November 2007 Archives

Citizen journalism is being hindered and may even be dying at the hands of citizens themselves, a growing number of media experts believe.

The fad journalism model is being brought down by poorly written and poorly presented content that is greatly inferior to content produced by experts, they say. To put it bluntly, if you need information on a subject, would you rather rely on the edited and proofread opinion of an expert, or the misspelled musings from some guy sitting in his basement?

Tribune Interactive announced Thursday that it has launched branded channels on YouTube for its television and newspaper properties.

"Our arrangement with YouTube underscores our efforts to leverage our award-winning content and make it more widely available to engage a new group of consumers," said Tim Landon, president of Tribune Interactive, in a statement.

Swedish researchers for Sifo Research International have mapped out changing readership patterns of both paid and free dailies in Sweden on each day of the week, concluding that Thursday is the best day for free dailies, while paid morning subscription papers show almost no readership variation on different weekdays. Sunday readership for those papers, however, tends to increase, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

Peter Callius and Anders Lithner detailed their findings in their paper Daily Reach and Beyond, which was presented at the Readership Symposium in Vienna last month.

Although Conrad Black is scheduled to be sentenced on federal fraud charges in Chicago in 10 days, that doesn't mean the world has seen the last of him, he told a British radio talk show Friday.

“This isn't a fall from grace and this isn't the end,” Black told Today, a BBC Radio 4 programme. “Even in the worst case I will be back.”

The Independent will relaunch its Web site next month, but it is unsure whether it will still release its first ABC Electronic user figures before 2008.

Earlier in August, the British daily announced that it had signed up for its web traffic to be audited by ABC Electronic and said it would report its ABCe figures later this year.

Fairfax Media has announced that its merger with Rural Press will secure $22 million in cost synergies for the fiscal year 2008, the Australian reported Friday. This is in addition to the strong first four months of the financial year.

Merger benefits are also expected to be higher than originally promised, climbing to $45 million in 2009, Fairfax said, according to the Australian.

Even in the current a digital era, U.S. consumers still say their favourite leisure activities are reading, watching TV and spending time with friends and family, according to The Harris Poll.

Computer activities, however, were ranked fourth most favourite, despite the fact that the percentage of people listing it as a favourite has gone up slightly over the last seven years.

Publishers around the globe are being asked to implement a new online publishing standard called Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP), designed to end clashes between publishers and search engines.

Unveiled during a conference Thursday in New York, ACAP was developed at an initiative by the World Association of Newspapers, the International Publishers Association and the European Publishers Council.

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced in a staff memo Tuesday that “there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory.”

He also stated that “a hiring freeze will continue, with open positions filled internally, and next year we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas.”

Yahoo and Adobe PDF have teamed up to launch a new ad product that aims to allow publishers to include text-based, contextual advertisements with PDF-based content, as well as giving advertisers “a new channel with a web-like ability to track ad metrics,” paidContent reported today.

Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo! will launch overnight, and is also expected to give readers more access to content in PDFs, once limited to paid subscribers only.

Trinity Mirror Plc has bought Globespan Media Ltd. for up to 5.9 million stg. – an initial 0.9 million stg and a deferred amount of up to 5 million stg on the condition of achieving specified operating profits over during the next 30 months.

The newspaper group has said it expects Globespan's revenues to hit at least four million stg in the first year of ownership, Thomson reported Thursday.

A daily news publication will debut in Beijing Tuesday – the first giveaway paper distributed at the city's massive public transportation stations.

The metro daily was developed from an earlier entertainment paper, the Star Daily. This 16- to 32-page daily will be distributed to subway passengers for free from Monday through Friday, according to the Beijing Evening News.

Agence France-Presse has bought 30 percent of the citizen journalism platform Scooplive, which will be renamed Citizenside.

AFP will not be a part of making editorial decisions for the site, which allows users to publish and sell video and photos for commission, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.

Mobile ad platform Amobee Media Systems has received a minority investment from wireless giant Vodafone. Previous investors in the company came from Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital.

Amobee launched its first consumer trial last year. Since then, it has partnered with carriers such as Vodafone in Greece, the Czech Republic and Spain.

Belo Corp. announced Wednesday the new executives for its newspaper group after a spinoff in early 2008.

The U.S. company Belo owns four daily newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News, and 20 television stations. Following the spinoff, the newspapers will be held separately by a publicly traded company, A.H. Belo Corporation.

Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, said Tuesday it is considering selling the rest of its community newspaper group.

Dow Jones, which is expected to be acquired by News Corp. by the end of the year, had already sold six community newspapers last year and used the proceeds to purchase the other half of the Factiva news database business from Reuters Group Plc.

A confidential, pre-sentence report could give Conrad Black a jail term decades shorter than the one prosecutors demanded in his fraud case held in Chicago earlier this year, The Australian reported Thursday.

The report, prepared by a probation officer, limits the extent of the former media baron's fraud to US $6.1 million, rather than the US $32.15 million estimated by prosecutors.

Bloggers from two popular Web sites in Singapore are worried that a new media study could focus too much on expert views, and are calling for so-called Web practitioners to gather feedback on how the Internet should be regulated.

Yawningbread.org and theonlinecitizen.com have posted notices stating that the government study needs to make room for regular Web users who might not be categorised as experts.

