August 2007 Archives

Google announced Friday it has made deals with four international news agencies for its Google News site to publish their news stories.

Google News began at 6 p.m. GMT Friday to scan news articles from the Associated Press, Press Association, Agence France-Presse and Canadian Press, omitting any duplicated versions from the agencies that can be found on other news sites.

The Sun is cutting its price from 35 pence to 20 pence in London and the south-east beginning Monday.

The move is aimed at keeping sales of News International’s red-top above 3 million copies per day. However, it may hit circulation revenue hard, because London and the country's south-east make up for about 20 percent of sales.

The American Press Institute's Newspaper Next team spent a year researching patterns of disruption in the newspaper industry, resulting in the team's latest report, Blueprint for Transformation, which gives newspaper companies a practical innovation process, a strategic game plan and the field tests of those approaches.

The most basic roles of newspapers – fulfilling a civic mission to create an informed society, facilitate civic dialogue and be public watchdogs – has not changed. What has changed is the addition of more ways to disseminate that information and the ways to financially support it. Newspaper companies that cling to old ways of doing things will “sink into irrelevance,” as will newspaper companies that innovate poorly, the Newspaper Next (N2) report tells us.

Online advertising revenue will pass radio’s for the first time, according to eMarketer’s recent study, Radio Trends: On Air and Online.

In 2007, Internet ad revenue is estimated to reach about $ 21.7 billion, compared to radio’s $20.4 billion.

Advertising and sponsorship accounted for just over 73 percent of annual turnover and gross revenues in the UK's regional and local newspaper publishing groups in 2006, the latest Newspaper Society survey has found.

That near three-fourths majority is followed by circulation sales at 15.4 percent and contract printing at 5.1 percent, the survey reported. Other revenue for the UK's approximately 85 regional and local newspaper publishing groups include photo sales, IT services, training, rent, canteen, waste sales, editorial syndication and telephone promotions.

The Polish media group Agora has appointed Marek Sowa as its new chief executive, responsible with pointing the company in the direction of growing its online advertising and finding a spot in local television.

Sowa, whose background is in television and electronic media, will take the reins from Wanda Rapaczynska, who took the company public in 1999.

The four free daily titles in Italy have been found to have a joint advertising revenue of 62 million euro for the first half of 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

Metro, Leggo, City and 24 Minuti were the four titles that could be measured by Nielsen//Netratings.

The Sun plans to get into the local advertising market when it launches its revamped Web site next month.

The move, in which the Sun will take on local newspapers, is part of an extensive customisable service on its Web site.

While most newspaper stocks peaked over three years ago and continue to sink, advertising is migrating to the Internet and circulation is weakening across the board, the only people who seem to want to get into the newspaper business these days are ... billionaires?

In his Turnaround Letter, published in Forbes, George Putnam points out that Rupert Murdoch, Sam Zell, Ron Burkle, Eli Broad and David Geffen are all billionaires, all very successful businessmen and have all recently tried to buy newspaper companies.

As regional publishers invested heavily online but could not stop declines in circulation and print ad revenue last year, the UK's local newspaper industry lost about 225 million pounds in 2006, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

So far, the newspaper industry views 2006 as a low point, as most regional publishing groups have reported improvements this year and a slowing trend in ad revenue decline, according to a survey by the Newspaper Society of its members published Thursday.

As new media projects mean higher investments, Swiss media group Tamedia AG saw first half net profit drop to 51.2 million Swiss francs (31.2 million euro) from 52.3 million.

Analysts had made the previous forecast of net profits for the group reaching between 49.4 and 54.8 million Swiss francs, or an average of 51.12 million.

According to a new study by Marketing Daily, eight out of 10 Americans know what “blog” means, and nearly half have visited the blogosphere – some even on a daily basis.

"The high awareness is surprising given that blogging is an emerging media outlet. The segmentation on awareness and usage, and on people having their own blogs, is driven by age, with obviously younger people more active in blogging," said Tom Mularz, senior vice president at Synovate eNation, which conducted the online survey of 1,000 U.S. adults.

The Sunday Times announced it is closing its bureau in Northern Ireland, leaving the editor there looking for other job options.

Liam Clarke has worked at the Times for about 20 years, witnessing some of the biggest, most dangerous stories the paper covered during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. “His departure marks and end to one of the most turbulent news reporting careers on the paper, during which he frequently covered terrorism, extortion and crime,” writes the Guardian's Ben Dowell.

The Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette has purchased The South County Commercial-Express, a weekly newspaper in Vicksburg, Mich., which serves Kalamazoo County's four southernmost townships.

The Commercial-Express, which is a combination of the former Vicksburg Commercial and the Schoolcraft Express, will operate with its current name remaining.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Dow Jones & Co. have cleared an antitrust waiting period early, which satisfies one of the conditions to closing the $5.6 billion buy-out deal.

The Premerger Notification Office of the Federal Trade Commission granted early termination of the waiting period, which is part of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, on Tuesday. Ending the waiting period means News Corp. is one step closer to owning Dow Jones.

Although three-fourths of its audience accesses the site from outside the United Kingdom, the Mail Online's commercial focus will remain on the UK, the editorial director has said.

Martin Clarke told Journalism.co.uk that even though traffic from the United States is high, “all our efforts are focused on the UK traffic.”

Local newspapers and Yellow Pages publishers are making deals with online and mobile companies, for the chance to up-sell their local listings in the digital market.

In the latest deal, R.H. Donnelley dealt with Yahoo Local to offer its directory customers exposure on the Yahoo Local and Yahoo Map sites.

French media giant Lagardère announced Wednesday it has bought the interactive media agency Nextedia for 50 million euro in cash.

Lagardère will pay additional earn-out payments in 2011 and 2013 for up to a maximum of 50 million euro, “contingent upon the attainment of specified profit targets,” according to a Lagardère statement.

