June 2008 Archives

Asian online advertising will continue to grow at rapid rates, Inquirer.net has reported.

Japanese companies are at the top, predicted to spend more than US$2.5 billion on online advertising next year. Chinese companies, meanwhile, are expected to reach the same figure by 2010.

When a newspaper is handed over from the seller to the buyer in South Africa, its journey has only just begun, as the latest SAARF AMPS study has found that although readership is up, circulation is the same, as more people are sharing newspapers, Biz-Community reported Thursday.

African Response, a co-contractor on the SAARF AMPS study, found that just because more South Africans are reading newspapers, it does not necessarily mean they are buying them.

The so-called video game generation is made up mostly by people in the 26- to 34-year-old range, according to an M:Metrics survey.

In Germany, more than 35 percent of people ages 26 to 34 play video games, followed by those ages between 18 to 24, and ages 35 to 44. Less than five percent of Germans over age 45 plays video games, according to the study, conducted in September 2007.

Two Michigan newspapers, The Saginaw News and The Bay City Times, will together launch EverythingTri-Cities.com, a regional site providing information on the activities and offerings of the Tri-Cities, Editor & Publisher reported Friday.

The joint offering highlights entertainment opportunities in the three counties the Web site is based from, featuring an interactive events calendar, where users can browse offerings by day or by category, and also lists of community resources.

The UK Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards will meet next week to discuss findings of a study on how newspaper Web sites gather traffic data, Journalism.co.uk reported.

The committee decides how online measurement standards are developed, and in May ordered a review on how the Audit Bureau of Circulation Electronic (ABCe) audits newspaper Web site traffic.

Yahoo!'s rejection of a Microsoft acquisition and partnership with Google could distract the company from its Newspaper Consortium partnership, and leads industry experts to ask if the long awaited ad platform AMP will launch as planned, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

More than 40 percent of U.S. daily newspapers, by circulation, have joined with Yahoo!.

In a letter to shareholders Wednesday, Yahoo! once again defended its decision to forego a Microsoft takeover and instead partner with Google in a non-exclusive agreement to have the ability to run sponsored search advertising supplied by Google alongside Yahoo! search results.

The agreement with Google was announced June 12.

Online newspapers in Norway generated nearly €290 million in 2007, up 61 percent from about €180 million in 2005, according to the International Newsmedia Marketing Association (INMA).

Display and classified revenues were at €129.25 million in 2005, and increased to €183.15 million in 2007, with a growth of 41.7 percent. The online sector's overall share of advertising revenue, however, dropped from 72 percent in 2005 to 53.3 percent in 2007.

U.S. mobile marketing continues to be immature, with just 6.9 percent of adults surveyed saying they purchased electronics due to the influence of a video on mobile phones, while 6.4 percent said they were influenced by text messaging, according to BIGresearch's “Simultaneous Media Usage Study,” eMarketer reported.

However, mobile media was twice as effective among younger users, the study found.

Free dailies earned 316 million Swiss Francs in ad revenue in 2007, making up 24 percent of all newspaper ad revenue in Switzerland, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

Overall, Swiss newspapers generated total ad revenues of 1.34 billion Swiss Francs (€826 million) in 2007. Of the total ad revenues in Switzerland, free dailies accounted for five percent.

The number of help wanted ads placed in newspapers in the United States fell one point in May, and 10 points year-over-year from May 2007, Reuters reported Thursday.

The data, from private research group the Conference Board, said the index of help wanted ad volume was at 27 in May last year, falling to 18 in April this year and 17 in May.

Publicis Groupe has established an ad network that depends on the four largest American-based Internet companies that are defining online advertising: Microsoft, Google/DoubleClick, Yahoo and AOL

Although most agencies already work with these systems, Publicis wants to “formally identify the relationships it has with these companies and how it plans to tightly coordinate its campaigns across these platforms,” paidContent reported Wednesday.

Neo-Gothic Chicago landmark Tribune Tower may be the next Tribune Co. property Sam Zell puts on the chopping block.

The Tribune Co. chairman and chief executive announced Wednesday he is looking for ways to “maximise the value of the headquarters building,” and would use proceeds from the sale to pay down the company's debilitating US$13 billion debts, the Chicago Tribune reported late Wednesday night.

Fairfax Digital has acquired a three-fourths stake in The Weather Company, which the company hopes will enable it to offer more online news and weather information, The Age reported Wednesday.

The deal was made for an undisclosed amount, and the company's founder and managing director, Mark Hardy, continues to own 25 percent of the company.

U.S. online users ages 12 and older spent 6.1 hours daily on video-based entertainment, according to a survey conducted in June 2008 by Solutions Research Group.

According to the survey, about four hours per day are spent on traditional television, including live, digital video recorder and video-on-demand viewing. Time on video games, online and PC video, DVDs and video on mobile devices totalled about two hours, eMarketer reported.

The following are top stories today from our partner site, The Editors Weblog:

Internet ad spending will surpass radio this year, with about 9.5 percent of global ad budgets allocated to online media, according to Steve King, head of research firm ZenithOptimedia.

“Internet has already overtaken cinema and outdoors. This year it will overtake radio. In a couple of years it's going to overtake magazines as an advertising media,'' King said at a presentation in Paris Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.

California-based Orange County Register Communications Inc. and India-based Mindworks Global Media will join together for a one-month trial at the end of June in which the Indian company will copy edit some stories published in The Orange County (California) Register.

Mindworks will also lay out pages for a community newspaper owned by the California company, Business Week reported Tuesday.

The two major dailies in Boston are cutting costs once again, with management at the Boston Globe asking unions to take an across-the-board 10 percent pay decrease, and the Boston Herald announcing plans on Tuesday to outsource printing operations and lay off 130 to 160 production-related workers, the Boston Herald reported Wednesday.

