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DENVER – On the day his newspaper published its final edition, Rocky Mountain News Editor John Temple advised a gathering of Colorado journalists to focus on local news and suggested creating online content that niche audiences might pay for.

"It's not realistic to think in this day and age that people are going to have one information source and you're going to be it. You try, you die," Temple told the Colorado Press Association convention on Friday.

"If you're not experimenting, then I think you're in trouble," said Temple, who also held the titles of publisher and president.

The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the News, announced Thursday that the Friday edition would be the newspaper's last after nearly 150 years in business.

"Goodbye, Colorado," read the headline on a 52-page commemorative edition wrapping the regular newspaper Friday. "STOP THE PRESSES," read the front-page headline inside.

Mike Simonton, a bond analyst at Fitch Ratings, said a number of other newspapers could close by the end of 2010, and those that survive will be focused on local contact with smaller staffs and less printed content.

Four owners of 33 U.S. daily newspapers have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 1/2 months, and a number of other newspapers are up for sale.

"We think this downturn is incremental to a very severe longer-term pressure from the Internet," Simonton said. "Many of the newspaper groups are in dire financial situations. We believe there will be more newspaper group bankruptcies and more newspapers closing over the next two years."

Scripps said the News lost $16 million last year. In December, the company put the News up for sale, along with its 50 per cent stake in the Denver Newspaper Agency, which handled business operations for the News and its rival, The Denver Post, under a joint operating agreement. No viable buyer came forward.

Under the JOA, approved in 2001, the newspapers shared business operations while keeping their newsrooms separate. Both papers published every weekday. The Post, owned by MediaNews Group Inc., published Sunday editions while the News handled the Saturday edition.

On Friday, The Post prepared to publish a Saturday print edition for its readers and for News subscribers, who will now get The Post for the length of their subscriptions no fax payday loans.

Post Editor Greg Moore said his newspaper didn't consider an online-only edition for the first Saturday. After Scripps' Dec. 4 announcement that the News was for sale, he said, "we knew this might happen. … So I've had a lot of time to prepare for this."

William Dean Singleton, chairman and publisher of the Post and CEO of MediaNews, has said he would like to keep at least 80 per cent of News subscribers. Simonton said that was a realistic goal since those subscribers have shown they value a printed product.

The Post has hired 10 News staffers, including columnists, and is picking up features and comics that the News published.

"We're going to make a play to get all those readers over time, and to keep them," Moore said.

The overlap in readership for the newspapers is roughly 14,000, according to the Denver Newspaper Agency. There were no immediate plans to raise ad, subscription or newsstand prices.

The Saturday edition of the Post will include a new home section called "Inside and Out" and features on things to do on the weekend, Moore said.

Singleton, who is also chairman of the board of The Associated Press, has said Denver could support only one newspaper. He said Thursday he was confident his newspaper would survive.

The state Senate paused Friday morning to lament the closing of the News and applauded one of its statehouse reporters, Ed Sealover, who had stepped into the chamber.

Republican state Senator Shawn Mitchell, one of the Senate's most vocal debaters, said he wouldn't even try to be eloquent.

"It's sad. I'm sad. Goodbye Rocky Mountain News," he said.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors announced Friday it was cancelling its annual convention, scheduled for April, so newspapers can save money and focus on surviving the recession. The last time the group cancelled was during the final months of the Second World War in 1945.

Temple said despite the tough times, the news still matters to people.

"I'm not pessimistic about the future of journalism at all," he said.

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Michael Townsend, who has served as acting chairman of the New York Power Authority since last August, has been elected chairman of the state-owned public agency.

Townsend, who is from the Rochester suburb of Fairport, was previously the authority’s vice chairman. He was named acting chairman last summer following the resignation of Frank McCullough Jr. Townsend was elected chairman Feb. 24 at the monthly meeting of the Power Authority’s board of trustees. At the same meeting, Jonathan Foster of New York City was elected vice chairman payday loan with savings account.

Townsend, a lawyer with the firm of Harris Beach LLP in Pittsford, has served as a trustee for five years. As chairman, he will preside over all meetings of the trustees, and on behalf of the seven member board, oversees the authority’s chief management officer in management of the not-for-profit public benefit corporation.

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Top home improvement retailer Home Depot Inc. posted a fourth quarter net loss Tuesday after charges tied to store closures, and said operating profit per share would fall in 2009.