Lagardère Active said it has acquired the French online advertising company ID Regie in order to reinforce the position of its Lagardère Publicite unit in the Internet market. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The group said ID Regie sells advertising space for more than 30 Web sites, including Price Minister, Alapage, LDLC and Top Achat. In 2006, ID Regie doubled its gross operating profit to $1.1 million euro.

The Mumbai based tabloid Mid-Day is looking to venture outside print and radio and into television broadcasting in an effort to further strengthen is Web presence.

Mid-Day, which has branched out into other cities, such as Bangalore and Delhi, also owns the private FM radio brand, Radio One.

Associated Newspapers has secured a deal to lift circulation of its national morning freesheet Metro by 250,000 copies. The move is designed to beat rival News International.

The deal will increase Metro’s circulation in London by 205,000 copies to more than 750,000 and another 45,000 will be spread among eight editions in other cities throughout the United Kingdom.

Belgian publisher Rossel is considering making an offer on French business daily La Tribune if its owner, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey, decides to sell it, according to a report in Les Echos.

Speculators expect LVMH to sell La Tribune when it finishes its proposed acquisition of rival newspaper Les Echos from British media group Pearson Plc.

The Russian newspaper known for its investigative reporting has begun posting English translations of select articles.

Novaya Gazeta's new English site, en.novayagazeta.ru, is currently designed for six articles, which the newspaper began posting Thursday.

Portable media players with video capability are expected to outsell audio-only devices by the end of 2008, according to a study from In-Stat.

The report, estimating both unit sales and revenue throughout 2011, indicates overall demand for MP3 devices will stay strong.

Moody’s Investors Service on Monday changed its outlook on the New York Times Co. from stale to negative, indicating growing pressure on the publisher’s advertising from other media and a decline in the housing market.

The media company's debt is likely to be downgraded over the next 12 to 18 months, the investors service said.

The search for a new publisher of the Ventura County Star is under way, the newspaper and its parent company, E.W. Scripps Co., announced Monday.

Tim Gallagher became the newspaper's publisher in 2004, and will step down from the post in several weeks, continuing on as a part-time assistant to Scripps Howard Publishing President Mark Contreras.

Advertisers from all over Africa are now eligible to enter their work as part of the Advertising Performance Excellence (APEX) awards.

The decision to extend entry outside South Africa, to the rest of the continent, was made by the custodians of the awards, the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA). Entries for APEX 2008 will be accepted until Nov. 16.

A group of 10 led by an ethnic Chechen organised crime boss that includes serving government officers will be charged in connection with the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Russian authorities announced Monday.

Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general, told a press conference that there is evidence the group also took part in killing U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov.

After agreeing to add News Digital Media to its content network, Google Inc. will run text-based advertising on the Web sites of The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and The Herald Sun, among others.

The deal could earn millions in pay-per-click revenue that would be shared between Google and NDM, The Australian reported Monday. Revenue from paid search ads Google generates on news Web sites operated by NDM, owned by News Limited, will also be shared.

ClickFacts has launched its new set of tools to help ad networks monitor participating publishers.

The Advertising Networks Verification Suite can continuously check if publishers run prohibited content, are involved in click fraud, forcefully install spyware on visitors’ computers or other “rogue” activities. And, if necessary, the suite can even remove them from the network.

Overall, newspaper sales in Ireland remained constant during the first half of the year, according to the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

For daily titles, the Irish Times was stable, with sales at 118,150. The Irish Independent fell slightly, to 160,818.

Indonesian newspapers and educators wanting to promote English language usage are looking to the New Straits Times Newspaper-in-Education programme in Kuala Lumpur as an example.

A group of Indonesian reporters, teachers and NIE managers visited Balai Berita in the capital city Friday to find out how the newspaper is promoting the programme, the New Straits Times reported Monday.

Former Minneapolis Star Tribune editor and publisher, Joel Kramer, announced Monday he will launch a not-for-profit news site, MinnPost.com, to serve the Twin Cities later this year.

This site, which will publish news Monday through Friday, will be built around original reporting from professional journalists, along with a function similar to blog entries, which allow editors to converse with readers.

The Mail Online is the second most popular newspaper Web site in the United Kingdom, second only to the Guardian, according to data from the Audit Bureau of Circulation Electronic.

More than 11,865,000 unique visitors accessed Mail Online in July, according to traffic data released last week by ABCe. The site will join the Guardian, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph in reporting monthly Web traffic.

The Sun-Times Media Group Inc. said today its recovering funds from Canadian investment may delay because of difficulties in the commercial paper market.

The company, previously known as Hollinger International until last year, owns the Chicago Sun-Times and other local papers in the Chicago region. An internal company source said it has a $95 million investment in Canadian asset-backed commercial paper trusts.

Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp., as well as others providing blogging technology in China, have agreed to control and censor blogs in the country.

In an accord with the Internet Society of China, part of the Information Industry Ministry, the companies have agreed to register users under their real names, and may be forced to censor posts and identify bloggers. The Internet giants have already provided Chinese police with information about their clients, resulting in arrests, in the past.

The Daily Telegraph's former editor has announced he will launch a national newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, creating 200 jobs around the world.

Martin Newland is working on setting up the newsroom and planning the design and title of the paper, which will be based in Abu Dhabi. Currently, there is no launch date, but Newland has said it will be “months, not years away,” and that the paper's future is “assured” by significant investment from the investment wing of the Abu Dhabi government, according to Press Gazette.

Malaysia’s Muslim-led government has banned a Tamil-language newspaper for one month for printing a caricature of Jesus holding a cigarette and a can of beer.

According to the Internal Security Ministry, the publishing permit of the daily, Makkal Osai Tamil, will be suspended for a month starting Friday.

U.S. mobile users surf online 12 times a month on average, while 64 percent have sent a text message.

Although the numbers are growing and above average now, U.S. mobile Internet usage still lags behind other parts of the world, according to a global mobile marketing study by Universal McCann.