The Kansas City Star is the latest in a string of mid-sized metros in the United States to offer buyouts to employees, telling readers today that Star employees with 20 years of “uninterrupted service” can take the paper up on its offer, which gives 20 weeks' pay.

“The voluntary program will be limited to fewer than four percent of The Star's nearly 1,400 employees and will not have a minimum job-reduction target,” the paper stated, citing Publisher Mac Tully, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

Further developing mobile phone technology will have a “transformative effect on journalism,” Reuters chief scientist told journalists and colleagues at Reuters' Canary Wharf headquarters Monday night.

Nic Fulton, on the phone from New York, talked about the company's ongoing collaboration with Nokia to develop equipment for journalists.

Johnston Press, the second largest local newspaper group in the UK and publisher of The Scotsman, plans to launch a news subscription service via mobile phone across its 120 titles next year.

The company said it will partner with telecommunications provider g8wave to roll out the service.

Internet and cable advertising are prospering in U.S. market, while newspaper and TV are in recession, according to the estimates by Credit Suisse.

The Internet, which made up merely four percent of the total U.S. advertising in 2000, is expected to double to eight percent in 2008, while cable, used to account for seven percent in 2000, could make up ten percent by 2008.

Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper announced the launch of its new children's supplement in Beirut Tuesday.

Jarida Kids is aimed at children between ages eight and 12, and was originally thought up by Gibran Tueni, the MP and An-Nahar general manager, who was killed by a car bomb in 2005.

Although it's been rumoured that Italian media group RCS is interested in the 30 percent of the Spanish Zeta group that is for sale, the group is denying having interest, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday evening.

RCS publishes Corriere della Sera and Gazzetta dello Sport in Italy, and El Mundo, Marca and Expansión in Spain. Zeta publishes magazines and several regional newspapers in Spain, including El Periódico de Cataluña.

Topix.com has signed on to run comments sections and online forums for newspapers owned by U.S. publisher MediaNews Group Inc.

Owned by U.S. newspaper publishers Gannett Co. Inc., McClatchy Co. and Tribune Co., Topix began as an archive of online news, and is now a provider of online local news discussion forums.

The Los Angeles Times Tuesday announced several new online features, including a new blog offering readers more access to Reader Representative Jamie Gold.

According to the company, the move will “increase newsroom access to better serve and communicate with readers.”

Greek journalists went on strike today, and more than 4,000 of them attended a rally and marched through central Athens to protest the reformation of the country's broken pension system.

The 24-hour strike began at 6 a.m. (0400GMT), after which content on Greek news Web sites was not renewed and state-run and private radio and television news was cancelled. And as no journalists were on the job today, no newspapers will be published Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.

Microsoft and the Danish newspaper Jutland Post (Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten) have launched a new digital product, a platform called JP2, which mixes print and online venues.

Consumers must download and install a couple of software programs, and launch the JP2 platform. Navigation is different from most, but the layout looks like a real print newspaper.

Telegraph Media Group has commissioned research that reveals that companies interested in recruiting will have the best results with integrated advertising campaigns, which incorporate online and printed papers, onrec.com reported Tuesday.

Telegraph commissioned the research to learn more about the value of newspaper brands, the changing role of national newspaper advertising in an increasingly digital world and the emerging role of online newspaper advertising.

Sanoma Digital has launched a new user-generated breaking news Web site that also gathers material for a series of weekly free newspapers by using an open-source journalism platform.

The Finnish news publisher last month launched Vartti.fi to allow users to upload multimedia content directly to the site.

Singapore and the Phillippines reached a media cooperation agreement today, to be applied to media policy and information exchange, co-production and mutual exchanges and training and human resource development, Xinhua reported.

The Memorandum of Understanding was inked at this year's Asia Media Festival, hosted by the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore.

Tribune Co. announced Tuesday that its October revenue dropped 9.3 percent to $383 million.

Its publishing revenue was down 7.9 percent to $287 million, from $311 million in the same period last year.

India’s English-language daily The Pioneer plans to launch its Ranchi edition after the launch of its Dehradun edition in September.

The new edition is expected to debut by mid-December. The company has an agreement with Ranchi-based Swastik Group as its local franchisee.

With the launch of the weekly newspaper Wicklow News, for Ireland's Wicklow area, River Media's number of local newspapers is expanding to 13.

The Wicklow News is the group's third paper in Dublin's surrounding commuter counties, following the Meath Post and Kildare Post, The Sunday Business Post reported Sunday.

New online business models for newspapers are substituting "pennies for dollars," the publisher of the New York Daily News told a UK House of Lords committee.

The House of Lords Select Committee on Communications interviewed Mort Zuckerman in September as part of their inquiry into media ownership. The minutes of the meeting were published Friday.

Today is the the unofficial kickoff for holiday shopping on the Internet, known as Cyber Monday, a trend that rises each year.

Media Life talked to Scott Silverman, executive director of Shop.org, about online spending, shopping at the office and other online shopping trends, in a report out today. Shop.org is a digital division of the U.S. National Retail Federation.

The Daily Mail's chairman is in talks with a UK senior government education adviser to sponsor an academy near the newspaper's office in Kensington, west London.

In the past, Jonathan Harmsworth (also known as the fourth Viscount Rothermere) ended plans to start five academies, “apparently because executives within the trust feared it would compromise the papers' ability to criticise the government,” the Guardian reported Saturday.

