July 2008 Archives

Although new formats of mobile ads come out frequently, a study found that traditional text messages are still most influential in terms of consumers’ responsibility, eMarketer reported.

According to a Direct Marketing Association (DMA) survey targeting U.S. mobile users ages 15 and older, 70 percent of the respondents who had respond to mobile ads said text messages had prompted their actions, more than three times as many as those who responded to a mobile Web offer or coupon.

Even though more people than ever read newspapers, an increasing number read them online for free, while a decreasing number read then in print. At The New York Times, for example, a print reader generates about 170 times as much revenue as an online reader; therefore, no matter what newspapers do to cut costs, they can't do enough to make up for lost revenues when income has dropped to 1/170th, Ted Rall states in his latest column Thursday.

And although it's unlikely the newspaper industry will try out his suggestions, Rall has a few for returning newspapers to their previous profitable selves: go offline, copyright every article in the newspaper and cut off wire services.

Publication of three California free weeklies will be suspended in August, U.S. publishing company Sun Community Newspapers announced Thursday, Editor & Publisher reported.

“Sun Community Newspapers will be on hiatus for the month of August, exploring options that will allow us to continue to bring our fiercely local publications free to the community every week,” Publisher Kelly Mayfield said in a statement.

The number of local salespeople selling online ads for U.S. newspapers has increased from 5,900 to 15,500 in the past two years, as the country's newspaper industry puts more effort into selling to local marketers, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Unfortunately, local targeting isn't doing enough to make up for spiralling print ad revenues, industry analysts told the WSJ.

The Guardian Media Group's regional newspaper businesses will have much smaller margins in the future, which means the company must have different expectations for them, GMG's chief executive told the Financial Times.

“They are good businesses, with potentially good profits, but the margins are going to come down,” Carolyn McCall said, the FT reported Wednesday.

For the first time, a significant portion of the U.S. online audience for prime-time TV content is not watching part of the show on television, according to a new study from Integrated Media Measurement Inc.

Up to 20 percent of U.S. TV viewing happens online, and some viewing levels are higher than levels via DVR playback. According to IMMI, half of these viewers consider online viewing as a “TV replacement,” 31 percent say online viewing is to “catch up” on missed programmes and some 18 percent categorise it as “fill-in viewing”, MediaPost reported.

On average, people who use online social networks, such as Facebook, Bebo or MySpace, consume larger amounts of digital content than those who are not social networkers, according to two recent ABI Research surveys, MarketWatch reported Wednesday.

People who access social networks regularly are also heavier consumers of text messages, photos, music, games, mobile TV and mobile e-mail, the research states.

Yahoo!'s distribution of local headlines across its network has driven more then 100 million visits to Newspaper Consortium member Web sites, the company announced Wednesday, Business Wire reported.

The Newspaper Consortium partners Yahoo! and 779 U.S. newspapers, aiming to deliver search, graphical and classified advertising to communities on a local level. Newspaper Consortium members provide headlines to Yahoo!, which then places the headlines across its properties, linking back to the original articles on the papers' Web sites.

Gaming is getting more popular and becoming more mainstream in the United States, according to a new survey by the Entertainment Software Association, MediaPost reported.

Based on the survey, nearly 40 percent of gamers are women, and the average age of game players has risen to about 35.

The national newspaper sites of six of largest UK newspaper groups attracted about 95 million visitors in June, according to a new report published by the Newspaper Marketing Agency.

The report aggregated the Web traffic of the 16 national publications owned by its members, Media Guardian reported.

Metro International is expanding its news operation, creating a so-called centralised content agency, in an effort to boost the amount of original content in its international editions, Journalism.co.uk reported Monday.

However, the publisher has reported an 83 percent decline in year-on-year quarterly operating earnings, thanks in part to slow advertising sales amid an overall market slump.

Analysts have warned that the U.S. advertising recession is spreading from newspaper and radio to other media and casting a shadow this year, even though it should have benefited from the Beijing Olympics and the election season, FT.com reported Monday.

Many big advertisers include car dealers, banks, retailers and airlines, and others have cut their marketing budgets, which poses a huge threat to the industry.

The Chicago Tribune will be the first U.S. newspaper to send job listings directly to mobile devices, the newspaper announced Tuesday, Editor & Publisher reported.

People looking for jobs will be able to send a specific Web ID to a number to be able to receive detailed job listings on their mobiles.

MySpace will relaunch its classified-listing section on Monday through a partnership with Oodle, CNET reported Monday.

Though it's no Craigslist, MySpace said its existing classifieds section attracts a million visitors per month. With the improved technology from Oodle, the social networking site can better search, filter, and tweak listings, which can draw in more users, CNET reported.

British Sky Broadcasting (Sky) intends to work with social media provider Pluck on embedding social media tools across the company's digital properties. Sky intends to boost audience interactivity by incorporating social networking features, MarketWatch reported.

"With over 1 billion monthly page impressions and many millions of unique visitors, the Sky portal needed a social media platform that could support the high-volume needs of our growing network," said Andy Jonesco, Managing Director of BSkyB, the Online Business Unit.

Gannett Co., which publishes USA Today, announced on Monday it has made a minority investment in Mogulus, an online video platform from New York.

"Mogulus adds a new and exciting dimension to Gannett's already broad-based multimedia journalism efforts. Our reporters and photographers in the field are equipped with video cameras, laptops and broadband wireless connections to enable timely and relevant news delivery to the Web," said Craig A. Dubow, Gannett Co.'s chairman, president and CEO.

About 66.4 million people visited U.S. newspaper Web sites in the second quarter of this year, a 12.2 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to a Nielsen Online custom analysis for the Newspaper Association of America.

This means 40.2 percent of all U.S. Internet users accessed a newspaper Web site, with just over three billion page views per month during the quarter, compared to 2.7 billion in the same quarter last year.

Monday has been another sad day for the U.S. newspaper industry, while shares of four companies hit all-time lows, Editor & Publisher reported.

The drops were led by GateHouse Media Inc., with a 21 percent plunge in shares to 66 cents a share. Others included McClatchy Co., Lee Enterprises, and Sun-Times Media Group.

Fairfax Media has moved into the custom publishing market after winning a contract to publish three shopping centre magazines, The Australian reported.