The Daily Mail will pay £45,000 plus VAT in legal fees after an agreement was reached over a libel action brought by Sikh police officer Gurpal Virdi.

The Mail agreed to pay Virdi's lawyers and print an apology for an article published about him in April last year.

Australian wireless broadband company Unwired is experiencing slower-than-expected development of new technology, causing a 12-month setback in the company's business plan.

Unwired was planning to begin using the technology this year, but due to the glitch it will be unable to upgrade its networks to the global mobile WiMax standared before late in 2009.

Digital media platforms may be the hottest on the market, but some consumer research indicates they still have a long way to go before persuading customers of their advertising effectiveness.

In order to evaluate the efficacy of using a wide range of communications platforms to reach consumers, the 2007 release of Compose, a collaboration of WPP Group's Kantar Media Research unit and Netherlands-based Pointlogic, shows that among 33 channels – from traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new media and marketing channels like sampling or direct marketing – most consumers still find mainstream media to have the greatest influence.

Newspaper Innovation, the Web site dedicated to information on free dailies around the world, reported today that Seoul's eighth free daily focuses on economics.

Launched in July, IlIlKyungJe (the Daily Economic), has a circulation of about 100,000.

In its latest tweak to the way it does business, the Chicago Sun-Times is partnering with Clickshare Service Corp. for access control on the newspaper's Web site and subscription management in hopes of increasing paid circulation and adding value to the paper in the eyes of existing customers.

The Sun-Times Media Group Inc. is launching an electronic edition of its flagship Chicago newspaper that will only be available to print subscribers, after recently contracting with the Chicago Tribune for home delivery in the city as well as both home subscriptions and single-copies in the city's suburbs.

In an affidavit filed this week, the Nigerian federal government is claiming it owns all of Sun Publishing Limited, which publishes the daily Sun newspaper.

The government filed the affidavit in response to the publishing firm's preliminary objection seeking a court order to stop the freeze on three bank accounts used to operate the company.

Fairfax Media is making up for 'lost years' of corporate stagnancy by heavily pursuing takeovers in the last 18 months, chairman Ron Walker has said, announcing a 9.9 percent comparable profit increase to $251.1 million for the year through June 30.

However, the result, described as “satisfactory” by the media group, did not excite investors, The Age, which is owned by Fairfax, reported Friday.

The Wall Street Journal Online has named Almar Latour its new managing editor, effective Sept. 4. Latour will replace Bill Grueskin, who was recently appointed deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Latour, 36, was previously the bureau chief for the technology group based in New York, in charge of the Journal's print and online edition integration.

A number of new locally focused publications in the Chicago area are coming to the market, in hopes of engaging more readers by providing news tailored to their immediate needs and relevant to issues they face in their daily lives.

In addition, McGraw-Hill announced this Wednesday that BusinessWeek will launch a local version, BusinessWeek Chicago, in November. This publication will be distributed to over 60,000 Chicago-based BusinessWeek subscribers, along with the original national edition.

Google’s YouTube has launched a new ad model which allows advertisers, such as New Line Cinema and BMW, to run rich media and video ads within either professional or user-generated content.

The new InVideo ads are semi-transparent overlays appearing at the bottom of the video player. The rich media animations show up 15 seconds after the selected content starts, and overlays up to 10 seconds. The ads also have interactive functionality, which allows users to click an advertiser’s URL to launch a new player on the original window, or to go back to the content at any time.

Publishers of two free dailies will pay for 64 recycling bins that will be placed across central London, it was agreed Wednesday.

Westminster City Council threatened earlier this year to ban the papers, London Lite, published by Associated Newspapers, and rival thelondonpaper, published by News International, if they did not help clean up thousands of discarded newspapers left around the city each night.

In an effort to fill a gap he thinks current Arab-American newspapers are missing, self-syndicated columnist Ray Hanania is launching a national newspaper, the Arab American Times.

The newspaper will “focus on features, profiles, culture and society of Arabs in America, something I think is needed,” Hanania said.

On the same day Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis announced a list of personnel changes, including new digital and political reporting teams, education editor Liz Lightfoot and royal correspondent Caroline Davies left the paper.

The newspaper will not comment on why the two quit, but it is understood they left Tuesday without giving notice.

AKQA, a San Francisco-based digital ad firm, has ticked off one item on its long shopping list, buying search marketing company Searchrev. Financial terms were not disclosed.

According to an inside source, Searchrev’s annual revenue is less than $10 million. However, AKQA also plans to establish the largest independent digital marketing concern in the nation, and the company believes the Searchrev buyout will pay off.

China's General Administration of Press and Publication has announced it will begin a two month campaign aimed at cracking down on so-called fake news, during which authorities will inspect every newspaper and magazine in the country, and also punish journalists caught accepting bribery or extorting money in exchange for positive coverage.

The campaign's purpose is to help the country's media regain credibility after a Beijing Television reporter was found to have made up a story about food vendors selling steam buns filled with cardboard.

Media giant Reuters Group Plc announced Tuesday it will buy San Francisco-based investment research group StarMine for an undisclosed amount.

The British media group, which is being taken over by Canadian publishing company Thomson Corp., said StarMine's analytics will be added to its Reuters Knowledge product.

Google has acquired a stake in Tianya Club, one of China's largest online forums, the site announced Monday. The size of the stake was not disclosed.

This deal apparently links to a new Chinese Q&A community site, Wenda, which is a joint venture between the two. Its format will be similar to the retired Google Answers, or the Russian Otvety, which resurfaced earlier this year.

Voting to approve the company's $8.2 billion plan to go private, 97 percent of Tribune Co. shares were cast Tuesday morning in favor of Chicago real-estate mogul Sam Zell's buyout plan of $34 per share.

The Chicago media holding company has bought half the company's outstanding shares at the $34 price tag, and although shareholders have formally approved the deal, Wall Street speculators are skeptical the deal will even go through.

The Des Moines Register tops the list of newspaper penetration for both daily and Sunday readership (based on DMA) in the United States, according to a new Scarborough Research.

