February 2008 Archives

Audit Bureau of Circulations figures out Thursday did not look good for most newspapers in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, as just one in more than 30 weekly Welsh papers reported a sales increase in the second half of 2007, compared to the same period a year before, the Guardian reported.

In some places in Wales, year-on-year circulation decreased by as much as 18.4 percent.

A new Sunday Zulu newspaper will hit newsstands across KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa on March 30.

Isolezwe ngeSonto, published by Independent Newspapers KwaZulu-Natal, aims to fill a “gap in the market,” as research has shown most readers there don't read newspapers on Sundays, even though Sunday is the preferred day to read a weekend edition.

Fairfax Digital is finishing its new Web site, codenamed Kwerky, which will target “free-spending hedonists desperate to have their say,” The Sydney Morning Herald, a Fairfax newspaper, reported this week.

The Web site will be launched within weeks, and aims to bring in an audience Fairfax believes other social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, have overlooked, by publishing off-beat news articles, opinions and reviews on music, entertainment, fashion and sport, and let the users review the reviewers, according to The Herald.

Google’s Print Ads programme, which sells contextual display spaces in print newspapers, is now working with 750 newspapers, according to a speech by Stephanie Davis, head of publisher development for Print Ads, at the NAA Marketing conference in Orlando.

According to Davis, newspapers and Google are helping each other. However, an article on the Local Onliner pointed out that perhaps newspapers need Google more. “Even if CPC rates may be peaking for Google and display is a much needed growth channel,” according to the article.

The Netherlands took the lead in European broadband penetration in the third quarter of 2006, with a reach of nearly 65 percent, according to Exane BNP Paribas.

In the Nordic countries of Finland and Sweden, the broadband penetration is also high – with nearly 55 percent and over 45 percent respectively, ranked on the second and the third spot.

Music Web site Last.fm announced Thursday that asking external developers to build complementary services has led to a boost in audience numbers to about 19 million users globally, who are using its services through applications and widgets on third-party sites, the Guardian reported.

These 19 million users are in addition to the 21 million users who access the site each month.

The Business Standard is aggressively launching Hindi and Gujarati editions, agencyfaqs! reported Thursday.

It launched its first Hindi business Daily on February 16 in Mumbai and New Delhi. Over the next 10 days, the Business Standard it launched Hindi editions in Lucknow, Chandigarh and Bhopal, and Gujarati editions in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Rajkot. Two more editions of the Hindi version are scheduled to be launched in Patna and Kolkata in March.

Philadelphia's two largest dailies announced another round of job cuts - 68 non-newsroom employees lost their jobs as the recession of the newspaper advertising market continued, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

According to the union Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, the papers’ parent company, Philadelphia Media Holdings, cut 68 jobs in advertising, circulation, customer service, finance, marketing and systems. The union said Wednesday that a "very small" number of managers will be laid off.

Trinity Mirror reported a pre-tax profit of £203 million for 2007, due to improvements in the ad market and selling off of its south-eastern titles and The Racing Post, Brand Republic reported Thursday.

In 2006, the publisher of the Daily Mirror reported pre-tax profits of a loss of £11.5 million. When adding in the sale of several titles, such as the Croydon Post, its sports division and the South London Press, the publisher made £263 total in 2007.

Mobile ad spending in Western Europe is expected to skyrocket within next few years, according to research firm eMarketer.

The mobile ad spending will exceed US$3.46 billion in 2011, from merely $454 million in 2006. The growth in Western Europe is nearly sevenfold.

Eighteen months after combining three publishing companies into one multi-media group, Belgium's De Persgroep is ready to report on the lessons of its transformation at the World Newspaper Congress, to be held in Göteborg, Sweden, from 1 to 4 June next.

Christian Van Thillo, chief executive officer of De Persgroep, will discuss what worked and what didn't after the merger of Aurex, De Morgen and Magnet Magazines into De Persgroep in November 2006.

Free daily 20 Minutos is the highest circulated daily in Spain, with distribution of 1,043,000 copies a day in 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

Following in second place is Qué!, with 957,000 copies.

China's first English-Chinese mobile newspaper was launched Tuesday in Beijing, China Daily reported.

Zhu Ling, editor of China Daily, and Wang Jianzhou, chairman of China Mobile, launched the mobile news site in a joint ceremony. The mobile news site will be produced by both China Mobile and China Daily, and will be called China Daily Mobile News.

Roularta Media Group SA has bought Belgian freesheet Het Gouden Blad, for about one million euro, Thomson Financial reported Wednesday.

Het Gouden Blad publishes in the two towns of Waregem and Deinze.

Six out of ten Canadians say they prefer newspaper ads to TV advertising, according to a survey released by the Canadian Newspaper Association.

This survey was conducted by Ipsos Reid on behalf of the Canadian Newspaper Association from January 31 to February 4, 2008, with an interview sample of 1,428 adults equally proportioned across the demographic groups.

The San Francisco Chronicle announced the launch of the new homepage SFGate.com, as part of a redesign.

The news site has simpler and top-of-the-page navigation, which allow users to access to multimedia features, and more search tools.

The World Editors Forum has re-launched its Editors Weblog to increase functionality and make it easier to navigate.

The Fiji Sun's publisher, Russell Hunter, was deported Tuesday after his paper printed reports that the country's finance minister, Mahendra Chaudhry, had engaged in tax evasion.

Hunter was described by the Fijian government as being a threat to national stability. He was given deportation documents Monday night by four soldiers and an immigration official and arrived in Australia Tuesday afternoon, the Sydney Morning Herald reported Wednesday.

Social networking has been booming in Australia and New Zealand, according to a recent Nielsen Online study.

