July 2007 Archives

The Bancroft family has accepted News Corporation's $5 billion buy-out offer of Dow Jones & Co., a Dow Jones executive announced Tuesday.

“The Bancroft family has accepted,” John Prestbo, editor and executive director of Dow Jones Indexes is quoted as telling reporters in Chicago. The publisher of The Wall Street Journal “will be part of News Corp.,” he said.

Following a public health scare in the news, the Chinese government has announced that journalists and media that “fabricate” stories will face severe penalties.

The announcement was made by China's three departments that control the media: the Communist Party's propaganda Department, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television and the General Administration of Press and Publications, Asia Media has reported. The crackdown follows the arrest of Beijing TV journalist Zi Beijia, who is charged with manufacturing a report on cardboard steam buns.

Monday's first edition of Yisrael Hayom was difficult to overlook, reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“This is not just a newspaper, it is a newspaper with an agenda,” wrote Haaretz's Asaf Carmel.

A project with the goal of training, paying and providing advanced mobile phone equipment to African journalists has launched Tuesday in four of the continent's countries.

Voices of Africa will begin providing reporters in Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa with state-of-the-art mobile phones to help them better do their jobs, capturing stories on the hand-held devices so they can upload them anywhere.

Pearson PLC has boosted its revenue growth forecasts for the year, even as it reported losses in the first half due.

Losses for the publisher of the Financial Times newspaper and Penguin books are due to the weakening U.S. dollar and the sale of its government-services unit.

The New York Times is teaming up with NBC News/MSNBC.com for the coverage of the 2008 U.S. presidential election.

As part of the collaboration, MSNBC.com will release national political coverage from NYTimes.com, while the Times will have access to NBC’s political news video for publishing and streaming on NYTimes.com in return.

“The rejection of celebrity-based journalism in Britain with the decline of red-top newspapers is being echoed in the States,” writes The Guardian's Roy Greenslade.

One of the popular U.S. supermarket check-out weeklies, Star, is facing problems. According to sources familiar with the magazines, “the title will not make its $1.5 million rate base for the first half of this year, and is considering another rate-base reduction, to as low as $1.2 million, for next year.”

The Vancouver-based citizen journalism site NowPublic.com has closed a $10.6 million round of financing with a series of Canadian and U.S. venture funds, the Web site announced Monday.

The deal was led by Rho ventures in New York and Montreal, as well as existing investors Brightspark and GrowthWorks Capital Ltd., both of which were seed investors, the site said in a statement.

The Associated Press is closing down its “asap” service in October, saying the multimedia service failed to gain enough traction with newspaper clients, the AP has announced.

The asap service was launched in September 2005 as a way for the AP to target a younger audience, between the ages of 18 and 34, but has evolved into a venue to feature multimedia packages.

The government in Kenya and media stakeholders have compromised on proposed amendments to the country's controversial media bill.

Media Owners Association Chairman Hannington Gaya and Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya activist and media consultant Tony Gachoka welcomed changes to the bill, but both are apprehensive that a Parliament “deemed hostile to the media may interfere with the passing of what they perceived as a 'healthy' bill,” AllAfrica has reported.

Richard Stott, 63, former editor of the Daily Mirror, died early this morning at home of pancreatic cancer, according to an announcement by his family.

Stott wrote columns for the News of the World, and more recently the Sunday Mirror, which he continued writing until shortly before his death. His last column in the Sunday Mirror was published June 3.

A new free daily Hebrew newspaper has launched Sunday.

Israel Hayom distributed 150,000 copies in train and bus stations, with a goal of reaching a daily circulation of 300,000. For its first month, the paper will sell advertisements only to non-profit organisations, and distribution will include placing copies in private mailboxes, as well as being distributed in transportation hubs.

After obtaining newspapers in Germany, Denmark, Norway, Poland, the Netherlands and Ukraine, Mecom wants to expand into France too.

The European publisher bid for regional assets of the Le Monde Group and Lagardere, including free daily titles Monpellier Plus and Marseille Plus.

European B2C e-commerce sales will grow threefold by 2011 to $407 billion, with a 25 percent annual growth rate over the next four years.

The United Kingdom, Germany and France are currently the market dominants, making up 72 percent of total online sales, according to eMarketer’s new report, European B2C E-Commerce: Spotlight on the UK, Germany and France.

The Bancroft family has until 5 p.m. today to present voting agreements on whether to sell Dow Jones & Co. to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which has offered $5 billion, or $60 a share, for the company.

