October 2008 Archives

Omnicom Group is launching a new mobile practice to marry behavioral and mobile marketing, Media Post reported Thursday.

The new agency, named Mobile Behavior, is aimed to help advertisers better understand consumers' mobile behaviors, which hopefully can lead to more effective use of the mobile marketing channel in conjunction with other media.

Independent News & Media is discussing whether to sell its 39.1 percent stake in Australasian newspaper and radio group APN News & Media Ltd., a move that would ease its debt load by about €800 million, The Irish Times reported Friday.

INM stated several groups have made their interest known, “adding that it intended to sell,” The Irish Times reported. INM publishes the Irish Independent and Sunday Independent. News that the publisher was considering the sale caused its shares to rise by 28 percent in Dublin to €0.64 at 2:50 p.m.

The New York Post, which has already doubled its newsstand price for weekday editions in May, is now raising its price by 25 cents on the weekend. The paper blamed the increase on "higher production costs," according to a note to readers Friday morning, Portfolio reported.

The Post has invested a lot into its Sunday edition this year, including adding a glossy supplement, Page Six Magazine, and a books and opinions section, PostScript.

Dennis Publishing’s newest digital magazines, iGizmo and iMotor, each have more than 100,000 readers per issue, while its first digital title, Monkey, launched in 2006 and averages 283,541 readers weekly, according to ABCe figures, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

The UK publisher's iGizmo, a technology title, launched in February and has 101,785 readers per issue, according to figures July figures. iMotor, launched in July, averages 108,622 readers every two weeks.

The first issue of free lifestyle magazine 20 Minuten Friday, published by Swiss free daily 20 Minuten, was issued today, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

The magazine will be distributed in the German-speaking areas of Switzerland, the same areas 20 Minuten is currently available.

The Albany, New York Times Union has boosted its combined print and online audience by 9 percent in the six months ending in September, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations data, Editor & Publisher reported.

“We committed ourselves to increasing our customer base in print and online during the past three years at a time when most media companies began cutting back and focusing exclusively online,” Mark Aldam, Times Union publisher, said in a statement.

Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki will begin charging for registration, Lenta.ru reported Friday.

After completing registration information, users are asked to send an SMS in order to actively participate in the social network’s features like sending messages, commenting on photos and on other users’ profiles as well as visiting members’ pages.

Top news executives concluded at a U.S. National Press Club forum Wednesday that new measures must be taken to appeal to advertisers to generate the revenues required to keep quality journalism active, the NPC reported on its Web site.

“The business model is clearly broken,” Des Moines Register Publisher Laura Hollingsworth told the forum. She said there is a gap between news content and advertising, as ads may not be following news contents' move to the Web.

Social networking media is booming in the United States, reaching 67 percent of the total online population, according to October 2007 data from comScore, SFN's latest report, A Publishers Guide to New Technologies, reported.

Unique user numbers were up to 121.2 million, a 16 percent increase compared with November 2006.

Most of Germany’s media outlets are predicted to have decreased advertising revenue by the end of the year, as the country's media and advertising industries are seeing large-scale cutbacks, Gipp.ru reported Thursday.

A third of Germany’s media firms, including telecommunications giant Deutsche Telecom, announced plans to slash advertising budgets in 2008 by amounts ranging between €500 million to €30.3 billion.

Ten Network will go easy on the advertising and heavy on sports in a new digital multi-channel sport service to be launched in the second quarter next year, The Australian reported Wednesday.

The service will be updated around the clock, and will have a goal of appealing to a broader audience than its current high definition channel, which focuses on 18- to 49-year-olds. The current HD channel will be renamed ONE and will be simulcast on its new standard definition channel, expected out in January.

Bhutan Today, the first daily newspaper in Bhutan, was launched Thursday as an eight-page morning newspaper. It is part of the small Himalayan country's plan to create a free press, and will be delivered across the country's mostly remote regions on horseback and on foot, Reuters reported.