According to the study, 55 percent of Australian and 62 percent of New Zealand's online users used a social network in 2007.

Yahoo has finally announced the launch of its long-rumored Buzz portal, a social news site where users can vote on stories, and send the most popular stories to a featured spot on the Yahoo homepage, according to the Wired Blog Network.

It is obvious Yahoo Buzz is aimed to compete against Digg and Reddit. However, Buzz is not simply trying to imitate Digg, the Wired Blog Network reported.

Weekly business newspaper The Myanmar Times, which is closely tied to Burma's ruling junta, may soon be permitted to publish the country's first privately owned daily newspaper since the military took over power in Myanmar in 1962, The Irrawaddy reported Monday.

Sources in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy, a Thailand-based newspaper that covers Burma and Southeast Asia, that it seems “very likely” The Myanmar Times will receive permission to publish the new privately owned daily following a national referendum held by the regime, which is scheduled for May.

As part of a deal with a media watchdog group, Norwegian media group Schibsted ASA will sell its entire 34.3 percent stake in newspaper group Adresseavisen ASA in order to create its Media Norge newspaper group.

The Independent Media Ownership Council authorised Media Norge's establishment Tuesday, on the condition that Schibsted sell its Adresseavisen shares, Thomson Financial reported.

The print industry in India is preparing a list of demands for the Finance Minister, to be delivered before the Union Budget 2008-09 is presented.

The list will demand the removal of the Fringe Benefit Tax (FBT), and lower taxes on the buying and selling of newsprint, among others, exchange4media reported Monday.

The American Press Institute's latest project, Newspaper Next 2.0, means newspaper companies “will have to venture farther afield and become the indispensable guide to everything that anyone in their local community needs to know to live there,” The Poynter Institute's media analyst Rick Edmonds stated Monday.

The report, a sequel to the original 2006 Newspaper Next report, was published online last week, and states that despite the problems plaguing the news industry, from circulation declines to online revenues that can't make up for them, newspapers can survive, and even see “dizzying growth rates” j – but not without dramatic changes in the way they think, the strategies they adopt and the innovation processes they use.”

Sales of traditional paid newspapers in Ireland are not being impacted by freesheets, Paul McCabe, head of media buying agency MCM told the Sunday Business Post.

McCabe's opinion is based on the Audit Bureau of Circulations data for July to December 2007, which showed only marginal changes for newspapers in the country.

As television audiences become increasingly fragmented, traditional TV players are reaching out to online audiences, eMarketer reported Monday.

“It hasn’t happened yet, but full-blown convergence between television and the Internet is on the way,” the company's latest report states.

Deutsche Bank cut its rating on shares of The New York Times Co. Monday, as the industry continues to battle soft U.S. advertising trends, the Associated Press reported.

Deutsche Bank's Paul Ginocchio cut his rating on the company from "Hold" to "Sell," and lowered his price target to US$15 from $17.

Could television be the next industry run over by the Internet? An article on Wall Street Journal pointed out the possibility - Online video has been a hit. In December alone, Americans watched more than 300 million videos on YouTube, and spent 34 percent more time watching it compared to the same period in 2006.

Although it has not been entirely at the expense of television viewing, the growth still comes as a shock to network executives. What’s more, Google's new plans to squeeze money out of online video advertising could also cause broadcasters a lot of pain.

Following the American Press Institute's release of its report Newspaper Next 2.0: Making the Leap Beyond 'Newspaper Companies,' the World Association of Newspapers will host the first-ever Newspaper Next event outside North America at the end of its UK Study Tour 2008.

Newspaper Next's Managing Director, Steve Gray from the American Press Institute, will present a day-long strategy session during the study tour's seminar in London at news agency Reuters.

Trinity Mirror has launched a new free weekly newspaper, to be delivered to and around 10,000 homes in Daventry, England, and surrounding villages, Holdthefrontpage reported Friday.

The Daventry Post will be delivered every Thursday, and compete with the Johnston Press title Daventry Express.

A new report from Outsell Research suggests a worrying trend: many U.S. online newspapers aren't attracting readers fast enough.

“In online usage, what stands out is that most sites are just treading water,” Ken Doctor, Outsell affiliate analyst and author of the report, told Editor & Publisher. “A few have managed significant growth year-over-year, but most are somewhere between barely growing and losing audience.”

Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin called Microsoft's bid for Yahoo an "unnerving" maneuver that threatens Internet innovation, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Brin reiterated the company’s position that a merger could violate antitrust laws and harm Internet users, after an event at the company's headquarters.

The mobile music market in Western Europe will continue to boom within next three year, as the overall mobile music spending has grown more than double from US$636 million in 2006 to $1.7 billion this year, and is expected to achieve $3.25 billion in 2011, research firm eMarketer announced.

In 2006, more than 80 percent of the spending came from ringtones and ringback tones, which accounted for $515 million. However, they are losing ground with time. In 2011, they are expected to reach $1.63 billion, but only represent 50 percent of overall spending.

USA Today has launched a new lifestyle magazine, Open Air, Editor & Publisher reported.

The new publication covers various topics including workout tips, athletic gear, and travel destinations, and will be distributed quarterly in the Friday editions of USA Today.

The Orange County Register's new publisher, Terry Horne, is taking a “three-pronged approach” to weathering falling advertising revenue and declining circulation, and is hoping free community newspapers, expanded online offerings and a smaller print version will help get the Register through the newspaper industry's tough times.

“The Register has to become a 21st century business,” Horne told the Register Wednesday. “We can't have the same model that worked 10 years ago.”

Investor group Firebrand Partners and hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners have increased their stake in the New York Times Company to 15.6 percent, making them the largest shareholder, and are pushing for four seats on the board, Brand Republic reported Friday.