The family, which controls 64 percent of Dow Jones's voting shares, headed into final deliberations over the company's fate yesterday, but a decision is still too close to call. Michael Elefante, the family's lead trustee, indicated to some on the board last night he has slightly less than 30 percent of the overall vote, according to The Wall Street Journal. It is unclear whether News Corp. would proceed with less than that.

DoubleClick, the Internet ad serving services developer and provider, launched a new video feature this week, which allows developers to create teaser ads with short flashes of video.

Microsoft executives said they will response the threat to its software posed by competitors such as Google, who offer Web-based applications to users. They will add some similar online services to its most-famous PC application, such as Office or Excel.

AOL has continued its Web remodeling, this week for its Money & Finance site. With the launch of the new-look site, AOL hopes to engage current users and eventually gain some attention while competing with Yahoo Finance, MSN Money and also Google Finance.

Microsoft yesterday announced an agreement to acquire AdECN, Inc., a California-based advertising exchange platform firm. Financial terms have not yet been disclosed.

U.K. newspaper publisher DMGT and its subsidiary, Associated Northcliffe Digital, have signed with Tomorrow Focus, a German digital content company, to sell advertising on the Internet across a European advertising network.

The network calls itself Premium Publishers Online, and connects Spain's El Mundo, France's 01net and 01men, Holland's Telegraaf Media Groep, Agora Group and Poland's Gazeta. They will offer advertisers campaigns spanning the continent to reach up to 40.2 million users in eight European countries.

Timesonline.co.uk is the only UK national newspaper Web site reporting a significant gain in readers and increased monthly traffic, according to figures released Thursday by ABC Electronic.

The Guardian and Telegraph both posted month-on-month unique users down, while the Sun saw the number of unique users barely up versus the prior month.

Print media such as newspapers and magazines are not being pushed aside due to the growing popularity of digital publishing, the Magazine Association of Thailand announced.

“The claim that consumers have gradually stopped reading magazines is a myth,” said Wiluck Lohtong, the association's secretary-general, who is also the CEO of Inspire Entertainment Co., at a seminar on the magazine industry's trends on Monday. He said the myth that young people do not read print media anymore is false.

Baidu.com, the most popular Chinese search engine, said its second quarter revenue and profits more than doubled compared to the same period in 2006, although its growth rate is expected to slow down.

This Wednesday, Baidu announced its second quarter revenue achieved 401.3 million renminbi, representing a 109 percent growth, while net income grew 143 percent to 141.9 million renminbi. Both increases are obviously lower than last year, which indicates the Chinese Internet market and Baidu’s business size are near maturity.

In a letter published in Thursday's Le Monde, journalists at the French financial daily Les Echos appealed to Bernard Arnault to quit talks to buy the newspaper because they say he does not know anything about the newspaper business.

“The newspaper business is a profession. It's not yours. We do not want you to send Les Echos into an infernal cycle of deficits. It would guarantee for certain that we lose our independence,” the letter stated.

The number of help-wanted advertisements in U.S. newspapers in June spiraled to a 49-year low, a research group announced Thursday.

The Conference Board, a global business research and membership organisation, stated that its Help-Wanted Advertising Index, which measures job offerings in major newspapers across the United States, dropped one point in June, to reach the index number of 26. That number was 32 a year ago.

A department editor at Azerbaijani newspaper Bizim Yol (Our Way) has been sentenced to three months in prison in a closed court hearing Thursday for taking $35,000 in bribes from a Labour and Social Protection Ministry employee.

Mushvig Huseynov was detained Tuesday by Azerbaijani National Security Ministry officials and was sentenced at Narimanov District Court by Judge Gulnara Tagizade. Huseynov is expected to make an appeal within three days, and has not admitted guilt.

The chairman of Lambrakis Press has sold 830,000 shares in the Greek publishing company.

Christos Lambrakis reduced his stake by 1 percent, and now controls 7.364 percent of the shares, and 33.242 percent of its voting rights.

Newspapers' online audiences are growing twice as fast as the Internet's general audience, according to research by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America.

This new research is being used to support the NAA's new ad campaign, Newspaper: The Multi-Medium. The campaign aims to attract marketers to newspaper Web sites based on the apparent higher earning power and sophistication of newspaper readers compared to average web surfers.

Due to a drop in ad sales, the Tribune Company has announced its second-quarter profit fell 59 percent.