It may take up to a week to reach different parts of the country, as the country's roads are largely undeveloped. Bhutan Today's cover price is about 10 cents, or five ngultrum.

In a move to restructure its operations amid unstable economic conditions, magazine publisher Time Inc. announced it will lay off up to 6 percent of staff, the Guardian reported Wednesday. Although none of its publications are expected to shut down, between 300 and 600 positions may be cut back.

“Industry conditions have been challenging due to the financial crisis, which has produced sharp decreases in advertising spending. This is expected to continue through most of 2009,” Time Inc. Chief Executive Ann Moore stated in a memo.

Telegraph Media Group and The Onion News Network are teaming up to broadcast 18 videos from the U.S. news satire Web site on Telegraph.co.uk, Journalism.co.uk reported Tuesday.

TMG entered into an agreement with myvideorights.com, a video distributor, to use the videos from The Onion.

Norwegian media, communications and IT company Telenor has agreed to buy up to a 60 percent stake in part of a telecommunications unit in India-based Unitech Ltd. for a price tag of more than 61.2 billion rupees (US$1.23 billion), The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

Telenor, also an SFN partner, will fund the investment through a “draw-down on existing credit facilities and/or issuance of short-term commercial paper,” Digital Media Asia reported Wednesday.

Radus Inc. has launched a new media hub platform that lets users “simultaneously discover, search, share and view digital-rich media” from PCs, mobile devices and social networks for free, Business Wire reported Thursday.

“Today, you're forced to jump between an endless array of news, entertainment, and social sites just to keep up. Radus solves this problem by offering consumers a new approach, one that brings together the best in online media and social networking in a way that's visually stunning and remarkably easy-to-use,” Radus CEO Scott Rankine said in a Business Wire statement.

More and more U.S. retailers have fan pages on social media sites, eMarketer reported Wednesday.

Facebook is the top choice for these retailers, according to a study conducted by Internet Retailer and Vovici in August 2008.

The China Post has become the twentieth member of the Asia News Network, a group of national newspapers from across Asia, The Post reported Wednesday.

Taiwan's top English-language daily, The Post will “further strengthen our coverage of Northeast Asia,” said Pana Janviroj, executive director of ANN. According to the agreement, The Post will be a news source from Taiwan for other ANN members, and will also have access to news coverage from other member newspapers.

Although reporters around the world are embracing new ways to tell stories, they are also getting burned out by news organisations “demanding that they use more and different types of technology to tell their stories,” journalists said at a U.S. National Press Club forum, the group reported Tuesday.

“I have been blogging for years,” Tony Messenger, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's state capital bureau correspondent, told the forum, held at the University of Missouri on Monday. “I have yet to have a discussion in my newsroom about why we're blogging and to tie that somehow into the newspaper's business model.”

Three of the world’s largest advertising groups, Interpublic, Publicis and Aegis reported mixed third-quarter results, with revenue dropping in most of Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. They also warned of a tough fourth quarter, and fears of a tough year in 2009 for the marketing industry, The Financial Times reported.

However, as marketing budgets are hit by the financial crisis, all insisted that they would control cost and cut staff in order to maintain or improve margins.

AOL and General Motors have partnered to create a channel within AOL Money & Finance targeted at small businesses, MediaWeek reported Tuesday.

Small Business Autos gives advice for businesses looking for auto loans, as well as tips for lowering fuel expenses.

French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot may permit alcohol advertising on the Internet, telling Le Figaro she is willing to “consider” it, FollowtheMedia reported.

The Health Ministry is currently writing legislation to amend the Evin laws, which control advertising in the country.

A Nielsen Online study has found that younger age groups are exposed to less Internet advertising than older age groups, MarketWatch reported Tuesday.

Online users ages two to 11 experience online advertising least, because sites for children contain hardly any ads. The next age group, 12- to 17-year-olds, is exposed to Internet advertising less than all older age groups. Meanwhile, Web users who are age 65 and above encountered the most advertising clutter online, according to MarketWatch.