The Iowa newspaper has an almost 50 percent reach on a daily basis. The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, The Honolulu Advertiser and The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.) follow, all reaching more than 39 percent of adults, the study found.

Due to lower demand resulting in a reduction in its print run and distribution points for the summer months, free Dublin newspaper Herald AM dropped 23 percent in circulation during July.

Media buyers expect a return to more normal levels beginning in September.

The Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla., will lay off 60 workers across several departments, but not in the newsroom, according to the paper’s report today.

Publisher Carl Cannon said that the reason for the layoffs, announced on Monday, is “nearly a year of declining revenue from real estate advertising.”

Nokia has launched its second Vernacular news portal in India, in association with one of the country's foremost media groups, Bhaskar Group.

The news portal will be accessible anywhere, and available in four languages: Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati and English.

Schibsted, the biggest media group in Norway, has bought the online marketing and traffic firm WebTraffic. The financial terms were not disclosed.

WebTraffic, based in Sweden, works with webmasters by providing them with guaranteed traffic to their websites.

Two UK regional papers, the Norwich Evening News and the Swindon Advertiser, have appointed new editors.

Norwich Evening News, an Archant-owned newspaper, appointed James Foster as the new editor. Foster’s move follows the departure of David Bourn, who quit the post in May.

As Tribune Co. shareholders prepare to gather in Chicago Tuesday to vote on the $8.2 billion plan that would take the company private, speculators question whether the deal will even go through.

Since April, when Tribune accepted real-estate tycoon Sam Zell's offer to go private, the company's debt has continued to mount, making the $34 per share deal tough to go through, according to industry analysts.

The Prime Minister of Mauritania's bodyguards physically attacked radio journalist Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Moghdad two days before newspaper editor Sidi Mohamed Ould Ebbe was charged with “libeling the First Lady” over the weekend.

Reporters Without Borders condemned both actions in Mauritania in a statement released Monday, following Saturday's charges against Ebbe and Thursday's beating of Moghdad.

Government officials in Thailand are illegally blocking Web sites and using threats and intimidation tactics against webmasters, legal experts and webmasters have announced.

The country's controversial Cyber Crime Act, pushed through by the military-appointed government July 19, allows the government to block a Web site only through a court order, said Paiboon Amornpinyokiart, a legal expert.

Broadcaster NextRadioTV is one of several to be offered a chance to buy French financial newspaper La Tribune from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, but is not interested according to the company's CEO.

Alain Weill said the newspaper got in touch with his company, “to ask if we wanted to look at the prospectus, which we did.”

A worsening credit market is likely to force Dow Jones & Co. to pay more to refinance debt, the company's chief executive, Richard Zannino announced Friday.

The company has a “three-year term debt facility to roll over, and with spreads widening we'll likely pay more to refinance it,” Zannino is quoted as saying in an e-mail interview with Reuters. He was responding to questions about the state of deteriorating credit conditions that began in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, Reuters reported.

MySpace, Blogger and YouTube are tops with U.S. audiences, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings report, which shows the top U.S. social networking, blogs and video sites in July.

MySpace, with 61 million in unique audiences, has remained the most popular U.S. social networking site, with a 33 percent growth from 46 million in unique audiences in the same period one year ago. Facebook ranked second, with nearly 20 million unique users. However, it showed a dramatic 129 percent growth compared to July 2006. Other sites worth observing are Club Penguin, LinkedIn, and Buzznet.com, all of which grew more than 200 percent each.

eBay has added yet another of its free classifieds brands to the United States, just weeks after launching the free classifieds site Kijiji.

Gumtree, a top online classifieds platform in Australia, the United Kingdom, Poland and South Africa, launched this week in three U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago and New York. Together with Kijiji and eBay's 25 percent stake in Craigslist, eBay will be behind two and a fourth classifieds sites in the United States, putting it in a better position to take over the free online classifieds market, should it go the way of the online auction.

Readership is up for the Czech Republic's top two general dailies, Lidové noviny and MF Dnes, for the first half of 2007, the latest readership survey Media Projekt 2007 by Publicitas has found.

The country's best selling general interest daily MF Dnes saw readership go up by 80,000 readers from last year, to 1,128,000 readers for the period between January and June this year. Lidové noviny, considered to be the Czech Republic's highest regarded daily, also saw readership climb, but by 7,000 readers. That daily's numbers grew to 239,000 in 2007, from 232,000 in 2006.

The New York Times Company has reported its July revenue declined 3.5 percent, but its Web site NYTimes.com still had a cheerful traffic growth from 12.53 million in June to over 14 million in July, securing its spot as the number one U.S. newspaper site, according to the figures released by Nielsen//Net Ratings.

Print advertising revenue continued to decrease, but both the circulation revenue and online advertising revenue grew four percent.

Four U.S. journalists have filed a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard (HP), claiming they suffered a “serious invasion of privacy,” when private investigators hired by HP assumed false identities to acquire their personal phone records.

Reporters from the Associated Press and the technology Web site CNET are among a dozen people targeted in an investigation ordered by HP's former chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, into who was leaking boardroom information. Dunn lost her job due to the incident, and California's attorney general brought charges against HP, which the company settled for $14.5 million. Charges against Dunn were dismissed in March.

Microsoft ranks as the top U.S. parent company, with more than 121 million home and work online unique audiences and an average two-hour time spent per user, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings report on July 2007 data for top sites by parent company and top brands.

Google was ranked number two, with Yahoo!, Time Warner, News Corp. Online and eBay following.

The Sunday Times has given a copy of South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's health records to the Cape Town Medi-Clinic.

The newspaper handed over its only copy of the records, which contained information on the minister's 2005 hospital stay, the topic of a recent exposé by the newspaper which alleged Tshabalala-Msimang drank alcohol and threw tantrums while in the hospital. Meanwhile, the minister and the clinic have filed an application with the Johannesburg High Court against the Sunday Times.