The company's net income dropped to $36.3 million from $87.8 million. That's a 10 cent drop per share, from 28 cents to 18 cents, Tribune said today in a statement. In the period that ended July 1, sales fell 6.8 percent to $1.31 billion.

A police report against Malaysian webmaster Raja Petra Kamaruddin is causing many in cyberspace to believe a crackdown against Web sites and blogs critical of the government looms in the near future.

The United Malays National Organisation's chief information officer, Muhammad Muhammad Taib, filed the report Monday against postings on Kamaruddin's Malaysia Today Web site which he said insulted the king and incited racial hatred.

The Daily Mirror Wednesday said that by using the Terrorism Act to arrest two of its staff, the British Transport Police has jeopardised the future of investigative journalism in Britain.

Mirror undercover reporter Tom Parry and photographer Roger Allen were released early Wednesday morning on bail, after the police used the act to arrest them at the Stonebridge Park rail depot in northwest London Tuesday. They are scheduled to reappear in court in September.

Bulgaria's leading business media group and second-largest media group is buying 60 percent of Sofia Echo Media Ltd.

Economedia will have a stake in The Sofia Echo, real estate magazine PropertyWise and the Web sites www.sofiaecho.com, www.propertywisebulgaria.com and www.expatinbulgaria.com, all of which are part of Sofia Echo Media Ltd.

While children and young adults are immersed in digital media, they may not want to know about the technology behind it, new research conducted by MTV Networks and Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions has found.

Most kids are not interested in the detailed workings behind the technology itself. They only care about how technology can help communication and bring in entertainment. According to this study, only 20 percent of kids showed any interest in technology.

A radical trade union reportedly affiliated with Nepal's Maoist party has continued to disrupt newspaper distribution for the seventh day in a row Wednesday morning.

Delivery boys belonging to the union tried to forcibly stop printers loading newspapers onto trucks for delivery, and when trucks were able to leave under police escort, workers threw stones and threatened the drivers. The newspapers being disrupted are the English language daily The Himalayan Times and its sister paper The Annapurna Post.

China, the forth-largest economy with the second largest purchasing-power in the world, has the opportunity step onto the world stage at the 2008 Olympic Games, according to Ben Macklin, eMarketer Senior Analyst and author of the new “China Internet Audience” report.

“In fact, the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics is likely to be the largest international marketing exercise the world has ever seen, and the fierce competition will extend for decades beyond,” Macklin said. “And one of the most important marketing channels will be the Internet.”

AOL announced Tuesday it has reached an agreement to acquire TACODA, an online behavioral targeting adverting network. TACODA will operate as a wholly-owned AOL’s subsidiary. This buyout is estimated around $275 million value.

Established in 2001 and based in New York, TACODA has about 1,000 employees. The network provides advanced technology that allows advertisers to have relevant ads and target customers based on tracking online users’ behaviours. TACODA’s technology will enable AOL to extend its targeting capabilities to both advertisers and publishers.

The first ever Welsh-language newspaper, Y Byd, will launch next March, and is confident it will be successful.

Ned Thomas, a former Times journalist, is the force behind the publication, and has said there has never been a better time to start a Welsh newspaper.

The Bancroft family has heard arguments for and against the sale of Dow Jones & Company to Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation yesterday, and in the next several days will tell their lawyers where they stand on the issue, so that results can be tallied up.

The Bancroft family, which controls a majority of the voting shares, met in Boston yesterday, and has a week to make their decisions.

As search engines try to balance between wanting to dig into users' private information to improve their businesses and the consumers' and privacy groups' concerns over the risk of leaking confidential information, the battle of search engines is changing.

Major search engine companies are now competing partially based on how well they can provide privacy policies to protect users.

Tamedia AG and Editpress have announced they will launch a daily newspaper together in Luxembourg by the end of this year.

The newspaper, to be called LEssentiel, will target young, urban readers with spending power.

The U.S. mobile search market is expected to be a fierce battlefield in the next few years as companies compete for the title of mobile search leader.

According to eMarkter, mobile search ad revenue in the U.S. will achieve $713.7 million, representing almost 15 percent of the total $4.7 billion mobile advertising market value.

As of Friday evening, the editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times will no longer work there.

Chaitanya Kalbag joined HT Media, which publishes the Times, in Sept. of 2006 after serving as managing editor of Reuters Asia.