The Los Angeles Times will lay off 10 percent of its newsroom staff, or 75 employees, as financial turmoil continues to haunt the entire industry, The Times announced Tuesday.

This is the newspaper’s third round of newsroom layoffs this year, and is part of a 200-employee reduction that started last week.

Russian authorities have halted Google’s purchase of an online ad service, the Associated Press reported.

Google announced in July it would spend US$140 million to buy the ad service, ZAO Begun, from Rambler Media Ltd., which owns one of the most popular online portals in Russia. The deal was expected to be finalised during the third quarter.

Northcliffe Media Group, the regional newspaper arm of publishing group Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), announced that it is slashing its operating divisions in half, the Guardian reported Tuesday.

The group will combine its six regional divisions into three larger ones, Midlands and North, South West and Wales, and South East.

Johannesburg-based Creamer Media group has launched an iPhone 3G application for its online Mining Weekly publication. It may be the first iPhone application developed in the area, BizCommunity reported.

“It is our intention to leverage off the international popularity of the iPhone to build our brand abroad and become the leading source of global mining news and information. We believe it is the first mining news service accessible on any phone, anywhere,” said Kenneth Creamer, CEO of Creamer Media.

Cox Communications, which pioneered the "triple play" in the cable market, will launch a quad option to include wireless services in a bundle along with the existing cable TV, phone and Internet, Media Post reported Monday.

The new services will hit the market next year - users will be able to subscribe to all four and pay one bill.

The Christian Science Monitor will stop publishing its print newspaper next year after 100 years of publication to focus on its Web site and a weekly news magazine, which it plans to launch in April 2009, the publication announced Tuesday. The move is expected to save the paper US$1.5 million to $2 million a year.

The Boston-based newspaper has been considering closing down its print edition for about two years, and made the decision this month. The Monitor will be the first national U.S. newspaper to close its print version in favour of its Web site, the paper stated in an article on its Web site.

Standard & Poor's credit rating agency Monday lowered its Washington Post Co. ratings outlook from "stable" to "negative," pointing out concerns over continued downturns in circulation and ad revenue in newspaper and magazine divisions, the Washington Post reported.

Though rating the Post Co.'s long-term debt as A1, Moody's also downgraded the company's ratings outlook from stable to negative.

The latest figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations show print circulation is plummeting across the United States; however, newspapers' reach is continuing to grow.

At the Baltimore Sun, for example, the newspaper's print version and Web site reach 53 percent of its market, or about 1.2 million people, according to the ABC, The Sun reported Tuesday.

Standard weekday circulation at 507 newspapers across the United States saw circulation numbers dive by 4.6 percent in the six-month period ending Sept. 30, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Reuters reported Monday. Circulation numbers are falling at an accelerating rate, as the drop from September 2006 to 2007 was just 2.6 percent.

Daily circulation during the week at the 507 newspapers was at 38 million copies. Meanwhile, Sunday circulation for 571 titles was 4.9 percent lower than in 2007, amounting to 43.6 million copies. From September 2006 to 2007, the drop in circulation for Sunday editions was 3.5 percent.

Social networking media and other participatory venues are becoming mainstream in the United States, according to a study by Forrester Research, Ad Week reported Friday.

According to Forrester’s polls, social media usage has grown significantly, with a majority of users now taking part. A consumer poll in the second quarter indicated that three out of four online users participated in some form of social media, up from 56 percent in 2007.

Six major European and South American newspapers launched the International Association of Sports Newspapers (IASN) on Monday, AFP reported.

The IASN is a result of a partnership between France's L’Equipe, Italy's La Gazzetta dello Sport, Brazil's Lance, Argentina's Olé and Spain's Mundo Deportive, published in Barcelona, and Marca, published in Madrid.