Home Depot (HD, Fortune 500), which is cutting 7,000 jobs as it shutters its Expo Design Center chain and trims corporate costs, also said it would open fewer new stores this year.

The quarterly loss came to $54 million, or 3 cents a share, for the quarter ended Feb. 1, compared with earnings of $671 million, or 40 cents a share, a year earlier guaranteed personal loan approval.

The latest period included a pretax charge of $387 million tied to the Expo closure and a $163 million writedown of an investment. Excluding those items, profit from continuing operations was 19 cents a share, better than analysts average estimate of 15 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

Sales fell 17% to $14.6 billion. 

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U.S. financial regulators will soon launch a series of "stress tests" to determine which of the largest U.S. banks should get bigger capital cushions in the event of a deeper recession, a person familiar with Obama administration plans said Saturday.

The person, speaking on condition of anonymity, said if institutions are found to need additional capital, financial authorities will provide them with an "extra cushion of support."

Banks are expected to receive additional information about the tests in the coming week from regulators.

The largest U.S. banks are "well capitalized" for current conditions, the source said, but the Obama administration wants to ensure that they can withstand a more severe economic climate and can play an important role in maintaining the flow of credit.

Initial plans for the stress tests were announced Feb. 10 as part of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s bank stabilization plan, but the source Saturday for the first time linked the tests to additional government support for large banks bad credit personal loan lenders. This person did not specify what form any extra capital cushion may take.

Little is known about the form of the stress tests, but the person described them as "consistent, forward looking and conservative."

The Obama administration on Friday tried to ease market fears that the government was poised to nationalize some large banks that are continuing to struggle with losses and a lack of confidence, notably Citigroup and Bank of America.

Bank shares fell sharply, with Citigroup’s (C, Fortune 500) plunging 22 percent to below the $2 price of a typical automated teller machine (ATM) fee and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) trading around the $4 level.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday that "this administration continues to strongly believe that a privately held banking system is the correct way to go." 

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Get over it. Move ahead.

That’s the tough-love prescription for investors debilitated by the economic and financial downturn. Yesterday’s gone, so deal realistically with the world before you.

As you begin to rebuild your savings and investments, take a deep breath and revisit the value of every holding that you own. Too many Americans are still stuck in avoidance mode.

"Folks won’t even look at their investment statements because they’re so worried and upset about the market, and that is a mistake," said Marilyn Capelli Dimitroff, a certified financial planner and president of Capelli Financial Services Inc. in Bloomfield Hills, Mich. "Stop thinking about history and where your investments were a year ago, because what you have now is what you have."
Although you can assume investment values will revive at some point, your projections for the future should consider current figures. In particular, go over 401(k) and other retirement accounts to see how your retirement prospects look.

Determine how much you need to save and invest regularly to get your overall assets back on track. Deferred spending is still the major component in wealth-building.

"Decide if your pool of assets is still enough, and if not, take action either by doing more saving and investing, or by cutting your spending," Capelli Dimitroff said. "With U.S. equity markets down more than 30 percent, you have to ask yourself if you could sustain another loss like that, because, if not, it is time to start ratcheting down equity exposure by selling some stocks."

For the fixed-income component of your portfolio, she recommends Treasury inflation-protected securities, known as TIPS, whose returns are indexed to compensate bondholders for inflation. And brave investors should at least consider some discount-priced stocks.

"There’s less risk in the stock market now than when the Dow Jones industrial average was at 14,000 and everybody loved it," said Capelli Dimitroff, who recommends a portfolio diversified among U.S. and foreign stocks, large- and small-cap stocks, and growth and value styles in order to reduce risk. "The price-earnings ratios of stocks are more in line, expectations are low and valuations are low."

More than ever, you need a budget you can follow and a regular plan to put your money to work.

"Handling this market is akin to trying to lose weight, because to lose a pound you must burn more calories than you take in," said Paul Larson, editor of the Morningstar StockInvestor newsletter in Chicago. "Similarly, you must save more money than you spend."

A bigger blunder than avoiding investments is panicking and dumping everything you own. Although money-market funds and bank certificates of deposit provide a safe underpinning for your portfolio, their low returns mean you’ll eventually need the longer-term inflation hedge that stocks historically have provided online payday loans.

"Resist the urge to sell everything that dropped in value, for this market isn’t going to persist forever," Larson said. "Yet if you do have too much in equities, this would be a good time to lighten up, because you will need balance and diversification."