"We are very keen to grow our magazines group within Fairfax. This opportunity came up and we were invited to pitch," said Fairfax Magazines chief executive and publisher Lisa Hudson.

Newspaper Web sites for mobile phones must be specially created mobile versions, not “just Internet lite,” Verve Wireless Chief Executive Art Howe told The New York Times.

Verve is already the provider of 4,000 newspaper mobile versions from 140 publishers, including the Associated Press, the McClatchy Company and The New York Times Company's Regional Media Group, The New York Times reported Monday.

Mid-Day Infomedia is looking to branch out to Pune next, as it focuses on new media and the top metro areas in India, afaqs! reported Monday.

Mid-Day aims to launch editions in the top 10 metro areas in India, with limited print runs.

Online ad company ValueClick has warned investors that earnings in the second half of year would not meet expectations due to weakness in display advertising, paidContent reported Friday.

After Yahoo’s poor Q2 earnings report, investment bank Cowen also cut its expectations for the online ad industry’s growth. According to the analyst’s report, its estimate for U.S. online ad market growth has been lowered to 16 percent year-over-year, compared to its previous projection of 19 percent, paidContent reported Friday.

A Durham, North Carolina lawyer sued The News & Observer, to which he is a subscriber, last month in an attempt to get the McClatchy Co. newspaper to stop making staff cuts and reducing news coverage. Now, Keith Hempstead has dropped the lawsuit, after his complaint has been covered by several news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio, saying he has made his point.

Hempstead said he chose to sue the newspaper instead of cancelling his subscription to get the newspaper industry's attention, The N&O reported Monday.

Automotive advertising spending in the United States declined to US$1.99 billion in Q1 2008, down more than 14 percent compared with the same period last year, according to TNS Media Intelligence, eMarketer reported.

“Ad spending is sinking as fast as new car sales,” said John Swallen, senior vice president of research at TNS, in a July 2008 Detroit Free Press interview.

Media giant Kerry Stokes' Seven Network spent AU$ 41 million on Thursday to invade West Australian Newspapers' (WAN) share register. The firm's stake in WAN rose from 19.4 percent to 22.4 percent, the Herald Sun reported Friday.

An anonymous media analyst predicted that Seven will continue "creeping up WAN's share register" instead of proposing a "full-blown takeover offer," according to the Herald Sun.

China has surged past the United States as the country with the most Internet users, Gipp.ru reported Monday.

Today, about 253 million Chinese citizens access the Web on a regular basis. In the United States, 218 million people use the Internet regularly.

The Financial Times (FT) announced on Monday the number of registered users on its Web site has increased to more than 500,000, and its digital revenues have increased, thanks to a corporate content licensing strategy that enables it to directly secure deals with 350 corporate customers, Le Figaro reported.

A recent European Media and Marketing Survey (EMS) indicated that The Financial Times is the number one paid publication in Europe, with 548,000 readers.

The French union representing the regional daily press (SPQD) signed an agreement Wednesday with the country's postal service and the state, permitting newspapers to be delivered through the Post's network, albeit at a higher price than before.

Publishers mentioned that this growth in delivery rates would be "heavy" on the industry as a whole, making some newspapers more "fragile," AFP reported.

Asian titles made up the majority of the top 100 paid-for dailies list, with more than 60 percent of the titles on the list being published in an Asian language, according to World Press Trends 2006.

Chinese and Japanese dailies topped the list - almost half of global top 100 paid-for dailies were published in one of those languages.

Magazines inserted in newspapers, such as weekend magazine supplements like USA Weekend, are doing well, “one of the weird paradoxes in current media trends,” MediaDailyNews reported Friday.

Although newspapers and consumer magazines are hurting in 2008, U.S. newspaper-distributed magazines are improving or seeing relatively small declines. Some leaders include American Profile, which saw a year-to-date ad pages increase of 12.58 percent, and Relish, which saw a 19.69 percent increase. Both are owned by the Publishing Group of America.

French press sites raked in advertising revenue of €183 million in the first half of this year, an almost 64 percent increase over last year, Le Figaro reported Thursday.

In the first trimester of 2008, advertisers' investments grew by nearly 73 percent and increased by 85 percent year-on-year since the first half of 2007, according to the APPM (a company that promotes publications) and TNS Media Intelligence.

Microblogging Web site Twitter has reported a 631 percent increase in UK user numbers in the past year, the Telegraph reported Thursday, leading the newspaper to ask, “is Twitter the new Facebook?”

Ten percent of all Twitter users are based in the United Kingdom, and those users send more than three million “tweets,” or short messages sent via the service, each day.

The Limerick Independent has been bought-out by management, thus making the paper completely locally owned, Cork 96 FM reported Wednesday.

The buyout, for an undisclosed amount, also secures 15 jobs at the Limerick, Ireland newspaper.

Advertising on mobile platforms is “practically the best marketing format,” Randall Rothenburg, president of the Interactive Advertising Bureau announced, Gipp.ru reported.

The Click-Through Rate (CTR) for online ads on mobile technology is 2 percent, as opposed to 0.2 percent from other platforms.

Escalating production costs and inflation have forced Zimbabwe newspapers and magazines to raise cover prices yet again, the Chronicle reported Friday.

People who have newspaper or magazine subscriptions, will have to top-up their pre-paid payments.

The San Diego Union-Tribune employed an investment bank to look into the possibility of selling the company. The paper is the only “significant asset” of Copley Press Inc., following the gradual sale its papers over the last two years, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The factors causing the firm to consider selling the Union-Tribune include a weakened economy and the loss of print readers as they move to the Web, said CEO Gene Bell.

Of six European countries, Italians are the heaviest users of mobile phones, while Germans are the lightest, according to a Nielsen Mobile study conducted in 2006.

In terms of the cost of the device, the average European user spent €83 on average. Italians, however, spent an average of €168 on the mobile device, which is more than three times more than the average German, who spent the least. Sweden in second, with €134 on average.

More than €1.8 million has been invested in online advertising in France during the first half of 2008, a 38 percent increase year-on-year, AFP reported Thursday.

Internet advertising in France constitutes 14.7 percent of the total advertising market, a 4 percent increase since the first half of 2007. It now ranks third, behind both print and TV ,but in front of radio.

Seven Network on Thursday bought four million West Australian Newspapers (WAN) shares, moving closer to owning a newspaper, SmartHouse reported.

