October 2007 Archives

The Dutch free daily DAG will launch a narrowcast channel that will be viewable in 1,200 cafés across the Netherlands, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

DAG is owned by PCM publishers and the telecom company KPN.

Indonesia could see some 40,000 villages linked with fiber-optic networks, giving them telephone and Internet connections, should the nation's government open the project for approval in Surabaya, East Java on Nov. 30.

The project would link the entire archipelago with a fiber-optic network, which would be called the Palapa Ring Project, said Muhammad Nuh, Indonesia's information and communication minister.

Although U.S. newspapers reported a print ad revenue fall in the third quarter, the number of visitors to the newspaper Web sites went up 3.7 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Over 59 million people, or 37.1 percent of all active online users, visited newspaper Web sites during the quarter, growing from 56.9 million a year ago, the Newspaper Association stated, citing data provided by Nielsen//NetRatings.

Lithuanian free daily 15min has expanded content by adding new supplements, including the new bi-weekly 15min SAU, Newspaper Innovation reported.

The magazine-like supplement covers psychology, beauty, innovations, travel and housing.

Fewer than four percent of Africans have an Internet connection, a depressing statistic Connect Africa, a summit of African politicians, international lenders and IT leaders, hopes to change.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was able to persuade Microsoft to help monitor the progress of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment in the continent with an online application called Global View, based on Microsoft's Virtual Earth, but hosted by the ITU, Heise Online reported Wednesday.

The Financial Mail in the United Kingdom is breaking fresh ground among national papers by launching a Polish supplement.

The business and personal finance section of the Mail on Sunday will launch reports in English and Polish, and as an online version at www.thisismoney.co.uk.

Thanks to new advertising programmes and expected expansion into the mobile phone services arena, Google Inc. shares have eclipsed $700, adding $100 in less than a month.

Google stock rose $5.38 to $700.15 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading Wednesday morning in New York, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Even earlier in the morning, shares had reached $704.79.

Trinity Mirror has hired News Corporation's mobile head from its Australian digital branch to lead its interactive group.

Rick Gleave will develop, test and launch Trinity Mirror's various content subscriptions services to mobile phones, MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

More than 10 percent of U.S. homes are receiving HD channels, according to new data from Nielsen.

The research firm also found that 11.3 percent, or 12.7 million, of 112.8 million U.S. homes not only have HD sets, but “have activated the service to receive the more pristine feed.” Some 13.7 percent have HD-compatible TVs, so the "turn-on" rate is significant.

Rupert Murdoch opened his Eurocentral printing plant in Scotland today, announcing it is the “largest and fastest” in the world, MediaGuardian reported.

The first stage of the UK subsidiary News International's £650 million printing press modernisation programme was also unveiled by the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation Murdoch, who was joined by Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister.

Bloggers and journalists have united to launch a Scandinavian citizen journalism portal to create a cross-regional Scandinavian news site, Kristine Lowe reported Tuesday from Oslo.

iNorden.org is “an attempt at setting new standards for civic journalism in our neck of the woods,” the site's founders stated.

Rumours of Google’s mobile plans have haunted the media and technology sectors all year, but sources close to MocoNews have suggested that the online big shot is going to announce a mobile operating system in mid-November.

The Wall Street Journal received similar information, reporting that “within the next two weeks, Google is expected to announce its plans to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year.”

The Times and The Telegraph have taken their Fleet Street rivalries to the desert, this time vying for the attention of the United Arab Emirate's cutting edge business community, Emirates Today Online reported Tuesday.

The Times of London is currently holding a business forum in Dubai, and has been printing 15,000 copies a day in the city since May. On Monday, The Daily Telegraph launched a temporary online edition for Dubai that can be downloaded and printed.

France's Culture Minister said in an interview Friday that the planned sale of French business daily Les Echos to luxury goods maker LVMH is a “private matter,” which does not call for legislation.

“I met LVMH's head, Bernard Arnault. I received the staff of Les Echos and La Tribune. Guarantees have been given. This is a private matter. The journalists, I believe they are independent. I do not think its is necessary to adopt a law,” Christine Albanel told French daily Le Monde.

ImpreMedia, the parent company of La Opinion in Los Angeles and El Diario La Prensa in New York City, is set to become the biggest Hispanic paper participant in Google's Print Ads and AdSense programs, according to a company statement Monday.

ImpreMedia's Spanish-language papers will join about 600 English-language papers in Google ad programmes.

When The New York Times changes its tagline from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the News That’s Fit to Click,” there is no doubt that the publishing world is facing tremendous change.

According to The Newspapers and Magazines Online report from eMarketer, newspaper publishers in the past few years have experienced an ad revenue migration from print, especially classifieds, to online sites, such as AutoTrader, Craigslist, Monster and Zillow.com. Many magazines with million subscribers have been shut down in favour of branded Web sites.

The BBC has set up a board for complaints following a phone-in featuring the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

Callers phoned in to the radio station 5 live to tell Sir Christopher Meyer their complaints against Scottish newspapers.

The Philadelphia Inquirer will launch its electronic edition in January, according to Pressmart Media Ltd., which will develop and deliver the digital edition.

"Pressmart will co-develop, host and electronically deliver the print-replica eEdition of The Philadelphia Inquirer on its New Media Delivery Platform," the company said in a statement. "Offering Web 2.0 features that include blogs, podcasts, RSS and social media integration, the electronic edition will be delivered on multiple distribution channels to individuals, enterprises and academic institutions."

The first Ugandan newspaper was recently delivered to Bukwo, the newly created remote eastern border district.