The transition to digital platforms in the music industry is underway, but it may not be soon enough, according to a new study “U.S. Music Forecast: 2007–2012,” from Jupiter Research.

The report indicated digital music spending will represent more than one-third of U.S. consumer music purchases by 2012.

The Daily Mirror will pay costs and damages to Migrationwatch UK for columnist Brian Reade's statements comparing the lobby group to the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi party.

The Mirror stated it would pay damages for Reade's Sept. 13 column in today's paper, and also apologised to the head of the organisation, Sir Andrew Green, MediaGuardian reported.

An in-house newspaper, produced for residents and businesses by Lincoln-shire County Council in the UK, will have to completely overhaul the way it does business, as it currently costs more than £5,000 a week to produce.

The public interacts with councils differently now than in the past, due to online and digital media, according to the council.

USA Today said the Web may begin to slow down as early as 2010 due to interactivity and video applications.

A study conducted by Nemertes Research revealed the data which were embraced by the Internet Innovation Alliance (IIA), a tech industry and public interest coalition that advocates tax and spending policies that favour investments in Web capacity.

U.S. e-commerce will lose $3.6 billion to fraud in 2007, up 20 percent over the previous year, according to a CyberSource survey.

Online merchants said they would lose 1.4 percent on average of their revenue to fraud in 2007, the same as in 2006. However, due to the growing of e-commerce, it means an increase in dollars lost.

Following a 21-month investigation, Australia's media watchdog has learned the country's foremost investment house, Macquarie Bank, breached media ownership laws when it became the top player in regional radio broadcasting, The Australian reported Thursday.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority found Macquarie and seven of its subsidiaries guilty of breaching media ownership rules in relation to the financing of five radio stations owned by Stuart Simson's Elmie Investments.

The results of a survey taken by organisations that conduct webinars were released this week, with findings that indicate simple practices can be implemented during a webinar to improve their effectiveness.

The survey, conducted by Osterman Research for Citrix Systems, also noted that these practices can mean a much greater return for very little extra effort.

The first issue of Awan, a new newspaper in Kuwait, was launched Sunday with Mohammad Al-Rumihi appointed as editor-in-chief.

Awan is the fifth local paper to be issued since the approval of the Publications Law earlier this year, and Kuwait's 10th daily.

Tuesday's edition of the Dutch free daily DAG was entirely devoted to the International Day for Children's Rights, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

A group of six children chose content for the paper, selecting a story about Sinterklaas (the Dutch Santa Claus) as the newspaper's top story, and also commented on the day's news.

The Navbharat Times has launched two new editions in Faridabad and Ghaziabad, strengthening its position in the Hindi daily market.

The daily newspaper also plans to unveil future editions in Noida and Gurgaon.

Newspaper online advertising revenue increased 21.1 percent to $773 million in Q3, compared to the same period a year ago, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Online revenue in Q3 represented 7.1 percent of total ad revenue, compared to 5.4 percent in Q3 last year.

For Americans who plan to stuff themselves with turkey, potatoes and pie on Thursday, before you head off to grandma's house, why don't you ask yourself what you can do to make Thanksgiving coverage on your news Web site more interactive?

Poynter's Al Tompkins asked himself that question, and came up with a several ideas:

Trinity Mirror is getting ready to launch a multi-platform mobile service designed to focus on regional news that can be targeted by post code.

The service is designed for “information-hungry snackers,” said Rick Gleave, the newspaper group's head of interactive, according to Brand Republic.

A new Dublin freesheet, serving as a features paper instead of a regular newspaper, has been launched.

The Dublin Informer delivers 250,000 copies directly to letterboxes twice a month.

Sony BMG Music Entertainment has struck a licensing deal with Yahoo Inc., which will allow people to upload files with music or video content by Sony BMG's artists to Yahoo, according to the companies Tuesday.

Financial terms of the deal were not revealed. According to Yahoo, the agreement calls for Sony BMG to receive a cut of the ad revenue.

A Chinese journalist who was imprisoned for alerting the public to an outbreak of dengue fever before the authorities has been awarded the 2008 Golden Pen of Freedom, the World Association of Newspapers' announced today.

Li Changqing, a reporter and deputy news director of the Fuzhou Daily in Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, was detained without charges for nearly a year, then sentenced to three years in prison in January 2006 for “fabricating and spreading false information.”

The Moscow Times has launched its mobile version, allowing readers to access the newspaper's latest information via their mobile phones.

Users can also update their mobile client, allowing them to read the news from the English-language newspaper without a network connection.

One of the top property classified sites Realestate.com.au is aggressively moving into online real estate markets in Asia, launching two new sites in Hong Kong and Dubai, The Australian reported Wednesday.

The company's objective is to “become number one or number two” in every market it operates in, Chief Executive Simon Baker told the company's annual general meeting, according to The Australian.

Spain’s Vocento SA will focus on its press and Internet businesses in the country, intending to become a leading player in the free press segment until 2010, according to CEO Belarmino Garcia.

The media group is also “open to selective international expansion,” Garcia added in a presentation on the restructuring of the group to the investment community.

The reduction of newspaper circulation figures in Zimbabwe are due to newsprint shortages, load-shedding and a delay in considering price review applications by the National Incomes and Pricing Commission (NIPC), a Herald article posted on AllAfrica.com today stated.