Seven paid AU$10.25 per share, costing about $41 million.

Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell announced he does not intend to sell any more of the company’s newspapers, after selling Newsday to Cablevision Systems Corp for US$650 million, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Tribune Co. is trying to pay off its debt of nearly US$13 million by selling properties like the Chicago Cubs baseball team, and downsizing and redesigning papers.

Most of American viewers watched online video at home, according to the 2006 online video survey conducted by the Online Publishers Association and Frank N. Magid Associates, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.

According to the survey, 14 percent of respondents watched online video at home on a daily basis, 19 percent viewed it several times a week, while another 6 percent did so on a weekly basis. Only 4 percent of respondents said they had never watched an online video at home.

The UK publishing market, which includes newspapers, magazines and books, grew 0.4 percent in 2007, to £18.41 billion, according to the latest Market Review report.

Each sector is dominated by about 12 top companies, with Pearson Plc being the only company with interests in each of the three sectors.

Print advertising receives more positive responses from British consumers than those in other media platforms, according to a study published by research consultancy Dynamic Logic in June.

The study asked respondents for their opinion of advertising in different platforms on a five point scale. Print media, including newspapers and magazines, came out on top, with 52 percent of respondents rating it as positive, the International Federation of the Periodical Press (FIPP) reported.

Pop group McFly gave away copies of their new album with the Mail on Sunday, but newspaper sales failed to reach the success of a similar promotion by Prince last year, according to early circulation figures, Gigwise reported Thursday.

Thanks to the album, the newspaper sold 2.4 million copies Sunday, 300,000 more than it usually sells.

Google has announced the launch of its Knol feature, a Web site dedicated to providing user-generated articles on a range of topics, similar to Wikipedia, CyberJournalist reported Wednesday.

Jack Schofield, a Guardian blogger, warned that Knol may harm the media industry since writers not only have the chance to sidestep editors, but also will be able to earn money from the ad revenues on their pages.

More than 70 percent of Internet users leave their favourite Web sites because of intrusive or irritating ads, which especially appear on gambling sites, financial services firms, automobile companies, household goods and beauty product companies, Brand Republic reported Wednesday.

The figure grew to 84 percent for 24- to 34-year-olds, up by 20 percent since last year.

The most engaging Web sites in South Africa, based on average time per session, are dating and recruitment sites, according to Nielsen Online data, BizCommunity Africa reported.

“It's very interesting to see, particularly for advertisers, which online sectors tend to generate the longest visitor sessions. South African consumers are clearly very engaged when visiting job, dating or real estate sites. It's likely their intention is to achieve a particular objective in that visit as opposed to just being a casual look,” said Alex Burmaster, an analyst for Nielsen Online.

A new Irish-language newspaper has launched in Brussels for the 15,000 Irish people living in Belgium, Waterford Today reported Wednesday.

The newspaper's name, Anam Beo, is derived from a quotation by Irish patriot Thomas Davis, “A country without its language is a country without its soul.”

According to the latest figures from Nielsen, U.S. DVR household penetration has reached 25 percent, up 5 percent from nine months ago, mostly because cable and satellite operators try aggressively to persuade customers to switch to the digital devices, Media Post reported.

The data also shows that U.S. households may be increasingly preparing for the coming of uninterrupted TV service during next year's digital transition.

There's no telling when the “revenue destruction” at U.S. newspaper publisher Tribune Co. will end, but the most difficult hardships may soon be over, the company's Chairman Sam Zell told employees Tuesday over the company's intranet, the Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday.

“We're not interested in dying by 1,000 cuts,” Zell told employees. “We're doing everything we can to make this downsizing happen as quickly and as painlessly as possible.”

British advertisers who invest in podcasts may see potential growth, according to a recent study “Podcasting and Radio Listening via Internet Survey” released by the Radio Joint Audience Research Limited (RAJAR) UK, eMarketer reported.

More than one-half of responding British podcast downloaders said they were at least somewhat interested in downloading free podcasts which include advertising, while only 31 percent said they were interested in paying for ad-free podcasts.

Over the weekend, News International began delivering the Times and Sunday Times to homes for free within the M25 motorway, which encircles London, Media Guardian reported.

The free delivery scheme is an attempt to offer readers marketing and other services, and aims to save readers as much as £50 annually in delivery charges.

Daily Mail and General Trust has reported its third quarter revenues are up 5 percent over the same time last year, thanks to ad revenue declines being offset by circulation increases and growth in the business division at its national newspapers, Brand Republic reported Wednesday.

The Daily Mail newspaper owner's overall revenues were up, due to its business-to-business divisions seeing growth.

Advertising revenue in metropolitan Australia could fall by 2 percent, according to predictions from media buyers, The Australian reported.

Earlier estimates from buyers were that ad markets would see growth of 4 to 5 percent; however, buyers currently believe the advertising market in Sydney fell by up to 2 percent in the first half of 2008, due to pessimism about the economy, the article stated.

Adobe Systems plans to improve its Media Player by adding a new interface and signing a deal that will allow Adobe software users to watch movies from Sony Pictures.

The Adobe Media Player 1.1 screen lets users watch more video shows, due to an interface update Monday, Cnet reported.

Total revenue for the publishing and broadcasting arm of U.S. media group Journal Communications, Inc. was down 6.4 percent for the sixth period ending June 29, Market Watch reported Tuesday.

Revenue that period was at US$42.75 million, down from $45.69 million in the sixth period last year.

The New York Times and professional networking site LinkedIn have inked a deal to personalise Business and Technology sections on NYTimes.com for members of LinkedIn, New Media Age reported Tuesday.

Relevant NYTimes.com business news will be recommended by professional industries and be available on LinkedIn.

Adobe Systems is working with Google and Yahoo! to improve their search engines by offering technology that will detect Flash Player content previously “invisible” to searches, CNet reported.

This may be an interesting opportunity for search engine companies, since their advertising may get a boost.

The number of Internet users is expected to rise to 1.9 billion by 2012, gipp.ru reported.

Towards the end of this year, the number is expected to amount to 1.4 billion users, nearly a third of the world’s population.

MySpace China aims to double its number of visitors and registered users this year, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“We plan to increase our coverage to 20 million people this year,” Chief Executive Officer Luo Chuan said in an interview in Shanghai. So far, MySpace has about 3.9 million registered users in China, he added.

