Journalism-related Web sites have been abuzz this week with rumors that Editor Tom Callinan is about to leave his job at The Enquirer. Callinan is keeping mum for now, but one of his rumored replacements says he will remain in California and not return to Cincinnati.

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Jim Hopkins' Gannett Blog and some local sources are reporting The Enquirer has laid off between 5 to 7 people this week.

Two of the casualties were the person in charge of the incessantly promoted Moms Like MeWeb site and the assistant managing editor of operations, who performed the administrative functions in the newsroom.

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CityBeat would like to thank everyone who joined us Saturday afternoon on Fountain Square for the broadcast of Comedy Central's Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. We had no idea how many of you would venture down to the Square for a healthy dose of hot food, cold beverages and comedy from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, but we were very pleased with the turnout. A nice crowd indeed. I'd even call it a “throng.”

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First she was elected president of the group's Greater Cincinnati chapter, and now WCPO-TV reporter Hagit Limor has been named president of the Society of Professional Journalists' national organization.

Limor, best-known for heading Channel 9's “I-Team” reports, was inducted to her new post Tuesday, on the final night of the organization's annual convention. This year the event was held in Las Vegas.

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The Cincinnati Enquirer's parent company is testing a “pay wall” system at three of its newspapers as it attempts to devise a business model that involves users paying for Internet content.

If successful, the model being implemented at the Tallahassee Democrat in Florida, The Greenville News in South Carolina and The Spectrum in St. George, Utah, eventually could be implemented at Cincinnati's only surviving daily newspaper.

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Ending a seven-month suspension from the air, The SistaHood Show is returning to its weekly berth at WAIF (88.3 FM) beginning today.

The program, co-hosted by Victoria Straughn and Crystal Allen, was a casualty of the ongoing strife at the community radio station between many longtime volunteer programmers and Board Chairman Donald Shabazz, about how he manages the station.

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The Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber embraced the YP concept several years ago in the wake of Richard Florida’s “creative class” discussion, which really hit home here because it crystallized the problem Cincinnati and other “uncool” cities face in stemming the brain drain of talented young people leaving to advance their careers elsewhere.

The Chamber created an array of programs to support local young professionals, an effort that certainly came at the behest of Procter & Gamble, Kroger, Macy’s and other corporate giants here that must recruit and retain the best and the brightest talent available. Bold Fusion has emerged as one of the Chamber’s highest profile efforts.

The sixth annual Bold Fusion conference was held Thursday afternoon at the Westin Hotel downtown, packing the ballroom to its 400-person capacity. It was one of the most interesting and inspiring afternoons I’d spent in a while.

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What do Little House on the Prairie, the Dean of Cincinnati and the Heimlich Maneuver have in common? They’re all mentioned in the same article in the current issue of L.A. Weekly.

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It doesn’t quite rank up there with the front-page apology to Chiquita that the newspaper published for three straight days in 1998, but The Cincinnati Enquirer used an entire interior page of it’s "A" Section today to apologize to Congressman Steve Driehaus.

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Anyone who looked at the front page of today's Cincinnati Enquirer saw a prominent advertisement along the bottom featuring an image of a treasure chest and announcing, “Roadshow is in town all week in Cincinnati!”

To the uninitiated, it might appear as if the popular TV show Antiques Roadshow is taping an episode in the Queen City. The program uses a similar image and logo, after all. And that’s exactly why WGBH-TV in Boston filed a federal lawsuit Feb. 23 in Illinois against the company that placed the ad, Treasure Hunters Roadshow.

Treasure Hunters used the ad to publicize its event this week at the Duke Energy Convention Center. Unlike Antiques Roadshow, Treasure Hunters doesn’t appraise items and tries to buy some antiques that people bring in for the lowest price possible.

WGBH, which produces the show seen on PBS outlets across the nation, including WCET-TV (Channel 48), alleges the company is guilty of trademark infringement through its name and marketing tactics. It has sued the Illinois-based firm and its owner, Jeffrey Parsons, seeking an injunction to prevent use of the name and image.

As first noted by Bill Sloat on his Daily Bellwether blog, the flap over “fair use” issues has received extensive media coverage in Illinois.

Ironically, The Enquirer ran the ad just days after its editor, Tom Callinan, wrote a column criticizing unnamed blogs, Web sites and radio stations of unfairly and illegally using the newspaper’s content.

“(O)thers are profiting from our work,” Callinan wrote. “We're no longer willing to idly watch our good efforts stolen.”

As a result, The Enquirer is using a software program called Attributor to track users of its contents, gauge if the use is improper and issue warnings to alleged violators.

“In an attempt to track down such content parasites, The Enquirer and Cincinnati.Com now employ technology that scours the media landscape for illegal use of our content,” Callinan wrote. “In recent weeks, we have sent warnings to several blogs, Web sites and radio stations.

“We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.”

Callinan didn’t, however, attribute that last line to Network, the Oscar-winning 1976 film about a banal media outlet run amok in pursuit of profits and ratings. The line is uttered by unhinged TV talk show host Howard Beale, famously played by Peter Finch.

Several local bloggers were upset by Callinan’s column, calling it heavy-handed and reminding them of Big Brother with its weird “we’re watching you” vibe. They’re wondering who – exactly – he’s alleging has made improper use of the newspaper’s content. Several blogs often post items commenting on news reported by The Enquirer or criticizing its coverage, but they generally attribute the newspaper and help drive Internet traffic to its site.

Sloat e-mailed Callinan asking for more details, but the editor remained vague.

“(T)he recent ones have been small blogs and websites who may simply not know better. I don't want to out them. We handle it with automated warnings (via a program called Attributor) and it usually goes away without escalation,” Callinan responded. “My threshold for getting into a public outing of the issue would be pretty high — repeated incidents, warnings and letters from our lawyers. Just hasn't risen to that level.”

Of course, if the problem hasn’t risen to that level, why write such a high-profile and accusatory column about it?

So far, The Enquirer hasn’t reported on the lawsuit against its advertiser. Maybe the dispute “just hasn’t risen to that level” either.