September 2007 Archives

Spanish media group Promotora de Informaciones SA (Prisa), said Friday it plans to take legal action against United States-based Nielsen Co. for downgrading unique user figures for the Web site of its newspaper, El Pais.

Prisa said in a statement it is calling for an independent audit of Nielsen's “procedures and audience metrics,” according to a Thompson Financial report.

Entrants have just over two weeks to submit ideas on how to use digital experiments to transform community news in the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge, a contest awarding as much as $5 million for innovative ideas.

Although 2007 is the contest's second year, it is the first for international entries. The deadline is October 15.

The workforce of the future, journalists ready to go wherever the twists and turns of digital media may take them, are already here. They can be found in the newsroom.

Los Angeles Times Publisher David Hiller plans to mine the newsroom's print side for “a good chunk” of the people to fill some of the 100 spots needed for its latimes.com digital operations, Reuters reporter Steve Gorman wrote in an article Friday.

Some editions of The West Australian are so heavy that home delivering them is becoming an occupational health and safety hazard.

“Newsagents are not meant to be throwing papers that weigh more than 600g and they're throwing papers weighing 1.2kg,” Rayma Creswell, Australian Newsagents' Federation chief executive, told the Australian, according to an article Thursday.

The Bath Chronicle's first weekly edition hit newsstands Thursday, the first time the 260-page weekly replaced the daily edition due to falling sales.

The new edition will be out every Thursday, and cost 60 pence.

The Walt Disney Company's $350 million purchase of Club Penguin signifies a new focus for marketers and media companies to target kids and teens online.

"For marketers trying reach kids and teens on social networking sites, there is a new game in town: virtual worlds," said Debra Aho Williamson, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report, Kids and Teens: Virtual Worlds Open New Universe.

The Yahoo consortium could give newspapers a boost into positive revenue territory a year earlier than originally expected, Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Ginocchio and his team, David Clark and Matt Chesler, estimate.

Since seven newspaper companies announced an alliance with Yahoo in November 2006, another 17 companies and about 400 newspapers have joined, all of which could see online revenues grow year-on-year by 20 points in the second half of 2008, from 20 percent to 40 percent, the analysts reported, according to Editor & Publisher.

The Guardian's union chapel voted almost unanimously Thursday to initiate a formal dispute procedure with management over pay and conditions, the Guardian reported.

About 180 of the Guardian's union chapel voted for the motion, no one voted against it and there were a few abstentions. The vote authorised the National Union of Journalists' Chapel to prepare for a strike ballot, as well as organise a meeting between NUJ national officials and Guardian management and hold a meeting with Acas, an employment dispute prevention organisation.

The Daily Mail and General Trust Plc Thursday announced it is seeing rising advertising revenues so far this year, and it expects end-of-the-year results to meet financial forecasts.

DMGT, which publishes the London Evening Standard, Daily Mail and the Northcliffe regional newspaper group, made public in a trading update Thursday that its total advertising revenues in the six months through the end of August rose 8 percent from the same period last year.

The debate over whether an EU regulatory body for European telecom markets should be created is heating up.

In a joint letter to the EU commission, economic ministry representatives from Germany, France, England, Spain and Sweden, as well as a state ministry representative of Luxembourg, announced their opposition to such a European super authority, stating there is no need for “institutional reform,” according to Heise Online.

The global video game market is expected to grow from $33 billion in 2006 to $47 billion in 2009, according to DFC Intelligence.

The newest generation of video game consoles is the driver to this growth. Based on sales so far, DFC said it had raised its forecast for the Nintendo Wii and the Sony PlayStation 3 and lowered the forecast for Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Nielsen//NetRatings is advancing in its full audit by the Media Rating Council, which is currently reviewing the patented Nielsen//NetRatings desktop meter and data transmittal processes, the media and market research group announced Wednesday.

“Nielsen//NetRatings has always been committed to measurement quality and transparency, and we welcome the opportunity to have our methodology and patented technologies validated by a respected third party like the MRC,” Manish Bhatia, president of global services and U.S. sales for Nielsen Online stated in a press release.

Financial services firm Morgan Stanley has cut its earnings targets for three of the United Kingdom's top newspaper publishers to reflect the industry's expected dip in advertising revenues next year, the investment bank said Wednesday.

Morgan Stanley has lowered its earnings per share (EPS) forecast on Daily Mail & General Trust by 7 percent, and target valuation by 6 percent to 780 pence. The bank lowered Trinity Mirror's EPS expectations by 1 percent, with a 4 percent cut to its target valuation, to 505 pence. The EPS forecast for Johnston Press was cut by 4.5 percent, with a target valuation deduction of 9 percent, to 425 pence, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Newsstands in Seoul could be eliminated by the end of 2009.

The Seoul city government announced last week it has revised regulations on commercial installations on roads, which affects newsstands, kiosks, shoe-repair shops and others, and will go into effect in mid-November if the city council approves the revisions, The Korea Times reported over the weekend.

Members of the National Union of Journalists at the Coventry Telegraph in the United Kingdom will vote on whether to strike in protest over what they say are inadequate editorial staffing levels, with forty union members receiving their ballot papers next week.