NBC Universal announced it has sold 90 percent of its Olympics ad list, after saying that it was striving to set a record of more than US$1 billion in ad sales, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Even though there was speculation about declining ad revenues, NBC said advertising has recently increased, thanks to the networks reporting on the Olympic tryouts during primetime on weekends.

The Washington Post Co. will buy Miami-based television station WTVJ, from NBC Universal, the South Florida Business Journal reported Friday.

Washington Post Co. subsidiary Post-Newsweek Stations will run WTVJ as an NBC affiliate, similar to the way that it runs WPLG, Miami’s ABC affiliate.

The Tuam Herald, one of the oldest regional newspapers in Ireland, has been put up for sale for a price of €8 million and €10 million and is expected to be sold by the end of 2008, Galway First reported Sunday.

The County Galway-based Herald is the third family-run, Irish newspaper to be put up for sale in 2008. The Sligo Champion was bought by Independent News & Media for €20 million, while The Mayo News is still up for sale for about €8 million.

The worldwide online advertising is forecast to hit US$65.2 billion in 2008, and rise to $106.6 billion in 2011, according to the IDC Digital Marketplace Model and Forecast Media Post reported.

“(Though) Internet advertising is growing at a phenomenal rate, (it) is still relatively new and growing from a much smaller base. By the end of the forecast period, spending for Internet advertising will trail direct mail by more than $30 billion, while spending on TV and print ads will each be nearly twice as great as for online ads,” said John Gantz, chief research officer at IDC.

Although growing strongly, online and mobile video have not harmed overall TV viewing time, and all types of video viewing continue to rise, according to a Nielsen Online study conducted in May.

An average U.S. television viewer watched more than 127 hours of television and spent more than 26 hours online in May, according to the survey, eMarketer reported.

More people than ever are reading newspapers in the top 100 markets in the United States, with 2.5 percent more readers in the spring than the same period in 2007, according to Spring 2008 Media Mark Research & Intelligence (MRI) data, on behalf of the Newspaper National Network (NNN), Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

“In a challenging environment for newspaper publishers, the MRI results are welcome news,” Jason Klein president and CEO of NNN, said in a statement. “Readership growth is good news for advertisers since it means more ad exposures.”

Employees at the Chinese-language China Times came close to launching a strike last week that would have started Friday, had union members cast five more votes in favour, the Taipei Times reported.

The strike at the China Times, one of the four largest newspapers in Taiwan, would have included printing press workers from all the paper's three printing presses, and would have stopped production. The paper's employees are looking to gain better job security and severance pay for laid-off workers.

Metro International's quarterly operating earnings fell 83 percent, due to poor sales and advertising, the free newspaper group reported Monday, Reuters reported.

The company's second quarter operating profit fell to €600,000, compared to €3.6 million last year at the same time.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation seems to be better off than other news companies in the United States because of its media diversity, according to Pali Capital analyst Rich Greenfield, paidContent reported Friday.

The media giant's variety of investments is exactly what is helping it be less vulnerable to the U.S. advertising and economic downturns as other pure-play companies, Greenfield stated.

Trinity Mirror's share price is rising again, and on Thursday was up more than 20 percent over the pervious night's closing price, Media Guardian reported, citing the reason the price was up was due to the publisher regaining investor confidence after rebutting “negative comments in an analysts' note.”

The note was from analyst Kaupthing, and called into question Trinity Mirror's “debt facilities and its ability to service the deficit” on its pension scheme, according to Media Guardian.

Marketers are increasingly boosting integration of direct marketing campaigns, the latest Direct Marketing Association (DMA) report has showed.

The report, “The Integrated Marketing Media Mix,” also found that although digital media usage is growing in these campaigns, traditional media still take up much of direct marketing budget shares, BizReport reported Thursday.

De Telegraaf was the most popular paid daily in the Netherlands in 2006, followed by AD Algemeen Dagblad, de Volkskrant, and NRC Handelsblad, according to World Press Trends 2006.

De Telegraaf, published by Uitgeversmaatschap pij De Telegraaf, had a daily circulation of 732,000, and a readership of more than 2.1 million in 2006.

Sun-Times Media Group on Thursday announced the total page views of all its Web properties rose to 54.6 million in the fiscal year that has just ended, according to Nielsen/Net Ratings.

The growth of 45 percent from the previous year is the first time the total page views of the combined Sun-Times News Group Web sites have exceeded 50 million, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

Newspaper cover prices in Zimbabwe increased at the beginning of July, from millions of Zimbabwean dollars to billions, The (Buea) Post reported Thursday.

The new cover price for The Herald in Zimbabwe has increased from 200 million Zimbabwean dollars to eight billion dollars. The Sunday Mail increased its cover price from 300 million dollars to 10 billion dollars.

Newspaper shares plunged in the beginning of July, knocking US$3.9 billion off their value, according to Alan D. Mutter’s Newsosaur blog.

The total loss of newspapers’ stock value amounts to $27.7 billion since the beginning of 2008, a decline of 35.7 percent.

Media General, Inc. on Wednesday announced the sale of two of its television stations in an attempt to relieve some of its debt, the company said in a statement.

The company announced the sale of three other stations since May, and expects total proceeds of the five stations to be between US$100 million and $105 million. After paying taxes on the sales, Media General expects to be able to reduce the debt by $60 million to $65 million.

America Online (AOL) on Tuesday launched new sites on personal finance and photography, in order to seek ad growth opportunities with certain niche audiences, the Associated Press reported.

The new WalletPop site, expanded based on the existing site of the same name, features latest deal alerts and money-saving tips, as well as answers to reader-submitted questions. Pixcetera, on the other hand, provides information about high-quality professional photography.

More than 80 percent of the top 30 U.S. newspaper Web sites saw an increase in unique users in June, compared to the same time last year, according to Nielsen Online data, Editor & Publisher reported Wednesday.

Of the top 30 sites, New York's Daily News Online had the largest growth, with user numbers jumping 109 percent from June 2007, to 3.8 million.

The Honolulu Advertiser will lay off 54 workers, cutting 6.8 percent of its payroll, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

The cuts mean the Advertiser is joining “a growing list of newspapers nationwide that have been forced to cut jobs in the wake of a weakening economy and loss of advertising to the Internet,” the newspaper stated in a Thursday article.