The very first copies of Daily Monitor were delivered to five schools in Suam town council.

The privately owned Czech publisher Mladá Fronta AS announced Monday it will launch a free business daily newspaper, called E15, at the end of November.

E15 will be published five times a week, beginning at a circulation of 50,000 copies and will be styled partly after London's City A.M. free daily, according to the Associated Press.

Gannett Co. Inc. and The Tribune Company announced Monday they will expand the Metromix brand of entertainment Web sites to a network across the United States.

Metromix LLC will launch Metromix.com in the top 30 media markets in the United States, as well as in other key metro areas, a joint release stated.

Chicago RedEye, the free daily tabloid published by the Chicago Tribune, bumped up 50,000 copies to a distribution of 200,000, on its fifth anniversary on Monday.

With the 33 percent circulation increase, RedEye is now the daily with largest distribution in the Chicago area, the paper said.

Media buyers are happy with Yahoo’s decision to open up its home page by adding outside links, but said the company should be moving faster to clear up barriers.

Yahoo last week started posting links to other news and content sites on the Featured section for the first time. The effort is aimed to open up the portal and make it the entry site for online users.

Paris-based Publicis Groupe revealed results that CEO Maurice Levy termed as “good” for the third quarter of 2007, with “excellent double digit growth” among its two media networks, Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia Group and the recent buyout of digital network Digitas.

Revenues of Publicis increased 10.8 percent to $1.617 billion in the third quarter, compared with the disappointing results of the first half.

The Sunday Times is the newspaper British readers spend the most time with, according to a National Readership Survey out Friday.

This is the first time the NRS revealed a set of data regarding the time spent reading papers, and will become a standard NRS data release, MediaGuardian reported Friday.

The World Federation of Advertisers has asked the European Union to “closely examine” Google's proposed $3.1 billion (£1.5 billion) purchase of DoubleClick, which the group says has the potential to greatly reduce competition in Internet advertising, MediaGuardian reported Friday.

The WFA sent a letter to the European Union's commission asking the EU to analyse the proposed acquisition as well as Microsoft's $6 billion (£2.92 billion) buyout of aQuantive and WPP's takeover of RealMedia.

Journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald have protested the newspaper's use of its front page to promote Singapore Airlines Friday.

The broadsheet also devoted a four-page wraparound to Thursday's arrival of the airline's giant A380 airbus. The wraparound included a full-page Singapore Airlines advertisement and three smaller ads for the airline, as well as articles about the arrival of the world's largest passenger plane and other milestones in aviation, The Australian reported Friday.

The board of The Associated Press on Thursday approved a major change on how it prices and packages news to U.S. newspapers.

Instead of offering news feeds defined by the volume of news delivered, the new plan will focus on a core service of all breaking news including national, state and international, with options for adding other services or purchasing stories individually.

The British government has dropped its proposals to tighten freedom of information legislation that would make rules more restrictive on cost limits for FOI requests and limit media access to coroners' courts and will instead investigate the idea for a freedom of expression audit for future legislation, the UK's Newspaper Society reported Thursday.

“We agree with Select Committee on Culture that a free press is a hallmark of our democracy, that there is no case for statutory regulation of the press, that self- regulation of the press should be maintained and that it is for publishers themselves to demonstrate by their decisions that they can sustain and bolster public confidence in the way information is gathered and used,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, according to the NS.

Swiss media group Tamedia AG will launch its free newspaper on Dec. 5. The new publication, named “News”, will have 334,000 copies published for the first edition, the group said in a statement.

The paper is a joint venture between Swiss local papers Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung and the national daily Tages-Anzeiger.

The Sun's Web site is the latest to switch to Escenic CMS's content management platform.

More than 350 media sites in 14 countries have switched to Escenic Content Engine, including The Times Online and Die Welt, according to an Escenic statement.

Japanese corporation Bridgestone has revealed its latest product - full-colour, bendable e-paper - which could be available as early as 2009.

The company has created a 0.29mm-thick, and 20sq cm measured display, which is able to show 4,096 colours.

Will Metro International, the “Free Dailies King” be dethroned by other free dailies following in its footsteps?

BusinessWeek talked to analysts who say that this may be so, as competitors usually have businesses outside free dailies to fall back on. Not so with Metro.

Wall Street analyst Paul Ginocchio has predicted that big metro papers will bounce back, but not until 2012.

The Deutsche Bank Securities analyst warned that if earnings do turn into black again, they'll be in margins far below the levels newspapers used to have in the 1990s.

News International is investing millions of pounds in the property search engine Globrix, expected to launch in November.

Globrix searches across several property sites and locates all properties available in the United Kingdom. It will use the funding from News International to become a top property search site within its first year, News International reported Thursday.

The E.W. Scripps Company reported third-quarter operating results Thursday, showing strong revenue and segment profit growth at Scripps Networks, which includes Food Network, HGTV and other national television networks.

The company's third-quarter revenue was $596 million, compared to $583 million the same period last year, PR Newswire reported.

Journalists, textile workers, file clerks, computer programmers and photo lab technicians are all on the U.S. government's list of endangered career paths in the 21st century, MSNBC reported.

Despite the numbers of media outlets increasing, newspapers, where most U.S. reporters work, will have to cut costs and jobs as digital media increases and print weakens, the U.S. Labor Department says.

Microsoft Corp. Wednesday announced its $240 million investment in a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, a deal which places a $15 billion valuation on the three-year-old social network. By beating out Google after lengthy lobbying, Microsoft won exclusive global rights to sell third-party banner advertisings on the social networking site.