The two dissident shareholders doubled their stake to 10 percent last week, before increasing it again to 15.6 percent this week. Scott Galloway, founder of Firebrand Partners, has been calling on the Times Co. to invest more in digital operations.

Singapore Press Holdings announced its latest digital initiative Friday, an interactive Web TV service to be launched later in the year, Asia Media Journal reported.

The Straits Times Razor TV will be a free-access, interactive Web television service, and will deliver live studio content and on-demand videos over a real-time interactive platform, SPH Chairman Tony Tan stated in the announcement.

Although its last year's acquisitions of Rural Press and Southern Cross Broadcasting's radio network confused performance results comparisons, Fairfax Media is already reaping the benefits from the buys, The Age, owned by Fairfax, has reported Friday.

Fairfax is “humming along very well and personally I'm very happy about what is going on in this organisation,” said Ron Walker, the company's chairman.

National newspapers' online editions in the United Kingdom that publish monthly Audit Bureau of Circulation traffic data are seeing large traffic growth, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.

Web sites for Times Online and The Sun, both owned by News International, saw high levels of growth. The Sun's year-on-year traffic was up nearly 40 percent, and it's growth from December to January was 27 percent, from 10,474,814 uniques in December, to 13,322,535 in January. Times Online saw users grow by 35 percent from December to January, and recorded a year-on-year growth of 39 percent, to a total of 15,087,130.

The Albuquerque Tribune will publish its last edition Saturday; the is closure due to plunging circulation.

Cincinnati-based E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the newspaper, announced in August last year that the paper would be shuttered if a buyer could not be found, the Associated Press reported.

Staff at Berliner Zeitung have held several emergency meetings to discuss both the newspaper's future and the 20 percent cuts media group Mecom Group Plc, which owns the paper, is rumoured to be considering.

The staff also wrote a personal letter to David Montgomery, Mecom's executive chairman, stating that he must “rethink his current business policy,” and that “if Mecom is unable to come up with such a strategy, in the interests of the paper and its readers a new, appropriate proprietor should be sought,” the Guardian reported Wednesday.

Although print circulation is dropping, there is a hope emerging from online readership, as the online newspaper audience is currently making up 28 percent of print readership losses, according to Scarborough Research.

This study surveyed local newspaper Web site users of 88 newspapers in the top 50 U.S. markets from August 2004 through March 2007. It found that online newspaper readership grew 14 percent over that period, and 70 percent of all newspaper Web site visitors also read the printed papers.

In the last two years, TV advertising has lost ground due to the digital competition, according to a recent study by the Association of National Advertisers and Forrester Research.

According to the study, 62 percent of marketers believe television is less effective than in 2006. This echoed the fact many TV marketers are interested in experimenting with new digital platforms for video commercials.

More than 70 percent online users in the United Kingdom never use online search on the mobile devices, according to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive.

Seventy-one percent of UK Internet users said they have never tried mobile Internet. Another seven percent said they have tried only once, 12 percent use it once a fortnight or less, and one out of 10 said they use mobile online search on a weekly basis.

The Evening Standard has a created a competition for advertisers, rewarding the winner with a £200,000 media campaign in the newspaper.

Those competing for the prize had to submit a 500 word essay on why their brands or clients want to reach the Evening Standard's audience, and how they “plan to use a selected range from the newspaper's media opportunities,” the competition announcement stated.

The dean at Northwestern University's journalism school, John Lavine, is being taken to task for his use of anonymous quotes in two introductory letters for the school's alumni magazine last year.

Last week, a column in The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper, called his use of an anonymous source into question. Following the column's publication, written by senior David Spett, a firestorm of media coverage has ensued over the journalism ethics practised by the dean, and on Tuesday 16 members of Medill School of Journalism's faculty released a statement saying that the “matter has become a crisis for the school.”

Hindi daily Nai Dunia is preparing to venture out of it's home in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, and spread across the entire Hindi-speaking belt in about six months, the Business Standard reported Wednesday.

Vinay Chhajlani, director of Nai Dunia News & Network Private Ltd, would not name specific states the newspaper plans to launch in, but did say Nai Dunia is “in an aggressive mode and ready to venture outside Madhya Pradesh.”

According to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Tuesday, dissident shareholder Harbinger Capital Partners has increased its stake to 11.8 percent in New York Times Co.

Harbinger, a New York University business professor, has criticised the Times for not aggressively focusing on its digital businesses.

Over 98 million mobile subscribers in the United States and Western Europe played games on their handset during December 2007, according to new research from M:Metrics.

In spite of high demand, advances in mobile technology and the emergence of mobile marketing service providers, the market is still not yet ripe enough to draw major ad dollars, Media Post reported.

The Sun-Times Media Group (STMG) Tuesday announced it will outsource its advertising production work to Affinity Express, which by estimate would save US$3 million annually for the company, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

"Partnering with Affinity will enable us to significantly upgrade our service to our advertisers while reducing our costs," said president and CEO of STMG Cyrus Freidheim Jr. in a statement. "This is one in a series of actions to make our company more nimble and efficient."

The Baltimore Sun Media Group will launch a free daily tabloid and Web site targeting young adults, which will focus on news, sports, pop culture, entertainment and night life, The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday.

The new free daily, to be called b, and Web site, bthesite.com, will target younger readers, ages 18-to-34-years-old. The newspaper will also publish content from other publications, including Chicago free daily RedEye, both of which are owned by Tribune Co.

The ten staff members at Irish language newspaper Lá Nua have been given redundancy notices, and the tabloid is expected to close at the end of the month.