If you’re mentally and emotionally up for stock investing, Larson sees potential in health care stocks, especially if the market downturn is prolonged and favors reliable industries. Johnson & Johnson and Novartis AG are solid companies with good balance sheets, cash flow, industry positioning and discounted stocks, he said.

Consumer staple stocks should also hold up relatively well versus the rest of the market, Larson predicts, with Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Diageo PLC his favorites.

"If any investor has a low tolerance for risk, the financial space — primarily bank stocks — is still an area with enormous risk but also the most potential going forward," Larson said. "If I was placing money on a stock I thought would triple in the next year it would be a bank stock, but if I was choosing one that could potentially fall to zero, it would also be a bank stock."

Jack Bowers, editor of the independent Fidelity Monitor newsletter (www.fidelitymonitor.com) in Rocklin, Calif., advises conservative investors to move into high-yield corporate bond funds now so "you get paid while you wait" for the market to revive. Revival of stocks may take a while, but he does see improvement.

"We’ve seen a sense of relief when companies announce earnings only down by one-third from last year, since that’s not so bad in this environment," Bowers said. "It also suggests that market valuations are getting in line with reality."

So much has to be decided in Washington and on Wall Street, progress will be gradual, experts said. Bowers expects a three- to five-year recovery period for stocks without significant progress for another year. The "fear factor" has caused all bank stocks to get clobbered, and he would avoid the stocks of autos and big banks, though he sees deals in smaller banks.

He concurs with Larson’s confidence in a comeback by consumers.

"The place to play right now is probably consumer stocks because they’ll benefit from the stimulus package and were the first ones to languish a long time ago when housing prices started going down," Bowers said. "Consumer stocks aren’t dropping as much on the down days, and they’re rising more on the up days."

So move ahead. Don’t look back.

andrewinv@aol.com

2009, TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES INC.

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In 2001, Cristina Mariaca watched the dot-com bubble burst while working as an analyst at the Latin American unit of Internet giant AOL in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

Today, she’s in business school, where a global financial collapse that dwarfs that earlier meltdown has prompted soul-searching among business academics about corporate responsibility and governance and a re-examination of risk models that failed to predict such disasters.

"I didn’t understand how this could continue to happen," said Mariaca, 30, as she prepared last month for the inaugural lecture of a new financial crisis course at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. "There’s a blindness to financial analysts."

Mariaca, a Brazilian native who has also worked for Spain’s Banco Santander, has watched in shock with fellow students as veteran executives with MBAs joined the ranks of the unemployed while they ponder their own dwindling job prospects.

For some academics, the financial crisis is the ultimate "teachable moment" for anyone destined to work in financial markets, big business and start-ups, and is forcing the schools to rethink the way they teach the art of making money.

Preparing future executives for any eventuality at the top of corporations is becoming the new vogue, replacing an emphasis on simply making money using short-sighted business plans and discredited risk models.

"People are more interested in exploring research that shows the limits of rationality," said Charles Trzcinka, chairman of the finance department at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and a former economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Our younger faculty are willing to entertain ideas that would have been offensive 20 years ago," such as psychological biases in markets, he said.

For example, big banks didn’t model situations where housing prices fall, assuming that what happened in the past wouldn’t occur in the future, Trzcinka said.

He and Simon Johnson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Business, also see an increased emphasis on ethics and global issues, and expect this trend that started after the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States to gain momentum.

Failed models

In one example, Wharton professor Jeremy Siegel asked his students last month to imagine a fictitious bank board meeting in December 2006, where executives were busy deluding one another about safe lending practices.

"We’ve tested all our portfolios with state-of-the-art risk models," he said, quoting one of his confident executives, and then prompting laughter when he added: "Some of which were learned at Wharton quickpayday loan."

The models in the scenario failed, steering the discussion back to responsibility. For Siegel, it sits squarely with chief executive officers paid millions "to stand back and say something" about excessive risks.

His musings prompted a wry smile from Patricia Klarner, a visiting doctoral student from the University of Geneva, whose loss on "conservative" investments in bankrupt Lehman Brothers strengthened her resolve to hold executives present and future accountable for their actions.

"It seems unbelievable that those company leaders who took their part in creating this crisis are now fired, but that many of them still get a bonus," she said. Corporate governance and executive compensation need to be rethought, she added.