Advertisements on mobile Internet and TV services are “irritating” to consumers, while branded content and opt-in Bluetooth downloads are better ways to reach millions of people using mobile devices, new media research has found.

Traditional rules of advertising still apply, according to a survey by media services group Universal McCann.

The Kushtia district administration in Bangladesh has cancelled declaration of regional 19 papers and periodicals, saying they were not published on a regular basis.

The 19 publications include five dailies, 12 weeklies and two monthly periodicals.

Hoping marketers will take note and follow suit, the Australian newspaper industry will launch a $10 million press campaign beginning Saturday for a five-month push.

Newspapers want marketers to spend an extra $100 million a year on newspaper advertising, and will run the campaign in every national, metropolitan and regional paper owned by the members of marketing body The Newspaper Works.

Vinay Chhajlani has been appointed CEO of the Hindi daily newspaper Nai Dunia, the Nai Dunia Group announced Thursday.

Nai Dunia aims to become the top publication in central India, and the group's executives have said they believe Chhajlani, founder of the language portal Webdunia and the newspaper's director for the past two years, is the person to take them to the next level.

Canadian Internet development used to be somewhat inactive, but not anymore.

According to eMarketer’s new report “Canada Online Overview,” 21 million Canadians were online in 2006, with a growth of one million users compared with the year 2005.

The former video-sharing and community site Bolt.com has shut down, after GoFish decided to withdraw from the site’s acquisition.

Bolt founders have moved on to WikiYou, the Mayfield and First Round Capital-funded startup they launched last month. A notice on Bolt.com says: “Please be advised that the operations of Bolt, Inc. and Bolt.com have ceased. Net Revolution, Inc. and Bolt, Inc. have executed an Assignment for the Benefit of Creditors effective as of August 14, 2007.”

South Africa's health minister has demanded the Sunday Times “come clean,” and admit to whether newspaper staffers were involved with missing medical documents, taken from the hospital where she had surgery in 2005.

The Medi-Clinic in Cape Town has opened a case of theft after admitting Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's file is missing from the clinic's archives.

On average, Latin American Internet users spent 29 hours online in June 2007, according to the first review of Latin American Internet usage published by comScore.

The first comScore study on Latin American Internet usage is based on data collected through comScore World Metrix audience ratings service. The research is based on Latin American online users aged 15 and older, accessing the Internet from either a home or a work computer in June 2007.

Newspaper higher-ups around the world are trying to decide how to best deal with the issue of staffers writing blogs outside the newsroom.

Some have opened their arms and made the newspaper the blog's new home, while others have wagged a finger and required the employee to shut down the blog or else.

American journalism's biggest in-house fight, which has gone on over the past year, was on full display in a Santa Barbara, Calif. courtroom Tuesday.

Eight fired journalists accused Santa Barbara News-Press owner Wendy McCaw of trying to end a union organising drive, while the publisher's head lawyer said the journalists had tried to take control of the newspaper.

Two new resources on free dailies are now available.

One is a study by Ingela Wadbring, “The Role of Free Dailies in a Segregated Society,” and the other is a thesis for the Copenhagen Business School by Marie Bakholdt Andersen and Christoffer Husted Rasmussen, “Det Danske Marked For Gratisaviser” (The Danish Market for Free Newspapers).

The Journalists Association of Korea will file a constitutional complaint against the government's plan to shut down most government pressrooms, saying the closures are unconstitutional, limiting freedom of expression and the right to know, the association announced Tuesday.

The association's legal advisers will file the complaint as soon as procedures for the filing are arranged, and are also considering asking the Constitution Court to stop construction of new, centralized pressrooms, officials said.

Advertising revenue at The Wall Street Journal declined 7.2 percent in July, on a 20.9 percent downturn in advertising volume, Dow Jones & Company has announced.

According to the media company’s newswire, technology advertising decreased 75.4 percent at its flagship paper, general ads fell 5.9 percent and classified ads were down 13.5 percent. However, financial advertising grew 21 percent in July.

While Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. was trying to win over the Bancroft family in the second quarter, Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought a small stake in Dow Jones & Co.

Berkshire's ownership is surprising because Buffett, the company's chairman, had made his concerns about the newspaper industry known publicly in the past few years. Buffett's main concerns stem from the challenges the industry faces as the Internet and other technologies become increasingly popular.

U.S consumers are more satisfied with Yahoo! than with Google, Ask.com, MSN or AOL, according to a new measurement study by the American Customer Satisfaction Index.

However, the real situation for search engines is much more complex than that.

As of 2007, online users are spending nearly half of their time online on content, a 37 percent increase from four years ago, the Online Publisher Association announced Monday in its four-year analysis of its Internet Activity Index.

The index breaks down time spent on e-commerce, communications, content and search.

The move by New Zealand's major newspaper group to outsource editorial production work will cut into the quality of those newspapers, the Brussels-based International Federation of Journalists has announced.

The New Zealand branch of the Australian-based APN News & Media began outsourcing sub-news editing and page layout Sunday for Auckland's daily The New Zealand Herald. Once the paper's outsourcing move is complete, the media group will move on to its six regional dailies and other weekly and community titles.

A tri-weekly tabloid style newspaper catering to younger readers was launched in Mumbai by e-sense Entertainment on Monday.

Yuva is aimed at readers ages 18 to 32 and will come out every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Priced at Re 1, it is beginning with 16 colour pages and the initial print run is 300,000 copies. The newspaper will be circulated via the city's newsstands and rail stations with a high concentration of colleges and corporate houses. Plans to expand circulation to the rest of Maharashtra will go through once the tabloid is more established in Mumbai.

According to a study by Deloitte & Touche’s Technology, Media and Telecommunications practice, there is still hope for traditional media.

For example, across all generations, "millennials" (13-24), "Gen-Xers" (25-41), "Boomers," (42-60) and "Matures" (61-75), nearly 75 percent say they enjoy magazines even though they acknowledge being able to read the same thing online, according to the study.