Microsoft has been able to sell ads on Facebook in the United States since August 2006. This move to expand to global market, however, is critical because 60 percent of Facebook’s 50 million registered users are overseas.

A new standard to protect the intellectual property of anyone wishing to make content available on the Internet will be unveiled at a conference in New York next month after a year-long pilot project spearheaded by leading publishing groups from around the globe.

Agora has launched a new e-mail service in partnership with Google, the Polish media company announced in a statement.

G.pl web mail is based on Google's popular Gmail, and uses Google's technology to provide high quality, extended capacity and functions, such as calendar synchronization, voice and text communicator (Google Talk) and documents sharing among G.pl and Gmail users, Agora stated Monday.

The Guardian America site was launched Tuesday, aimed to meet the needs of a growing U.S. audience, according to its editors.

Michael Tomasky, editor of the Guardianamerica.com site, said it would include the best of the UK site and also “political and cultural coverage of the States that is more geared toward a US audience’s interests.”

Strikes by public transport workers in France meant two free dailies, MatinPlus and Direct Soir, were not published last Thursday and Friday, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

Both free dailies are published by Vincent Bolloré.

John Mulholland will take the reins from Roger Alton as editor of The Observer at the end of the year.

Previously at the Guardian, Alton has been at The Observer for more than 20 years, and has served as arts editor, features editor, editor of Weekend magazine and assistant editor. Mulholland is currently deputy editor at The Observer, Press Gazette reported Wednesday.

GateHouse Media Inc. said Tuesday it has agreed to buy several daily and non-daily publications from Morris Publishing Group for $115 million.

GateHouse Media said the acquisition is expected to generate “an incremental $14 million of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization,” according to Finanz Nachrichten.

Susan L. Decker, Yahoo’s President, said that the company would emphasize partnerships with popular local search engines in South Korea in order to maintain Yahoo's strong position in the country’s online search market.

"South Korea's Internet market is expected to rise 20 percent on average annually over the next four years. South Korea is a single largest market except that of the U.S.," Decker said, unveiling her intention Tuesday for a bigger stake in the world's most Internet-savvy country.

Reuters and Nokia Research Center (NRC) are teaming up on a mobile journalism project that could change how journalists file news when they're on the go.

The new mobile application is based on a lightweight toolkit that gives journalists everything they need to file and publish news from the most remote regions in the world. It is the first project the NRC and Reuters are showcasing after collaborating on long-term research, PR Newswire reported.

In Asia, South Korea is the country with highest Internet penetration, beating even Japan, while China has the most monthly unique users but the Internet reach is still very low, according to the “China: Online Overview” report from eMarketer.

South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are the top three countries with Internet penetration over 60 percent, while China and India lag far behind, with the online reach of merely nine and three percent, respectively.

HT Media Ltd. and The Wall Street Journal's joint venture, Mint, is set to launch its third edition in Bangalore in the next month, an expansion that comes within eight months of being launched, Agencyfaqs reported Tuesday.

Mint is the fifth business daily to hit newsstands in India, and the third from media giant HT.

Fairfax Media is closing its printing press in Warrnambool, in Victoria's south west, causing up to 20 job losses there.

The closing is part of an effort to combine the company's regional printing plants, ABC News in Australia reported.

MediaNews Group Inc. announced Monday that Hearst Corp. bought its stake for $317 million as part of a deal between these two private publishing groups involving several papers in San Francisco area.

According to the terms of the deal, which was first announced last year and completed Friday, MediaNews picked up newspapers that Hearst acquired from McClatchy Co. as an exchange for Hearst’s 31 percent interest in MediaNews's operations outside the Bay Area.

Billionaire Sam Zell, who plans to buy the Tribune Company, told a group of newspaper executives Monday that part of the industry's problems are due to complacency, comparing the industry to Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the Canadian Press reported.

“I think the newspaper industry has stood there and watched while other media enterprises have taken our bacon and run with it,” he told the Inland Press Association. “It's too much complacency.”

The New York Times Company announced Tuesday that total revenues from continuing operations were up five percent in September compared with the same period last year.

Ad revenues increased 5.5 percent and circulation revenues rose 4.1 percent.

Newspapers and magazines in Ireland record circulation figures monthly, but release those figures just twice a year. Releasing the data more often could mean more lucrative advertising deals, Ireland's Sunday Business Post reported Sunday.

In fact, advertisers could begin asking for these figures more frequently due to the ever-growing number of people using electronic media, and should the Irish media resist, they could be left behind, ABC's Martyn Gates told the Post.

The Sun announced its mobile phone offering to readers Monday, making it the first UK national newspaper to launch a ".mobi" domain name with content to mobile users.

The site, www.thesun.mobi, allows readers to access it over mobile phones or portable devices, and covers a simple version of contents on the Sun's Web site.

MediaNews Group will create Web sites separate from its 57 dailies in an attempt to reach younger readers and increase the percentage of sales that come from the Web from the current seven percent to 20 percent within the next five years.

MediaNews owns the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News, among others.

Tribune Co. stock on Friday dropped the hardest in five years, after the Los Angeles Times reported that the planned $8 billion purchase by Sam Zell is in peril.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering possible changes in media-ownership regulations, which may cause the Tribune deal to not close on time, the Times stated.

The Financial Times saw a nine percent bump in ad revenues for the first nine months of the year, while its owner, Pearson Plc, has reported a 20 percent jump in operating profits.

Pearson said it expects to “achieve a strong underlying growth on its key financial measures for the full year,” and currently all of its businesses are trading either in line or ahead of forecasts, Brand Republic reported Monday.