At the same time, plans to launch a Welsh-language daily, Y Byd, were abandoned last week. Closure of both papers is due to inadequate funding, management for both papers have said.

The Bay Area News Group newspaper publisher, controlled by MediaNews Group Inc. is cutting jobs at newspapers including the Contra Costa Times and the Oakland Tribune, in a sweeping cost-cutting measure includes offering buyouts to almost all of the group's 1,100 employees.

San Francisco-based Bay Area News Group will not disclose how many jobs will end up being cut, or how many it intends to save, The Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

The World Editors Forum, Reuters and Zogby International Wednesday began collecting data for the second annual Newsroom Barometer, a global survey of chief editors about their attitudes and strategies in the multimedia age.

The Newsroom Barometer aims to provide a better understanding of the changes in newsrooms through the eyes of editors-in-chief and senior news executives.

Free daily Metro continues to have the highest circulation in Hungary, distributing 332,000 copies in the fourth quarter of 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

The country's second highest circulated paper was paid daily Blikk, owned by Swiss publisher Ringier, which sold 227,000.

The Newspaper Association of America spent almost US$1.6 million last year lobbying the U.S. government on issues ranging from advertising to freedom of information requests, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

According to a disclosure form from the Senate's public records office, the NAA spent a total of $1,578,000 (€1,071,428) in 2007, lobbying the government on issues such as “whether drug companies are allowed to market directly to consumers, the laws forcing government agencies to provide reporters with requested information, rules on how many properties media companies can own and whether telemarketers can call people who do not want to be called,” the AP stated.

Two auditors of newspaper and magazine readership, the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) and the National Readership Survey (NRS), will appoint a joint chief executive, and will meet next month to decide whether to merge, Brand Republic reported Tuesday.

Appointing a joint chief is one of several steps toward merging in the long term that ABC and NRS are considering, such as merging their public relations operations. However, it is not an understanding that the two bodies will combine their offerings of data for media planners and buyers.

Chinese mobile phone users are much more likely to listen to mobile music than users in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy or Spain, according to a survey by M:Metric.

The survey, conducted in December 2007, showed that almost 35 percent of Chinese respondents listened to mobile music in the previous month. Following are Spain and the United Kingdom, with 20 percent and 18.9 percent of respondents, respectively. In United States, however, only 5.7 percent of mobile subscribers were listening to music, which lagged behind any other countries surveyed.

According to an interview with Bill Gates, Microsoft is not haggling with Yahoo over the rebuffed $31-per-share buyout offer, the Associated Press reported.

"We sent them a letter and said we think that's a fair offer. There's nothing that's gone on other than us stating that we think it's a fair offer. They should take a hard look at it," said the Microsoft chairman Monday.

According to Parks Associates, the spending on "new multimedia" platforms will increase to US$12.6 billion over the next five years, which includes broadband multimedia advertising, estimated to be more than $6 billion, and embedded video advertising, which will account for over one-third of the total.

Mobile news and entertainment will achieve $5 billion in 2012, dominated by display and search, while on-linear TV services, such as video-on-demand and digital video recorders, will generate revenue of less than $1 billion, most of which are interactive ad spots.

The Daily Mail has launched a new mobile phone service that, after connecting mobile phones to the Internet momentarily, allows them to send an unlimited number of free text messages to anyone on the system.

The MailTXT system requires readers to download a Java application to their phones, but there is no contractual requirement, and no subscription fee, Brand Republic reported Monday.

A recent slide in results for Finland's SanomaWSOY and Schibsted in Norway could be just a bump in the road, or they could be an indicator of downward trends to come. Either way, both groups say 2008 is already looking better.

Schibsted saw shares slide 36 percent year-on-year, while Sanoma was down 25 percent from 2006 to 2007. Both missed fourth quarter forecasts.

The Montenegrin government will offer only 51 percent of its shares in Pobjeda, the oldest state-run daily in Montenegro, in a bid to take the newspaper private.

Offering only 51 percent will allow the government to retain power over decisions about content, design and production, The Montenegro Times reported Monday.

The Business Standard has launched a Hindi business daily, which hit newsstands Friday.

The new paper, named after the Business Standard, will be published in New Delhi and Mumbai, and more editions are expected to be announced in the next few months, agencyfaqs! reported Monday.

The Rocky Mountain Collegian of Colorado State University is in jeopardy of being taken over by Gannett Co., Inc., a move the university paper and its staff fears would quash its status as an independent student newspaper, The New York Times reported Monday.

J. David McSwane, the paper's editor, learned early in January that the university's president was meeting with representatives from the city's daily, The Fort Collins Coloradoan, owned by Gannett, to discuss a possible “partnership” between the local paper and the student paper.

Telegraaf Media Groep N.V. has bought communications firm Nobiles Media BV and 100 percent of both of its joint ventures, Smart Events B.V. and Info Pinnacle B.V., Thomson Financial reported Monday.

Financial terms of the deal, effective Saturday, were not disclosed. Nobiles Media had previously held a 50 percent in Info Pinnacle and Smart Events.

Media employment levels were "slammed by the slumping newspaper industry,” falling to a 15-year low of 886,900 in December in the United States, AdAge.com reported Monday.

“Since media employment peaked in dot-com-infused 2000, media companies have eliminated one in six jobs (167,600),” according to AdAge.

Yahoo Videos has been relaunched with new features, including a larger media player, in order to increase users’ engagement with the site, Media Post reported.

In addition to the new wide-screen player, the site now aggregates video from all of Yahoo’s other sections. It also provides upgraded tools for playing, sharing and organising videos. For example, users can upload bigger files up to 150 megabytes, which can accommodate longer and higher-quality videos.