UK marketing budgets are at an all time low not seen since since Sept. 11, 2001, due to poor sales, increasing energy and resource costs and lack of trust in the economy, according to the latest Bellweather Report, Advertising Age reported Wednesday.

The report was conducted by collecting data largely through e-mails from 250 top UK marketers that represent the main business industries.

The Argus, a Newsquest title based in Brighton, United Kingdom, plans to cut its two daily editions down to one, and close its weekly Sports Argus newspaper, threatening 10 editorial jobs, Holdthefrontpage.co.uk reported Tuesday.

The newspaper is currently in a 30-day consultation process with employees about the cuts.

Gannett Co., the largest U.S. newspaper company, has dropped to its lowest stock price in its over-17-year history in New York trading, after Lehman Brothers reduced its estimates for the stock price and full-year profit, Bloomberg reported.

Gannett’s prices fell 26 cents, or 1.5 percent, to US$17.35, the lowest since December 1990, at 4:02 p.m. Tuesday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares have dropped 56 percent this year.

Gannett Co., which owns 23 television stations and 85 newspapers in the United States, has announced AOL's Platform-A as its digital advertising partner. According to the deal, Platform-A's Adtech will mark its U.S. debut of the formerly Europe-only division, CNet.com reported Monday.

After it is rolled out completely, the deal will encompass all of Gannett's local news markets, including print and broadcast, USAToday.com, and other Internet properties. No target date was revealed yet.

The U.S. economy and newspaper valuations are continuing to spiral downwards, but as hard times tend to do, they are also bringing people together. Industry rivals the New York Post and the New York Daily News long “locked in a rivalry verging on vendetta,” are in talks to combine back-office functions, printing and distribution, MediaPost's MediaDailyNews reported Wednesday.

The report, which first came from The New York Times Tuesday afternoon, cited unnamed sources and has not yet been confirmed by either newspaper. However, as many newspapers across the country are putting rivalry aside and sharing work, such as the Chicago Tribune's deal made last year to deliver the Chicago Sun-Times, partnerships are becoming more common.

India's Tier-2 markets are growing, thanks to economic expansion, and newspapers there are rushing to fill the needs of new and growing audiences, exchange4media's Mumbai bureau reported Wednesday.

“We believe that the real growth is in India's Tier-2 markets. In keeping with the fast rate of economic expansion seen in these cities, we ,too, are keeping with this,” said Rajiv Jaitly, president of ad sales and marketing at Dainik Bhaskar Corp. Ltd.

Two new Amazon Kindle models will be on the market later this year, with the first coming around October, according to an insider source, Crunch Gear reported Tuesday.

The first new model is an updated version, featuring a screen the same size as the last version, a smaller form factor and an improved interface.

Microblogging Web site Twitter has bought Summarize, a search engine tool that indexes posts on social networks, MediaPost Publications reported Wednesday.

Twitter will employ five of the six Summarize engineers, as Jay Verdy, founder and CEO, leaves to work on another project.

The best way to reach teen audiences may well be via their mobile phones, CNet.com reported Tuesday.

Fuse, a Vermont-based marketing agency, predicted mobile phones will become much more popular amongst teens than desktop computers. In the past few weeks, the agency held talks with senior executives of tech firms like Sony, Yahoo! and Nokia to learn what the teen-focused tech market will look like in the future.

Yahoo! announced a deal with Google in June, permitting Google’s sponsored ads to show up next to Yahoo! search results. The deal, which may bring between US$250 million to $450 million for Yahoo! in the first year of its implementation, might also cause turmoil amongst ad buyers. A new report by search engine expert SearchIgnite seems to offer little to calm ad buyers’ anxieties.

"The deal is clearly financially beneficial for both Yahoo! and Google; however, advertisers need to be aware of the potentially significant impact to their search marketing efforts. Most marketers will see their overall costs for search advertising across the Yahoo! network increase, and will need to adjust their search strategies accordingly," said Roger Barnette, SearchIgnite president, AdWeek reported Tuesday.

Chicago Tribune Editor Ann Marie Lipinski on Monday announced her resignation from the newspaper, which she called “the love of my life,” 30 summers after she started at the Tribune for a summer internship. Los Angeles Times Publisher David D. Hiller also resigned Monday, after presiding over plans for the largest staff and production cuts, as well as resignation of two editors.

The departure of the two Tribune Co. key players comes amid the largest advertising revenue decline in history, as well as sales and huge cutbacks across Tribune Co. newspapers.

Marketwire has finalised its expanded Asia Pacific news distribution platform and media contact database, MarketWatch reported Tuesday.

The expanded news distribution services agency established regional headquarters in Shanghai, an office in Hong Kong and media research labs in Beijing and Manila.

YouTube will be allowed to mask users’ identities when it offers viewership data to Viacom and other copyright holders, according to the Associated Press.

YouTube said Monday that it would change user IDs, IP addresses and other identifiers before revealing the data to Viacom as required under the court order that has been criticised by privacy activists.

Fairfax Media is looking to expand into South Australia, less than a month after launching WAtoday.co.au, based in Western Australia, The Age, owned by Fairfax, reported last week.

Fairfax launched the Perth-based site June 10, and last week bought the rights to AdelaideToday.com.au and SAtoday.com.au.

Continuing with a restructure of its commercial operation, News International announced a string of executive moves, Media Guardian reported Tuesday.

The company is merging ad sales teams at the Times Media Group and at News Group Newspapers. The new unit will begin operation in September.

Outsourcing company Mindworks Global Media, based outside New Delhi, expects to attract more business from North America and Europe as publishing companies in those places continue to look for new ways to cut costs, BusinessWeek reported.

Mindworks has been handling work from non-Indian publishers for four years, BusinessWeek reported last week.

In Florida, the Pasco County district school board, together with the county's utilities department, are partnering to put newspaper recycling containers at 35 schools, which will be available for the general public to use, The Suncoast News reported Tuesday.

Newspapers around the world are looking to be more environmentally friendly, and partnering with the communities they publish in for efforts such as recycling are increasingly popular.

U.S. online users watched 12 billion online videos in May, up 45 percent from the same period in 2007 and nearly 10 percent from April, according to the latest data from comScore's Video Metrix service.