The Globe recently completed a round of employee buyouts, while the Herald's production staff being cut will come from press operators, electricians and other production-related staff, and will take place later this year.

Social network advertising may become more effective, thanks to two new methods, one involving studying regional online ad expenditure and the other targeting ads to specific online “friends,” TechCrunch and CNet News reported.

Some advertisers want users to “peddle their stuff to peers on Facebook and MySpace,” CNet stated, while others believe “an effective way to value a particular user is based on the average Internet advertising spend per person in the country they live in. The higher the spend, the more value the social network can get out of the user by serving them advertising and other products,” according to TechCrunch.

Global advertising group Publicis Groupe will launch its digital agency network Digitas in Australia in 2009, the France-based group's global chairman and chief executive announced, The Australian reported Tuesday.

Kenny confirmed the Australian launch in an interview at the International Advertising Festival at Cannes.

Two major dailies in Detroit are offering buyouts to employees and shared business staffs, which totalled at least 150 positions, or seven percent of staff.

The downsizing moves at the Detroit News and the Detroit Free Press are due to financial difficulties in the newspaper industry and a statewide economic downturn in Michigan, the Associated Press reported.

European publishing group Mecom cut 30 journalists at German title Berliner Zeitung, Media Guardian reported Tuesday.

The cuts accounted for about a quarter of the overall editorial department at the newspaper, which was acquired by Mecom in 2005.

The BBC's plan that would have 65 Web sites across the United Kingdom provide on-demand news and sports video puts local press in danger, and will have a negative effect on commercial competition, announced The Newspaper Society, which represents local UK media companies, Media Guardian reported Tuesday.

The BBC plans to spend £68 million on the sites, which will give the corporation “free rein to trample over commercial rivals,” who are already providing local online content, the Newspaper Society stated.

Social media marketing could lead to smaller media budgets, as it “just doesn't cost that much money to make social media advertising effective,” MAGNA Global's senior vice president told the OMMA Social conference in New York Monday, Media Post reported.

“That's the whole point. The brand that is Google spent how much on advertising to build their brand?” Brian Weiser said.

Once again, Google may have developed a product that could challenge traditional media buyer business models. The online giant is expected to announce its latest product, a new tool called Ad Planner, later this afternoon at an Advertising Research Foundation session in New York, MediaPost Publications reported Monday.

AdPlanner will expand on Google’s algorithms by providing media buyers with more detailed information on their target audiences and their media habits.

Google Inc. will unveil its first mobile phones that run on the online giant's Android operating system within the second half of 2008, Bloomberg reported Monday.

Android will allow users to check e-mail, search the Internet and watch videos on their mobiles.

Online job search site Monster has partnered with several more U.S. newspapers, the company stated in an announcement Monday.

Monster launched co-branded sites with 11 dailies, including The Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; New Hampshire Union Leader; Rutland Herald/Times Argus in Vermont; Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram; The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C.; The Blade in Toledo, Ohio; San Francisco Examiner; Baltimore Examiner; and El Nuevo Día in Puerto Rico, Editor & Publisher reported.

The Tribune Co. has begun its overhaul, and the Orlando Sentinel is the first to exhibit the changes, with more news bytes, graphics and top news items, making it easier to skim for more hurried readers, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Sam Zell, owner of Tribune, announced plans earlier this month to cut down on employee numbers, pages in its newspaper and increase its ads to content ratio to 50/50, as well as redesigning the papers to offer more easily digestible news and information, for readers on the go.

The China Times, one Taiwan's top four newspapers, will appear as a tabloid in September, after laying off about half of its staff.

In a company statement issued Thursday, The China Times stated it will relaunch as an "elite" paper to continue serving its readers, Asia Media reported.

Social networking site Facebook has launched a version tailored for online users in China, a move that puts it in direct competition with local and international competitors in the world’s biggest online market, Reuters reported.

When accessing the site, Facebook users in mainland China are redirected to zh-cn.facebook.com, a version in simplified Chinese.

Changes in the newspaper industry, mainly readers switching from paid print formats to online, coupled with a weak economy, are causing advertising sales to take a nosedive in the United States. So far this year, ad revenue is down 12 percent from 2007, and last year, it was eight percent below 2006 levels, The New York Times reported Monday.

Additionally, many company reports, out last week, indicate even worse turndowns, of 14 percent to 15 percent, in May.

South African social media site Zoopy.com will be the Mail & Guardian Online's video delivery partner, BizCommunity reported, following the newspaper's test version launch of its new Web site earlier this week.

Last year, Zoopy was chosen by Nokia as its regional imaging partner for South and West Africa, BizCommunity reported Wednesday.

The UK Newspaper Society has started a Web site that aims to help advertisers better understand regional differences in the United Kingdom, helping them take a less London-centric approach for campaigns, Journalism.co.uk reported Friday.

The site was built based on a national study, called Local Matters, the Newspaper Society commissioned that divided the United Kingdom into 12 regions and to understand attitudes people in each place have on issues such as national government, economy, environmental awareness, sports and personal safety, the article stated.

The Idaho Press Tribune will begin printing the Idaho Statesman, the two most recent U.S. newspapers to cut costs by sharing a printing plant, Fox 12 News reported Thursday.

Other newspapers in the United States and around the world are taking the same measure to offset rising printing costs and lower income due to a poor ad market.

Executives at Yahoo Inc. may overhaul several product groups into a centralised global-product organisation, making groups such as search and e-mail one, MarketWatch reported Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the plan is being headed up by the company's president, Susan Decker.

Nearly every top 30 U.S. newspaper Web site, ranked by traffic, saw unique user numbers grow year-over-year, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune saw traffic jump 136 percent from last year, while traffic at The Dallas Morning News increased 156 percent. The Star Tribune's traffic is now at 2.3 million unique users, while The Morning News is at 3.2 million.