An increase in pricing from 15p to 20p that began last month hasn't had much effect on sales of the Sun in Scotland, according to the newspaper's latest circulation figures.

The Sun sold an average of 397,509 copies each day in July, just under June's 398,114 a day, according to the ABCs, AllMediaScotland reported in a Tuesday article.

Over the next year, China will overtake Europe's top two advertising economies, the United Kingdom and Germany, and claim the United State's place as the biggest contributor to the growth of global advertising, according to a report on world media.

By the end of 2008, China will also account for 6.8 percent of the amount spent globally on all media, according to the report, This Year, Next Year, by WPP's combined media operation Group M.

The top 100 U.S. newspaper Web sites aren't search-engine friendly enough, with nearly a third being fully gated, and 26 requiring sign-ups to access content freely and three requiring paid subscriptions, according to a recent study by The Bivings Group.

The study, “American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?” also found that the number and quality of reporter blogs went up this year.

Online advertisers now are allocating their budgets across more sites, and paying lower rates in many cases, placing pricing pressure on established online players.

Several companies already met the challenges when the reports showed weakness in online ad revenue from banners and other display ads.

Newspaper publisher APN News & Media began outsourcing editorial production work Sunday, and will extend the plan to five daily and three weekly newspapers by the end of the year, APN deputy chief executive Rick Neville said.

An outside contractor will be in charge of news editing and layout operations at The New Zealand Herald, the country's biggest daily, and several regional dailies, he said.

The government in Kazakhstan appears to have taken over the newspaper Karavan, the International Press Institute announced Monday.

The weekly newspaper received a letter, dated Aug. 6, from the printing house Asia Press stating it would no longer produce the paper. Karavan's management received a letter at the same time from the office's landlord, stating they must vacate immediately.

The media group Lagardère has agreed to sell its regional daily newspaper group in southern France to Hersant Media Group for 160 million euro, Lagardère Group executives announced Monday.

The companies began negotiating the deal July 19. Top titles in the newspaper group include La Provence, Nice Matin, Var Matin, Corse Matin and Marseille Plus.

Mixing Google Maps with crime data, The Los Angeles Times has launched the Homicide Map on its Web site, which plots all of the cases listed in the newspaper's Homicide Report column.

The map pinpoints on a map and lists by category all of crime reporter Jill Leovy's daily homicide reports, showing 515 homicides in Los Angeles County so far this year.

Gannett is launching more than 100 mobile Internet sites in order to reinforce its local presence. The free sites, covering 84 daily newspapers, 19 local broadcast sites and USA Today, will feature news, sports, weather and other local information.

The content will be provided by Gannett’s Information Centers, which generate content from various Gannett media sources, including print, television, Internet and mobile.

Google is closing down its service for online video sales and rental, a 19-month experiment doomed by free online video sites such as YouTube.

The decision, confirmed Friday, reinforces Google’s intention to concentrate on an ad format development to capitalize on the popularity of online video. The company has already earned a lot from advertising, but most of it comes from traditional text-based messages along with search results or other written content online.

A part-time television producer who allegedly faked a story about steam buns filled with cardboard was sentenced to one year in jail and fined 1,000 yuan Sunday, Chinese state media have reported.

Zi Beijia's so-called expose on Beijing TV showing a street vendor filling a bun with pre-soaked cardboard was aired July 8. Zi later said he bought the cardboard and hired four migrant workers to act out a choreographed scene.

The libel system that has cost UK news organisations millions of pounds in past years is under review via a Ministry of Justice consultation paper.

Newspapers and other media say the no-win, no-fee libel system allows claimants to hold newspapers ransom. If newspapers win a case, they usually have no chance of recovering any costs from claimants who have no money to pay their fees.

Reuters has admitted that footage it released last week showing Russian submersibles on the North Pole's seabed was actually from the movie Titanic.

The images were seen around the world, alongside an article about Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Aug. 2.

Plans to create a new regional state-owned social and political newspaper will be introduced at the next legislative assembly session in Russia's Krasnoyarsk Territory, the area's assembly deputy announced Friday.

Yevgeni Tsvetkov told reporters a system of issuing, distribution and financing for the newspaper will be worked out during the session. Tsvetkov also said the popular regional newspaper Krasnoyarskiy Rabochiy, with a circulation of 100,000, was sold to private entrepreneurs illegally, and should become state owned again.

Asian News, the free monthly newspaper paper published by MEN Media, has axed its print version. The newspaper will be available solely online at theAsianNews.co.uk and has appointed a young new editor.

Shelina Begum, 27, the previous chief reporter, replaces Steve Hammond.

Marina Lee Abdullah told reporters police are looking to charge her together with her husband, blogger Raja Petra Kamaruddin, for her involvement with her husband's site, Malaysia Today, AsiaMedia reported Friday.

Abdullah was interrogated by Malaysian police Wednesday, and Kamaruddin was detained for eight hours July 25 after police filed a report against him, saying he insulted the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, the Malaysian King and Islam.

Newspaper Web site traffic has slowed down in July, according to an analysis by Wachovia Equity Research analyst John Janedis using comScore data for newspapers in its coverage area.

Janedis found that The New York Times Co., including About.com, did the best, with a 12 percent growth in unique users from last year. USA Today traffic fell three percent from last year.

Shareholders of aQuantive approved the buyout by Microsoft at an 86 percent premium in a meeting in Seattle Thursday. The purchase is expected to close within days.

More than 58 million shares voted to approve the buyout, out of about 79 million share outstanding. The meeting lasted about six minutes and drew about 20 people, according to Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogger Todd Bishop.

As Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. released its financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2007, Murdoch also announced he hopes to close the $5.6 billion buy-out deal with Dow Jones & Co. within three to four months.