The number of editorial staffers has dropped constantly over the past two years due to not replacing people who leave, or long delays when vacancies are filled, said NUJ members at the Telegraph and its sister papers, the Coventry Times and Hinckley Times, which are part of Trinity Mirror's portfolio in the Midlands, currently up for sale, according to HoldtheFrontPage.

Most marketers worldwide use e-mails in their campaigns, according to a new survey conducted by McKinsey.

This study surveyed 311 marketing executives globally, and found that 83 percent used e-mails, ahead of display ads (73 percent), and paid search (63 percent).

Kenya's Daily Metro was been added to the Nation Media Group's list of newspapers Wednesday.

The Daily Metro, which targets younger readers and those in lower and middle income levels, will be sold for Sh20, All Africa reported.

With the help of online initiatives, Gannett Company Inc. is recapturing revenues that used to be a given for newspapers.

The company's online assets shows Gannett, whose flagship newspaper is USA Today, has extended its operation beyond newspaper Web sites, to bring in revenue from areas that once used to be newspaper turf only, such as classifieds.

The New York Times has made its Real Estate section available in detail to readers on their mobiles, allowing them to send and receive listings whether their property search began in print, online or on The Times mobile real estate site.

The new mobile product was launched Monday in beta, and lets readers search property listings directly from their mobiles, send listings from NYTimes.com/RealEstate to their mobiles by clicking on “Send to Mobile” or send full details and photos of properties listed in the newspaper to their mobiles by using an SMS code from the newspaper, The New York Times Company announced in a statement.

Microsoft Corp. is looking to invest in Facebook Inc., which would value the online hotshot at $10 billion or more, according to a report published Monday.

Microsoft is holding preliminary discussions that could culminate in a $300 million to $500 million investment in the social-networking site, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources who are familiar with the matter.

Mumbai-based Daily News and Analysis, or DNA, is set to launch an edition in Ahmedabad in October, two years after its Mumbai launch.

Owned by Diligent Media, the joint venture between the Bhaskar Group and Zee, DNA's 2005 launch saw massive subscription drives and aggressive outdoor campaign, which the paper's executives say will be replicated in Ahmedabad, in India's Gujarat region, according to a report by agencyfaqs.

Nearly a year after the curtains closed for racing and sports newspaper the Sportsman, a new national racing paper is expected to launch October 20 in England.

Racing Ahead Weekend will be edited by former Sun racing reporter Stephen Mullen, who said the new weekly is aiming to avoid the Sportsman's fate, which closed when it ran out of funds after only seven months of publishing, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

The Miami Herald and its Spanish-language sibling El Nuevo Herald have launched subscription digital editions, their parent Miami Herald Media Co. announced Friday.

Users can read the day's paper in standard online text mode or newspaper mode, which is shown exactly as it is laid out in print. Navigational tools organise sections by topic and allow readers to pull out interesting headlines and then jump directly to articles they wish to read.

Aiming to reach new readers and give advertisers more audience reach, Metro's Scotland edition has extended its distribution to Dundee.

Currently distributed in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the commuter corridor running between them, Metro will also be distributed at strategic locations throughout Dundee, such as railway stations and bus stops, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Tuesday.

Japan's Willcom has launched Bytemobile's embedded browser optimisation technology, which accelerates web browsing for handset subscribers, Digital Media Asia reported Tuesday.

Willcom launched the “Speed-up Service,” which increases download speeds by up to two times from current clientless service and up to four times from standard, unoptimised service, earlier this month.

European Union regulators have until November to decide whether to approve Google Inc.'s $3.1 billion takeover bid of online advertising group DoubleClick. Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp. has launched a behind-the-scenes opposition campaign against the deal.

Public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, which Microsoft retains, has warned more than 100 companies and organisations that the deal would further strengthen Google's already tight hold in online advertising, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

In an effort to attract readers from both paid newspapers and free papers, Spanish group Mediapro has launched a new daily paper which will cost half of what paid competitors charge, but embody the breezier style of free dailies.

The new half-price daily, Publico, has 64 colour pages, and will feature larger pictures, more graphics and shorter articles than its paid competitors. It is also larger than the 20-some page free dailies that are so popular in Spain, according to a report by AFP. It will cost 50 cents, compared to 1 euro, which is what most paid papers cost.

The London Evening Standard Monday launched a news and comment Web site, standard.co.uk.

The new site is a complement to the existing entertainment-focused site, thisislondon.co.uk, which is run by the Evening Standard's owner, Associated Newspapers.

European Media Investment AG (EMI), an ARBOmedia company, is planning a strategic expansion on the Romanian market. It will continue its campaign to take over Romanian local newspapers by investing two printing plants and a local news Internet portal.

ARBOmedia/EMI already has a presence on the Romanian market with several local titles. Its main competitors are the Austrians from Inform Media and the PubliMedia local network, developed by Adrian Sârbu with CME support.

Chinese media baron Tan Sri Tiong Hiew King has started work to set up a proposed local English daily in Malaysia.

Negotiations for the new daily, to be based in Sarawak, have begun with prospective partners. The paper's business model is still preliminary and could change, however a paid paper is being favoured over a free paper, according to a report Monday by The Edge Financial Daily.

Media owners in Australia could be forced to join a coalition of advertisers and ad agencies in an attempt to stop governmental advertising regulation.