During the year ending in March 2008, Economist.com reported three million unique users, up 39 percent over the previous year, and 199 million page views, according to paidContent.

The overall annual revenue of the company was £266.4 million, up eight percent and leading to 23 percent better profit of £44.3 million.

Yahoo has rolled out a matching service for HotJobs recruitment advertisers, Editor & Publisher reported.

The new service, HotHire, helps employers narrow down candidate pools based on search criteria.

Advertising expenditure in France grew from €7.47 billion in 1996 to €10.7 billion in 2007, and is expected to exceed €11.5 billion in 2010, according to research firm ZenithOptimedia.

In 1996, TV, newspapers and magazines were the three dominating media with most of the ad spending. TV will continue growing steadily and magazines will stagnate, while newspapers will be even in a recession, the research group predicted.

User-generated content has its place, but it won't come near replacing professional journalists or filmmakers, Australia's BigPond boss Justine Milne told The Age Thursday.

“The idea six months ago was that the days of newspapers and journalists had ended and that this was the age of user empowerment and everything was going to be built around blogs and so on. Wrong,” he said.

A report on media ownership and news plurality will be published by the House of Lords communications committee in England next Friday, June 27, Media Guardian reported Thursday.

The committee's chairman is Lord Fowler, who once was a journalist at the Times.

Mail Online surpassed Telegraph.co.uk and Guardian.co.uk in May to become most popular national newspaper website in the UK, with 18.7 million unique users, the Guardian reported Thursday.

The Daily Mail & General Trust's site network in May achieved its highest unique user number on record with 100 percent year-on-year traffic growth, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulation figures published Thursday.

Central Counties Newspapers, part of UK local newspaper publisher Johnston Press, may seek voluntary redundancies for 34 jobs at its Midlands newspapers, HoldtheFrontPage reported Thursday.

The company will “reorganise some of its editorial, sales and administrative duties at some of its centres,” CCN stated.

According to a recent Experian study, currently there are 2.7 billion mobile phones globally in use. By comparison, there are 850 million personal computers, 1.3 billion fixed landline phones, and 1.5 billion TV sets.

In January 2001, only 13 percent of the global population carried a mobile phone. However, by December 2010, the figure will reach 70 percent, Media Post reported.

Turkey's media and entertainment sector will reach a value of US$12.5 billion by 2012, a growth of about 16 percent each year, PricewaterhouseCoopers has forecast, Hürriyet reported Thursday.

The PwC report also showed that Turkey is the fastest growing country in Europe in terms of Internet users.

Advertising expenditure in Spain is expected to grow from €5.4 billion in 2002 to more than €8.3 billion in 2009, according to Duplo, Nielsen, Infoadex and ZenithOptimedia data, incorporated in World Press Trends 2007.

TV will top other media with the most ad spending throughout the years – from about €2 billion in 2002 to nearly €4 billion in 2009. Its shares will boost to nearly 50 percent by 2009, the firms predict.

Gannett Co. has bought a minority stake in online family calendar service Cozi, and as part of the deal, the U.S. newspaper company will make the service available across all of its online newspaper and television properties, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported Thursday.

The calendar service, a Seattle start-up, also includes a photo screen saver, and the calendar function automatically imports selected information, such as school calendar activities, holidays or information on local events or sports teams. So far, the service has been installed by more than 200,000 families.

Although online advertising growth is slowing, it will grow 19.5 percent on average each year until 2012, representing the highest growth levels of media around the world, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook, paidContent reported Wednesday.

In general, PwC predicts global ad revenues will reach US$2.2 trillion by 2012, growing an average of 6.6 percent each year.

Several newspaper networks netted more unique traffic than Google News in May, Nielsen Online data shows, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

Yahoo News had 35.8 million unique monthly visitors, beating out Google News, which had 11.36 million. NYTimes.com also beat the online giant, with 21.3 million uniques.

Professional social networking site LinkedIn has secured US$53 million from global private investment firm Bain Capital and other existing investors to expand in Europe, Media Guardian reported Wednesday.

The investment values the company at $1 billion. Other investors include Sequoia Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners and Greylock Partners.

The China Times will lay off almost half of its 1,200 staff due to financial difficulties, mainly stemming from business and advertising declines in Taiwan, union and newspaper officials announced Wednesday, Monsters & Critics reported.

“In the face of a widening deficit and streamlining of the newspaper, a large-scale redundancy in terms of people and facilities is inevitable,” Chou Sheng-yuan, the newspaper's publisher, stated in a letter to employees.

U.S. online ad revenues reached US$5.8 billion in the first quarter this year, up 18.2 percent over the same period in 2007, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).

However, it was the first time in three years that online ads experienced a sequential decline, lower than the highest $5.9 billion in the last quarter of 2007. The 18.2 percent gain, although healthy, shows that online ad growth has been slowing over the past year, paidContent reported.

McClatchy Co. cut 10 percent of its workforce this week, or 1,400 jobs, pointing to tumbling ad revenue, low cash flow results and poor stock performance as reasons for such drastic cost-cutting measures. It was a tough business decision made during a very difficult time for U.S. newspapers, and other newspaper companies across the country are taking many of the same measures.

Yet, when such a sweeping step is taken, especially when that step is to put loyal, hard-working employees out on the street during a time when finding a journalism job in the United States is beyond difficult, (not to mention under-paid, in many cases) it's only natural for a critical eye to be turned on management, as journalism professionals across the country and around the world wonder if such a drastic step could have been avoided. The Lexington (Kentucky) Newspaper Guild was perhaps the first to make a statement on the matter, and on Monday released a statement criticising CEO Gary Pruitt for his high salary and sizeable 2007 bonus, all while his company was suffering financially.

Media General released its revenue results in May, revealing online as the only unit marking growth, Media Post reported.

