infringement by CommonWealth magazine, a wonkish public-policy periodical. Then Boston magazine — a more natural competitor — sued, claiming the newcomer purloined a database of its advertisers. (Both cases were resolved.)

Boston Common boss and BU grad Jason Binn has made a career of publishing gorgeous, slick magazines celebrating the rich and famous in Aspen and the Hamptons. The question is whether frumpier and dumpier Boston — where Johnny Damon and Jasper White are considered beautiful people — will sustain that kind of party-hardy publication.

A vastly different periodical, The Atlantic Monthly departed for Washington after 148 years in Boston, another victim of the outsourcing of the city’s local treasures. At a bittersweet farewell party, former editor Bob Manning voiced the hope that the magazine of Emerson and Longfellow would not be re-named "The Potomac."

WHO KO’D THEO?

Boston’s nastiest media war of the past year erupted when Red Sox GM Theo Epstein decided not to re-up with the team (at least for now). In a column subtly headlined "Smear Campaign Stinks," the Herald’s Tony Massarotti accused the Globe of siding with Sox CEO Larry Lucchino against Epstein because its parent company, The New York Times, owns a chunk of the team. The blogosphere was ready to lynch the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy after he wrote an incendiary column characterizing Theo as a selfish ingrate. Then sports-radio giant WEEI joined the anti-Globe chorus, getting its licks in against a paper that has forbidden its staff to appear on ’EEI’s air. And when Massarotti and the Globe’s Gordon Edes appeared together on Channel 4’s Sports Final, you practically needed UN peacekeepers to prevent bloodshed.

To make matters worse, new Globe ombudsman Richard Chacon wrote a column scolding the paper’s execs for accepting 2004 World Series rings. On Morrissey Boulevard, the Globe was learning how to deal with its own "Curse of the Bambino."

Mark Jurkowitz can be reached at mjurkowitz[a]phx.com