Google Inc., which owns leading video sharing site YouTube, again topped the chart with a 35 percent share of all videos viewed. Fox Interactive Media followed far behind, with 6.4 percent market share, which, however, was up 1.3 percent over last month, Media Post reported.

A Future Exploration Network report predicts that the global media and entertainment market will increase from US$1.7 trillion to $5.7 trillion, according to a report by MarketWatch.

The demand for media services seems to be growing as people look towards the mobile technology industry, according to MarketWatch. Average media consumption is estimated to increase to 13 hours per day by 2020, the report predicted

In the first quarter of 2008, online advertising amounted to US$5.8 billion, and is expected to grow to $105.3 billion, outstripping the $98.5 billion that is spent on TV, radio and film advertising, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

Outsell Inc. data shows that companies may invest $147 billion on print advertising, a 12 percent growth since 2007.

The Financial Times is the only daily newspaper in the United Kingdom to have had a year-on-year increase in circulation since June 2007, according to the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Although circulation increased by 0.22 percent year-on-year, it decreased 1.07% month-on-month, Media Guardian reported.

Other papers like the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian and the Independent also saw decreased circulation since last month and between June 2007 to 2008.

Advertising revenue for Spanish-language media in the United States reached US$5.78 billion last year, up three percent over 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor Plus.

Although anemic compared to the 14.4 percent rise from 2005-2006, the three percent figure is still quite healthy compared to the overall U.S. ad spending, for which revenue was up merely 0.6 percent in 2007, Media Post reported.

Wall Street last week was “no fun for anybody,” as the U.S. mortgage crisis, airline industry woes and financial sector continued to fall, all while fuel costs reached an all-time high. It's no wonder most media outlets were too busy to report on spiralling newspaper share prices, Editor & Publisher reported Sunday.

But in the next couple of weeks, as second quarter results roll in, “it's not going to be a pretty picture,” E&P stated.

Britain's Guardian Media Group has bought ContentNext, which publishes digital media news site paidContent, for about US$30 million (₤15 million), Reuters reported Friday.

New York City and Santa Monica, Calif.-based ContentNext was founded by Rafat Ali, who also serves as editor of paidContent, and Nathan Richardson, the company's chief executive.

British businesses are slashing their marketing and advertising budgets, the sharpest downturn for the third quarter in a row since Sept. 11, according to the latest Bellwether report, Media Guardian reported Monday.

The report, covering a quarterly measure of the marketing industry, pointed out that if trends from the second quarter of 2008 continue, the overall British marketing spending may drop in absolute terms.

Media buying agency ZenithOptimedia recently downgraded its ad spending forecast for Western Europe to 3.7 percent this year, barely more than the inflation rate, The New York Times reported Monday.

Though still better than the 3.5 percent growth prediction in North America, the agency cut two-tenths of a percentage point from the previous forecast, which showed a spending shift as advertisers put more money online, cutting their budgets on broadcast and print advertising.

The Swedish newspaper industry pension scheme PP Pension is looking to diversify, and possibly reduce, its large real estate allocation.

Twenty-eight percent of the fund's assets are currently allocated toward real estate, an “unusually large” amount, Dow Jones Financial News reported Monday.

The North Thompson Times in British Columbia is the latest to adopt a tabloid format, as newspapers around the world switch from broadsheet formats to cut costs and make newspapers more easy to read, especially for commuters.

The British Columbia-based Times started out as a tabloid when it launched in 1964, but went broadsheet in 1977 when the paper began being printed by a press set up for a broadsheet, bclocalnews.com reported Monday.

Hundreds waited in line at stores across Europe for the new iPhone 3G on Friday, and retailers sold out before stores in the United States even opened, Apple Insider reported.

Free Swiss daily 20 Minuten reported that a mobile phone provider opened 100 stories at 6:30 a.m. and served food to those waiting in line.

According to September 2006 data from Nielsen//NetRatings, 48 percent of the global online population was female, while 52 percent was male.

In terms of age, 18 percent of global online users were under age 18, one-fourth between 18 and 34, 29 percent between 35 and 40, and 28 percent above 40.

Publishers cutting into newsroom jobs are in danger of doing away with a long-held standard for the number of journalists needed to serve a newspaper's readers, former Chicago journalist and current Silicon Valley CEO Alan Mutter stated in his Newsosaur blog.

“The unwritten but widely honoured rule of thumb in the industry always has been that a newspaper should employ one journalist for every 1,000 in daily circulation,” Mutter stated.

Publishing houses across Vietnam are having to raise cover prices or reduce the number of copies they print due to a sharp increase in paper prices and printing fees, VietNamNet Bridge reported Thursday.

Paper and printing now account for 25 percent to 30 percent of publishing costs.

Although Australia has a relatively small population, it will take a top spot among industrialised countries in terms of broadband penetration, eMarketer reported. Like many other countries, the number of dial-up subscribers in Australia declined in 2007, while that of high-speed subscribers surged markedly, according to the Australian Communications and Media Authority.

Metro International, the global publisher of free commuter papers, on Friday announced it will increase its stake in its joint venture in Mexico, Editor & Publisher reported.

Metro cooperates with Publicaciones Metropolitanas S.A. De C.V., called Publimetro, in Mexico, which owns a free title in Mexico City.

Rupert Murdoch said on Friday that News Corp is not likely to get involved in a Yahoo Inc. transaction and that Yahoo and Microsoft wouldn’t wind up with any agreements because of “bad personal feelings,” Reuters reported.

Microsoft bid US$47.5 billion Yahoo earlier this year, but Yahoo executives believed the offer undervalued the company, and no deal was made.

The BBC's social networking site for young children now has 100,000 users, Media Guardian reported Thursday.

MyCBBC's registration levels rose to the 100,000 mark in four months, and is designed for children ages six to 12.

Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. told U.S. lawmakers that Congress should pass privacy laws that would protect consumer information online, “such as the data being gathered about people's Web surfing habits in order to pinpoint Internet advertising,” the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The rules should be made based on three main principles: “Consumers should be clearly notified what information is being collected about them; people should control how that information is used; and such data should be secured to ensure it does not fall into the wrong hands,” according to the AP report, posted by Media InfoCenter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook.com and Web sites published by companies like Conde Nast Publications and Glam Media Inc. have more than half of their visitors coming from outside the United States, though many have not yet recognised this as an opportunity, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

Sites with a majority of overseas readership sometimes only receives five percent of their revenues from these customers, according to comScore and industry analysts, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Free Dutch daily De Pers has spent 60 to 70 percent more than its budget allowed, and will axe eight journalists to cut costs, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

Currently, the newspaper has 51 newsroom staffers.