Total revenues were US$64.3 million, down from $71.3 million in the same period last year.

Two Stockholm free dailies, Metro and City, have lost readers in the first four months this year compared to the same period in 2007. Metro’s daily circulation dropped from 554,000 to 545,000, while City (Bonnier) has 482,000 readers now versus 518,000 in 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported.

Another free paper, Punk.SE, was still published in the first three months of 2008, but closed down in May. Readership for the next period is expected to rise again.

The Sun-Times Media Group may go private, and may sell one or more of its businesses, the company's chief executive told shareholders at an annual meeting Tuesday, The Canadian Press reported.

Cyrus Freidheim said the company has received several responses from possible buyers last month after discussing a potential sale.

Yahoo has signed onSearch partnerships with five mobile operators in the Asia Pacific region, Digital Media Asia reported Tuesday.

Yahoo will partner with Hong Kong CSL, Mahanagar Telephon Nigam (MTNL in India), Digital Mobile Phlis (Sun Cellular in Philippines), Vibo Telecom (Taiwan) and Smart Communications (Philippines).

Australian analysts have cut their target prices on several top media stocks following Ten Network's downgrade of its earnings outlook Friday, The Australian reported Tuesday.

The drop in target prices given by top investment firms in Australia have led to two days of selling across most top media stocks in the country. Prices were dropped for many top media stocks, including Fairfax Media, Ten, Seven Media and APN News & Media.

Apple Inc. has no plans to sell its 3G iPhone in Korea, for now, at least, the company's Korean unit announced last week, The Korea Herald reported.

Apple unveiled its 3G iPhone June 9, and will initially sell it in 22 countries and regions. Korea is not included in the first 22. By the end of 2008, it will sell the phone in 70 countries.

Tribune Co. and MediaNews Group Inc. could each be unable stop advertising losses fast enough, leading them closer to the possibility of defaulting on billions of dollars in debt, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.

Standard & Poor Analyst Emile Courtney told Bloomberg that Sam Zell's Tribune Co., despite selling assets and debt, could default on debt “as early as December.” William Dean Singleton's MediaNewsGroup Inc. is also in danger, Courtney told Bloomberg.

The Kansas City Star will cut 120 jobs as part of parent McClatchy Co.'s decision to axe 1,400 jobs across its newspapers, The Star reported Tuesday.

The Star's combined readership for print and online is almost four million, but the company continues to struggle, as online revenue, although growing quickly, is not enough to fill the gap made by lost print advertising.

Cox Newspapers Inc. on Tuesday launched 19 mobile Web sites in Texas, Ohio and Florida, TMCnet reported.

According to TMCnet, Cox Newspapers will partner with Quattro Wireless, a mobile services start-up, for the new site launch.

Besides its lead in online search, Google did a great job in mobile search during the first quarter of 2008, according to data from Nielsen Mobile. It captured 61 percent of the mobile search market, while Yahoo! lagged much behind in second at 18 percent. MSN, in the third spot, holds five percent.

Earlier this year, Google said the number of mobile searches coming from iPhones was 50 times higher than any other handset. This may be because Google is set as the default search engine on all iPhones, while Yahoo! is a secondary option. The Microsoft search product is not even available as a default on the iPhone, Ars Technica reported.

The International Herald Tribune on Tuesday announced plans to expand in India, through a partnership with a Indian business newspaper publisher Deccan Chronicle Holdings.

The IHT said it will create a branded business section in Deccan's Financial Chronicle, a version of the Business Asia with Reuters section.

Brazil, Russia, India and China, collectively known as BRIC, will account for about 1.2 billion mobile phone subscribers this year, and profoundly change the operation of both mobile telecommunication and marketing industries, according to the new report “Mobile BRIC: Extreme Growth Ahead” published by eMarketer.

"Mobile is not simply viewed as an extension of the Web in BRIC, as it is in the US, Western Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. Mobile is the Internet for an increasingly large and attractive consumer segment—an important distinction for marketers to keep in mind." according to John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst and author of the new report.

The Spanish-language daily Al Día will increase distribution of its free editions from 40,000 to 120,000 every Wednesday and Saturday.

The change will be effective in late July, Newspaper Innovation reported.

McClatchy Co. plans to cut its work force by about 10% after it announced a 15 percent revenue drop in May, mostly hurt by a 17 percent decline in advertising sales, The Wall Street Journal reported.

"The effects of the current national economic downturn - particularly in real estate, auto and employment advertising - make it essential that we move faster now to realign our workforce and make our operations more efficient," according to Chief Executive Gary Pruitt.

Goldman Sachs has trimmed its estimates for Gannett, after the company announced its plan to take a non-cash impairment charge between $2.5 and $3 billion in the second quarter.

Gannett acknowledged the challenges at its British properties as well as continued softness in U.S., Editor and Publisher reported.

The Newspaper Association of America will no longer send out a quarterly press release on how much advertisers are spending on newspapers, Reuters reported Friday.

The NAA also cancelled its annual U.S. newspaper conference earlier this year.

The family-owned Mayo News has been put up for sale, and is believed to be asking more than €10 million, The Sunday Business Post reported on Sunday.

The Westport, Ireland-based newspaper has about 31 employees, who were informed of the impending sale in recent days.

Yahoo finally completed a search ad pact with Google as Microsoft abandoned its takeover pursuit, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Yahoo said Thursday that under the new ad pact, it will display some ads sold by Google. Yahoo estimated it would generate $800 million revenue annually with improved monetisation of certain types of searches.

The Sun-Times News Group (STNG) has introduced a new real estate print section targeting new home buyers in Chicago area, Editor and Publisher reported.

This new product, called Today's New Homes, will have a paid circulation of 700,000.