The Advertising Federation of Australia and the Australian Association of National Advertisers have been fighting government attempts to change the current system of advertising self-regulation. The AFA's new federal director, Mark Champion, has stated a coalition of interests, like the one he helped make as head of the Communications Agencies Association of New Zealand, are part of his agenda in Australia, The Australian reported Monday.

Google Inc. is considering moving into the UK wireless market after the region's telecommunications regulator announced Thursday it has plans to take back part of the region's mobile phone radio spectrum, the Guardian has reported Friday, without citing sources.

Regulator Ofcom proposed liberalising more than a third of the spectrum Vodafone and O2 have been using for 22 years, in order to auction it off to new market entrants.

Associated Newspapers Limited has taken the prepaid public transit card idea and applied it to newspapers, allowing readers to tap their cards on electronic pads at newsstands, walking away with discounted newspapers, as well as reward points and even free iTunes.

The company's unveiling of the Evening Standard Eros Card is aimed to boost circulation of its evening daily Evening Standard, which competes against two free papers in London, as well as learn more about its readers. The Standard's current daily circulation is at about 270,000, including about one-third bulk sales, followthemedia.com reported Friday.

USA Today plans to open a store in New York’s LaGuardia Airport in order to extend its brand footprint.

Merchandise will be available at the store, which will have everything displayed according to newspaper’s color scheme – lifestyle products in purple, sports in red, financial goods in green and news in blue.

Austrian publisher Styria Medien will launch Slovenia's first free daily, Zurnal24, Sept. 26, followed by the Oct. 10 launch of Luxembourg first free daily, L'Essentiel.

Zurnal24's launch will increase the number of European countries with free dailies to 30, and will be published first in Ljubljana and Primorska. L'Essentiel is a joint venture between Swiss publisher Tamedia, which publishes 20 Minuten, and the Luxembourg publisher Editpress, which publishes Das Tageblatt, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

Vodafone Group Plc has released the first consumer charter for mobile phone advertising, which the mobile telecommunications company wants other carriers to adopt, reports The Australian.

The charter comes as advertisers release the first wave of genuine display campaigns on mobile phones, and parent groups lash out at plans for fast food ads.

Yahoo Japan Corporation's chief wants to seek tieups with a wide range of mass media, such as newspapers and broadcasters, to obtain more Net-based advertisers.

"We would like to widen our business fields through more business partners that we will seek to obtain down the track," President Masahiro Inoue said in a recent interview with Kyodo News.

Taipei judges have ruled two Web sites will not have to pay compensation to the city's deputy mayor, King Pu-tsung, for criticising him on their blogs.

The bloggers, one on yam.com.tw and the other on udn.com, criticised Pu-tsung for “humiliating Taiwan” during the International Children's Games in Thailand last year when he was failed to prevent Chinese representatives from snatching Taiwanese flags from Taiwanese medallists as they walked to the podium. King lodged a complaint asking for an apology from the Chinese team, but he request was denied.

Hispanics whose first language is Spanish are among the most avid newspaper readers in the United States, according to a new study of how ethnic groups consume old and new media.

The study was conducted by the Florida State University Center for Hispanic Marketing Communication, and contains more good news for newspapers, including that the time spent on print is not declining among whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, and English-speaking Hispanics in spite of their heavy use of online media and television.

Chief executives from media companies on the opening day of Goldman Sachs' annual Communacopia conference agreed on the vulnerability of conventional television and print advertising, while hedging on online target marketing, which they say has the potential to bring in more wealth and sustained value across all platforms and businesses.

The industry's massive, unsettling schism clearly has Time Warner, News Corporation, Walt Disney and Viacom straddling the struggling traditional mass media and the emerging consumer-centric media - advertising being central to both in very different ways.

Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore Media Metrix have completed pre-audits, and are moving into the next stages of auditing and accreditation, giving online audience measurements tools a boost in proficiency, the Interactive Advertising Bureau has announced.

Nielsen//NetRatings is currently in the process of a full audit overseen by the Media Ratings Council, the IAB announced in a press release this week. comScore is now reviewing the MRC's report and proposal for a full audit, but has not yet committed to a timeline, the advertising bureau stated.

McClatchy reveals its August advertising declined 9.2 percent from the same period last year, while total revenues were down 8.4 percent.

On a year-to-year basis, the company's advertising revenue dropped 8 percent and total revenues were down 7.1 percent.

As online editions continue to grow in popularity for breaking news, readers still rely on print for analysis, which means stability in newspaper readership for Canada's largest four markets, according to a study released Wednesday.

The Newspaper Audience Databank Inc., found autumn 2006 and spring 2007 readership results from Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa-Gatineau show that half of the country's adults read a newspaper on a regular weekday, while 75 percent said they read at least one on a weekly basis.

As competition rises in Poland's national newspaper market, publishing company Agora is getting hit hard by the market economy its flagship paper, Gazeta Wyborcza, helped usher in.

“Although Gazeta Wyborcza is very important, over time the importance of traditional media will fade,” Marek Sowa, Agora's recent chief executive appointee, told the Financial Times.

Online newspaper advertising spending has grown in the double digits for the past 13 consecutive quarters, reaching $795.7 million in the second quarter of 2007, the Newspaper Association of America has announced.

Although some of the growth has to do with overall online advertising growth, newspapers are “making aggressive efforts to make their sites more compelling,” Randy Bennett, vice president of audience and new business development at NAA, told eMarketer.