The Norwegian media group A-pressen may sell its stake in the country's largest circulation tabloid newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, to Grigory Beryozkin's ESN Group, it was announced Monday.

If the group sells its 25 percent stake in the newspaper and one share in its publisher, A-pressen could be on the receiving end of about $41 million, according to a report.

More people have visited newspaper Web sites in the second quarter this year than ever before, according to new information from the Newspaper Association of America.

More than 59 million active Internet users – 37.3 percent of all Internet users – visited newspaper Web sites in the year's second quarter, 7.7 percent higher than the same period last year. Page views are also up, at about 2.7 billion page views per month in the second quarter, compared to 2.5 billion in the same period in 2006.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations in the United Kingdom has no eminent plans to produce a single combined figure for newspaper and online readership like its American counterpart.

ABC announced last Tuesday it had approved development of the new measurement tool Audience-FAX, which will combine newspaper readership and online audience estimates into ABC circulation reports beginning in November. The figure will appear at the end of audit certificates in addition to print circulation numbers, and the combined readership total will be based on a research panel with data assembled by Scarborough Research.

The French daily newspaper Mutations has mutated into two versions, being sold side-by-side at newsstands Monday. One version is being published by the South Media Corporation, the previous publisher of the paper, and the other by Haman Mana, its editor-in-chief until yesterday.

Sunday, the newspaper was in a single newsroom, but Monday saw journalists working in two separate newsrooms. One is at the newspaper's old headquarters under the South Media Corporation now managed by Alain Batongue, and the other is in its new quarters of Haman Mana at the Kabba Ngondo.

The click fraud rate for online ads is increasing this year, according to a new report from Click Forensics. The click fraud rate in the second quarter this year was 15.8 percent, with a 14.1 percent rise over the same period last year and 14.8 percent increase from the first quarter this year.

Click Forensics also indicated the fraud rate within large pay-per-click networks is more serious – making up 25.6 percent of all fraudulent traffic in the second quarter, increasing 21.9 percent over the same period 2006 and 19.2 percent over the preceding quarter.

A Maoist affiliated trade union has disrupted the distribution of The Himalayan Times and Annapurna Post Monday morning, despite Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala's assurances he would not tolerate attacks on press freedom.

According to the Times, union members forcibly took control of vehicles that were loaded with Monday's edition in Bhaispati, at Sama Printers, which prints both dailies. The Times also reported that police remained quiet spectators to the activities, and following requests, the police escorted vehicles to the main distribution at Bhugol Park.

An Arizona judge has dismissed former U.S. Rep. Gary Condit's defamation lawsuit against weekly The Sonoran News, which said in an article the California representative lied to investigators about his relationship with a Washington intern who disappeared and was found murdered.

After 13 years in Congress, the Democrat lost his 2002 re-election when news coverage about Washington intern Chandra Levy's 2001 disappearance made national headlines. Her remains were found in a Washington park in May 2002, and Condit denied he had anything to do with her disappearance or death.

Macau has the highest mobile penetration in the world, according to a new study.

“2007 Asia - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in Hong Kong and Macau” by Research and Markets has found that although Macau had a fixed line saturation a little over 35 percent a few years ago, the mobile penetration has already reached 137 percent, making it the highest penetrated in the world.

Global Voice editor and Inmediahk.net blogger OiWan Lam is facing a 12-month imprisonment or HK$400,000 fine for posting and linking to images which authorities consider “indecent.”

Lam is protesting the standard the government has to determine obscenity by publishing the art photograph and articles. Flickr, where Lam linked the images from, has limited Hong Kong users access of the Photos Lam referred, as well as other possibly obscene images.

A dozen officials from Beijing ordered the China Development Brief to stop publication July 4, and charged the editor, Nick Young, with conducting “unauthorized surveys” in contravention of the 1983 Statistics Law, Young has said in a statement.

Young said in a New York Times article that the publication did not conduct surveys or polls, and that the 1983 law is so vague it can be used to prohibit any type of information-gathering involving citizens.

Former newspaper baron Conrad Black will stay out of jail until his November sentencing for his obstruction of justice and fraud convictions, a Chicago judge ruled Thursday.

Dow Jones Director Dieter Von Holtzbrinck has quit in protest over News Corp.'s bid to buy the company, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing has revealed.

Dow Jones's chief executive, who has led the company's negotiations with News Corp. over its $5 billion buyout offer, explained in a memo to employees why the company's future could be “even brighter” if the deal is approved.