U.S. President Barack Obama earlier this month launched a broad effort to clamp down on excessive corporate pay by setting a $500,000 annual pay cap for executives at companies requiring taxpayer bailouts.

The subject of financial crises is also becoming a fertile field of study in itself.

Jennifer Amyx, a University of Pennsylvania professor who will lecture on the similarities of the current crisis to Japan’s financial mess in the 1990s, called it "a huge boon for teaching."

But for students, the fact that employment outlooks have soured far outweighs the benefits of interesting coursework. Some 2008 Wharton grads are reporting they’ve lost their jobs, and professors at other schools say companies are rescinding offers made to students preparing to graduate this year.

The mood change has been palpable. "Last spring we had (CNBC cable TV "Mad Money" show host) Jim Cramer here, and everyone was excited and said ‘Buy stock, buy stock, buy stock’," Trzcinka said. "It’s not like that anymore."

Johnson of MIT expects more students will become entrepreneurs, especially those with a "tech story," mirroring a trend seen in 2001. But the reality of the crisis and job market will serve as a reminder for why students are taking Wharton’s financial crisis course.

"Certain situations are out of our control," said Melissa Bramowitz, a Pittsburgh native who worked in marketing for Elizabeth Arden before heading to Wharton in 2007.

"I want to be able to bounce back," she said. "I think that’s going to be the most important thing. You have to know how to operate in these times." 

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Toyota Motor Corp. is taking additional steps to scale back production at its North American plants, the automaker said Thursday, in anticipation of worsening auto sales.

Toyota said it will schedule additional "non-production days" in April at certain plants. The company has production facilities in Kentucky, California, Indiana and Texas.

Additionally, there is a "strong possibility" that Toyota will shorten work weeks at certain plants to 72 hours from 80 hours, a program the company calls "work sharing."

"This philosophy of shared sacrifice is the best approach for us, and hopefully will make us a stronger company in the long term," said Jim Wiseman, a Toyota spokesman, in a statement.

Toyota also said it will eliminate executive bonuses and trim some executive salaries, while bonuses for production workers will be reduced.

The company will offer "no wage increases for the foreseeable future" and a "voluntary exit program" will be set up for employees who wish to pursue other opportunities.

Toyota said the new actions "are consistent with the company’s philosophy of making every effort to protect jobs during the sales downturn."

The new measures come after Toyota (TM) had previously established a hiring freeze, eliminated overtime and suspended capital spending paperless payday loans.

David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research, said years of over-production in the auto industry make scaling back output a necessity now that demand for new cars has dried up.

"There’s no alternative," he said. "They have to balance production with capacity."

Toyota, like most automakers, has high fixed costs that make it hard to absorb a sharp drop in sales, and the credit crunch has made it difficult for willing buyers to finance a new car, Cole said.

"Toyota is a very smart company, but they acknowledge now that they overbuilt, and when you do that, you pay a price," he said.

Last week, Toyota lowered its sales forecast for the current fiscal year to 7.08 million vehicles from an earlier projection of 8.87 million. It also said it expects to suffer a net loss this year for the first time since 1950.

In January, Toyota’s U.S. sales fell 32%, compared with a 49% sales plunge for General Motors (GM, Fortune 500) and Ford’s (F, Fortune 500) 40% decline.  

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Montgomery County has launched a green task force of lawmakers, bureaucrats, educators, entrepreneurs and utilities to help shape the county into a destination hotspot for the clean technology industry.

The new Green Economy Task Force is working with local consulting firms to come up with a strategic plan by this summer to create a business atmosphere to lure environmentally friendly companies, widely seen as the next growth sector for the country.

“Montgomery County is really ideally situated to replicate what it did 25 years ago in the biotechnology sector … and become a real leader” in green technology, said Dick Wegman, chairman of the task force and attorney with Garvey Schubert Barer law firm.

The county is one of eight jurisdictions nationally devising such a green economy strategy through the Climate Prosperity Project, launched in 2007 by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and coordinated by Global Urban Development. It’s also in the running to house Maryland’s first-ever clean energy center, pitching Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville as an apt location for what will be a clearinghouse and incubator for the state’s green technology companies.

Sustainable Design Group, a Gaithersburg firm contracting with the county to inventory its current energy businesses and draft a 10-point plan to draw more, has counted 223 green technology companies in the county so far, nearly all in the category of green services and product providers no credit check payday loan.