Representatives of the country's newspaper industry presented their findings to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Transport and Communications, chaired by Makonde Member of Parliament Cde Leo Mugabe. They told the committee that the issue of pricing must be seriously considered if the industry is to be viable.

AT&T plans to buy online ad company Ingenio for an undisclosed sum, a move to vie against Google and other online advertisement leaders.

Ingenio's technology is meant to evaluate the effectiveness of advertisements by tracking phone calls made to businesses based on phone numbers in ads, including online, on mobile phone Web sites, and in print. The technology provides the phone numbers and tracks the calls, and advertisers pay based on the volume of calls generated by the ads.

paidContent's Joseph Weisenthal got a chance to use Amazon's Kindle Reader, unveiled today, at the product's launch Monday.

“Although Amazon’s been working on this for awhile, this is very much a first-generation product,” Weisenthal wrote. “It’s not going to revolutionize the industry overnight, though it sounds like Amazon is going to take this business seriously and continue to invest in it. It seems safe to guess that in a couple years, the top-of-the-line Kindle will be a much-improved product.”

Newsweek is giving an early peek at a device to be released by Amazon called Kindle, which has been described as “the iPod of reading.”

The Nov. 26 issue of Newsweek shows off the creation by Amazon's Jeff Bezos, “an electronic device that he hopes will leapfrog over previous attempts at e-readers and become the turning point in a transformation toward Book 2.0. That's shorthand for a revolution (already in progress) that will change the way readers read, writers write and publishers publish,” the Newsweek article states.

Rwanda newspaper Izuba, The New Times Publications' sister Kinyarwanda newspaper, will become tri-weekly beginning Sunday.

The vernacular paper, launched on August 16, started as a bi-weekly. Izuba, which means “Sun” in Kinyarwanda, will now be published every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday.

The World Association of Newspapers today called on all of next summer's Beijing Olympics participants, including the International Olympic Committee, athletes, sponsors and others, to “exert serious pressure” on the Chinese government to stick to its promises of reform.

As WAN issued its resolution, at least 30 journalists and cyber dissidents remained in prison in China and the country's media continue to remain under government control.

More than 100 journalists have been killed around the world in 2007, the World Association of Newspapers announced in its half-year report on world press freedom, published today.

One hundred and six journalists have been killed in the line of duty in 28 countries so far this year, with 45 of those killed in Iraq, where 150 members of the media have been killed since 2003.

AOL Monday morning announced plans to offer "video ticker ads," an alternative to pre-roll video ads and a graphic banner ad integrated directly into streaming videos.

The new advertising format was developed by AOL and rich media developer PointRoll. The ticker ad appears at the bottom of the video player 10 seconds into the video stream. If clicked by a user, the ad expands while the video pauses. If the user does not interact with the ad, it will disappear after 15 seconds leaving the branded text link. If the user clicks on the branded text link, the ticker will be relaunched.

Korea’s LG Telecom Wednesday said its mobile phones will feature Yahoo's Internet search window on the idle screen from next summer.

The company said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Yahoo Korea. With this new feature aimed to make the mobile Internet easier and faster to use, users can type keywords such as "weather" or "stock" on the initial screen before they connect to the mobile Internet site.

Seventeen more newspapers have joined Yahoo Inc.'s online publishing group, bringing the total to 415 dailies and 140 weeklies, the Associated Press reported today.

The Columbus Dispatch and 16 of The New York Times Co.'s regional newspapers have joined, Yahoo executives told the AP.

Although newspaper circulation in Korea has always been somewhat of a mystery, as only three paid papers and two free papers reported audited circulation in 2004, Korea's ABC has released 2006 free daily circulation, Newspaper Innovation reported today.

AM7 had a circulation of 402,000 in 2006, while Metro had a circulation of 497,000. The Daily Focus had the highest circulation of all audited free titles, with 529,000.

Taking the next step in integrating its business desk, the Telegraph Media Group's business team will now work across The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and the newspaper's Web site, Telegraph.co.uk.

Although writers for both titles will be spread throughout the week, City sections for the two print versions will maintain their own separate identities.

USA Today Thursday announced plans to cut about 45 newsroom jobs.

The cut will impact almost nine percent of a current newsroom staff of about 500, according to USA Today spokeswoman Alexandra Nicholson. Cuts will be scattered throughout news, money, sports and lifestyle sections.

Guardian Unlimited will be the first media outlet other than traditional radio stations to join industry body the Radio Academy and also the UK Podcasters' Association, the company announced Thursday.

The Guardian's audio department produces a range of programmes, including Football Weekly, the football podcasts in the UK, the daily news show Newsdesk, Media Talk and other specialist weekly shows.

Beginning this weekend, people who buy both The Straits Times on Saturday and The Sunday Times will receive free movie tickets and karaoke club passes, and will also be able to buy mobile phones at discount rates, AsiaMedia reported Friday.

For five weeks, The Straits Times on Saturday will carry a coupon readers can match with a second coupon to appear in The Sunday Times. To receive the rewards, retail buyers must present both coupons.

Conrad Quilty-Harper, the first blogger ever to become a member of the UK National Union of Journalists, was admitted this week, Poynter reported Friday.

Harper contributes to Engadget and blogs at Spalpeen.