Magazine publisher Mansueto Ventures cut 20 employees at the beginning of October, mostly from its online department, after putting a lot of work into strengthening its digital side, Forbes reported last week. Why? To break down the wall between its print and digital sides, and to focus on what makes money online, Mansueto CEO John Koten told Forbes.

Aggregation, or social publishing, is what will grow revenues through a recession, Koten told Forbes.com. Mansueto publishes Fast Company and Inc.

Australia-based PBL Media does not need help to cover its debt, the company announced after James Packer left the company's board of directors, The Sydney Morning Herald reported Monday.

Consolidated Media Holdings, which is controlled by Packer, will likely not try to go through with a joint venture with PBL Media, the report stated. Packer and John Alexander, ConsMedia's executive chairman, resigned from the PBL board immediately after it was announced that ConsMedia would not “contribute any further funding to PBL Media,” the company stated in a stock exchange announcement.

NYTimes.com relaunched its video platform last week, featuring a high-definition, wide-screen format, redesigned video library and individual playback pages for each video, Media Post reported Monday.

The Times’ partner, Brightcove, which offers the video platform, is hoped to help the newspaper site reach new readers through SEO and syndication, and improve streaming experiences.

Micro-blogging is gaining popularity in Russia, Kommersant-Vlast reported Monday. The growing interest is not just about finding content produced by celebrities - rather, it is a way to engage in more serious issues, such as the global financial crisis.

The rising appeal of micro-blogging may also be attributed to the tool’s format, which permits easier and more rapid access to content than a regular blog, according to Kommersant-Vlast. Furthermore, the tool is accessible from both regular computer as well as a mobile device, which may lead certain users to be more active.

Online marketing communications in Russia have experienced a surge in financial backing since the beginning of 2008, Lenta.ru reported Saturday.

Total marketing spend for the entire year will be between US$1.04 billion to $1.48 billion, market analysis firm Tagline predicted at the annual Russian Internet Week. By the end of this year, media advertising is expected to receive an investment ranging from $285 million to $390 million.

FT.com is looking to bring back the good old days, with the launch of its virtual Long Room, a bar and restaurant where London's top financiers once gathered in the centre of London. The Long Room was “renowned for where you went to find out what was really going on” in financial circles, Rob Grimshaw, said FT.com managing director, journalism.co.uk reported Saturday.

Registered users can join “tables” that are arranged by topic, and can also create their own. The Long Room launch comes after the success of FT.com's FT Alphaville, a financial blog, which had 7.1 million unique users as of March, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic.

Germany's total video viewing audience totalled 26 million people in May, with more than three billion videos watched that month, according to comScore Video Metrix.

According to the data, in SFN's latest report, A Publishers Guide to New Technologies, 74.7 percent of all online users in Germany watched video online during this period, watching a total of 202 million hours of video content.

The Associated Press will give discounted rates to newspapers and get rid of restrictions on articles in response to newspapers ending agreements with the news service, the AP announced Thursday.

The AP's board of directors decided to “provide all member newspapers complete access to all AP text content, at no extra cost,” Media Bistro reported Friday. The AP's finances are decreasing while a number of newspapers have criticised the AP's price scheme, The New York Times reported.

U.S. newspaper Web site usage grew almost 16 percent in the third quarter, together averaging 68.3 million unique users each month, up from 59 million in the same period last year, the Newspaper Association of America announced Thursday.

“As news surrounding the economy and the presidential campaign rivets the nation, record audiences are trusting newspaper Web sites for comprehensive, up-to-the-minute reporting and analysis on the events that impact their lives,” NAA President and CEO John Sturm stated in a press release. “Whether in print or online, newspapers are the top local brands that readers turn to for information that will help guide them through some challenging issues facing consumers today.”

The Telegraph Media Group (TMG) launched an application for Google Android on Thursday, journalism.co.uk reported.

According to the group, it is the first publisher in the United Kingdom to launch an application for the mobile phone open-source operating system.