The overall ad expenditure in Netherlands was worth €3.87 billion in 2007, and is expected to reach €4.08 billion in 2009, according to data from VEA, the BBC and ZenithOptimedia, documented in World Press Trends 2007.

In Netherlands, newspapers beat other media with the biggest ad spending from 2007 to 2009, with television and magazines followed behind.

Agora-owned Metro is second in circulation in Poland, with more than half a million copies distributed, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

According to Polish circulation data for February through April, Metro's distribution was 511,000.

Denis O'Brien has failed to block Independent News and Media board resolutions, The Australian reported Thursday.

Following an annual meeting Wednesday, the rebel investor failed to attract shareholders to support his attempt to block all board resolutions, and votes against proposals ranged from 22 percent to 37 percent.

Advertising expenditure in India will boost about eightfold from 47.3 million rupees in 1995, to over 367.3 million rupees in 2010, according to the estimates by ZenithOptimedia.

Before the year 2000, newspapers and TV owned over 90 percent of the Indian ad market, while all other media ad expenditure accounted for almost nothing. By 2010, TV and newspapers still own the biggest share, but some other media grow strong, such as the Internet.

Newsstands in France are empty today, after distribution company NMPP announced it is on a 24-hour strike, The Connexion reported Thursday.

NMPP is the main group that delivers 85 percent magazines and newspapers to shops and newsstands in France.

Google hopes its subsidiary DoubleClick will aid newspapers to bring in more online revenue, according to Chief Executive Eric Schmidt Wednesday.

"It's a huge moral imperative to help here," said Schmidt at an event hosted in San Francisco by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, the Associated Press reported.

The New York Times has appointed Cella M. Irvine as chief executive of the About Group, the newspaper reported Thursday.

The appointment was announced Wednesday, and will be effective July 28. The About Group includes information and advice site About.com.

When it comes to accuracy online, students agree newspapers are by far more accurate than news on the Internet. However, information online is looked at in terms of consensus more than accuracy, Peter Duffy, columnist at The Chronicle Herald in Halifax, Nova Scotia, wrote Thursday.

“If we go online and find five different articles and they come to the same consensus, then that’s what we’re going to believe, whether it’s right or not,” one high school (secondary school) student told Duffy. “You’re trying to find a commonality. It doesn’t have to be necessarily correct; just believe what everyone else generally believes.”

Gannett on Wednesday announced in a memo it will freeze employee pensions, as well as including a shift in how much it will match for 401(k) plans, with workers earning main Gannett stock for each contribution to their 401(k) funds, Editor & Publisher reported.

The memo, sent from Gannett CEO Craig Dubow, comes just days after Gannett announced it will write down its assets by US$2.5 billion to $3 billion in this quarter, due to its depreciating value in the United States and United Kingdom.

Irish media group RTÉ will launch an online streaming news service Thursday, functioning as an Internet-based news channel, called RTÉ News Now, the Sunday Business Post reported.

The service will be available on RTÉ.ie. It may also be available on mobile phone networks in the future.

A “tipster” e-mailed Gawker, stating that the Wall Street Journal's Page One staff will be absorbed into the news desk, and Page One Editor Mike Williams would become a “roving features editor,” Gawker reported Tuesday night.

The Page One desk has been increasingly marginalised as the newspaper's front page becomes more newsy, Gawker stated.

Employees at the Portland Press Herald/Main Sunday Telegram were offered buyouts Monday, as executives there aim to cut more than 35 jobs in the face of increased energy and newsprint costs and advertising revenue declines, the Press Herald reported Tuesday.

Staffers who agree to take the buyout next month will receive extended severance packages, based on seniority as well as compensation for unused personal and vacation time.

By 2013, U.S. consumers will spend as much time on video as on sleeping, stimulated by more PC viewing over the next five years, according to a new study from Solutions Research Group.

Today, the average American aged 12 and older spends on average of about six hours a day on video-based entertainment, increasing from 4.6 hours in 1996. The figure will continue to go up and reach eight hours in 2013.

Making investments and focusing on the long-term used to seem like a good idea for private newspaper companies in the United States, but financial pressures are putting the squeeze on owners in the short-term, which is putting futures in peril, Fortune reported Tuesday.

Take, for example, Brian Tierney, who, with a group of investors, bought the Philadelphia Inquirer and sister tabloid Daily News, for US$515 million in 2006. At that time, the equation seemed simple: invest more money into the newspapers to boost circulation and revenue. But two years later, that strategy hasn't worked, and Standard & Poor reported last week that Philadelphia Media Holdings missed a June 1 interest payment on a mezzanine loan and is in violation of its covenants on its senior debt, according to the Fortune article, posted by CNN Money.

Sporting News will launch an online daily national sports newspaper July 23, to be called Sporting News Today, the group announced Tuesday.

The U.S. magazine will also reformat and redesign its Sporting News Magazine.

The U.S. advertising economy marked a tepid 0.6 percent growth during the first quarter of 2008, according to data released Wednesday by TNS Media Intelligence. However, concerns about the economy are still holding back ad spending in some major media, Media Post reported.

"Enduring concerns about economic conditions and consumer spending behavior continued to cast a pall over the advertising market during the first quarter. After a hopeful start to the year, the pace of ad spending slowed perceptibly during March and early figures from the second quarter indicate little immediate or sustained improvement in the core ad economy," according to Jon Swallen, senior vice president-research at TNS media intelligence.

Google accounted for more than 68 percent of all search traffic in the United States, and for about 87 percent in the United Kingdom, according to data collected by Hitwise in May.

The online search giant reported year-over-year growth in both countries.

Fairfax Media launched Western Australia's first online-only newspaper Tuesday, Australian-Media.com.au reported.

Roy Fleming was appointed managing editor of the Perth-based site, WAtoday.com.au, and he will lead nine multimedia journalists, Editor & Publisher reported.