Online video advertising spending will reach $775 million this year in the United States, with an 89 percent annual growth rate. It will continue to grow with at least 39 percent annually in five years, achieving $4,300 million in 2011, according to eMarketer.

Eighty-one percent of newspaper Web site readers have also read the printed newspaper in the last seven days, according to a new released study by Newspaper National Network LP and Scarborough Research.

U.S. advertisers consider their own Web sites to be the most effective online marketing tool, according to the “Annual Ad Spending Study” by Outsell Inc. E-mail and search marketing came in second and third.

The Audit Bureau of Circulation has announced it will begin offering combined print and Web readership data of U.S. Newspapers.

Web and print numbers combined will be much more positive than print alone; however, an emerging question is whether advertisers will buy into it. Usually advertisers are guided by circulation when they buy print, and they pay much more for print readers than for Web readers. So, although the total readership is up, will advertisers look at the figure, or just concentrate on merely print and online numbers, like they always have?

A Dow Jones board member could face civil charges in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of insider trading linked to News Corp.'s bid for the company.

David Li is chairman and chief executive of the Bank of East Asia. The bank received a “Wells notice,” about Li. The notice indicates the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is considering the recommendation to take action against him.

The new Web site IOL Classifieds, launched this week, will give access to the collective classified advertising sections of all the newspapers in South Africa's Independent News & Media Group.

These papers include The Star, The Cape Times, The Cape Argus and The Mercury, as well as IOL's own service. The collective circulation of the group's newspapers reaches over 2.2 million print readers and 2.2 million unique online users.

The Nepalese government will soon recognise and issue press passes to journalists working for online news sites.

The agreement was struck at a meeting between journalists at the Federation of Nepali Journalists, the Online Media Association and Ministry of Information and Communication officials.

Google has bested Yahoo! and Microsoft in revenue earned per share in the second quarter of 2007, according to the white paper “Market Share Trends within the Engines, and Their Impact on Brand Marketers,” from SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets.

This report revealed that Google has a 76 percent market share, regardless of only 60 percent of ad impressions. Because of Google’s continual tweaking of quality score algorithms and minimum bid requirements, its revenue per search keeps on growing. On the other hand, Yahoo! had 34 percent of searches among its network even though it held 18.3 percent of media spend in the second quarter this year.

As part of its ongoing selling process, Trinity Mirror agreed Thursday to sell 14 regional newspapers in Berkshire for 10 million pounds.

The company will sell Berkshire Regional Newspapers, including its Reading Chronicle series, to a unit of the Scottish group Dunfermline Press.

Korea has reached 90 percent high-speed Internet saturation in April this year with 14.3 million subscribers, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication, and the penetration keeps on growing.

This figure defied the idea the broadband penetration rate had already reached its limit a couple of years ago. Yet, an official at the Information Ministry said, that's not the case.

Coverage critical of the Niger government's handling of lethal attacks by armed nomadic Tuareg rebels in the country's north led authorities to close the private bimonthly newspaper Aïr Info beginning last month, for a period of three months.

The newspaper's director was detained Thursday by police as he attempted to relaunch the paper this week under the new name Info Aïr.

Google Inc. announced Tuesday it is expanding its Print Ads program that will allow online advertisers to buy print advertisements in 225 U.S. newspapers. The programme is in general release now.

Google launched a limited test for the Print Ads program in November 2006, allowing advertisers to make offers for newspaper advertising inventory online in the same way they buy Web, radio or TV ad space.

During the first half of 2007, mergers and acquisitions in the media industry have set a new record, according to figures compiled by the investment banking Jordan Edmiston Group.

From January to June 2007, the transaction value of mergers and acquisitions in the media industry achieved $76 billion, growing 78 percent from $43 billion in the same period last year. The number of media companies involved in these deals also rose from 355 at the first half of 2006 to 399 this year.

As Gannett Co. reported higher second-quarter profits Wednesday, helped by a gain due to selling several newspapers, its earnings excluding those sales fell, as advertising for the entire industry is migrating to the Internet.

The largest newspaper publisher in the country saw net income increase to $365.7 million, or $1.56 per share for the three months ending in June. In the same period last year, net income was at $310.5 million, or $1.31 per share. Excluding $73.8 million in earnings from the sale of newspapers and discontinued operations, profit was in line with the McLean, Virginia-based company's forecast, at $1.24, versus $1.28 a year ago.