The Kunming Daily, in China's southwestern province of Yunnan, published local government officials' contact information, with government permission.

The information appeared Saturday in a four-page special section, and included telephone numbers, positions and responsibilities of local government officials, as well as leading officials of the municipal Communist Party committee, Xinhua reported Monday.

Those working in journalism, public relations, photography and broadcasting are 50 percent more likely to work overtime for free than the rest of the workforce, according to the Trades Union Congress, the national trade union centre in the United Kingdom.

Four in 10 media industry professionals work an average of six hours and 42 minutes for free each week, adding up to unpaid overtime worth about £288 million total each year, the TUC announced Friday.

The Sun-Times Media Group Inc. announced Friday it has retained investment banking firm Lazard to help evaluate strategic financial alternatives, including selling its flagship newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times.

Earlier this month, Sun-Times Media announced it had formed a strategic alternatives committee to investigate future actions, including selling some or all of its properties, and partnerships with third parties, The Chicago Tribune reported Friday.

The Los Angeles Times named Russ Stanton its new editor-in-chief Thursday, the fourth person to fill the role in the past three years.

James O'Shea, the paper's previous top editor, was forced out three weeks ago by resisting another round of staff cuts. Many newsroom staffers resent how O'Shea and his predecessors were treated, and for years editors and reporters haven't seen eye-to-eye with David Hiller, the paper's publisher, or the Tribune Company, its owner, The New York Times reported Friday.

Due to insufficient funding, plans to publish the first daily Welsh-language newspaper have been abandoned, as a £200,000 annual grant for the next three years just isn't enough, the company behind Y Byd (The World) announced.

Dyddiol Cyf criticised the assembly government for not supporting Welsh-language press by not expanding its funding, BBC News reported Friday.

An Astana court has ordered one of Kazakhstan's only independent newspapers to be closed, saying that errors were made when the newspaper was registered, RadioFreeEurope reported Friday.

The owner of the newspaper, Law and Justice, have said the order is an attempt at shutting down an independent media outlet that reports on Kazakh judiciary corruption, and has nothing to do with their registration.

Global daily newspaper circulation reached 551.2 million in 2006, with a five-year growth rate of 14.2 percent, up from 482.7 million at the beginning of 2002, according to ZenithOptimedia and the World Association of Newspapers.

Paid-for daily newspaper circulation reached 510.4 million in 2006, up 8.7 percent from 2002, when circulation was at about 469.5 million.

According to research firm Mindshare Interaction, the Russian online advertising market is projected to achieve US$685 million in 2008, after doubling to $369 million last year.

The figures surpass previous predictions, a Russian daily reported.

Four U.S. publishing companies today announced a one-stop shop, offering advertisers space on local newspaper and TV station Web sites, called quadrantOne.

Participating firms are Hearst, Tribune, Gannett and The New York Times, according to Editor & Publisher.

Growth in Australia's online advertising market continued to slow in 2007, but display advertising surged, The Australian reported Thursday.

Advertisers spent AU$1.4 billion online last year, and $31 million more in the fourth quarter compared with the third quarter, according to Internet Advertising Bureau figures.

comScore has released its list of top 20 global Web properties, ranked based on total unique visitors, as of December 2007, and only one newspaper has made the list.

The New York Times came in 19th, with 9 percent reach worldwide, and 69,435,000 unique users, comeScore World Metrix data revealed.

The New York Times “will bow to growing financial strain” and cut 100 newsroom jobs this year, The Times reported Thursday.

The positions will be cut by leaving vacant jobs unfilled, offering buyouts, and through layoffs, if necessary, the paper's executive editor, Bill Keller, told the paper.

Belo Corp. reported a net loss of US$262.81 million, or $2.57 per diluted share, for 2007, Providence Business News reported Thursday.

This is compared to earnings in 2006 of $130.53 million, or $1.26 per share.

The relationship between the Associated Press and member newspapers is changing and being tested like never before. Although AP copy makes up about 40 percent of daily news content in many papers, growing online news is hurting the newspaper industry.

“Do newspapers still need The Associated Press? And does The Associated Press still need newspapers?” Louis Hau wrote for Forbes Thursday.

According to the data collected by Nielsen Online and compiled by the Magazine Publishers of America, the top 320 magazine Web sites in the United States had an average of 67.5 million unique visitors per month during the fourth quarter last year, an 8.1 percent growth from the same period in 2006.

This increase is even faster than the Internet overall, where the total U.S. online population rose 2.4 percent in 2007.

Yahoo Wednesday sent a letter to its shareholders, outlining the reasons why its board believes Microsoft’s offer is not in the best interest of Yahoo stockholders and undervalues the company, PaidContent reported Thursday.

The letter came as the company is having talks with News Corp. as an alternative deal.

The year of 2000 was the tipping point for U.S. newspapers - the year growth slowed, and even started to recess, according to the Newspaper Association of America and Kubas.

Using figures in 1995 as the index base 100, U.S. GDP, retail sales, and newspaper ad revenue almost grew at the same pace, and reached about 135 in 2000. After 2000, the newspaper advertising revenue index started to lag behind against these of GDP and retail sales.

Free Czech dailies are seeing readership rise, while the country's top three largest paid titles are losing readers, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

According to the latest readership figures from Media Projekt 2007, free daily Metro saw readership go up from 387,000 to 393,000 in the last six months of 2007.

The latest technology could help newspapers in the United Kingdom to completely revamp their sites, but with Internet start-ups filling the market, local newspapers may not be making changes fast enough, Journalism.co.uk reported Wednesday.