News Corp. saw an 8.6 percent increase in fourth quarter consolidated revenue, to $7.37 billion from $6.82 billion. Operating income grew 18 percent from $1.03 billion to $1.2 billion, while net income rose 4.5 percent from $852 million to $890 million in this quarter.

News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch announced Wednesday during the company's fiscal fourth quarter conference call he plans to sell Dow Jones' Ottaway newspaper group, once the $5.6 billion sale is complete.

“We will be selling the local newspapers fairly quickly,” Murdoch is quoted by Editor & Publisher as saying during the call. “Outside of that, we are keeping everything and developing it.”

Trinity Mirror may be considering more “reverse publishing” hyper-local products, the company's regional editorial director has hinted, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

Neil Benson said the Teesside Evening Gazette has been successful after launching six free newspapers made up of content from the region's 20 local citizen journalism Web sites since December 2005.

U.S. media company Scripps has bought the audio and video sharing site Pickle.com for $4.7 million.

Scripps, which last month bought the cooking Web site Recipezaar.com for $25 million, aims to build its user content platform into the specialist sites.

Global press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders has sent a letter to Kenya's president, asking him not to sign a new media bill passed by the country's Parliament.

Under the law, journalists would be forced to reveal their sources, which the organisation told President Mwai Kibaki would lead to “disastrous consequences for Kenyan democracy.”

Two student journalists have been killed in separate incidents in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna.

Nilakshan Sahapavan, 22, editor of Chaa'laram and student at the Jaffna University Media Research and Training Centre was killed by an unidentified gunman Aug. 1. Thanikasalam Sasirooban, 25, a trainee journalist for the Daily Mirror, was gunned down while traveling home on his motorbike Aug. 2.

In a strange new deal, the Sun-Times Media Group Inc. announced Wednesday that one of its biggest competitors, the Chicago Tribune, will deliver its flagship newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, and 10 other suburban Chicago papers owned by the newspaper publisher.

Although the Sun-Times will continue selling single copies of the tabloid-style newspaper in Chicago, the Tribune will deliver both home subscriptions of Sun-Times publications and single copies of the newspaper in the city's suburbs.

The Sarasota Herald-Tribune will cut jobs as it reshapes its features section and consolidates four regional offices.

The Herald-Tribune, owned by the New York Times Regional Media Group, is the largest of the four daily titles the Times owns in Florida.

Google News is planning to introduce a new feature that would invite the subjects of news articles to comment on the stories.

The Google News blog states that the long-term goal is for all participants to be able to send in their comments, which will be published in full, and without edits. They will be marked as “comments” so readers know to differentiate between the actual report and what the subjects of the report have to say about it.

As UK Regional media company Archant saw an overall revenue increase of 2.1 percent, or 98.5 million pounds, operating profit fell by 1.1 percent, or 12.9 million pounds, in the newspapers and printing for continuing operations sector.

The financial data from the six months ending June 30 reflects costs offset by productivity improvements, or inflationary pressures on costs and further investment of .6 million pounds in online activities, holdthefrontpage.co.uk has reported.

Beating out The Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and The Sunday Mail, The Age Wednesday night was voted the Pacific region's major newspaper of the year.

The award was given at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association's 38th annual conference in Melbourne.

The New York Times Co. will stop charging for access to a section of its Web site called TimesSelect, The New York Post reported Tuesday.

Citing a source who had been briefed on the matter, The Post wrote that the decision stop charging for access to columnists and Op-Ed pieces via that section of the site was made by top executives. It is unclear when the service will become free.

Thanks to an increase in advertising revenue and new publications, second quarter profits are up, the German newspaper and magazine publisher Axel Springer announced Wednesday.

Profit in April – June rose to 44.9 million euro, versus 44.2 million euro for the same period last year, the Berlin-based publisher of newspapers Bild, Die Welt and Sport Bild said. Sales for that quarter are also up, now at 617.3 million euro, a two percent increase from last year.

Of the 18 million U.S. college students heading back to campuses in the autumn, 95 percent, or 17.1 million, use the Internet at least on a monthly basis.

In the 2007 Youth Trends survey, full-time college students said they spent 19.2 hours online on average per week, one hour more than in 2006.

The question is, what are they doing online?

Customer product reviews online can increase conversion rates, online traffic and average order values, according to the latest “Social Commerce Report 2007” by e-consultancy and Bazaarvoice.

More than half of online retailers in the UK, U.S. and Europe said their overall conversion rates had grown in the past year due to customer ratings on their Web sites, while only nine percent said they dropped. Over 75 percent said their site traffic had increased due to the reviews, while only five percent said it had dropped. Average order values increased for 42 percent of the responders, and only six percent said they had decreased, according to the report.

Newspapers embracing new media platforms and championing issues that are close to readers have a chance to reach more people than ever, News Ltd. boss John Hartigan said at an industry conference in Melbourne Tuesday, The Sydney Morning Herald reported in a Wednesday article.

“Once newspapers were the primary source of information; now they are the primary source of what that information means and why it's important,” Hartigan is quoted by the Herald as saying in a speech to the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association.

Online advertising is expected to surpass newspaper advertising in size in the United States by 2011.

The findings from the annual research report on the media sector by Veronis Suhler Stevenson come as declining advertising sales continue to be reported by newspaper groups this year.

The number of readers grew for only two of Italy's ten major dailies, according to a readership survey released Tuesday by Publicitas.

Il Resto del Carlino saw readership go up to 1,197,000 in 2007, up from 1,131,000 in 2006. Il Giornale's readers grew to 655,000 in 2007, from 648,000 in 2006.

Nearly 80 percent of newspaper and magazine readers consider online publications to be as trustworthy and reliable as their print counterparts, according to new research by the UK's Association of Online Publishers.

The study indicated 81 percent of newspaper readers and 74 percent of magazine readers felt print and online media were equally trustworthy.

The Silicon Valley blogger Fake Steve Jobs, who has posed online as the Apple chief executive for a year, has been revealed as an editor at Forbes magazine.