Advertisements that appear in newspapers and their Web sites reinforce confidence in products and services, Google research has revealed.

A study commissioned by Google, conducted by Clark, Martire & Bartolomeo shows that consumers trust ads appearing in newspapers, and many times look at both newspapers and the Internet to evaluate and make purchases, the Newspaper Association of America announced Monday.

Media General Inc., owner of several U.S. newspapers and TV stations, has announced it expects to generate less money from publishing, but will still beat analysts' estimates, Boston.com reported.

Chief Financial Officer John Schauss said the company expects its second quarter earnings from continuing operations of six cents to 10 cents per share, excluding 14 cents per share in severance costs.

UK television group ITV Local will go head-to-head with newspapers trying to make it in the online classifieds market by launching a new property area on ThinkProperty.com, part of Guardian News & Media, Brand Republic reported Tuesday

Beginning next month, the site will be a property search partner with ITV, which will also launch a co-branded site with utility advice site uSwitch.

While many newspapers across the United States trim sections and reduce pages, The Dallas Morning News is taking the opposite route - launching a new print product.

The new publication, titled "Briefing," is a free 16-page broadsheet, which will be home-delivered to non-subscribers of the Morning News every Wednesday through Saturday starting on Aug. 27, Editor & Publisher reported.

In terms of the share of users, Stickam, a live webcam chat community, is now the most popular online video destination among U.S. teens between ages 12 and 17, according to new data from Nielsen Online's VideoCensus online video measurement service, Media Post reported.

About 44 percent of Stickam's over two million members are ages 12 to 17. Among the same age group, music-centric sites Buzznet.com and Atlantic Records followed behind with a close share of 43 percent.

News International may cut managing director roles across its newspapers, which could lead to mergers in the future, Brand Republic reported Tuesday.

It is thought that James Murdoch, chairman and chief executive of News Corporation Europe & Asia, is looking at possibly creating three separate units across Times Media and News Group Newspaper, creating commercial digital and operations divisions.

Telegraph Media Group will target British vacationers in Nantes, France this summer, where it will print and distribute same-day editions of The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, Brand Republic reported last week.

TMG is estimating it will sell about 5,000 copies each day at the peak of the summer holiday season.

Gannett Co., publisher of USA Today, will write down its assets by approximately US$2.5 billion to $3 billion, the Associated Press reported Monday.

Gannett Chief Financial Officer Gracia Martore attributed the writedown to the company’s lagging UK operation, Newsquest. She also blamed the struggling economy, specifically the real-estate market, for weakening the advertising environment.

More than 320 free newspapers have been launched so far, and of those, 81 have closed down, Newspaper Innovation reported Monday.

The 25 percent closure rate seems to stem mainly from years with economic recessions.

Ad spending across all media in the United Kingdom increased 4.2 percent to £19.4 billion last year, with the Internet, cinema and the outdoor ad sectors growing most strongly, according to an Advertising Association report.

The report showed that online ad spending jumped 39.5 percent year-on-year in 2007 to more than £3 billion, accounting for 16 percent of total ad spending.

Two of the largest media companies in the United Kingdom are in talks that could lead to a merger, creating a £3 billion media giant, The Scotsman reported Monday.

The two companies, United Business Media and Informa, are believed to be discussing an all-share merger.

According to a new report issued by The Media Audit, 43.8 million U.S. adults have read an alternative newspaper or visited its Web site in the past 30 days.

The study, covering 117 alternative papers across 88 markets in the country, reveals an average readership of 374,296 adults in 2007 compared to 362,938 in 2006, with a three percent increase. In addition, the average unique monthly Web site visitors totaled 113,469 in 2007, up seven percent from 106,139 in 2006, Media Post reported.

Darlington-based UK daily The Northern Echo changed its colour to green last week for World Environment Day, aiming to raise awareness about the environment, HoldtheFrontPage reported Friday.

The special edition was published on green newsprint, a 52-page supplement contained news, tips and features on environmental issues and how to save energy and reduce carbon emissions. The paper also looked at local companies' efforts to become more environmentally friendly, featured an article by England's Secretary of State for the Environment and had a 15-year-old guest editor, who is serving as a government “Climate Change Champion” for the area.

Instant messaging has outpaced SMS texting in Singapore. More and more people are logged on for hours on end, 'talking' to friends and colleagues while at work, according to The Straits Times.

These people, so-called 'efficiency freaks', send about 55 million messages each day, and 1.6 billion a month in total in 2007.

The Chicago Tribune and public schools in Chicago will together launch a weekly student newspaper and Web site, featuring content written mostly by high school students, and will be the only media products targeting Chicago teens exclusively, a Tribune press release announced, Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

The Tribune Co.'s flagship will distribute 100,000 copies of the student paper to all public high schools in Chicago beginning in September, featuring “student-generated and student-targeted editorial content, with student contributors receiving on-the-job journalism training by Tribune editors, who will review and edit all content,” according to the press release.

Tribune Company's CEO and chief operating officer last week announced sweeping staff and content cuts, with plans to shed 500 pages of news each week from the company's dozen newspapers, leaving 50 percent for content, and 50 percent for advertising – not counting classified and special ad sections. Is a thinner, more ad-heavy newspaper “the best financial model for an industry that is enduring a painful contraction with no end in sight?” The New York Times reported Monday.

Moreover, the idea that advertising will take up most of the newspaper (if ad sections are counted) while there is less staff needing to be paid makes sense on financial balance sheets, but is it a winner when it comes to keeping readers? When news can be accessed for free on a newspaper's Web site, will readers want to pay for advertising, accompanied by a few news stories, many of which are already updated on the newspaper's Web site?

Media General Inc. has received a warning from NYSE Regulation Inc., because its independent audit committee is short one member, following its April board of directors election, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported Friday.

Companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange must have three independent members on their audit committees. Media General lost a member when three of the company's supported members were not re-elected, and shareholders instead elected three Harbinger Capital Partners candidates.

Yahoo will enable retailers to deliver their own personalised online newspaper circulars directly to customers in the Yahoo network, BtoB online reported Friday.

The Yahoo Circular Program allows retailers to target who gets their circulars based on interests.

The killing of Pierre Fould Gerges, vice president of economic daily Reporte Diario de la Economica, could have a chilling effect on Venezuelan media, international press freedom groups are saying in condemnation of the killing, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Gerges was driving his brother's car late Monday when two unidentified gunmen on a motorcycle shot him, and local media reported he was shot at least 12 times.

Tribune Company is planning to take sharp cost-cutting measures, reducing the number of journalists it employs and printing fewer numbers of papers, Crain's Chicago Business reported Thursday.

The company, burdened by US$12.8 billion worth of debt, has done an analysis of how many column inches each reporter produces, and found a wide range – from 51 to 300 pages per year, per writer – which means the company could cut staffing levels without the amount of content being cut down too much, The New York Times reported Friday.

Demand for wireless broadband access in Australia is surging, and exceeding that of fixed-line broadband, The Age reported.

The rapid growth of wireless, driven by pricing pressure among the four mobile carries, has led Goldman Sachs JBWere (GSJBW) to adjust its estimates of wireless broadband penetration for the next three years.

Advertising expenditure in Germany grew from €16.1 billion in 1996 to €20 billion in 2000. It experienced a recession at the beginning of this decade, but has been back up since 2004, and is expected to exceed €18.8 billion again in 2010, according to the research firm ZenithOptimedia.

Online advertising expenditure, which is merely niche before 2000, will increase from €719 million in 2007 to €991 million by the end of this year, and is expected to reach €1.59 billion. Growth is expected to continue, but slow down, ZenithOptimedia has forecast.

In Begium, the overall advertising expenditure grew from €1.94 billion in 2002 to over €2.88 billion in 2007, and is expected to reach €3.15 billion in 2009, according to research data from ACP, MediaMark Belgium, CIM, MDB, IAB and ZenithOptimedia, as reported in World Press Trends 2007.

Television is the overall winner from 2002 through 2009, owning the biggest share of ad expenditure. In a distant second place throughout the years is newspapers.

Online advertising spending in Europe remained its double-digit growth in 2007, according to the latest PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) data compiled by the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IABEurope).

On average, Internet ad spending grew 40 percent in the 16 countries surveyed, while online ad spending in the US only increased by 26 percent during the same period.

According to a new report released Tuesday by Moody's Investor's Service, U.S. newspapers still have yet to prove that they're adapting to changing reader habits, which reiterated its negative outlook on the industry.

Print newspaper revenues have dropped steadily over the past three years while more readers switch to the Internet for news and information. The downturn in housing and in automotive sales have damaged classified ad sales in those two important categories, which aggravating the problem.

The Sun is planning to charge readers of its Polish-language Euro 2008 edition 50 pence, higher than its charges from regular readers, the Guardian reported Thursday.

The News International red-top plans to print between 50,000 to 75,000 copies of each of the six planned Polish-language editions. This publication, beginning June 7, will complete with a page three girl fro Poland, throughout the Euro 2008 football tournaments.

The Washington Post Co. Wednesday announced that it is launching a new unit to produce and run a family of Web-based magazines, Reuters reported.

According to a company statement, the Slate Group is planning to embark in other new media ventures, which it develops on its own or through acquisitions.

Microsoft Corp. is still interested in striking a deal with Yahoo, in order to grab bigger shares of the Internet ad market, according to CEO Steve Ballmer, Bloomberg reported.

Microsoft gave up a $47.5 billion deal for Yahoo in early May, after the Yahoo management said the offer was too low to accept. Later Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo's search business.

The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium continues to expand, with 94 more U.S. papers from several publishers joining in, including the Sun-Times News Group, Black Press, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Stephens Media Group.

According to the announcement from Yahoo Wednesday, the consortium now comprises 779 papers, up fourfold since its launch in late 2006.

Kim Roegner, display advertising director of The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., has been appointed president and publisher of the Fort Collins Coloradoan, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

According to Bob Dickey, president of U.S. Community Publishing for Gannett Co. Inc., which owns of the Coloradoan and other 84 papers in the country, “Kim has shown great leadership in all of her roles. She will do an excellent job as president and publisher at the Fort Collins Coloradoan.”

The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is planning to re-launch its data center on June 9, to make it simpler to search and navigate reports, Editor and Publisher reported Tuesday.

Director of marketing and sales at ABC, Gladys Searcy, said in a statement that “the new look and customised search capabilities of the e-Data tools encourage more user interaction with ABC data.”

Göteborg, Sweden - Outsourcing is becoming increasingly common, and increasingly necessary, as publishers struggle to take control of their businesses in the face of declining print ad revenue, Tony Watson, editor-in-chief of the Press Association in the United Kingdom, said in the last session of the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress Wednesday.

Although outsourcing is still controversial, “it makes no sense for skilled journalists to do this work when they can produce greater value elsewhere,” he said. It has taken 18 years for the process to evolve in terms of television listings, but as newspapers are tightening their belts, they'll need to do something before another 18 years rolls around.

Göteborg, Sweden - Focusing on content, better design, info-graphic journalism, online offerings and how a newsroom is set up and run are keys to successful futures, according to the Innovations in Newspapers presentation by the Innovation International Media Consulting Group at the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress Wednesday.

“I am not worried about the future. I'm worried about the present. I'm not worried about the future of newspapers, I am worried about the future of journalism. This is the issue that is at stake right now. Not the newspaper, but the soul of our industry,” Juan Antonio Giner, founding partner and vice president of the group, and former senior research fellow at Harvard University, told the audience.