OK! magazine will launch a German-language version set to debut in Germany, Austria and German-speaking areas of Switzerland in the first half of 2008.

The new edition will be the magazine's fourteenth international edition in three years.

The Internet is growing strongly in Taiwan, according to Charlene Hung, general manager of Yahoo Kimo Taiwan, who underlined that the business potential has not been fully exploited.

According to Hung, there are 12.5 million Internet users in Taiwan, and 80 percent, or 10 million, are frequent users. This is up from merely three million in 1998.

The News Media Coalition has reached a temporary deal over media rights and ended its boycott of the Sri Lanka versus Australia cricket series.

The coalition also includes Agence France Presse, the Associated Press, News International, Reuters and Getty.

Media General Inc. may have to sell properties in some markets in which it owns television stations and newspapers, should new media ownership rules being considered by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission be implemented.

The new rules are meant to loosen restrictions in large U.S. cities in the country's 20 biggest markets, but could put Media General in a position for a “tough fight” to keep its newspaper and television station combinations in eight small market, according to Stanford Group Analyst Paul Gallant, Reuters reported Thursday.

A newspaper marketing company in Zimbabwe has begun selling titles from South Africa's Independent News & Media (INMSA), just over a month after the Sowetan hit the country's newsstands but was quickly withdrawn.

These new titles appearing on Zimbabwe newsstands are The Saturday Star, The Sunday Independent and Wednesday's edition of The Star. They are distributed by Munn Marketing, the same company bringing the existing foreign titles into the country.

The latest paper to be added to Seoul's already crowded and intensely competitive free daily newspaper market closed down after just a few months, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

Economic free daily IlIlKyunJe launched in July 2007, and closed down after three months.

Indian newspapers could be helped by more dialogue within the industry, as well as learning from outside industries, participants said at the final day of the International Newspaper Marketing Association's (INMA) first South Asian conference in New Delhi Friday, The Times of India reported.

“As an industry we do not discuss what advertisers expect from us. If we talk more and discuss such ideas at least once a year we can definitely improve,” said Ravi Dhariwal, president, INMA Asia division, and CEO (Publishing), The Times of India.

Ten employees of the Reno-Gazette Journal, a Nevada-based newspaper, have accepted voluntary buyouts to retire by the end of the year, according to the newspaper's Web site.

These ten veterans include five senior writers and editors at the newsroom - Managing Editor Tonia Cunning, columnist Cory Farley, reporter Don Cox, sportswriter Steven Sneddon and newsroom administrative assistant Sharon Genung.

Victoria is flourishing when it comes to newspaper readership in Australia, according to the latest circulation and readership data reported by The Age Friday.

For the year up to Sept. 30, the Herald Sun's weekday edition was the only Melbourne-based paper to see a drop in sales, of Australia's top two publishers, News Ltd. and Fairfax Media, which owns The Age.

Although Olympic organisers for the Beijing Games are building a database on foreign journalists, the Chinese government is denying plans to suppress media.

The purpose of the database is to help foreign journalists working at the Olympics, set for August 8 – 24, said Li Zhanjun, director of the Beijing Olympic organising committee's media centre, according to an AFP article posted online by The Australian Wednesday.

Il Sole 24 Ore, publisher of Italy’s most influential financial daily, has won stock exchange approval for its market debut. It is expected to take effect early in December, according to Borsa Italiana Tuesday.

Analysts said the group declined to disclose any details on its listing plans, but it could have an enterprise value of between 800 million and 1 billion euros (US$1.2 billion to US$1.5 billion).

The largest marketing company in Sweden and the national postal service, are refusing to distribute a political newspaper that contains a caricature of Muhammad, a Muslim prophet.

Posten, the postal service, stated it will not distribute the far-right Swedish Democratic SD-Kuriren, which contains a reproduction of the cartoon of Muhammad as a dog by Lars Vilks, in the nation's southern city of Svedala. Marketing company Svensk Direktreklam stated it would distribute political material only from Sweden's current parliamentary parties, The Local reported.

U.S. mobile search market is expected to boom throughout 2011, according to a study by eMarketer.

The number of U.S. mobile Internet users will rise from 27 millions in 2006 to nearly 65 millions in 2011, up over 140 percent.

Express Newspapers and the Telegraph Media Group are battling publicly over the fate of the pension scheme at their joint printing venture West Ferry, MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

The controversy comes after Telegraph's decision to leave the venture, singing a new deal with News International to begin in 2009.

U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin proposed Tuesday to relax a 32-year-old ban that does not allow companies to own a newspaper and television station in the same market, a move that would benefit News Corp. and Tribune Co., Bloomberg reported.

Martin's proposal would let newspaper publishers in the 20 largest U.S. markets to own either a radio or television station, but would not allow a company to own a TV station ranking in the market's top four, he said in a conference call.

Tribune Co. Chairman and CEO Dennis FitzSimons said Federal Communications (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin's proposal to lift cross-ownership regulations in only America's biggest markets is “too little for the company - and may present 'challenges' as the Chicago media giant attempts to close its going-private deal led by real estate mogul Sam Zell,” according to a memo to Tribune employees Tuesday afternoon.

Tribune petitioned the FCC in May to transfer the licenses of the television and radio stations in four markets where it has newspaper operations.