With its recent focus on advertising, AOL has established a new division, called Platform A, for its ad networks, including Advertising.com and Tacoda.

AOL has named Curt Viebranz, former CEO of TACODA and a one-time Time Inc. executive, as the leader and the unit, which will reach an estimated 90 percent of Web users.

Media baron Vincent Bolloré's two free dailies, MatinPlus and Direct Soir, have secured rights to distribute in the Paris Metro system.

Although the city's first free dailies were launched more than five years ago, the Metro's distribution contract was with the free weekly A Nous Paris, according to Newspaper Innovation.

Fairfax Media's ownership of Riverina Media Group is free and clear, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission stated Tuesday.

Fairfax will not be forced to offload the regional publisher, or sell assets in areas where it operates, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Wednesday.

The entertainment and media market in the Asia Pacific region sprang by 10 percent in 2006, making it the fastest growing region in the world, according to a global survey conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

This prosperity was fueled by a number of industry segments - Internet spending jumped 23 percent due to the fierce growth of the broadband and online advertising market; filmed entertainment increased 7.5 percent, and interestingly, recorded music rose 15.6 percent, making the Asia Pacific region the only area in the world to post a significant gain in this segment, according to the survey.

The Indian Newspaper Society is seeking abolition of the Wage Board, accusing the government Wednesday of threatening freedom of speech and media independence.

“At a time when independent India boasts of a free and open economy, we are faced with yet another Wage Board – being the only industry in the country to have one,” INS President Hormusji N Cama told the audience at the society's 68th annual general meeting, in comments reported by The Hindu.

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch intends to expand Dow Jones & Company's revenue partially by making $100 million in savings once his News Corporation's $5.6 billion takeover of the company is complete.

“We've already identified the low hanging fruit will be $100 million in savings," Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corp., told an investor conference in New York Tuesday, Reuters reported. “But we're about expanding revenue."

Content previously available through TimesSelect, including online access to news and opinion columnists, archives and personalisation tools, will be made available at no cost beginning Wednesday, NYTimes.com has announced.

The TimesSelect subscription revenue model will be replaced by an advertising-based model, with American Express signing on to be the first sponsor of the newly opened areas once only accessible by subscribers to TimesSelected, according to a New York Times Company statement.

Following the AdWords launch to mobile, Google on Tuesday announced the availability of AdSense for mobile.

The program allows AdSense publishing partners to earn revenue through contextually targeting text ads to mobile Web site content.

The Teesside Evening Gazette's successful series of hyperlocal sites targeting smaller postcode areas has brought in more advertising revenue, which means more jobs and a greater investment in journalism, the Gazette's editor told the Society of Editors Scotland conference at Glasgow Caledonian University, Press Gazette reported Tuesday.

“(Gazette Communities) have attracted new advertising and proved such a success that Trinity (Mirror) has launched print versions of the microsites,” Editor Darren Thwaites said.

The Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDVZ) has announced there is “damage to the sensitive good that is the freedom of the press” in Germany, due to proceedings against journalists, Helmut Heinen, the association's president, announced Monday in Strasbourg.

The “series of preliminary proceedings launched of late against journalists for allegedly aiding and abetting the betrayal of secrets” points to a “highly questionable interpretation of freedom of the press,” Heinen is quoted as saying by Heise Online.

Time Warner and AOL's honeymoon period seems to have come to an end, as some analysts are strongly suggesting that Time Warner should cast off the online service company.

Some analysts suggested Time Warner could have sold AOL for about $20 billion about a year and a half ago, when Google, Comcast, and Microsoft were strongly interested in buying AOL, which had renewed its worth with a resurgence, especially in the search traffic area.

Nigeria's Gombe State government will set up a newspaper to report on the administration, the special assistant to the state governor on printing and publishing has disclosed.

Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed Yidikawu said the newspaper is needed to inform the public on government activities, a challenge in light of the state Printing and Publishing Company's poor condition, according to an article posted on AllAfrica.com.

Irish River Media group is set to launch four paid-for local newspapers before Christmas, including a competitor against the Meath Chronicle.

According to local sources, the launch of the Meath paper is imminent. It is expected to be a colour tabloid targeting readers between ages 20 and 50, in accordance with the group’s general strategy of tailoring publications to a younger demographic.

Tribune Company's daily Spanish language newspaper will increase its circulation in the Chicago area by about 40 percent beginning Monday, in response to a rapidly growing Hispanic population.

Hoy will also increase penetration into several of the city's suburbs, while the paper's home-delivered weekly supplement, Fin de Semana, will increase in stages, from 211,000 to 290,000, beginning in October.

The Czech Publishers Association has announced it will launch an autumn campaign to promote the daily press and help educate advertisers on how to better use daily newspapers for publicity.

The campaign will aim to support publicity performance growth in daily newspapers as well as readership rates, Jiří Hořčica, account manager at the public relations agency Bison & Rose, stated in a press release, according to a Czech Business Weekly article.

The New York Times online once again beats all other newspaper sites with most unique visitors in August, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

The Times also leads the amount of time spent per person, with an average of almost 24 minutes.

Merrill Lynch downgraded New York Times Co. and two other newspaper groups Monday, following a recent pattern for analysts covering the industry in a predicament.