As competition from the Internet and other media has transformed the market, the rate of decline in newspaper advertising revenue is accelerating. This decline, which is causing newspaper stocks to plummet, has spurred restructuring and consolidation, and has affected Dow Jones's talks with News Corp. and the Tribune Co. sale.

A slump in advertising revenue that began last summer is accelerating this year, as total print and online advertising revenue is down 4.8 percent to $10.6 billion in the first quarter, compared to a year ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

After months of negotiations, the Dow Jones & Co. Inc. board has voted in favour of a $5 billion buyout offer from Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The deal will have to be approved by the Bancroft family, which controls 64 percent of Dow Jones' voting shares.

The 16-member board was not unanimous in its decision, but a “strong majority” voted to approve the deal, according to a source familiar with the matter.

Digital content-provider Jupitermedia Corp. announced Wednesday it has bought Mediabistro.com, a community and job search Web site for creative industry and media professionals, for $20 million in cash.

The deal includes a two year earn-out that could net an additional $3 million.

The Fresno Bee has announced it will outsource some of its advertising production jobs to workers in India.

The California newspaper, owned by McClatchy Company, will send seven of its 31 ad production jobs to India, and those currently holding the positions in Fresno will be terminated if they can not be placed in other jobs, said Ken Hatfield, a spokesman for The Bee.

Broadband penetration has a strong correlation with household income, according to the “Broadband Access and Service in the Home 2007” study by Leichtman Research Group.

53 percent of U.S. households subscribe to a broadband Internet service at home. So far this year, broadband accounts for about 72 percent of all Internet subscriptions at home, compared with 60 percent last year.

Due to dropping cash flow and revenue, the Tribune Co. will run advertisements on the front pages of most of its daily newspapers. The move to increase ad sales breaks the company's tradition of keeping ads off the front pages of its largest dailies.

The newspapers will soon offer a 1.5-inch strip along the bottom of their front pages to select advertisers, said Scott Smith, publisher of the Chicago Tribune. He did not say when the ad placements would begin.

The Mail on Sunday sold an additional 600,000 copies, due to its promotional giveaway of Prince's new album, the newspaper's managing director announced today.

Sunday's sale of at least 2.8 million copies was the most successful promotion the paper has had in its 25-year history, Stephen Miron said.

Google Inc. is planning a new search service for mobile users that will help them find and buy mobile content, such as ringtones and games, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

While Google has had the services for mobile users to search the Web, the search engine would like to become a portal for finding and purchasing mobile media content.

The board of the Audit Bureau of Circulations has approved on Tuesday development of the new measurement tool Audience-FAX, which will combine newspaper readership and online audience estimates into ABC circulation reports.

“Beginning this autumn, newspapers using the tool will be able to report in-market print, online and net combined readership as measured by Scarborough Research. Monthly Web site unique visitors also will be reported from sources such as Nielsen // NetRatings, comScore Inc. or server-based analytic tools,” according to an ABC statement.

Google Inc. is offering search engine services for small websites for a discounted price starting from $100 per year, according a the company statement made today.

The service is targeted at millions of small-scale websites which do not have a search engine or are satisfied with the current features, said Nitin Mangtani, Google’s product manager.

As emerging evidence has begun to cast doubt on initial explanations for the deaths last week of two Reuters staff members, the news service has asked the Pentagon to conduct an investigation into the killings.

Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in Baghdad Thursday in what witnesses have said was a U.S. helicopter attack that a preliminary police report described as “random American bombardment.” The U.S. military said in a statement that the incident was a firefight with insurgents, and the killings are being investigated.

Facing the end of their joint operating agreement with Gannett Co. and The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Cincinnati Post and The Kentucky Post will stop publication on Dec. 31, 2007.

The decision comes three years after Gannett notified the E.W. Scripps Company, which owns the two newspapers, that the agreement would not be renewed when it expires at the end of this year. The agreement, which makes publication of The Post newspapers economically feasible, was signed in 1977.

A strong correlation exists between advertising spending and buzz in the blogosphere, a new report has found.

Nearly 3 million copies of Prince's new album was released with copies of The Mail on Sunday yesterday, and will also be handed out for free at a series of London concerts beginning in August.

Giving away an album on the front of a newspaper or magazine, a tactic known as “covermount” started in the 1980s, when “floppy” singles would be given away to promote an album. Prince's weekend giveaway angered the Entertainment Retailers Association, the trade body for shops who sell music, because he gave away the entire Planet Earth album, not just a sampling.