Australian online jobs group Seek.com.au will invest US$45 million (AUD$46.9 million) on Chinese recruitment site Zhaopin, increasing its stake to 42.9 percent, The Australian reported Thursday.

Seek first acquired a 25 percent share in the Chinese site in September 2006. According to the company, the increased investment would be earnings per share dilutive in 2009.

The Daily Telegram in Superior, Wis. announced Thursday it will begin publishing mostly online starting in the autumn, the Associated Press reported.

The afternoon paper currently prints six issues a week, and will switch to printing just two issues a week.

Mobile Internet marketing has reached a critical mass in the United States, with 15.6 percent of the mobile users actively surfing online, according to a new study conducted by Nielsen Mobile, Media Post reported Wednesday.

The main driver to mobile Internet adoption is the growing popularity of unlimited data packages, which about 14 percent of U.S. mobile users have subscribed for.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (STNG) on Wednesday announced that in June, total page views for the company’s Web sites increased year-on-year by 45 percent, to 54.6 million.

Additionally, the time users spent on the STNG sites increased to more than nine minutes on average, the Herald News reported Thursday.

Rupert Murdoch told the Associated Press Wednesday he thinks the next year will continue to be difficult for capital markets, due to bad debt related to a nationwide mortgage crisis in the United States.

“I think there's more (bad news) to come and it'll take a year to shake out,” the News Corp. chairman told the AP, calling himself “a bit of a bear.”

China is increasing the availability of foreign newspapers and magazines in time for the Beijing Olympic games August 8 – 24, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Foreign publications will be available in new kiosks around areas accommodating athletes and media covering the event.

Al-jazirah is the first Saudi newspaper to release its sales and subscription figures to the public, reporting circulation at 131,000 copies each day, AME Info reported Wednesday.

“The announcement of our distribution and subscription figures is a brave decision that we dared to take in order to help readers and advertisers discover the reality about Al-jazirah level of readership and circulation among other newspapers,” said Shaikh Mutlaq Al Mutlaq, chairman of the newspaper's board.

Publishers in Boston could lose thousands of dollars a year if the city's mayor's proposal to limit news boxes on city property and charge newspapers fees for the news boxes is realised, the Boston Herald reported Wednesday.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino is proposing that each publisher may have no more than 300 news boxes on city property, as well as charge a yearly US$300 application fee and an additional $25 for each news box.

Online video and social media ad revenue gains are slowing, while search is still on top, according to Magna Global, paidContent reported Tuesday.

Meanwhile, digital media growth through 2009 will continue to expand, Magna reports, with the group's director of Industry Analysis pointing out in his Emerging Media Forecast that “traditional media never died.”

Business Wire, one of the key distributors of press releases and other announcements in the United States, launched LatinoWire on Wednesday, Editor & Publisher reported.

The new service was launched in a joint venture with ImpreMedia, the largest publisher of Spanish-language newspapers in the country, according to Business Wire.

The San Francisco-based Social Media Club announced Wednesday that 42 industry leaders will form an interim board of directors, MarketWatch reported.

The new media and advocacy organisation aims to promote “media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behaviour; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large,” said Chris Heuer, founder of the SMC and partner at the Conversation Group.

Google Inc. is hitting a wall when it comes to selling advertising on YouTube, as corporate advertisers aren't keen to give the video-sharing site the ad revenue boost Google had hoped for, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Although YouTube's users view videos more than a billion times almost each day, the site's global ad revenue is expected to be at about US$200 million for 2008, the newspaper reported, citing “two people familiar with the matter.”

News Corp. is looking to venture into Japan’s 600.3 billion yen (US$5.6 billion) online ad market in September, hoping to act as a middle man by acquiring ad space, finding the marketers to fill it and distributing the ads, the Evening Standard reported Tuesday.

A Japanese report said the firm has already established an online operation in its Japanese business and might try to acquire online Japanese ad agencies.

The Investment Bank Ozone Capital Advisors Pvt LTD is working with Indian media companies in an interesting advertising/investment scheme, the Wall Street Journal's liveMint.com reported Tuesday.

The bank's media unit, dubbed the Morpheus Media Fund (MMF), is to combine advertising space across Indian media houses, in turn reserving the space for promising start-up companies that don't have the money to buy ad space on their own.

Following the company’s June downgrade by Standard & Poor's from B minus to CCC, MediaNews Group (MNG) CEO Dean Singleton sent a memo last week reassuring staff about the company’s future, The Paper Trail blog reported.

MNG’s major investor Hearst continues to support the company. Singleton mentioned that MNG would soon announce a future transaction with Hearst.

News International is set to make large-scale cuts after its two sales divisions merged into one. A trade source said up to 100 jobs could be axed, Media Guardian reported.

This re-organisation will have Times Media Group's ad sales teams merge with their colleagues at News Group Newspapers.

In light of the falling market value of U.S. newspaper publishers and the decrease in investors interest, ranks of newspaper stock analysts seem to have diminished in number, Reuters reported.

In 2006, over two-dozen analysts were available, whereas today it is barely half of that. Firms like Prudential, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS trimmed the number of employed analysts, as large research departments become more expensive to upkeep and financial market revenue plunged.

A U.S. judge has ordered Google to reveal the video-viewing habits of YouTube users to Viacom, a decision condemned by the online company and privacy advocates, Agence France-Presse reported.

Louis Stanton, U.S. District Court Judge, backed Viacom's request for data on which YouTube users watch which videos on the site, in order to support its case in a copyright lawsuit against Google.

Even in a mobile-advanced country such as Japan, where everyone has a speedy multimedia handsets, many marketers are still not ready to use mobile campaigns, eMarketer reported.

According to a study conducted by the Nikkei Advertising Research Institute (NARI) in June 2008, nearly 62 percent of responding marketers in Japan said they were not interested in using mobile ads.

Telstra and Apple will together make the iPhone 3G available to Telstra's Australian customers on July 11, Digital Media Asia reported.