Analyst Karl Choi lowered the rating on New York Times to "Sell" from "Neutral." Choi also made the same call for McClatchy Co. and Lee Enterprises Inc.

The union representing Dow Jones employees has recommended its 2,000 members approve a three-year contract, as long as three percent raises are given each year for newsroom, sales, administration and technical staff, MarketWatch has reported.

Union officials of the Independent Association of Publishers' Employees recommended the deal be approved Sunday, as employees have gone without a contract since January. Under the deal, Dow Jones employees would have to pay more for health care premiums, however.

The World Association of Newspapers has announced its support for the Swedish publishing community, specifically artist Lars Vilke and Editor Ulf Johansson, of the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper, which published a cartoon portraying the Prophet Mohammed as a dog.

Death threats have been made against Vilke and Johansson, who published the cartoon to draw attention to threats against freedom of expression in Sweden. Al Qaeda in Iraq has offered a bounty for the murders of the two men.

All industry rival eyes are on Independent News & Media Plc. as it pushes forward with its decision to outsource production of its main Irish titles.

Sizeable severance packages have helped the company smooth the path to outsourcing most of its Irish subbing work, despite increasing opposition even before the decision has been publicly announced, Press Gazette has reported.

Moody's Investors Services late Thursday downgraded The Thomson Corp.'s senior unsecured debt rating from A3 to Baa1, the minimum investment grade rating, due to its agreement to take on the news agency Reuters.

“Thomson's agreement to acquire Reuters makes its debt more risky because it is not only borrowing to swing the deal, but selling off a property not significantly affected by business cycles,” Moody's stated. "The downgrade reflects the significant increase in Thomson's leverage that will result from the pending Reuters acquisition, with pro forma 2007 debt-to-EBITDA at approximately 3.1x (incorporating Moody's standard adjustments) and free cash flow-to-debt of less than 5 percent."

Google is asking the United Nations Friday to do its part to protect Internet users' privacy around the world.

Peter Fleischer, the company's privacy chief, is asking both governments and businesses to agree on international privacy standards at a UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) conference in Strasbourg. As information now instantaneously makes its way around the world via the Internet, a new set of rules needs to apply internationally to so that Web users do not lose confidence in privacy protection, which will hamper the Internet's development by a rise of online crimes, he told the Guardian.

The Norwegian media group Schibsted plans to create a presence in the international ad market by opening shop in London, according to a Swedish newspaper.

The London office will hire two media sellers in charge of ad space sales for Schibsted's Swedish Web sites, such as business site E24.se.

The 2-millionth article has been published on Wikipedia's English version of the online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit.

Wikipedia is available in 250 languages, and has more than eight million entries combined. It is the sixth most visited network of Web sites worldwide, following Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Time Warner and eBay.

Jerry Yang promised to overhaul Yahoo within his first 100 days after becoming Yahoo's CEO in July, yet an Adweek article says he was wrong to mark time that way, as the overhaul had already begun hundreds of days before Yang made his statement.

During Terry Semel’s tenure, Yahoo started its expansion beyond a Web portal in order to become part of an online ad network. Semel used to hold up Yahoo’s value as a portal, where the revenue can be generated by attracting traffic. However, when he found it was obviously not enough, Yahoo started to switch to online advertising. The company purchased Right Media late last year, and bought BlueLithium earlier this month, both of which have bolstered the company's online ad model.

USA Today will celebrate its 25th anniversary Saturday as the first national newspaper in the United States.

Founded in 1982, it was the most expensive and closely watched newspaper debut in history, and is the nation's top selling newspaper today.

Google has launched paid listings on mobile searches after one year of testing.

With keyword management integrated with the AdWords interface, advertisers will automatically have listings sent to them on the mobile platform unless they request otherwise.

The second World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo, organised by the World Association of Newspapers, will be held in Amsterdam on Oct. 17 and 18. The conference will present an overview of the best digital strategies for newspapers, presented by some of the most forward thinking media executives from around the world.

Schibsted Deputy CEO Birger Magnus will be the keynote speaker at the conference, while Leon Levitt, president of Cox Interactive, will also join in a session on digital profit initiatives.

Unlisted publisher Polskapresse has announced it will launch a new national Polish newspaper in October, Gazeta Prawna reported Thursday.

Newcomer Polskapresse will give market leaders Axel Springer and Agora a run for their money, widening competition in Poland.

As the number of freesheets in Denmark has increased from two to four, the Mecom newspaper group has been forced to admit profits will fall short of what the company had previously forecasted.

Shares fell to 80p, a 4.8 percent drop in Denmark, the largest of the five northern European countries in which Mecom operates.

Although it is behind in circulation, London Lite is ahead of rival thelondonpaper on readership, according to a readership survey released Thursday.

London Lite, owned by Associated Newspapers, is read by about 740,000 people each day, while News International's thelondonpaper is behind at 713,000, according to the National Readership Survey.

Nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched an average of three hours of online video in July, with Google sites pulling in the most unique video viewers and the most videos watched, comScore announced Thursday.

Of the more than nine billion videos Americans watched online, 2.5 billion, or 27 percent, of those were viewed on Google sites, and 2.4 billion of those were on YouTube.com. Yahoo sites ranked a distant second, with 390 million, or 4.3 percent. Fox Interactive Media had 298 million, 3.3 percent, and Viacom Digital had 281 million, 3.1 percent, according to comScore data.