The New York Times Company's profits dropped 51.4 percent in the third quarter of 2008 compared to the same time last year, the company announced, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The U.S. publisher stated will write down the value of its assets in its New England Media Group, and may also cut its dividend. Janet Robinson, company's chief executive, said in a statement that the board of directors will go over the current dividend policy before the end of 2008 “to determine what is most prudent in light of the overall market conditions.”

A “vocal networking” site has been launched in the United Kingdom by software engineering graduate Chris Ridgeon, The Inquirer reported Wednesday. The site, Internet Shout, is aimed at filling a spot in the social networking landscape by being the world's first “purpose-built voice-based forum.”

The network’s 22-year-old creator said that while verbal communication has been used in live chat, it may be “more useful” if conversations “build up over time, with many participants from different backgrounds and locations.”

French mobile network operator SFR will launch three new mobile devices in time for Christmas, including the EeePc 901 3G+, which is a newer vision of a mobile micro-computer with integrated 3G features, Le Figaro reported Thursday.

“While the classic computer is used by all the members of a household, the ultra-portable is the small computer that belongs only to individuals. It will become as personal as a mobile phone,” said Jean-Mark Tassetto, general director of marketing at SFR.

French Web-based news site Mediapart announced Thursday that it will no longer participate in the federal press assembly, charging the association with making a fool of the industry and a threat to the entire field, AFP reported.

Mediapart, owned by political journalist Edwy Plenel, attended an assembly meeting early this month. The online outlet said not even the smallest conditions for having such a meeting were fulfilled.

In May 2008, 25 million French people watched 2.3 billion online videos, according to comScore data, SFN's latest report, A Publishers Guide to New Technologies, reported.

Google, the owner of popular video sharing site YouTube, was the most popular online video property in France, with 27.9 percent of all online video viewed coming from a Google site.

Business social networking site LinkedIn reported Thursday it will be acquiring an additional US$22.7 million from previous investor Bessemer Venture Partners and new investors, such as business software manufacturer SAP AG, banking firm Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Business Week publisher The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The financial backing is hoped to “help insulate the steadily growing online business network from the economic storm and provide more financial flexibility,” the AP article stated.

One of the largest community newspaper publishers in the United States will be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange before the market opens Friday morning, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

GateHouse Media Inc.'s stock price, which has not gone above US$1 per share since July, is “abnormally low,” making it appropriate for the NYSE Regulation Inc., the regulatory branch of the NYSE, to suspend trading. Earlier this month, GateHouse presented a plan that it had hoped would keep it from being delisted.

State-owned media holding firm All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK) announced it is suing Internet site Mail.ru and online social network Vkontakte for copyright violation, Kommersant.ru reported Thursday.

VGTRK, which owns TV channels like Vesti-24 and Rossiya, wants the two sites to prevent users from including its rights-protected video clips. Mail.ru and Vkontakte responded that they do not have the technical capabilities to control each and every user’s actions or to authenticate a clip’s author.

Nearly four out of five Hearst Magazine readers ages 13 and above are concerned about the environment, a survey by the magazine publisher found, with 43 percent saying they would stop purchasing a product they use regularly if it wasn’t eco-friendly, Advertising Age reported Wednesday.

Another 43 percent said they would buy a magazine printed on recycled paper and 39 percent said they would pay more for an eco-friendly magazine. The magazine industry is increasingly concerned with reducing its carbon footprint. The American Magazine Conference addressed the issue for the first time earlier this year, according to Ad Age.

Research backed by the Flemish government revealed that having a Flemish domain extension instead of the .be that is used by most Belgian Internet sites might bring “interesting new opportunities,” Flanders News reported Thursday.

An application for a Flemish domain extension will be completed by the government by 2009 and could cost nearly €100,000.