Both MySpace and Facebook each lost over one million users in September compared with the previous month, according to Nielsen Online.

The unique user for MySpace dropped by nearly three percent to 58.6 million in September versus the 60.3 million in August. That marked the first time since June that MySpace saw unique user figures at less than 60 million.

At least 33 interactive digital media research projects have been given $14 million in funding in the past year in Singapore, The Straits Times reported.

The funding is part of $500 million the government put aside last year to place Singapore in a top position to grow into a hub for interactive digital media (IDM).

Advertising will appear on the BBC.com Web site beginning next month.

BBC Worldwide will soon be able to bring in revenues from its global audience following approval for the controversial plan from the BBC Trust.

The World Editor & Marketeer conference and Expo, organised by the World Association of Newspapers, ended Friday as a celebration of newspapers' future, in print and as a growing multimedia business.

“Newspapers are a growth business, with circulation, free dailies, market share, advertising revenues and newspaper online consumption continuing to grow, as do the number of newspaper titles,” said Eamonn Byrne, business director for the WAN.

As it prepares for its expected December acquisition by News Corp., Dow Jones & Co. reported revenues jumped nearly 20 percent in the third quarter to $493 million, thanks to a 50 percent acquisition of Factivia.

Without the acquisition, revenue would have increased only about 1.8 percent, as print advertising continued to decline in the quarter. Excluding a comparison to 2006's high earnings per share due to a major tax gain that year, as well as a charge for costs relating to the upcoming merger, Dow Jones also saw earnings of $23.1 million, or $0.27 per share – that's a 145 percent increase from third quarter 2006, when profit was at $9.4 million and $0.11 per share, paidContent reported Thursday.

Kif?, the first free independent commuter newspaper on the public transport system in Malta, was launched Wednesday, patronised by the Ministry of Urban Development and Roads, the Malta Transport Authority and the Public Transport Association.

The publication will be issued on the public transport system and readers can pick up a copy every Thursday morning on their commute.

Two Village Voice Media executives were arrested in Phoenix Thursday on charges that a story published earlier that day in The Phoenix New Times, owned by Village Voice, revealed grand jury secrets.

Jim Larkin, chief executive, and Michael Lacey, the executive editor, were arrested at their homes Thursday night because of an article they wrote revealing that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, reporters and names of the readers of its Web site had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor, the New York Times reported Friday.

Free newspapers are a major force in print, particularly in Europe, where two-thirds of the 42 million copies every workday are published.

Piet Bakker, one of the world's leading researchers on the subject, provided an overview of the free newspaper phenomenon and their impact on newspaper markets at the World Editor & Marketeer conference in Amsterdam.

Advertising supports journalism – we all know that. But what happens when a specific advertiser is courted to sponsor a specific piece of journalism? Is it a viable new business model, or does the ad depreciate the value of the journalism it is meant to support?

A Memphis editor found out that things don't always work out in the best interest of journalism or advertising. Chris Peck, of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, told Editor & Publisher Thursday his paper found itself on “treacherous ground” when its advertising department pursued Federal Express to sponsor a six-part series titled “Memphis and the World,” set to run for six Sundays beginning in November.

Publishers at the 2nd World Digital Publishing Conference in Amsterdam Thursday agreed on one thing when it comes to newspapers' uncertain future: the pace of development is always increasing, and being able to adapt to that constant change is vital to each newspaper's survival and success.

“I can't tell you what products and services will be available in five years. I have some ideas, but it is nonsense to guess,” Birger Magnus, deputy CEO of Schibsted, the Norway-based publishing group, told conference-goers. “The only thing we know is the speed of change is increasing, we have to be flexible and adapt.”

Singapore and China have inked 17 agreements to develop the interactive digital media (IDM) industries in the two countries.

The agreements were signed by Singapore's Media Development Authority (MDA) and China's State Administration for Film, Radio and Television, which means both countries will be “well poised to capture a slice of the IDM market,” Asia Media reported Thursday.

Asians will drive the evolution of content and applications online, which are now dominated by English-speaking users, said Vinton Cerf, Google's vice president, at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul Wednesday.

"The number of people using the Internet will only increase in Asia, so will their languages, culture and contents on the network," Cerf added.

Overall, readership in Denmark is on the upswing, with free dailies claiming the top three spots, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

24timer counted 594,000 readers, MetroXpres has 571,000 and Nyhedsavisen has 503,000, according to September readership data.

Aegis, the UK-based agency holding company Thursday announced its acquisition of Implicom, a Paris-based firm specialising in sales promotion and direct marketing media. With about $4.6 million gross assets, Implicom will ally with Aegis Media unit, which oversees media networks like Carat, Isobar, Vizeum and Posterscope, and happens to be the dominant media buyer in France.

"Its expertise will help us further broaden our market-leading offer in France, where Aegis Media is the number one player," said Robert Lerwill, the group's CEO, according to Media Post. He said that Implicom would be part of an "integrated" offering.

What will the newspaper look like in 2020? The Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project asked 22 futurists, academics, industry insiders, internet pioneers and other media experts to envision the newspaper of the future, and their responses say much about the present state of the newspaper business.

Top Spanish newspaper El Pais already prints a Latin American edition in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, but will expand distribution in the region to further its place in the market, ultimately using the print version's reach as a vehicle to establish a global brand on the Internet, the head of media group Prisa told Reuters in a report Wednesday.

Prisa is not aiming for El Pais to compete with local dailies already established in Spanish-speaking markets, but to “capture an educated elite of the sort won over by The Economist in that magazine's transformation from a British to a world-wide publication,” the Reuters article stated.