Internet start-ups are native to new media, and can offer lower costs. Additionally, their ultra-local video news broadcasts and the huge success of YouTube has newspaper sites gunning for their video cameras. “The early results were often embarrassing, as many in the industry admit,” writes Journalism.co.uk's Paul Bradshaw.

Washingtonpost.com and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle have the highest adult penetration in their local markets in the United States among newspaper Web sites and printed newspapers, according to the latest Scarborough Research figures.

The Scarborough Newspaper Penetration Report covers data collected from August 2006 to September 2007.

Belgian publisher Corelio increased its market share reach in the country to 32.3 percent in 2007, and globally sold 451,592 copies daily, according to CIM, the Belgian Audit Bureau of Circulation.

Corelio's De Standaard saw the biggest circulation increase of all Belgian newspapers, up 4.1 percent.

Journalists at French business newspaper Les Echos went on strike Tuesday night to show support for their editor, who has resigned.

Erik Izraelewicz said his resignation is due to interference from the paper's new owners, luxury goods group LVMH, which bought Les Echos late last year. Izraelewicz will become editor of rival newspaper La Tribune.

European authorities are going to impose new limits on the time period search engines can retain data of users’ search queries, MediaPost reported Wednesday.

The Article 29 Working Party, in charge of enforcing Europe's privacy laws, will issue new guidelines next week, according to The Financial Times.

Reuters and the Guardian have reached an advertising agreement in the United States, which allows Reuters to sell Web advertising targeting the Guardian’s U.S. online readers, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

According to the terms, Guardian.co.uk will be sold alongside Reuters.com in the Reuters Affiliate Network, a newly launched collection of news sites and blogs targeted to business professionals.

Hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners has increased its stake in The New York Times Co., doubling its share from 4.9 percent to 9.96 percent, a move aimed at naming four directors to The Times' board, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

Harbinger is working with Scott Galloway, a New York University marketing professor, to try to implement changes in the company, which they say has not built up its digital businesses aggressively enough.

Media Times Ltd. has launched Urdu newspaper Aaj Kal, and plans to launch another newspaper to promote a “progressive and modern Pakistan” in the future, the Daily Times reported Tuesday.

The launch was announced Monday at a ceremony attended by former Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif.

In its latest round of layoffs to combat “rapidly declining revenue,” due to advertising and circulation declines, the Minneapolis Star Tribune will cut 58 positions and freeze the wages of non-union employees.

About three percent of the staff will be cut, as well as seven additional photo-imaging employees, the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal reported Monday.

Editors of four national dailies in Bangladesh, as well as 30 editors and publishers of local dailies, urged their government to implement policies that would help newspapers survive during difficult times.

The editors of Amar Desh, Amader Shomoy, Manabzamin and Bhorer Kagoj and others addressed the government at the “Problems of the newspaper industry” forum, organised by the Progressive Democratic Party, The Daily Star has reported Wednesday.

Yahoo announced Tuesday a strategic partnership with T-Mobile International, in order to expand its mobile services with the help of T-Mobile's European footprint.

This agreement, which bolsters Yahoo’s oneSearch initiative, will make it the exclusive mobile search provider for T-Mobile in 11 European markets starting from the end of March, Media Post reported Tuesday.

Yahoo, who turned down a takeover bid by Microsoft Monday, announced Tuesday its acquisition of Maven Networks, an online video distribution firm.

According to Yahoo, this deal is valued at about US$160 million, and would make it the leading premium video publisher online, Media Post reported Tuesday.

Katharine Weymouth was named publisher of The Washington Post and chief executive of Washington Post Media on Thursday, giving her oversight of The Washington Post newspaper and its online version, washingtonpost.com, The Post reported Friday.

Weymouth, who will take over from her grandmother and late Washington Post Co. Chairman Katharine Graham, will examine the newspaper and Web site's business and advertising departments, which could lead to merging some operations.

Montreal-based Transcontinental Media is closing the Halifax Daily News to put out a new free paper in the city instead.

The newspaper “will close immediately,” and the first edition of the free Metro paper will be published Thursday, the Canadian Press reported Monday.

Promotora de Informaciones SA (Prisa), will sell minority stakes in its businesses to cut debt and finance expansion, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Prisa CEO Juan Luis Cebrian said the media company will continue what it started in December, when it sold 16 percent of its radio operations to 3iGroup Plc for €225 million, and sell of pieces of its other divisions.

The Irish-language daily Lá Nua is likely to close at the end of February, the paper's editor said he believes. Conchubhar O'Liatháin said the paper's closure would be due to a withdrawal of funding by Foras na Gaeilge, the governing body of the Irish language, the Sunday Business Post reported.

Lá Nua announced last week it would stop publishing print editions, and switch to online publishing only, as Belfast Media Group, which publishes the paper, could not absorb losses from the print side.

Belo has completed the spin-off of its original newspaper division. The new broadcast-focus company, which operates 20 local stations in seven markets in the United States, began trading Monday.

The newspaper operations, including The Dallas Morning News and Providence Journal, are now a new separate public company, A.H. Belo, which also began trading on the NYSE Monday, Media Post reported Monday.

According to a Nielsen Online survey, books are as popular as ever, and buying them online is growing in popularity.

In fact, books are the most purchased item online. The survey found that 41 percent of online users had bought a book online, while two years ago, only 34 percent of Internet users did so, according to eMarketer.

Yahoo turned down Microsoft's US$44.6 billion takeover bid as “inadequate” Monday, without explaining how its management will match the payoff that the shareholders would have received if the offer had been accepted, MSNBC reported.

The rebuff had been widely anticipated due to the leak of Yahoo's intention during the weekend.

Marcus Wilding of the Carat Global media planning agency has joined the programme of the World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo in Budapest next month, where he will share his views on the changing advertising environment and what it means for newspaper advertising sales.