Göteborg, Sweden – Publishers must come together to control their own content on the Internet, as well as protect media rights to freely cover sporting events, the World Association of Newspapers' president and News International's UK editorial services director told newspaper executives Wednesday at the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress.

WAN President Gavin O'Reilly urged publishers and newspaper executives gathered at the conference to adopt Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) technology, a non-proprietary, open system that allows the terms and conditions of Web sites to be placed in a machine-readable format, allowing publishers to control how aggregators and search engines use their content.

Online advertising in U.S. will keep on growing even in an economic downturn, which forces marketers to reduce the overall ad spending.

According to a recent IDC study, “US Internet Advertising 2008-2012 Forecast and Analysis: Defying Economic Crisis”, the current economic recession will accelerate the transfer of marketing budgets from traditional to new media.

According to a new report entitled "U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning" released by Wall Street firm Sanford C. Bernstein, Google and Amazon.com will be long-term winners, while Yahoo and IAC InterActiveCorp fall by the wayside and eBay Inc becomes a merger target, the Reuters reported.

Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay argued in the report that Google and Amazon are best placed to withstand the recent economic downturn.

Göteborg, Sweden - “If you want to study 'digital natives,' you need to be with them, otherwise you will not understand what they are doing,” said Katarina Graffman, PhD of Cultural Anthropology at Inculture AB in Sweden said Tuesday at the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden.

Observing young people and how they consume media is better than asking them, because many times, they will not be accurate in what they tell you, and you will also be able to observe habits they have that they don't even realise about themselves, she said.

Göteborg, Sweden - The pressure on revenue sources in increasing, which means newspapers need to be the strongest brands in their markets, Christian Van Thillo, CEO of De Persgroep in Belgium told the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden, on Tuesday.

Newspaper companies must build new revenue streams while also maximising existing ones, build a centralised Internet division, prepare a new sales approach for a new advertising market and find the best talent for the company, with one corporate culture, he said.

A new free daily was just launched on May 15 in the North-Western Austrian town, Innsbruck.

The new publication, TT Kompakt, has a circulation of 10,000. It is published by Moser Holding, along with Tiroloer Trageszeitung and the Neue Zeitug fur Tirol, Newspaper Innovation reported Monday.

Göteborg, Sweden - Taking a fully integrated, multimedia, multichannel approach, focusing on younger readers and specific reader groups and strong branding are some of the best ways to grow a newspaper, newspaper group panelists from around the world told the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden, on Tuesday.

In the case of La Gazzetta dello Sport, one of the most well-known sports papers in Italy and around the world, the newspaper was losing ad market saturation and faced declining saturation in 2002, said Giorgio Valerio, managing director of RCS MediaGroup, which owns the title.

New Zealand Press Association (NZPA), the country’s national news agency, is cutting seven full-time jobs to reduce costs, The New Zealand Herald reported Tuesday.

Lincoln Gould, the chief executive of NZPA, said that the organization’s shareholders, New Zealand’s major newspaper publishers, want the costs down but with efficiency boosted.

Göteborg, Sweden - Newspapers are a growth industry, and much of the uncertainty surrounding the industry is unfounded, stemming from commentators who are “making a profound mistake,” World Association of Newspapers President Gavin O'Reilly told the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden, on Tuesday.

“I find it rather remarkable for an industry that is built as the fourth estate, with a proud legacy that goes back more than 400 years, I'm amazed at how unsophisticated the conversation is. Brokerage reports seem to support the conventional wisdom that newspapers are to be a relic of the past, or that they will only exist digitally. All of these commentators are making a profound mistake,” O'Reilly said at the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper session. “We don't need to reinvent the newspaper – I talk about evolution, not revolution.”

Walmart is now testing a classified listings service on its Web site, according to Tech Crunch.

This service is powered by a 2004 start-up, Oodle.

Gannett Co. Inc. eliminated 55 positions last week at four of its six papers in New Jersey, including Asbury Park Press, the Home News Tribune in East Brunswick, the Courier News in Bridgewater and the Daily Record in Parsippany, Asbury Park Press reported.

This job cuts were due to continuing adverse business conditions, according to the company.

Göteborg, Sweden - Newspaper companies are expanding in every direction – to online, video, mobile and beyond. And while growth and innovations are exciting new ways to reach more people than ever before and grow content monetization, publishers cannot afford to forget their core business: the newspaper, publishers agreed on Monday at the first session of the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden.

“From now on, we have to be even bolder and more creative in the way we produce and distribute content. We have to be very aggressive in the way we organise our media companies. We have the challenge of what our public is going through, and newspapers, with their brands and credibility, will continue to be the guardians of freedom around the world,” Nelson Sirotsky, president and CEO of RBS Group in Brazil, told the congress.

The Aberdeen Independent decided to shut down after 12 years, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Monday.

The management at the Scottish weekly still hopes to find a buyer, although several tries in the past month were unsuccessful.

Newspapers aren't just holding on when it comes to circulation, they're growing around the world, Timothy Balding, CEO of the World Association of Newspapers, told the 61st annual World Newspaper Congress in Göteborg, Sweden, Monday.

Over the past five years, paid daily circulation has grown 9.39 percent globally, and in the past year, it is up 2.57 percent. When statistics are looked at in terms of paid and free dailies, circulation is up 14.3 percent in the past five years, and 3.65 percent in the past year, Balding told the Congress, citing data collected in Shaping the Future of the Newspaper's World Press Trends and World Digital Media Trends.

Boone Newspapers bought Georgia-based twice-weekly, The Post-Searchlight, from Sam and Mary Ann Griffin, Editor and Publisher reported.

The 101-year-old paid paper has a circulation of 22,000 on Wednesdays and 6,900 on Saturdays.