A Russian Federal Security Service officer has been charged Wednesday in connection with the 2006 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

FSB Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov has been charged with providing Politkovskaya's killers with her home address prior to her Oct. 7, 2006 slaying in her Moscow apartment building, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday, citing a source close to the investigation, United Press International stated in an article.

The East Valley Tribune, an Arizona daily which serves the Scottsdale/Mesa/Tempe area, this week announced major changes to its content and business model.

The paper will move all local news to the front page, and increase the number of local editions from two to four. It will also convert the new front local news section to a smaller size and distribute it for free in selected areas. Moreover, paid subscribers will keep receiving full content in print and Web in a "premium" package.

Gannett Co. reported Wednesday profits fell 10 percent in the third-quarter, due to a slump in classified advertising sales and television revenue.

Net income dropped $234 million, or $1.01 per share, for the largest newspaper publisher in the United States. The third quarter in 2006 saw net income at $261.4 million, or $1.11 per share. Sales dropped 3.8 percent to $1.81 billion, but earnings per share bested the average of $1 based on the average of 11 analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg, the financial news service reported Wednesday.

The Bristol Evening Post is the first in the UK regional press to broadcast city council meetings live via webcasts on its Web site.

Beginning Tuesday night, thisisbristol.co.uk began offering readers live coverage of the 6 p.m. Bristol City Council meetings, keeping the video posted on its Web site for those unable to watch as it happened live.

MySpace has struck a deal with Skype which will enable users to make free online phone calls.

According to the deal, which is set to begin in November, MySpace members can access the phone service on the social networking Web site through the instant messaging function.

The 320-million strong young Chinese consumer group, between ages 16 and 20, have strong spending powers and a huge appetite for electronic media and foreign consumer goods.

A report from Pearl Research released last week reveals some insights for marketers interested in tapping into the growing youth market.

The publisher of the popular weekly Uyo newspaper, Events, was arrested by security agents last week and continues to be detained, apparently because of allegations printed in the latest edition of the newspaper.

The paper, published by Jerome Imeime, contained a caption reading “Akpabio finger treasury,” which may have contained unfavourable news or allegations about the country's governor, Godswill Akpabio.

At the World Digital Publishing conference in Amsterdam, Steve Seraita made a case for a combined print and web audience measurement to better reflect the reach of newspapers than audited circulation alone.

International press freedom watchdog group Reporters Sans Frontières released Tuesday its Worldwide Press Freedom Index 2007, which measures the level of press freedom in 169 countries. The index revealed Eritrea has replaced North Korea as being in last place in the world with respect to press freedom, while Iceland claimed the number one spot as best in the world.

Online press freedom violations are playing an increasing role in affecting overall press freedom around the world, as the most oppressive governments, such as China, are finding new ways to quash freedom of speech, the index reported.

British publishing giant Mecom is planning to bid on a 62 percent stake in Sueddeutscher Verlag, the Stuttgart-based group that publishes Germany's largest broadsheet daily, Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The deal would value the newspaper group at more than 1 billion euro (£695 million).

In a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission late Friday, Belo Corp. has outlined what the company will look like after its proposed newspaper company is established independently in the first three months of 2008, The Providence Journal reported Tuesday.

The Dallas, Texas-based media company announced a plan to split the company in two on Oct. 1. Should the split go as planned, Belo Corp. would continue to hold the company's TV stations, while a new, separate company, to be called A.H Belo Corp., would be created to hold its newspapers.

E.W. Scripps says a plan to split itself into two separate companies has been approved by its board. Scripps Network Interactive, which includes the company’s cable networks and Internet assets, will be spun off to shareholders, while E.W. Scripps will hold onto its newspapers and broadcast TV businesses.

The move follows Belo’s decision to spin-off of its newspaper business from its broadcast business two weeks ago.

In order to keep their videos off YouTube, media companies may have to give their videos to YouTube.

YouTube's parent company, Google Inc., announced on Monday its long-promised method to reduce piracy, which means it will need content owners ,such as TV networks and movie studios, to provide the online video-sharing site with master copies of their videos.

Vienna's free/paid daily Österreich has been around for more than a year, and is proudly announcing its place in Austria's top three newspaper slots, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

In a special issue handed out during the last IfraExpo, the paper stated it is in third place, not counting free circulation, after Kronen Zeitung and Kleine Zeitung, and before Kurier, Presse and Standard. If free circulation is taken into account, Österreich moves up to second place.

McClatchy Co., one of the largest newspaper companies in the United States, stated Tuesday its profits and revenue for the third quarter have dipped sharply, leading the company to take a non-cash charge due to a 57 percent drop in its stock price since January and continued difficulty for the daily newspapers sector.

McClatchy said it is still deciding how much the charge will be, and expects to disclose an amount in the company's quarterly regulatory filing on or before Nov. 9, the Associated Press reported.

Most senior executives prefer to get information from a mix of print and online formats, according to a recent survey by Doremus and the Financial Times.

About 75 percent of respondents said print media were not becoming obsolete. More than 60 percent said they paid more attention to print ads, and 59 percent said they trusted print more than online media for information. Six out of 10 indicated they preferred print for in-depth analysis.

The Nielsen Co. Monday announced a reorganisation of its online and mobile measurement services, consolidating its Nielsen//NetRatings division with BuzzMetrics into Nielsen Online, and re-branding the recently-acquired Telephia unit as Nielsen Mobile.