U.S. news audiences think online news is convenient, accessible and easy to use, but TV news and newspapers have more extensive coverage and content, according to the “2006 News Consumption Survey” conducted by Pew Research.

Nearly 40 percent of respondents agreed that online news is convenient, accessible and quick, while only 32 and 14 percent thought so the same of newspapers and TV news.

The Financial Times Group and CNBC are discussing sharing news resources to uphold Web operations, according to people familiar with these two companies.

A possibility is that the Financial Times could use video clips from CNBC on its website, www.ft.com, and in return, CNBC would have access to Financial Times articles on its website, www.cnbc.com.

Cash flow at the Tribune Company's largest newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, fell 27 percent in the second quarter, which could cause the company's shares to fall.

Publisher David Hiller wrote in a July 13 memo to employees that a 10 percent drop in sales, in addition to fewer advertising pages, couldn't be saved by gains in ad supplements and Internet advertising at the newspaper.

Media baron Conrad Black once stood at the helm of Hollinger International, controlling some of the most influential newspapers in the world. But the tycoon became the story in the past several months, and was found guilty of obstruction of justice and mail fraud last Friday.

His conviction in their home town was especially good news to employees of the Chicago Sun-Times, the editorial board stated Sunday, as it “lifts the cloud of uncertainty that has been hanging over the Sun-Times Media Group, formerly known as Hollinger International, since the fraud scandal first erupted in 2003.”

Online market spending in Europe will double from U.S. $9.5 billion in 2006 to $20.2 billion in 2012, according to the “European Online Marketing Tops Eur16 Billion in 2012” study by Forrester Research.

The study covered France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

The Journalist Association of Korea last week voted to refuse to accept the administration's plans to shut down most of its press rooms in government offices.

The association's objections will not force the press rooms to stay open, however, and the government will continue with the closures as planned, which could trigger further conflict.

A freedom of expression case that began with the July 1998 publication of an article titled “How to steal millions” in the newspaper Diena is finally over.

The article, in which journalist Aivars Ozolins examined the role of Laimonis Strujevics in the privatization of the Latvijas Nafta company, led to a series of other articles, which suggested the process would mean a loss to the state budget of about 8 million lats (nearly 11.5 million euro).

The media tycoon who built an vast newspaper empire was convicted by a Chicago federal jury Friday of a count of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud and could face up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Conrad Black, 62, was acquitted of nine other charges, including racketeering and wire fraud, for a scheme to steal millions of dollars from shareholders of Hollinger International. Sentencing has been set for Nov. 30.

The Mail on Sunday has threatened legal action against the Official U.K. Charts Company to try and force Prince's new album Planet Earth to be counted on the charts.

The newspaper, which paid Prince an estimated 250,000 pounds for the license, will give away 2.9 million copies of the new album; one will be included in each paper on Sunday. An extra 200,000 copies of the paper will be printed without the CD for foreign and bulk sales.

The United States, the United Kingdom, northern Europe, Australasia, Japan and Korea are the hottest digital spots around the world, according to OECD and CIA.

Those hotter countries have Internet penetration of more than 60 percent, and mobile penetration over 70 percent.

As Nielsen // Net Ratings has decided to rank a site's popularity based on time spent, rather than page views, tricks to increase page views are out, while tricks to keep users on the same page for longer are in.

And what better way to get a visitor to spend more time in one place than to expand video and podcast use, writes Philip Stone, for Follow the Media.

Austrian publisher Styria Medien is planning the first free daily for Slovenia, one of the few places in the European market that doesn't already have one.

The new paper will be called Zurnal24, and will launch in the capital Ljubljana in the fall, with a circulation of at least 100,000.

Northcliffe Media will not cut editorial jobs or resources, and will instead invest in digital operations of the 25 titles it is buying from Trinity Mirror in the southeast corner of England, Northcliffe's managing director has said.

Michael Pelosi said any “efficiency drives” would not affect editorial staff, but could affect “back-of-house” positions, such as those in human resources and administration. Northcliffe's parent company is Daily Mail and General Trust.

Broadband penetration is expected exceed 20 percent in the United States and Europe by 2010, according to a study from Eurostat.

Western Europe and the United States, with 15 and 15.3 percent of broadband penetration in 2005, will reach 27.1 and 25 percent in 2010, with the growth rates of 81 and 63 percent, respectively, the study found.