Yahoo UK & Ireland announced on Wednesday an exclusive strategic partnership with social networking site Bebo. The deal covers the sales and serving of display advertising, integration of Yahoo Answer and a toolbar that allows users to manage Bebo activities.

Based on the deal, Yahoo will sell the majority of Bebo’s display advertising in the UK and Ireland, reaching an estimated 11.6 million users. Bebo’s membership reaches over 38 million users globally, ranked as the second most engaging site in the UK after Google. Most of the site's members are between ages 13 and 24.

Media group Impresa SGPS has announced its 50 percent owned EdImpresa publisher will create an Internet company providing content specifically for a younger audience.

EdImpresa will hold a 51 percent stake in the new company, Netjovens Internet.

Although Banc of America Securities analyst Joe Arns gave six newspaper publishers “Neutral” ratings, due to declining advertising revenues, he said the stocks are underpriced.

Arns doled out target prices on shares of U.S. media groups the New York Times Co., E.W. Scripps Co., McClatchy Co., Gannett Co., Lee Enterprises Inc. and GateHouse Media Inc.

The recession of print advertising at The New York Times Co. continued in August, with its News Media Group ad revenues down 4.6 percent from August 2006.

The group, with flagship New York Times, managed to eke out an increase of 0.2 percent in ad revenue by reinforcing national ads led by fashion, technology, packaged goods and hotel advertising. Retail advertising at the group fell on softness from national chain stores. Classified ad revenue declined on weakness in the main three advertising categories: real estate, help-wanted, and automotive, which have troubled metro dailies for most of the year.

An Arabic-language newspaper published by Iran's state news agency plans to reach farther into the Middle East, the newspaper Asharq Alawsat reported.

Al-Wifaq is interested in publishing in some Arab countries, specifically Iraq and the Gulf countries, the Arabic-language newspaper's editor-in-chief, Museeb Naeemi, told Asharq Alawsat.

Tracking tools that monitor what is being written on blogs, forums and in chatrooms are being used to track public reaction to events and news, and how to best manage issues with the public, The Australian reported Wednesday.

Dow Jones's Factivia helps companies understand how they are regarded by key interest groups, while the latest study by the tracking application Seer monitored views on public issues, events private sector initiatives and product launches.

Google is looking to partner with newspapers to post their video content on YouTube and share the advertising revenue.

David Eun, Google's vice president of content told the Korea Times he has had discussions with content providers in Korea, and that new deals will be announced soon.

Results from the first survey to include French language free dailies Le Matin Bleu and 20 Minutes in Switzerland are out today, showing German language 20 Minuten to be the largest daily newspaper in the country, while Le Matin Bleu is the most read daily in the country's French speaking region.

20 Minuten counts 1.2 million readers, while Le Matin Bleu has 353,000 readers, according to the Swiss readership survey conducted by Publicitas between April 2006 and March 2007. 20 Minutes saw readership of 276,000.

Shares of several newspaper companies dropped on Monday after a Wachovia Capital Markets analyst predicted lukewarm ad revenue for the second half of the year.

John Janedis said the sector’s ad revenue in August was lukewarm, and predicted the third quarter would be below expectations. He cautioned that the Journal Register Co., Lee Enterprises Inc., New York Times Co. and Gannett Co. have the most risk exposure relative to 2008 consensus earnings estimates.

France's Le Monde has launched a bold Web 2.0 experiment, LePost.fr, a separate unit from the national daily and its LeMonde.fr Web site.

Le Monde's interactif unit was charged with shaping LePost.fr to differ from other newspaper Web sites, offering a mixed, continuous stream of news from both staff reporters and readers who also contribute to the site, which launched Sunday.

Spiegel magazine group will likely buy British publisher Pearson's 50 percent stake in the daily Financial Times Deutschland, according to a Handelsblatt newspaper report.

The deal is expected to be complete in the coming weeks, the article states, citing sources at Germany's Spiegel and publisher Gruner + Jahr, which owns the other half of the FTD.

Richard Zannino, the chief executive of Dow Jones & Co., prepared the way on Monday for job losses at the company after it is acquired by News Corp.

In a letter to Dow Jones employees, publisher of the flagship Wall Street Journal, Zannino said the main goal of the $5.2 billion takeover deal is to "increase profits by strengthening and growing our products and brands, not by slashing costs."

Fairfax Digital will use the $12 million acquisition from online managed funds Web site InvestSmart to build news and lifestyle portals on its site.

InvestSmart will merge with Fairfax's Direct Access investment products Web site to create a business that will have access to more than $1 billion in managed funds, it was announced in a deal Monday, The Australian reported Tuesday.

Total U.S. advertising expenditures declined 0.3 percent to $72.5 billion in the first half of 2007, the first time that ad spending has fallen for two consecutive quarters since 2001, according to TNS Media Intelligence.

"While the protracted downturn in automotive spending has been a prime contributor, the overall results reflect weakness across a wide range of industries and advertisers. Given the uncertainties about near-term economic growth and consumer spending, we expect core ad spending will continue to face challenges during the second half of the year," Steven Fredericks, president and CEO of TNS Media Intelligence, said in a statement.