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, which has become a must-read in the industry, satirised the cult of Apple, the excess of the tech industry and the so-called "lack of candidness" in corporate blogs.

Finland's largest press distributor is interested in buying the controlling stake in its Polish peer Ruch, the daily Rzeczpospolita has reported Tuesday.

Rautakirja, a unit of Sanoma WSOY is eyeing a 50 percent stake plus one share in Ruch that the Polish state treasury plans to sell. Rzeczpospolita did not name any sources.

The Sydney Morning Herald's Web site, smh.com.au, has a new look.

In hopes of attracting more readers it has reorganised the page, making it more user-friendly and with added news, videos and features. The page also now has more white space and room around the articles and images.

The Iranian government has ordered the country's leading reformist daily newspaper to shut down Monday, less than three months after it was allowed to begin publishing again.

Although the government said it closed Shargh, which means “East,” for interviewing a poet who disputes Islamic views on relationships between men and women, Shargh's editor said it was an excuse to silence one of the few reformist outlets remaining in Iran.

Seven Network has increased its stake in West Australian Newspapers from 16.1 percent to 17.3 percent, becoming the dominant investor of WAN.

The television broadcaster is the first company to take advantage of the Australian Federal Government’s new media ownership laws this year.

The publishing group Controlinveste will launch a new free daily, Global Notícias in September.

Global Notícias will have 24 pages and a circulation of 150,000, available first in Lisbon, by home delivery and in public places, according to Newspaper Innovation.

A new free afternoon Hebrew daily newspaper will premiere this week in Israel.

Metro will attempt to carve out a place for itself in the Hebrew journalism world dominated by paid morning newspapers like Yediot, Aharonot, Ma'ariv and Haaretz. The newspaper will go to press at noon and distribute papers between 2 and 5 p.m.

The Santa Barbara Daily Sound has turned Monday over 144 unpublished photographs taken during a gang fight that ended in the stabbing death of a teenager.

The paper's editor and publisher, Jeramy Gordon, turned the March 14 photos over to Superior Court, calling it “a sad day for journalism and for our rights as Americans.”

Newspaper companies are utilising the Internet to expand their reach, a recent study has found.

“American Newspapers and the Internet; Threat or Opportunity?" by Bivings Research has found that in 2007, 92 percent of America’s top 100 newspaper Web sites now have video on their sites, which grew significantly from 61 percent in 2006.

The New Castle News has announced in an article Monday it will challenge in court the police seizure of a newsroom computer that police say a reporter used to record a phone conversation with two public officials.

Northwest Lawrence Regional Police got a search warrant and took the computer July 25 when a reporter, who is married to the town's police chief, told the chief an interview he had given to another reporter was recorded without the chief's knowledge.

Google is planning to enter the lucrative mobile market, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

Google has invested a lot on mobile phone projects, including developing prototype handsets, proposing to operators, and talking with phone manufacturers over technical specifications. It hopes to have products manufactured base on its specification and multiple carriers to offer the services.

A strike at Glasgow Herald and Evening Times papers was called off after half an hour earlier today. Staff returned to work after the management agreed a staff member facing compulsory layoff would be reinstated.

"All industrial action is suspended," said National Union of Journalists Scottish organiser Paul Holleran. "We reached an agreement with a form of words on how redundancies should be handled."

France was not a earlier adopter in the Internet era, and French companies were relatively slow to move into the online advertising market.

Now the situation has changed. The Internet penetration and online marketing spending are booming, and France has become the third largest online advertising market in Europe, only behind the UK and Germany. French online ad market will grow nearly 35 percent in 2007, and exceed $4 billion by 2011, according to eMarketer.

China has so far failed to guarantee full media freedom for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. A survey indicated that the harassment of foreign reporters is still very common.

However, according to the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, the situation is much better than January this year, when the government loosened reporting regulations.

The annual Harris Poll measuring public perceptions of 23 professions and occupations came out Wednesday, and it turned out journalists appear in the Bottom Ten.

The poll surveyed 1,100 U.S. adults in June and July. Only 13 percent said the occupation of journalist had "very great prestige," while 16 percent said it had "hardly any prestige at all." Most of the respondents, 47 percent, said there was "some prestige" in being a journalist.

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it will offer a free, advertising-supported version of its basic software, Microsoft Works. It is part of a test program with computer manufacturers.

Due to the severe competition with Google’s business software services, Microsoft is recently wondering the future of its Microsoft Works. Unlike Google Docs and Spreadsheets delivered on the Internet, Microsoft plans to pre-install Works on computers and display the advertisings stored in cache. The software prices $39.99 for retails.

Barcelona-based media group Planeta, the leading Spanish book publisher, will buy 55 percent of Casa Editorial El Tiempo for $338 million, 13 times the EBITDA of $28 million in 2006, according to Semana.

Using a mix of human/editorial curation and algorithy-driven methods, the news aggregation site Newser.com has been launched by Patrick Spain, CEO of Highbeam, Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair media columnist, and Caroline Miller, former editor-in-chief of New York Magazine.

MSNBC.com has launched online vertical advertising networks for the TODAYshow.com and political sections, which allows small publishers access to its content while increasing ad inventories.

Large online publishers are currently competing for a greater share of inventory with the major ad networks such as Google AdSense, Gorilla Nation or Glam.com, which are the largest single holders of ad inventory in any vertical market segment.

Abdel Mutsanki, editor of Johannesburg-based ZimOnline, has been released from hospital after being shot last week.

One of the bullets was so close to his heart that doctors decided to leave it where it was.

MySpace and other social networking sites may have more room for growth ahead, according to a June 2007 Web usage study from Compete.

The local mobile phone market in Thailand is going bullish this year, with new subscribers nearly reaching seven million in the first half, representing two-thirds of the total numbers for the whole year in 2006.

In a buyout that will end a century of the Bancroft family's ownership, Rupert Murdoch has sealed a deal to buy Dow Jones & Co. for $5.6 billion.