Web portals and local TV newcasts are the most frequently used news sources among the U.S. audience between age 18 and 34, according to the Carnegie Corporation.

Over 70 percent of the respondents said they watch local TV newcasts at least once a week, while about 62 percent said they use web portals as their news source at least on a weekly basis.

Ifra, the international newspaper operations organisation based in Germany, has released four special reports and two research reports that explore production and technology topics.

The first report examines “local search,” which studies market developments and options for publishers who want to compete with search-engine giants.

Nielsen//Net Ratings has named the top 30 U.S. newspaper Web sites based on site traffic in June, with The New York Times coming out on top, and The Boston Globe bumping The Wall Street Journal to sixth place, from fifth in May.

The battle over top French financial daily Les Echos took a turn Thursday when it received a 245 million euro offer from the financial services group Fimalac.

Striking, locked-out employees of the Quebecor Inc. tabloid Journal de Quebec picketed the newspaper's offices Wednesday for the first time since conflict began April 22, after a meeting between the union and management broke down.

A federal labour agency has accused the Washington Post on Thursday of repeatedly violating labour laws by failing to negotiate with the newspaper's union over extra work employees performed for its radio station.

Harvard University has released a study showing that 60 percent of U.S. teenagers pay little attention to daily news, according to Reuters report.

Young audiences are spending more time listening to the radio, and radio profits are up in Europe, a recent study has found.

TV advertising in the United Kingdom will decline one percent after falling four percent last year, and should be flat next year, according to WPP’s Group M media planning and buying arm. Radio advertising will be flat this year and grow one percent in 2008, the group predicts.

The Daily Afrikaans newspaper Beeld has launched a mobile addition to add a “third avenue” to reach readers.

A Reuters photographer and driver were killed in Baghdad Thursday.

China's ban of online publication China Development Brief amounts to “growing censorship of socio-economic news, preventing any reliable assessment of the real state of the country” the group Reporters Without Borders stated Thursday.

Eleven percent of total U.S. e-commerce is done by Hispanics, and that percentage is expected to grow, according to the “Hispanic Shoppers Online, 2007” report by Jupiter Research.

Wikipedia has added nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors in the past year, making it the top destination for online news and information, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

Spending on and by teenagers will exceed $208 billion in 2011, from $189.7 billion in 2006, despite an estimated 3 percent decline in the 12-to-17-year-old segment by 2011, according to a recent report.

London's Westminster Council says Associated Newspapers Ltd. and News Corp. are creating “a mountain” of garbage on the city's West End, and have threatened to penalize the publishers if they don't do something to help clean up the mess.

The Tribune Company will expand its local entertainment guide Metromix throughout its newspaper chain. The Metromix site will be up and running in New York City this week, and it has already been introduced at the Los Angeles Times, the company has announced.

In an attempt to meet the needs of those with no time to read, the Economist is launching an online audio version of every issue of the magazine.

Telegraph.co.uk has launched a new blog aimed at updating developing breaking news as quickly as possible.

News International's four daily and Sunday newspapers will integrate editorial print and online teams, as well as make the Times Online full archive, which includes stories dating back to when the Times was first published in 1788, available to the public, according to a staff announcement.

Due to a time limitation statute, the owners of the Herald group of newspapers can not be ordered to honour quality pledges they made when they first bought the Herald, a commission in Scotland has stated.

Online growth is slowing for newspaper Web sites, according to June comScore data.

A mother in Canada is asking the question: Are children being taken advantage of by large newspaper companies?

The Indian government will introduce the Broadcasting Services Regulation Bill in the coming parliament session this month. The bill contains several harsh clauses meant to gag electronic media.

The Belfast Telegraph won the newspaper of the year award in the UK's premier Regional Press Awards for the second year in a row.

The case against former media baron Conrad Black is centered around non-compete payments, with a jury sifting through thousands of documents about payments from newspaper sales, which will likely determine whether the former head of the Hollinger International newspaper empire goes to jail.

Niger authorities have banned the fortnightly Air Info newspaper for three months and given formal warnings to three others for “demoralising” troops by reporting on rebel attacks in the northern part of the country.

A planned merger between newspaper groups PCM and NDC-VBK has been halted, and will not continue, both sides said in a statement today.

Online growth will not offset print losses for at least four years, which means it may take a while for newspaper publishers to see Internet rewards, a Goldman Sachs analyst said today.