As traffic to U.S. newspaper Web sites surged in October, more people visited NYTimes.com than any other newspaper site in the country, according to new data from Nielsen Online.

The number of unique monthly visitors to NYTimes.com jumped from 14.6 million in September to 17.5 million in October.

The Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union representing employees at the Vancouver Sun and Province has filed a grievance following a planned restructuring.

Union members are consulting with lawyers to decide what their next move will be, said Mike Bocking, with the union, according to news radio station Vancouver CKNW AM980.

Rupert Murdoch Tuesday confirmed his intention to make the Wall Street Journal's Web site free.

He said that substituting the site's subscription revenue for a larger audience will bring in more advertising to the financial news site.

The India Today Group announced the launch of Mail Today, a joint venture with Associated Newspapers (ANL), the publishers of Daily Mail.

Mail Today, expected to hit the Delhi market by the end of this week, is planned to gradually increase editions for a national presence, according to the group.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations board voted to change the way newspaper circulation is tallied, placing more importance on the metric of total audience, Editor and Publisher reported Tuesday.

The Seattle online real estate startup Zillow.com will give information on home valuation and neighbourhoods to 282 newspapers in 11 newspaper chains, and in return the newspapers will be able to post classified advertisements on Zillow's site.

Zillow.com's president, Lloyd Frink, is calling the deal a “groundbreaking partnership, the Seattle Post Intelligencer reported Tuesday.

The Newspaper Association of America has launched a blog targeting newspaper executives, aimed at sparking conversation about the future of industry.

Several industry observers including Deutsche Bank analyst Paul Ginocchio and technology forecaster Paul Saffo were invited to write essays about their vision of the future of newspapers. The blog also invites people to respond.

Global media conglomerate News Corporation posted its operating income of US $1.05 billion (A $1.14 billion), up 23 percent compared to the first quarter last year.

According to the company, double-digit revenue increases came from the filmed entertainment and cable network programming segment, such as a US $61 million (A $65.97 million) improvement at the direct broadcast satellite segment.

Advertising will change more drastically in the next five years than in the previous five decades, according to the IBM Global Services report "The End of Advertising as We Know It."

Half of the 80 IBM executives surveyed agreed such a shift would occur.

Britain's Daily Telegraph Monday stated that it has withdrawn its Pakistan correspondents over an editorial last week which contained an expletive.

The editorial, which criticised Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Sunday prompted the president to say that he expected an apology from the paper.

Sales of video-capable mobile phones will have a more than double growth from $58 billion in 2006, to $125 billion in 2010, according to Infonetics Research.

Catalysed by more powerful phones and the upcoming analog broadcast signal switch-off, mobile video subscribers will also increase from merely a few million in 2006 to 58.6 million in 2010.

In an open letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin, Michael R. Fancher, Editor at Large of Sunday's Seattle Times, claimed that the elimination of rules against same-market common ownership of newspaper and broadcast would cause "catastrophic consequences" for journalism and democracy itself.

The FCC held its final public hearing on ownership rules in Seattle Friday. According to published reports, the majority of the speakers and audience opposed lifting the 1975 cross-ownership ban.

A new Web site offering local news to residents of Minneapolis, Minnesota, is staffed by journalists who left other publications due to newspaper downsizing, which they say is causing quality local coverage to suffer.

MinnPost.com, led by Joel Kramer, a former Minneapolis Star Tribune publisher and editor, is meant to pick up the quality journalism in the area that its staffers say is lacking, due to downsizing at area newspapers.

The New Paper (TNP), a Singapore daily, is shifting its publication time, but will offer a lunchtime sports edition twice a week.

A choice of either a breakfast edition or a lunchtime edition will be available on Mondays and Thursdays.

The Saturday afternoon edition of the Pennsylvania newspaper Lancaster New Era, will end publication next year.

Lancaster Newspapers Inc. said a combined Saturday morning edition of the New Era and the Intelligencer Journal will replace the individual Saturday Lancaster New Era.

The penetration rate of super-speed Internet in Korea hit a record high in September, overall achieving 30 percent reach for the first time, according to a report released by the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication last week.

The super-speed Internet, including XDSL, HFC, LAN, FTTH and satellite Internet, is being used by 30.11 percent of the Korean population, a 0.14 percent growth from August.

While the Audit Bureau of Circulations' Audience-FAX is now measuring both print and online readership, its makers have acknowledged its “methodology puts newspapers at a disadvantage in comparison to other media audience measurements,” Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

“The newspaper (readership) focus has always been on seven-day while online has always concentrated on 30-day,” Bob Cohen, president and CEO of Scarborough Research, which measures newspaper, print and online audiences for the Audience-FAX, told E&P.

News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch said Thursday he is still pondering making the Wall Street Journal's online version free when News Corp. takes over Dow Jones in December.

News Corp. posted a 19 percent increase in revenue even while seeing a 13 percent decline in net earnings in the first quarter, when the media giant spent on its newspaper, Internet and cable businesses.

Reiner Mittelbach, CEO of Ifra, announced that in January 2008 they would launch a vertical search engine for the newspaper.

The search engine will be an easy-to-use tool to find news, information and reports on the newspaper business, according to Mittelbach at the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Dublin.

The New York Daily News is the latest newspaper to participate in the Yahoo partnership.