As part of the plan, Itzhak Fisher, former executive chairman of BuzzMetrics, has been named executive chairman of Nielsen Online. Manish Bhatia, executive vice president of Nielsen//NetRatings, was named president of global services and U.S. sales for Nielsen Online,. Jonathan Carson, a co-founder of BuzzMetrics, was named president of Nielsen Online's international organisation.

Newsstands in Poland looked a little different and weighed a little more today, as the new daily title Polska launched, while broadsheet Rzeczpospolita switched to a new format.

Rzeczpospolita, the country's last broadsheet, reduced to Berliner size. Polska has chosen to begin circulation just as Poland prepares for its general election at the end of the week.

Every edition of the Guardian and Observer will be available in a newly launched online digital archive beginning Nov. 3.

The first phase of the News & Media archive will include the Guardian from 1821 to 1975 and The Observer from 1900 to 1975.

Greenpeace activists in the Netherlands this weekend blocked a cargo ship they said was carrying newsprint that had been made from trees cut down in old growth forests in Canada.

The environmentalists called for newspapers to not use papers made from old growth forests, and on Saturday prevented a 560-foot ship called Finnwood from unloading at Terneuzen port, 130 miles south of Amsterdam, the Associated Press reported.

Gannett Co. announced Monday it has joined with Tribune Co. to publish and syndicate USA Today on a weekly basis outside the United States.

Gannett, the publisher of USA Today, the highest-selling U.S. daily, will publish an eight-page broadsheet called USA Today Abroad, which will cover most of the feature stories from the daily version in the previous week.

The Hartford (Connecticut) Courant has brought a digital reproduction of The Courant's print version to the small screen, making the newspaper accessible, downloadable and searchable from computers or iPhones.

eCourant differs from the newspaper's Web site courant.com, as the Web site focuses on breaking news, offering a different format for news and information, while eCourant is a smaller version of the print format.

The Sun reached an audience of 22.2 million people in Britain last month through print, online and mobile media combined, the newspaper has announced.

Its combined audience has grown 13 percent year-on-year, helped by its September Audit Bureau of Circulations figure of 3,213,756 copies, the Guardian reported Monday.

Newspaper publisher Journal Register Co.'s current chairman and chief executive, Robert Jelenic, will resign, effective Nov. 1. James Hall will take his place.

Hall, 60, has been the company's acting CEO since mid-June, when Jelenic, 57, took a leave of absence to undergo treatment for cancer.

Metro International expects third quarter losses to reach $18 million, double last year's deficit, and a blow that has it reviewing its operations around the world, Brand Republic reported Friday.

“We are launching actions based on our findings and conclusions and this work will intensify over the coming period,” said Dennis Malamatinas, chairman of the board at Metro, according to the report.

The alliance between Yahoo Inc. and hundreds of newspaper Web sites has aided publishers in gaining advertising, but could end up costing them independence and flexibility, all while burdening them with the uncertainty of technology that hasn't proven itself yet, Reuters reported Thursday.

Some of the 19 publishers partnering with Yahoo say the program has helped bring in readers and increased advertising in its first phase (in which classified ads are linked between newspaper sites and Yahoo's HotJobs), but nearly a year after the alliance was formed, results are hard to come by.

The Financial Times recorded a 2.1 percent year-on-year circulation growth once again in September, which makes it the only daily quality newspaper seeing a rise in sales, the Guardian reported.

Owned by Pearson, the business daily sold an average of 441,219 copies last month, a 3.4 percent rise from August, according to data released Friday by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Those watching the most online videos in the United States tend to be younger males, who are also above the average income level, a recent study conducted by the Online Publishers Association found.

The study profiles an average U.S. online video viewer as 39 years-old with an annual income of $59,000, and has equal opportunities for both genders.

Police in Niger are continuing to detain a journalist who ran the only newspaper in the region, which has been made unstable by a continuing rebellion against government, Voice of America news reported Friday.

No official charges have been filed against Manzo Diallo,who published Air Info. He has been transferred back to his hometown, Agadez, which is under military occupation and a government state of alert. This makes his case difficult to track, Leonard Vincent, of journalism watchdog group Reporters Sans Frontieres, told VOA.

If you plan to apply for this year's Knight News Challenge grants or the MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning competition, time is running out. The deadline for both of the programmes is Monday, October 15.

Those applying for the Knight News Challenge can submit a public application, which can be viewed by all, and commented on by News Challenge site users. Applicants for the Digital Media and Learning competition can also upload applications to the site, and revisit the application as many times as they want until the application deadline. Applicants need to be sure to click the “Finish” button, though, because incomplete applications will not be reviewed, the competition's site warns.

Official industry auditor ABC will restructure in an effort to better monitor the changing multi-platform media industry, Media Week has reported.

Account teams managing print-based, traditional media, will now also be responsible for all ABC platforms, especially online.

Portugal's top press distribution company, the Vasp Group, has been putting several international newspapers on newsstands in real time during the past two months; sometimes the newspapers are for sale in Lisbon even before they're available in their home cities.

Thanks to digital developments, The Washington Post, Folha de São Paulo, Tribune de Geneve and The Evening Standard are available in Portugal on the day they're published in their country of origin, with The Post and Folha actually hitting newsstands in Lisbon about four hours before they go on sale in Washington, D.C. or São Paulo, due to time differences.

The Internet is growing rapidly in China's rural areas, allowing more farmers and migrant workers to access news, music, videos and more online, Asia Media reported Thursday.

National Development and Reform Commission statistics found that as of June, 37.4 million people living in rural areas of China are using the Internet, a 14.3 million increase from six months prior. In the first half of 2007, the percent of the country's rural population accessing the Internet increased from 3.1 percent to 5.1 percent, Xinhua reported.