The world of advertising agencies is undergoing powerful changes as fragmentation continues and new forms of advertising emerge. Wilding, who will deliver the conference keynote address, will examine how these changes will affect newspapers and how to sell advertising effectively in the new environment.

Earlier this week, Google News unveiled a new feature that creates a local section for any city, state or country in the world and includes thousands of news sources for that local section. What makes the feature different is that every word in each story – not just the source or byline – is analysed to understand the location the news focuses on, and where the news source is located, Google software engineers Andre Rohe and Rohit Ananthakrishna wrote in their blog Wednesday.

So does this new way of analysing data to come up with the most relevant top news for an area actually work? I checked on my own city, Chicago, to see how relevant the Internet giant's news results are.

Free newspaper group Metro International posted 61 percent fourth quarter losses in operating profits on Friday, blaming its performance on a difficult global newspaper market.

The Sweden-based group also said its poor U.S. results were due to global credit problems. In the United States, newspapers are having trouble as print advertising migrates to the Internet, and problems in the real estate sector have hurt classifieds.

Promotodora de Informaciones SA (Prisa) saw net profit fall from 228.9 million euro to 191.9 million euro in the full year to December.

The profit drop was in line with analysts' estimates of 135 to 236 million euro for the Spanish media giant, Thomson Financial reported Thursday.

Finland's top media group SanomaWSOY reported fourth quarter profits that missed previous forecasts' marks, due to weak showings in its newspaper unit and education and books division, Reuters reported Thursday.

Operating profit in the fourth quarter of 2007 declined to 68.3 million euro, from 73.9 million the same quarter the year previous, the company announced Thursday.

According to a ZenithOptimedia estimate, global Internet advertising spending will reach US$45 billion this year, and exceed US$60 billion in the year of 2010.

In 2010, North America will still own the lion’s share of the overall global online ad spending, which is over one-third of the total. Following are Western Europe and Asia Pacific, according to the estimate.

Sam Zell has started filling a promise he made in December to streamline The Tribune Co., which will start with a string of layoffs this week.

About a dozen Chicago-based employees in the human resources department have been informed their positions at Tribune Tower are being eliminated, according to sources cited by the Chicago Tribune Thursday.

The Chicago Tribune confirmed Friday it will terminate remote printing of its Midwest edition this spring, shrinking its distribution area, Editor & Publisher reported Friday.

Its Midwest edition has been printed by Capital Newspapers in Madison, Wisc., and The News Gazette in Champaign, Ill.

Bharti Airtel, VSNL and seven other global telecoms have agreed to build a submarine fiber optic cable that will stretch from India to France, through the Middle East, The Times of India reported Thursday.

The 14,000 km cable is hoped to be completed by late 2009, and will meet the growing needs of Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Bharti would not disclose the cost of the project.

Andris Tiltnieks has filed a £3.7 million libel claim against the publishers of the Guardian newspaper.

Tiltnieks is the head of The Baltic Work Team, a company that employs Bulgarian workers to do manual labour. A Guardian article, published in August 2007, claimed the company illegally employed and exploited the workers, not paying them for 34 days and forcing them to live on scraps and by scavenging vegetables from fields where they worked, and housing them in dirty caravans. The story also stated that Tiltnieks had his gangmaster licence revoked for abuses of employment law, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

A third session of strike action at the Milton Keynes Citizen scheduled to start Tuesday was postponed, with the chapel choosing to instead go on strike within the next few weeks, HoldtheFrontPage reported Wednesday.

The row between the National Union of Journalists and the paper, owned by Johnston Press Plc, is over a pay dispute.

Attempting to benefit from cost-per-click or cost-per-action online advertising, News Digital Media has launched a performance-based network of advertising spots on its Web sites, The Australian reported Thursday.

The New Performance Network is hoped to give NDM access to about 40 percent of the online display advertising market.

Madison, Wisconsin's afternoon daily newspaper will become a free weekly beginning in the spring, The Business Journal of Milwaukee reported Thursday.

The Capital Times will also revamp its Web site to give online readers more daily news and features.

2007 was a tough year for U.S. newspaper companies, as 10 out of 11 saw their stock prices drop, while nearly 80 percent of the companies saw declines of more than 30 percent.

Journal Register and McClatchy experienced the downturn most seriously – their stock price plunged 75 percent and 71 percent, respectively.

AOL's U.S. dial-up access and advertising businesses will finally be divided, announced Jeff Bewkes, Time Warner's recently appointed CEO, Media Post reported Thursday.

During the fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday, Bewkes said his vision for the future of the company includes the possibility of spinning off its cable division.

The Conference Board, which measures print help-wanted ad volumes in 51 major U.S. papers, reported that although the Help-Wanted Advertising Index was up one point to 22 in December 2007 compared to the previous month, it dropped 33 percent compared with December 2006.

The organisation pointed out print recruitment advertising dropped in eight of the nine regions in the United States, where the steepest declines occurred in the Pacific (down 18.9 percent) and South Atlantic (down 16.3 percent). The East North Central region, on the contrary, grew 2.5 percent, Editor & Publisher reported earlier this month.

Nearly 5,000 text messages were sent every second in the United Kingdom in December, ending 2007 with a text message sort of bang. The full year saw 57 billion texts sent, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

The next step for Britons is picture messaging, which the Mobile Data Association shows is beginning to take off.

McClatchy Chairman and CEO Gary Pruitt told analysts and investors Wednesday that “growing online revenue is a significant priority for this company,” Editor & Publisher reported.

As 2008 shapes up to be an even more uncertain economic time in the United States than 2007 was, Pruitt said McClatchy will focus on Internet growth to get the company through tough times.