All plans will require customers to sign a 24 month contract, and will include free Wi-Fi access in Telstra hotspots.

About 10 percent of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's 1,300 full-time workers will be laid off by the newspaper's publisher, Journal Sentinel Inc., the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The 130 job cuts are due to a downturn in ad sales, and will be made by the end of the year.

Free weekly Tiempo Uruguayo (TU) in Uruguay recently closed down, according to Newspaper Innovation.

TU, launched in December 2005, last year had switched to a biweekly schedule and planned to go daily later.

Mobile gaming revenues would reach $6.3 billion worldwide in 2011, up from $4.5 billion in 2008, according to the June 2008 data released by Gartner.

Gartner also said that these revenues were promising in regions with low PC and game console penetration, as well as among both low- and high-income users, eMarketer reported.

Lehman Brothers Monday downgraded shares of News Corp. to "Equal Weight" from "Overweight", according to the Associated Press.

In a note to investors, analyst Anthony DiClemente reduced his price target from $26 per share to $15 per share. He pointed out two main causes for concern: threats from digital content distribution as well as the company's exposure to the newspaper business.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation will not sell community newspapers it obtained as part of its Dow Jones & Co. buyout in December last year, the Associated Press reported.

The Ottaway group newspapers, which News Corp. has previously slated for sale, include Oregon's Medford Mail Tribune and the Times Herald-Record in New York. Several of the newspapers posted stories online Tuesday stating the sale out not take place after all.

De Pers will partner with the TNT Post for distribution in the 100 largest postal Business Points across the Netherlands, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

The free daily and the TNT Post said they are also looking for other ways to partner.

The Swedish government intends to eradicate the press advertising tax amidst claims that it is “unfair” and “ideologically wrong”, reported the European Journalism Centre last Monday.

"Advertising is part of a company's marketing, which is a central and healthy part of a market economy - nothing that should be subject to penal taxes," said Culture Minister Lena Adelsohn Liljeroth.

Over one year after being launched, French online-only news site Rue89 increased its capital by acquiring new investors, such as Verdoso Media and Hi-Media.

This venture may allow Rue89 to evolve and to proceed with its status as an independent news agency, according to the company's press release.

Text-messaging is the most important feature U.S. mobile users are looking for while buying a new handset, according to a new study conducted by Amplitude Research on behalf of Access Systems Americas, Media Post reported Thursday.

About three quarters of mobile phone subscribers surveyed said text-messaging is the most critical among other 18 mobile features. Mobile camera was ranked on the second with 67 percent, followed by e-mail (63 percent) and online access (61 percent).

The Los Angeles Times Wednesday announced its plan to cut 250 jobs across the company, including 150 editorial positions, or 17 percent of newsroom jobs. According to the newspaper’s Web site, the move is "a new effort to bring expenses into line with declining revenue. In a further cost-cutting step, the paper will reduce the number of pages it publishes each week by 15 percent," Editor and Publisher reported.

"You all know the paradox we find ourselves in. Thanks to the Internet, we have more readers for our great journalism than at any time in our history. But also thanks to the Internet, our advertisers have more choices, and we have less money," according to Times Editor Russ Stanton in a memo to the staff.

Magazine publishing has taken a leap towards the future with the beta launch of MagCloud, a print-on-demand service. MagCloud’s method will help improve control and revenue in the field of magazine publishing, Folio Mag reported.

MagCloud lets users upload PDF pages and takes care of everything else like printing, mailing and subscription. Derek Powazek and HP Labs developed the software.

Newspaper readership in South Korea is down, due to competition from the Internet and television, the Korea Press Foundation has announced, Monsters & Critics reported.

Three or four out of every 10 adults surveyed between May 3 and June 9 said they were newspaper subscribers, compared to seven out of every 10 saying they were regular newspaper readers in 1996, the KPF said Monday.

Fairfax Digital (FD) announced Wednesday that it will be selling eBay.com.au’s online display advertising, which may nearly double Fairfax’s page impressions and unique online users.

“This agreement means greater opportunity for advertisers to leverage eBay’s significantly higher than industry average click through rate and highly engaged audience, with each user spending an average of almost two hours per month on the site,” said eBay Vice President Simon Smith.

American newspaper companies are dealing with debt and loss of market share value with job layoffs and other cost-cutting solutions, a trend brought on by continued losses in earnings and weak investor confidence.

As Alan D. Mutter wrote in his Newsosaur blog, the general trend for newspapers is declining market value.

Online media and technology, and marketing and interactive, were the two bright spots in the overall cloudy media M&A market for the first half this year, according to a review by Jordan Edmiston Group, Folio reported.

The number of M&A transactions in the media, information, marketing services and related industries reached 404 during the first six months of 2008, up 1.8 percent from 397 during the same period in 2007. However, deal values totalled US$23.2 billion, plummeting 64.8 percent from $65.8 billion last year.

According to a new study, "How People Use® the Video Marketplace," released by Knowledge Networks, the traditional forms of video, especially DVDs, still dominate the video rental market, Media Post reported.

"While consumers are indeed turning to new video technologies, such as online streaming and mobile video, most of their video-related spending continues to be on conventional sources such as DVD rentals and purchases," Knowledge Networks stated in the new report.

About three quarters of Canadians ages 16 and older went online for personal reasons during the 12 months ending in June 2008. These figures are up from just over two-thirds one year prior, according to the "Canadian Internet Use Survey," conducted by Statistics Canada, eMarketer reported.

Personal Web use in Canada rose five percent between 2005 and 2007.

The E.W. Scripps Co. on Tuesday officially divided into two companies, one company running newspapers local television stations and the other operating online businesses and cable TV channels, the New Mexico Business Weekly reported.

The online and cable unit is now known as Scripps Networks Interactive Inc., and the newspaper, local TV, licensing and syndication unit will continue under the E.W. Scripps name and its current stock symbol, SSP, on the New York Stock Exchange.

Two MPs have attacked Fairfax Media's plans to centralise part of its New Zealand newspaper sub-editing into hubs that would edit world, features and business pages, saying the move will devalue regional coverage, The Dominion Post reported Wednesday.

The hubs would be in Wellington and Christchurch, and would create as many as 40 redundancies, according to Fairfax's announcement Monday. Fairfax publishes The Dominion Post.