Luxembourg's first free daily was launched Wednesday, as free Ukranian daily 15 Minut launched three more editions in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Lviv, Newspaper Innovation reported.

L'Essentiel, in Luxembourg, brings the number of European countries with free dailies to 32, and circulation to more than 28 million.

Within just a few years, mobile phones have transited from a privilege of few to a technology everyone embraces. A study about phone usage across Europe even showed that one-fourth of young Britons say they are "addicted" to their phones, with more text messaging going on in Britain than any other European country.

Conducted by the London School of Economics and mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse, the survey found that Britain was one of the most advanced European countries in terms of using handsets, with hi-tech uses more commonplace in Britain than anywhere else in Europe.

According to a new report, Bear Stearns suggests that newspaper holding companies in Florida and California will likely see ad revenue weakened as the real estate market declines.

"Already struggling with the secular challenges of declining circulation and shifts in ad spending away from print, the cyclical hit of the weak housing market and the ripple effect we believe will occur into retail should continue to weigh on earnings into the first half of 2008," wrote Alexia Quadrani, a Bear Stearns analyst.

Ireland’s newspaper sector is on target to generate revenues of over $1 billion within four years, according to new research by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

The report also predicts that it will grow at more than double the global average until 2011.

Internet censorship in China is becoming increasingly tight, according to a Chinese IT expert and the international journalism watchdog group Reporters Sans Frontieres.

In partnership with RSF and Chinese Human Rights Defenders, an anonymous author, who is a technician working inside a Chinese web company, has written a report detailing the expansion of China's official system of online censorship, surveillance and propaganda.

Google has began allowing its advertisers to embed clips from YouTube into their promotional messages, which shows the company's strategy on how it will make money from video streaming.

The company announced Tuesday that its AdSense platform would support video content, which means, for example, a beverages company could show a clip of somebody enjoying a drink.

Finnish microblogging service Jaiku has been bought up by Google, according to an announcement on the company's Web site. The amount of the deal is undisclosed.

Jaiku allows users to share short messages and presence alerts with each other, using a computer or a mobile device, just like its competitor, Twitter. Not many details about the deal have been revealed. A FAQ on the company Web site only said employees will be joining Google and that Google is interested in doing more with activity streams and mobile presence.

Canadian group Thomson Corporation's planned takeover of British financial news and data provider Reuters Group raises concerns the deal could stifle competition, European Union antitrust regulators announced Monday.

The European Commission, Europe's antitrust authority in Brussels, has said it will make its final ruling by February 25 as to whether the £8.7 billion ($17.7 billion, €12.6 billion) deal will adversely affect European competition in the financial information sector, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

Google’s shares topped $600 Monday for the first time, making its market capitalisation greater than the three biggest traditional media companies – Time Warner, Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. – combined.

According to Monday's closing price of $609.62 per share, Google has a $190.28 billion market cap. Meanwhile, traditional media's Big three - Time Warner ($71.23 billion), Walt Disney Co. ($68.50 billion) and News Corp. ($49.00 billion) - reached $188.73 billion combined.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the most conservative daily newspapers design-wise in Europe, has moved to a more modern look, adding photos and dropping the last of its old typeface.

But the daily newspaper, published in Frankfurt am Main, isn't giving up substance for style, newspaper executives stated.

A South African newspaper on Sunday became the first on the continent to provide readers with access to information via cellphones with Internet connectivity.

The Sunday Times invited readers to take a picture of a barcode on the front page using the camera on their cellphones, which gives them automatic access to a Web site of the Springbok rugby team’s chief sponsors.

Between 2006 and 2009, the advertising market in Serbia is expected to grow 308 percent, making it the fastest growing in the world.

This years’ ad growth in Central and Eastern Europe has also been risen to 18.3 percent from 16.9 percent, according to the latest ad market forecast from ZenithOptimedia.

For its first acquisition in its 11-year history, the news Web site MSNBC has bought the social media news network Newsvine for an undisclosed sum.

MSNBC, an independently run joint venture between Microsoft and U.S. broadcaster NBC, and Newsvine, a two-year-old Web start-up, are both based in Seattle.

Daily Express owner Richard Desmond paid himself £40.6 million in 2006, more than four times the £9.1 million pre-tax profits of Northern & Shell Network, the holding company for all of his media assets, according to account documents to be published this week.

The payment will show up in Northern & Shell's annual results, and will also reveal the media boss gave himself quite a pay increase from the £27.3 he received in 2005, which followed a bumper 2004 payout of £51.7 million.

The World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forum have renewed the call to Russian President Vladimir Putin for a thorough and impartial investigation of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, a journalist killed a year ago.

"We are seriously concerned that those who order or carry out violence against journalists in Russia enjoy almost total impunity from prosecution. It is estimated that 21 journalists have been killed since you came to power in March 2000," the WAN and WEF stated in a letter to Putin on the one-year anniversary of Politkovskaya's death.

Polskapresse will launch new daily newspaper Polska Oct. 15, six days before Poland votes in parliamentary elections, the publisher announced Monday.

Polska (Poland) will compete in a tightly competitive news market alongside other dailies, namely Agora's Gazeta Wyborcza, Axel Springer's Dziennik and Presspublica's Rzeczpospolita.

Egyptian independent and opposition newspapers began striking Sunday to protest a government clampdown that had several journalists hit with lengthy jail terms.

The journalists' union said 23 newspapers joined the strike. Dailies did not publish their Sunday editions, while independent and opposition weeklies would not be appearing on newsstands either.