Newspaper publisher Calkins Media Group announced Tuesday it will restructure the company for future growth, regrouping its print, broadcast and interactive media divisions, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The Pennsylvania-based media company owns eight newspapers, including the Bucks County Courier Times, and three television stations.

The Welsh language minister announced Tuesday that an extra subsidy of £200,000 per year until 2011 has been created for Welsh-language newspapers and magazines, BBC News reported.

Rhodri Glyn Thomas said the “pot” of funds will be available for print or online, and will be administered over the next three years by the Welsh Books Council.

According to research firm iReach, online advertising in Ireland is increasing, but has failed to keep pace with the UK.

Internet advertising accounted for 12 percent of total media advertising in the UK last year, but only accounted for 2.5 percent in Ireland. However, according to eMarketer, this may not be a fair comparison since the UK has one of the highest rates worldwide. Even the rate in the United States is lower - only 7.4 percent in 2007.

Time Warner's AOL has purchased an online affiliate marketing network named Buy.at in order to bolster its ad infrastructure, MediaPost reported. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Since 2007, AOL's acquisitions have mostly focused on ad serving to build its overarching Platform-A advertising unit, while Buy.at is expected to give AOL a more direct relationship to online retailers.

Google plans to enter a market where others fear to tread: the Chinese digital music market, where search leader Baidu leads the pack linking to “illegal” music download Web sites and has even won court ruling against labels, PaidContent reported Wednesday.

Google is in the late planning stages of a joint venture with Top100.cn, a Chinese online music company which currently sells licensed music downloads. The new service would allow Google’s search engine to provide free and licensed music downloads in China.

More than 800 users from around the world have joined a Facebook group formed to defend 23-year-old Afghani journalism student Sayad Parwez Kambaksh, who was sentenced to death by an Afghan court for insulting Islam. Another group, Save Sayed Pervez (sic) Kambaksh, has garnered more than 2,000 members, and a total of 19 groups on Kambaksh's behalf have been created on the social networking site.

Kambaksh's crime: downloading from the Internet and distributing to fellow students a paper that states the oppression of women is not justified by the Koran or Muhammad's teachings.

Saying that time for a negotiated solution is running out, the European Union is preparing to complain to the World Trade Organization about China's restrictions on financial news from foreign providers, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson has written the proposal for the WTO to initiate a “dispute settlement procedure” over strict Chinese measures that affect “the supply of financial information services to China,” according to a European Commission document.

Kicking of Super Tuesday today in the United States, Metro editions around the world are using CNN content for the U.S. elections. Some content will even be exclusive for Metro, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

Super Tuesday is the day when nearly half the states in the United States participate in primary elections, selecting delegates to national conventions, where presidential candidates for each party are officially nominated.

Herald Media, which publishes The Korea Herald and The Herald Business, announced Monday that Hong Jung-wook, its chairman, chief executive officer, publisher and largest shareholder, is resigning.

In naming a new publisher and CEO, the company is focusing on striking balance of separation between ownership and management, as well as management and editorial, The Korea Herald reported Tuesday. Hong's replacement, “will be named soon,” the article stated.

The UK Competition Commission may weigh in on the sale of eight Trinity Mirror titles to Dunfermline Press Ltd. over concerns of competition restriction, as the Scottish firm would have control over the only two newspapers in the Eton, Windsor and Slough area if the sale goes through, HoldtheFrontPage reported Tuesday

The Office of Fair Trading has asked Dunfermline to address the competition concerns with a series of “satisfactory undertakings,” which will determine whether the OFT refers the sale to the Competition Commission.

The total U.S. podcast audience reached 18.5 million in 2007, and will increase 251 percent to 65 million by 2012, according to research firm eMarketer.

Of the expected 65 million strong audience, 25 million will be “active users,” who tune in at least once a week.

Should Microsoft and Yahoo make a deal, it would obviously transform the online ecosystem. However, before news that Microsoft was after Yahoo went public, there were few signs that Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was about to make an acquisition that would transform the company and pose a threat to Google, writes James Robinson, of The Observer.

To compete against Google's biggest competitor, Microsoft and Yahoo have talked about forming an alliance before, but Yahoo's flagging share price has now given Microsoft an opportunity to buy it outright. If the bid goes successfully, it would bring a competitive edge in cyberspace to the software market giant.

MothersClick.com has acquired MothersGroups.com and has also launched a new portal of mom-centric and parenting Web sites, the company announced Monday.

The acquisition of the domain strengthens the company's online assets and casts a wider net for their target audience. MothersClick is a subsidiary of the ParentsClick Network, which currently owns more than 150 parenting-related domains, according to a company statement.

News Corporation Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch used Monday's earnings call to reiterate how well the subscription model has worked for the Wall Street Journal's Web site, and also mentioned expanding free content for the site.

Although some more content, such as opinion, will come out from behind its paid wall, “the bulk of the Journal's core business coverage will remain behind the subscription wall,” PaidContent reported.

The Gambia Press Union will launch a 1.2 million dalasi (€38,541) project to train journalists in field reporting, online journalism and Web mastering, with trainers from Denmark facilitating.

GPU President Madi M.K. Ceesay announced the project Friday at the opening of the first week-long training course, according to an article posted on AllAfrica Monday.

The new editor of the Independent on Sunday is not ruling out further integration with the paper's daily counterpart, the Independent, in the future, but for now, merging is “not on the agenda,” Press Gazette reported Monday.

“All newspapers are looking at the best way to use their resources in very tight markets. You would be wrong to suggest that it’s not an important thing to look at. From my point of view at the IoS there will be no diminishing of its identity,” John Mullin told Press Gazette.