With Yahoo's Web technologies, the paper is able to enhance its targeting display advertising, content distribution, and its job board, HotJobs.

Archant will delay its geotagging personalised online news feature for its regional newspaper sites by months, the UK media group's business development director told the Beyond the Printed Word conference in Dublin Thursday.

Plans to relaunch the Web sites, which would have allowed users to prioritise news based on postal codes, have been delayed until mid-2008 due to technical problems, Ian Davies told conference delegates.

U.S. publisher Lee Enterprises unveiled its strong growth in the third quarter, despite a continued slowdown in real estate advertising and struggling circulation.

The net income of the third quarter rose 83 percent to $19.9 million compared to $10.9 million a year ago. Revenues for the period last year went up moderately, from $216 million to $219 million, which represented a 1.4 percent gain.

The Heartland Evening News, the 5,123-circulation title based in Nuneaton, UK, is switching to become a morning daily and giving up a taxi service that used to deliver some afternoon copies.

“More and more newspapers are taking this route, and we are aware that people want the paper out on the streets earlier,” said Tony Parratt, the paper's editor, Press Gazette reported.

The Sun-Times Media Group will lay off 20 full-time and 11 part-time editorial staffers from the Daily Southtown in Tinley Park, Illinois, a Chicago suburb.

The layoffs are due to the merger of the Daily Southtown with Star publications, a twice-weekly paper.

Circulation slumps across the United States continued throughout the spring and summer, as overall industry sales fell almost 3 percent compared to 2006, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The declines are a sign that readers are increasingly trading in print newspapers for the Internet, where readership is climbing, as well as a strategy many newspapers are undertaking to rid themselves of unprofitable or slightly profitable print circulation, the Audit Bureau of Circulations reported.

French business daily La Tribune Wednesday on its front page accused its owner, luxury goods group LVMH and its chief executive and chairman Bernard Arnault, of putting “The economic press in danger,” its top headline stated.

The newspaper's journalists argued that Arnault “cannot define without checks the new outlook of the French economic press,” MediaGuardian reported.

Finnish media group SanomaWSOY Tuesday announced in a statement it would stop publishing the print version of the business daily Taloussanomat at the end of the year.

"Taloussanomat has great opportunities in the Internet. We will transfer our resources to the place where the future of financial publishing lies. This is an important strategic decision," said Mikael Pentikäinen, the chief executive of Sanomat, SanomaWSOY's newspaper division, in a statement.

The U.S. government is changing up media ownership rules for the second time in four years, a move that could end up allow big companies to get bigger, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The Federal Communications Commission's Democratic members have accused Republican Kevin Martin, the chairman, of rushing the review process and calling public hearings without enough notice time.

Pakistan's government will crack down even harder on private press, monitoring 21 national Urdu and English language newspapers, according to a national paper, the Daily Times

This move is to ensure implementation of the newly proclaimed Press, Newspapers, News Agencies, and Books Registration (Amendment) Ordinance, 2007.

Social networking site Facebook Tuesday unveiled its new advertising programme in New York.

"The next 100 years starts today, and it's going to be different," founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, Media Post reported.

News Corporation has gone against the wishes of Dow Jones major shareholders the Bancroft family by appointing an opera singer with little media experience to represent the family on its board, MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

Natalie Bancroft, 27, will join the board after News Corp. vetoed the family's nomination of Michael Hill, an environment scientist and critic of the former management of Dow Jones, according to Reuters. The Bancroft family sold its controlling shares in Dow Jones as part of the $ 5 billion sale. The Wall Street Journal, owned by Dow Jones, reported that News Corp. was unhappy with Hill's activism.

Four out of five U.S. adults go online now, a new survey has found.

This new Harris Poll, which surveyed 2,062 U.S. adults between July and October, found that 79 percent of adults, or about 178 million, are wired, spending 11 hours a week on average online.

Trinity Mirror has announced plans for a single, multimedia newsroom in Wales for its regional papers, the latest attempt a UK newspaper group has made to integrate its resources.

All the company's Cardiff-based titles, including the Western Mail, South Wales Echo and Wales on Sunday, will be integrated into one editorial operation, which serves both print and electronic outlets.

China's largest mobile telecom operator has joined Google Inc.'s alliance of wireless and technology companies to co-develop the first open and comprehensive mobile platform, called Android, Thomson Financial reported Tuesday.

China Mobile is the latest of more than 30 companies, including Google, T-Mobile, Motorola and Qualcomm, to join the alliance.

French luxury goods maker LVMH announced late Monday it has signed an agreement to buy French business daily Les Echos from British company Pearson Plc, despite fierce opposition from the newspaper's staff.

To protest the deal, Les Echos journalists decided they would not put out a Tuesday edition of the newspaper, and plan to also not publish Wednesday.

Just six weeks after its launch, free daily Zurnal24 has become the most highly circulated newspaper in Slovenia.

Zurnal24's total circulation is now more than 100,000, while paid newspapers Slovenske Novice and Dolenjska are in second and third places, with circulations of 90,000 and 70,000, respectively, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

Five of the biggest U.S. newspaper companies are in talks to develop a new online national network which could directly compete against Yahoo’s, the Chicago Tribune reported Tuesday.

Executives at Gannett, Tribune, Hearst, MediaNews Group and Cox Newspapers are working to build up a "one-stop shopping" destination for national online advertisers, according to the Tribune's Michael Oneal.