But all acknowledged much of the challenge is defining what a green job is, and how to measure how many of them there are. For example, how does one assess a manufacturer of green products that operates in a non-environmentally conscious way? Or a non-energy company that’s just greening its internal operations?

“We’re not creating a separate sector like the biotech sector,” said John Spears, president of Sustainable Design Group. “We’re trying to green the whole economy … and that will create demand for the jobs and goods and services that we’re talking about.”

Last month, a sustainable working group appointed by County Executive Isiah Leggett released a report with 58 recommendations on making Montgomery County more eco-friendly, saving both energy consumption and costs in the long run.

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Nissan, Japan’s third-largest automaker, announced a series of steps Monday to deal with the economic downturn, including slashing its workforce by 20,000.

The cost-cutting measures makes Nissan (NSANY) the latest among the country’s carmakers to take drastic action in the face of a worsening financial outlook.

The job reductions will bring down Nissan’s head count from 235,000 to 215,000.

The company also said it is eliminating bonuses for its board of directors. And until its financial situation improves, it is reducing board members’ salaries by 10%.

The company took the steps after reporting a $860 million third-quarter consolidated net loss after tax. For the same period a year ago, it had a net income of $1.5 billion.

Nissan’s net revenue is down 34.4%. It has revised its forecast for the fiscal year ending in March, saying it will post a net loss of $2.9 billion.

"In every planning scenario we built, our worst assumptions on the state of the global economy have been met or exceeded, with the continuing grip on credit and declining consumer confidence being the most damaging factors," said Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn low interest payday loans. "Looking forward, our priority remains on protecting our free cash flow and taking swift, adequate and impactful actions to improve our business performance."

Among other steps the company said it will take are:

– suspending part of the five-year strategy plan it unveiled last year, dubbed Nissan GT 2012. The ‘G’ stood for growth; the ‘T’ for trust. As part of the plan, the carmaker had hoped for 5 percent revenue growth on average over five years.

– reducing labor costs in high-cost countries by 20%.

– slashing global production by 20%.

Fellow Japanese automakers Toyota (TM), Mitsubishi Motors and Mazda have also forecast financial losses for the current fiscal year.

Talkback: Is the economy giving you wedding jitters? Are you cutting back on your big-day plans or are you still going all out? Email realstories@cnnmoney.com and you could be included in an upcoming article. 

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new york — Stocks gained Friday, sending the Dow Jones industrial average to its best two-day rally in a month, on speculation that the highest unemployment rate since 1992 will force Congress to pass an economic stimulus package.

Bank of America Corp. jumped 27 percent to lead gains in 29 of 30 Dow stocks after saying it doesn’t need more government aid. Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. added at least 10.7 percent on speculation that a bank rescue to be detailed next week won’t wipe out shareholders.

All 10 industry groups in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose as Labor Department data showing the nation lost 598,000 jobs last month bolstered expectations lawmakers will agree on a plan to combat the recession.

The S&P 500 rose 2.7 percent to 868.60. The Dow added 217.52 points, or 2.7 percent, to 8,280.59, capping a 4.1 percent two-day gain. The Nasdaq composite index climbed 2.9 percent, erasing its 2009 loss. The S&P 500 gained 5.2 percent over the last five days.
Bank of America rallied $1.29 to $6.13 to pare its year-to-date slide to 56 percent. CEO Kenneth Lewis told CNBC that nationalization of the bank wasn’t even a "remote possibility cash advance to savings account."

Citigroup added 11 percent to $3.91. JPMorgan jumped 13 percent to $27.63.

Regional banks including Fifth Third Bancorp, Regions Financial Corp., Marshall & Ilsley Corp. and Huntington Bancshares Inc. were among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500.

Fifth Third, Ohio’s second-largest bank, rallied 60 percent to $2.63. Regions Financial, Alabama’s biggest bank, advanced 48 percent to $4.20. Marshall & Ilsley, Wisconsin’s largest bank, gained 39 percent to $5.31. Huntington, Ohio’s third-largest, climbed 32 percent to $2.36.

Hartford Financial Services Group Inc. bucked the trend, falling 16 percent to $12.68 after reporting a loss and cutting its dividend.

General Electric Co. rose 2.3 percent to $11.10.

Apartment Investment & Management Co. dropped 6.2 percent to $7.25.

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