The Sun announced Monday it will launch a prepaid MasterCard to help its readers “combat the growing problem of debt.”

The prepaid MasterCard, which allows readers to spend only the amount of money they have loaded onto it, is a marketing push in association with Newcastle Building Society and Tuxedo Money Solutions.

Although 515 million newspapers are sold globally each day and more people around the world are reading newspapers than ever before, the battle between print and new media have caused print sales in Europe and the United States to drop five percent, newspaper specialist Irwin Manoim told the Flux Trends Review 2007 in Johannesburg Friday.

Although developing countries such as India, China, Bangladesh, Turkey and Korea are seeing the newspaper industry thrive, newspapers are not pushing to be as creative as rivals in other industries, reported BizCommunity, the online media partner for the event.

In an effort to improve primary education and help teachers use its Newspapers in Education programme, the Daily Monitor has extended the program to the eastern region of Uganda.

More than 200 teachers were trained last week on how to use newspapers in their classrooms to bring out creativity in students while giving them more of a quality education.

Making progress in digital acquisition, WPP has acquired Los Angeles-based interactive agency Schematic. The amount of the deal is undisclosed.

Schematic, led by Trevor Kaufman, has an impressive client list across a range of digital media. It developed CNN’s Pipeline video player, the newly designed ITV.com and the all-important development of its ad-funded media player. Schematic generated annual revenue of $29.6 million as of March.

Indian newspaper Divya Bhaskar has launched the afternoon daily Gujarati tabloid DB Gold, with target readership of businessmen and women, industrialists and traders in Surat.

The tabloid's initial print run of 80,000 copies has only been circulated in Surat, but the Bhaskar Group has stated it expects circulation to reach one lakh, or 100,000, in the next few months, and four lakhs, or 400,000 in the near future, agencyfaqs has reported.

By embracing technologies and innovations, such as creating online newspapers and sending headlines by SMS, Kenyan newspapers have increased their sales.

Pamela Howard-Reguindin, field director of the Library of Congress Office in Nairobi, told the recent World Library and Information Congress in Durban that the Daily Nation and Standard, Kenya's main newspapers papers, have “realised they must adopt new technology or fall into oblivion as has happened with some of their competitors."

Should either company decide to terminate the $5.2 billion merger deal, Dow Jones & Co. would have to pay Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation $165 million, according to a regulatory filing revealed Monday.

The fee imposed on Dow Jones, should News Corp.'s takeover bid not go through, was revealed in a filing made in connection with shareholder meetings to complete the merger.

The Financial Times has once again boosted its year-on-year circulation by 2.51 percent, making it the only daily quality paper with a rise in sales.

According to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, it sold 426,830 copies in August, about a 0.09 percent rise over July’s circulation.

The Wall Street Journal Friday announced it will reorganise its advertising sales department to create the leading marketing and integrated sales team in business media.

Designed to help advertisers better reach the newspaper's worldwide audience of 19 million, the reorganisation is a response to “increasing requests by our advertisers for integrated solutions across all media,” L. Gordon Crovitz, executive vice president of Dow Jones & Co. and publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is quoted as saying by Prime Newswire.

Privately owned newspapers in Zimbabwe got a lift from bumper editions reporting financial results that began being released in September instead of July, due to delays caused by unavailability of inflation rates from the first half of the year until June 30.

The rush to publish financial results follows a government cabinet taskforce on pricing, which forced newspapers to cut prices and advertising rates by half at the end of June. The taskforce overlooked independent newspapers in a review allowing state newspapers to hike cover prices by 20 percent and advertising rates by 50 percent at the end of August.

In a departure from video news clips only, the Telegraph has launched a new on-demand video news service that provides a seven minute bulletin of stories that can be viewed as separate clips or all together.

Telegraph News Now features the newspaper's reporters in video content, produced in partnership with ITN, that is updated throughout the day.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is one of the potential buyers of the second largest media group in Turkey.

Regulators put the assets of Merkez Yayin Holding, which includes Sabah newspaper and ATV Television, up for sale this week at a price of $1.1 billion, seeking to make back losses at a failed bank.

The Paxton Media Group has bought The LaPorte County Herald-Argus daily newspaper in LaPorte County, Ind.

This sale from the Small Newspaper Group announced Thursday is expected to be effective October 1. The deal amount has not yet been disclosed.

USA Today began offering three kinds of “widgets” this week, with plans to offer four more in the future.

Designed to rake in advertising dollars through ads offered on them, USA Today's widgets can be installed by online users onto their blogs and personal Web pages. The widgets will then pull news updates and information from the newspaper's site.

Yahoo’s $300 million buyout of BlueLithium comes in the middle of CEO Jerry Yang’s 100-day strategic planning period, right after the management reorganisation by president Sue Decker and prior to government clearance of Google's deal to buy DoubleClick.

By integrating BlueLithium’s targeting and analytics technology, Yahoo will prop its own capability to serve behavioural and contextual ads on its Publisher Network and improve the Smart Ads service.

Putting stories online before they appear in the newspaper actually helps print circulation by raising awareness and creating new readers, according to the UK-based Newsquest.

The 'web-first' strategy increased the Daily Telegraph's print edition market share by three percent in the year after the newspaper built up its web focus, said the paper's editor, Will Lewis, according to Press Gazette.