Google is one of News Corp.'s major preoccupations, and is “hugely dangerous,” the editor-in-chief of Times Online told the Society of Editors conference, Press Gazette reported Tuesday.

“Its move into DNA is a massive threat, and I wonder whether we will start feeling that they are behaving a bit too much like big brother,” Anne Spackman said, speaking as a panel member about the future of newspapers.

As Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a so-called state of emergency, the country's media took a huge hit, as news coverage became increasingly restricted, penalties were increased and private television stations were shut down, AsiaMedia reported.

Pakistan's major newspapers condemned Musharraf's clampdown. The News stated in an editorial that “as the state of emergency, which in effect is a euphemism for martial law, was imposed on Saturday, Pakistan entered a new age of darkness.”

Hispanic online users represent a lucrative customer base marketers want to reach, according to eMarketer’s new report, Hispanic Americans Online: A Fragmented Population.

An estimated 18.8 million Hispanic Americans are Internet users in 2007. That number will grow to nearly 25 million by 2011, with a steady double-digit annual growth rate in the next four years, according to the report.

Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt announced Open Handset Alliance, a programme under which 34 partners have built an open-source mobile operating system, in a conference call Monday.

The operating system, codenamed “Android”, will be made available under “the most liberal open source license given to mobile operators ever,” creating “products of many, many different kinds,” Schmidt said, calling the system “the first truly open and complete platform for mobile devices.”

Officials in the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs accessed the Geassocieerde Pers Diensten's (GPD) online editorial system in mid-2006, an act GPD calls espionage, and published the story on Saturday.

GPD is the top news agency for many of the provincial newspapers in the Netherlands. The ministry has acknowledged the unauthorised access, Poynter Online reported Monday.

Audience-FAX, the new measurement tool that combines readership, circulation and online audiences calls attention to the “full reach” of newspapers, and isn't meant to cover up bad news about circulation, leaders of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and the Newspaper Association of America said Monday.

“Part of the reason it was created is, we think we haven't done the job we should in marketing this industry,” said Stephen Hills, president and general manager of the Washington Post, according to Editor & Publisher. “More people will read the Washington Post (and other papers) this Sunday than will watch the Super Bowl. The focus has been on the decline, as opposed to what is our overall reach.”

The third edition of a new local newspaper has launched in one of Dublin's southern districts, aiming to offer readers there more localised content.

The weekly Dun Laoghaire Express will be published weekly and costs €1.50.

Rupert Murdoch plans to reassign Robert Thomson, Times editor, to become publisher of the Wall Street Journal next year, a senior U.S. media executive has said.

Thomson's transfer to a senior role at the Journal is the source of intense speculation, although that the $5 billion (£2.5 billion) purchase of WSJ owner Dow Jones is not due to be completed until December.

In hopes to attract more advertisers, MySpace will divide its 110 million users into more than 100 targeted advertising categories, The Age reported Tuesday.

The social networking giant began its HyperTargeting programme in July, splitting its U.S.-based users into 10 categories based on their interests.

AOL is in the process of acquiring New York/Israel-based ad targeting provider Quigo for $300 million, according to the Israeli daily Haaretz.

The rumour was first reported last week by the Web site All Things Digital.

The Irish Catholic is targeting sales growth, as its new owners are planning to relaunch the newspaper before Christmas with a redesigned look, more staff and a more aggressive marketing strategy, the Sunday Business Post reported.

The paper was taken over by the Agricultural Trust, which owns the Irish Farmers' Journal and the Irish Field, for an undisclosed sum last summer.

Yahoo data helped the Chinese government identify and convict Chinese pro-democracy journalist Shi Tao, who has been sentenced to ten years in prison.

So far, Yahoo has taken the position that it must abide by the laws of the countries within which it operates, but now Michael Callahan, Yahoo's executive vice president, is apologising to a U.S. House of Representatives foreign affairs committee, admitting he “provided incorrect information” in a previous meeting, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Washingtonpost.com Thursday announced the launch of a new application on Facebook, Washingtonpost.com News Tracker, which allows users to create personalised news feeds, keeping users updated with the topics important to them.

The application compiles news from The Washington Post and 400 other news sources all over the world.

Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili has decided to hand over his majority stake in Imedi media group to News Corp. in a one-year deal.

Rupert Murdoch Wednesday gained control of Georgia's main opposition TV station, according to News Corp., with a local magnate who pledged to focus on funding an anti-government coalition.

NYTimes.com has expanded and redesigned its technology section, with further aggregation of top publications and more tech news updates throughout the day.

The enhanced section gives readers a better understanding of the tech industry as well as an analysis of policy issues which affect the business.

Gannett's Newspaper Division will launch Sunday Select, aimed at delivering pre-print advertising directly to targeted postal codes, beginning Sunday in Indianapolis, Indiana.

The McLean, Virginia-based Gannett will launch the Sunday-only packet at its 16 largets newspapers in phases throughout 2008.

In a time when reports of media companies getting by thanks to their to other businesses offsetting newspaper losses, Canadian media giant Torstar Corp. seems to be the exception to the rule.

The Toronto Star's publisher has reported a 9 percent increase in its fourth quarter profits over last year at the same time, all thanks to gains in newspaper and book publishing, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.