Facebook’s independent developer’s forum, a pioneering call for innovation transformed into a capitalistic free-for-all, will have great universal impact, according to Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large of MediaPost.

Very few companies are willing to lower its walls and make an at-large appeal for future growth ideas. Facebook’s founding chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, 23, who keeps a tight rein on his private little enterprise, has not strayed from his launching vision three years ago, and totally understands that individual talent and intelligence are a company's most valuable assets.

U.S. News & World Reported is launching a “best of” Web site, which will rank many products, beginning with cars and trucks last week, Media Post reported Monday.

Could this be an online idea newspapers should take note of?

U.S. users will spend more time accessing mobile content throughout 2011, both in pure-play or traditional media-related, while time spent on online access will grow slower in the next couple of years, according to the study “Consumer End-User Spending on Communications” by Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS).

The group Project Freesheet is lobbying the British government to ban the distribution of freesheets the London Paper and London Lite.

The group has posted its petition on the 10 Downing Street e-petitions Web site, asking for an end to freesheet distrubution, due to the problem of discarded newspapers on London's streets.

Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd. is expected to begin releasing public documents to shareholders within days, which will detail its split into separately listed media and gaming companies, The Australian reported Friday.

James Packer's PBL overcame its final obstacle with the Australian Taxation Office, and is now ready to separate into two companies, Consolidated Media Holdings and gaming group Crown.

Metro France has beat out 20 Minutes for the number one position, while in Belgium, Metro's French edition is in second place.

Metro's Dutch edition in Belgium has climbed to the fifth spot for Dutch language papers.

AOL UK is preparing to cut over half the editorial jobs at its newsroom operation, according to NUJ insiders, with a number of positions outsourced to India.

The NUJ, representing AOL's editorial staff, has voted to hold a ballot for industrial action with 100 percent of members in favour. The union estimates the number of editorial jobs cut from 39 to 17 across the UK operation.

According to a report from Gimme Credit LLC, Gannett, the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, may spin off its TV business.

But if so, the impact would be "minimal" to the publisher.

The New York Times will publish its International Weekly edition in Montenegro, appearing in the Podgorica-based newspaper Vijesti, the company announced Thursday.

Vijesti is the latest to publish the weekly edition, joining 20 other countries and the United States, and will appear in the newspaper each Monday.

U.S. newspapers will begin integrating print readership and online audience estimates into audited circulation reports beginning in November.

Participants at the World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo in Amsterdam later this month will have a preview of the plan that holds great promise for the future of readership measurement everywhere.

The two leading newspapers in the Netherlands, De Telegraaf and Algemeen Dagblad, both lost readers in the second quarter compared with the same period last year.

In the free daily newspapers category, Metro was still on top with the widest circulation, according to the figures released by the institute for media auditing, HOI.

Daily newspapers are spending about $1 billion at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), according to a recent survey from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

In 2006, dailies spent more than $972 million on USPS postage, growing from $901 million in 2005, and $700 million in 2002.

Kenya’s Nation Media Group (NMG) has added a new title, the Daily Metro, targeting younger readers.

Speaking at the launch ceremony in Nairobi, group chief executive Linus Gitahi said the “easy-read” paper is aimed to cultivate a reading culture among Kenyan youth and those preferring lighter material to read.

Although the Olympics will drive worldwide ad spending next year, newspapers' share of the global advertising market by 2009 will drop to 26.2 percent from 29.0 percent in 2006, according to a ZenithOptimedia study released Thursday.

"Newspapers are suffering the most from the depredations of the Internet, which is better at delivering timely news and is an efficient substitute for newspaper classifieds," the survey states.

Peter Bale, the executive producer at MSN UK, Wednesday warned major British newspaper Web sites of a "bump down" in user traffic due to Google News' recent content deals.

Bale told an audience at the Association of Online Publishers conference that popular UK Web sites such as the Guardian, the Times and the Sun should be aware of the ramifications of Google News' recent deal with news agencies.

The U.S. general economy appears to be slowing down - the housing market seems to be on the precipice, and the stock market is experiencing bubblish volatility. However, the marketplace for media mergers and acquisitions broke a record during the first nine months this year, compared with any preceding year it has bee tracked, according to media industry investment banker Jordan Edmiston Group Inc. Wednesday.

With 637 transactions, valuing more than $95 billion in total, the first three quarters of 2007 have already tied with the whole year of 2006 in terms of the number of deals, and the deal value has far exceeded fully least year's $60.6 billion by 64 percent, according to JEGI.

For consumers, slick ads are not the best persuader; word-of-mouth marketing is considered most valuable among all the ad platforms, according to a recent Nielsen Internet survey.

Seventy-eight percent of consumers said they trust other consumers' recommendations over all other advertising/marketing means. Ads in newspapers came next at 63 percent. Consumers' opinions from online blogs were in the third at 61 percent. Brand Web sites came closely behind at 60 percent.

Yahoo has upgraded its search to “universal search,” a results-blending concept used by Ask.com, MSN and Google. Its search results will now include relevant photos from its Flickr, events posted at its Upcoming.org and materials from Yahoo Answers, reports the Wall Street Journal. Besides these, videos from YouTube, owned by Google, will also be included in Yahoo search results.

The Sun-Times Media Group, Inc. announced Wednesday it will combine its Daily Southtown and Star newspaper titles into one, in an effort to regain profitability and growth.

Chicago-based Sun-Times stated it expects the move will lower the cost of newsprint, headcount and circulation sales, RTT News reported.