Polish national daily Gazeta Wyborcza saw a four percent increase in sales in July from the previous year, Polish press distributors' association data reported Wednesday.

Agora's flagship newspaper, which accounts for 70 percent of the company's revenues, sold an average of 423,842 copies each day in July, about 0.6 percent less than in June.

About 15.2 million, or 61 percent, of all UK households had Internet access as of May 2007, a four percent increase since last year, according to the 2007 Omnibus Survey from the UK Office of National Statistics.

"The UK government has managed to successfully create a regulatory environment that has fostered competition in the sector. Separating the wholesale and retail arms of British Telecom has given smaller ISPs and access providers an opportunity to compete with their bigger rivals," eMarketer senior analyst Ben Macklin is quoted as saying in an eMarketer article.

The Guardian is centralising its recruitment and display advertising sales operation in London.

The move, currently under consultation, is aimed at developing a national management structure for the newspaper’s ad sales teams. A small number of redundancies is expected in London and Manchester.

The marketing communications manager of Afrikaans daily newspaper Beeld Wednesday listed myths about media consumption habits of young readers in South Africa that can be applied to better serving young readers around the world.

Gavin Rheeder's conclusions are based on his work with JIP, the KwaZulu-Natal-based newspaper's weekly youth insert. JIP caters to Afrikaans readers between ages 13 and 25. It is inserted into Beeld, Volksblad and Die Burger, and has a readership of 316,000.

The Sun's move to cut its cover price to 20 pence in London and begin using street vendors to stay ahead of circulation rivals the Daily Mail and freesheet Metro could force rival red-tops the Daily Mirror and Daily Star to follow suit, should the price cut prove successful.

The price slash, from 35 pence to 20 pence that began Monday in the London region, is seen as a defensive strategy to keep circulation above three million, and is being backed by a television advertising campaign.

Following the recent RightMedia deal, Yahoo is making yet another acquisition in the online advertising market by purchasing BlueLithium, the online ad network, for about $300 million in cash.

BlueLithium, the fifth largest ad network in the U.S. and second largest in the UK, has nearly 145 million unique visitors per month, according to comScore.

The free Australian daily mX has seen readership double since 2005 in Sydney, and increase more than 50 percent in Melbourne compared to 2001, when the paper was launched, Newspaper Innovation has reported.

mX's Brisbane edition, launched in March, has not been audited, although publisher News Ltd. stated readership was at 74,000 in December last year. The Melbourne edition saw readership increase from 100,000 in 2001 to 157,000 in 2007, with circulation at about 90,000.

Japan's Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Wednesday announced Tsuneo Watanabe and Toshitada Nakae are the winners of the Newspaper Cultural Award for the current fiscal year.

Watanabe is chairman of the board and editor-in-chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings. Nakae is the former president of The Asahi Shimbun.

The English-language Standard, a business daily in Hong Kong, will go free beginning Monday.

According to its publisher, Sing Tao News Corp., the move to drop costs for readers is a push to compete with the paper's rival, the South China Morning Post, and to acquire more readers. The free publication will be distributed at over 80 spots, including schools, airports, hotels, and business districts throughout Hong Kong.

Advertising on newspaper Web sites in the United States reached $796 million in the second quarter, an increase of 19.3 percent from last year, according to preliminary estimates from the Newspaper Association of America.

Not surprisingly, the 13th consecutive quarter of growth in the double-digits saw Web site advertising continue to grow, now at seven percent of total newspaper ad spending, compared to 5.4 percent last year, the NAA stated.

Online newspaper advertising is still a relatively small portion of overall advertising income for newspapers, but its continued growth indicates how important it is, and how integral it will be in the future.

Advertising on newspaper Web sites has grown in the double digits for 13 quarters in a row, since the Newspaper Association of America started reporting online ad spending in 2004, and now makes up seven percent of overall newspaper ad spending in the United States, compared to 5.4 percent in the second quarter one year ago.

The Trinity Mirror will launch a free weekly business paper in Scotland, the first freesheet to be put out by the Daily Mirror's publisher.

The new weekly, Business 7, will be distributed to nearly 20,000 people every Friday morning.

Local newspapers in the United Kingdom are pushing to publish industry-wide Web site traffic numbers, launching a new tool Tuesday which will detail readership across platforms and help advertisers plan and target local advertising.

Although traffic data from 800 of the 1,100 local newspaper Web sites in the UK on the Newspaper Society's Media Portfolio Database will initially come from publishers, the tool has been developed with the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic, the official industry auditor. Many of these papers will be auditing online users for the first time.

Searching for new ways to entice marketers, newspapers are looking to make scratch-and-sniff advertisements a new part of print advertising.

The Los Angeles Times will carry a scratch-and-sniff ad Sunday in a 32-page autumn films section. The advertisement, for “Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium,” will smell like frosted cake, according to a Tuesday New York Times article.

Widespread adoption of broadband technology means streaming video is now reaching most Web users, and a surprising 70 percent of people age 35 and older are now viewing online video, according to a new Advertising.com study.

"The Internet is still seen first and foremost as an information resource," said Lynda Clarizio, president of Advertising.com. "With news clips remaining the most popular type of streamed content, video viewing habits reflect that status."