An Idaho, U.S.-based newspaper company announced Tuesday it has bought and closed down its rival, 127-year-old weekly Wood River Journal, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

Express Publishing, Inc. runs the Idaho Mountain Express newspaper in Ketchum, Idaho, a rival of the Wood River Journal, based in Hailey, Idaho. The Journal published its last edition Wednesday.

The Tribune Company is looking into buying the Orange County Register and combining it with its Los Angeles Times in order to strengthen its hold in the Los Angeles newspaper market, the Financial Times reported Wednesday.

If Tribune does not buy the Register from its current owner, Freedom Communications, another option is to create an agreement in which both the Register and LA Times would merge production and distribution to save money, “media industry sources” told the FT.

The Financial Times will eliminate 60 staffers, mostly in commercial departments, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

FT management has started to consult with employees about the redundancies. Those facing the risk of losing jobs include staff in the editorial library and the managing editor's office, as well as in advertising sales, finance, IT, conferences and marketing departments.

As profit slides, Yahoo! Inc. announced it will cut at least 10 percent of its employees in the next few months as part of a plan to whittle down costs by US$400 million in yearly expenses of $3.9 billion, the Lost Angeles Times reported Wednesday.

About 1,500 workers will be laid off, but Yahoo! would not confirm when the cuts will happen.

McClatchy revenue for July through September dropped 16.4 percent year-on-year to US$451.6 million, according to a company announcement Tuesday.

Total ad revenue declined 19 percent to $370.1 million. Total net income from continuing operations totaled $4.2 million, Media Post reported.

Active Internet users in Taiwan reached 10.14 million in Taiwan by the end of June – 44 people out of every 100, the Taipei Times reported Sunday.

According to a report by Foreseeing Innovative New Digiservices (FIND), broadband subscriptions reached 4.7 million in June, up 40,000 from the previous quarter. Mobile Internet subscriptions were also up by 920,000 from the previous quarter, to 13.38 million.

The UK Office of Fair Trading decided Wednesday to continue to protect newspaper distribution through an opt-out from competition law, Media Guardian reported.

After a long investigation, the OFT said it has looked over the 14 year-old national newspapers code of practice and decided some restrictions on wholesalers should be made less stringent. Lord Mandelson, the new business secretary, is in charge of the code.

Due to a highly competitive market and a recession, Spanish free dailies are down 20 percent in circulation over the past year, from 3.9 million in September 2007, to 3.3 million last month, 24/7 reported Monday.

20 Minutos distributed 815,600 copies in September, a 39 percent drop.

The Russian mobile device market will be the first in the world to receive the Nokia 5800 Xpress model, which will be equipped with a touch screen, Lenta.ru reported Tuesday.

The new Nokia model will be launched on December 8 in Russia, with a price tag of RUB 16,000 (US$594). The phone will be on sale in Ukraine starting in the second half of December and in Kazakhstan from January 2009.

Products and services in the middle market will feel the squeeze that comes with tight financial times, as people look for cheaper buys on the low end most of the time, while occasionally indulging in a high-end treat, The Sunday Business Post reported.

Products on the lower end of the market will likely see stronger growth than originally expected, as companies such as eBay, which has “made a business out of the middle class' developing love for seeking out a bargain,” are likely to see a drop in business, Michael Silverstien, a U.S. consumer specialist, told Ireland's The Sunday Business Post.

Digicom, a sales group for independent outdoor digital screen firms, has been launched in the United Kingdom by ex-Chief Executive of CBS Outdoor Tom Goddard, Brand Republic reported Thursday.

“We identified a missing link between independent digital network operators and the buying industry of specialist agencies and media agencies,” said Goddard. “The independent networks we plan to service need this more than ever because it will offer increased incremental revenue and reduced selling costs.”

The India-based Tribune has launched its sixth new edition in five years with the unveiling of its Dehradun edition Monday, Exchange4Media.com reported Tuesday.

The Dehradun edition is printed in Chandigarh. Previously, new editions appeared in Jalandhar, Bhatinda, Jammu, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh.

Although no one yet knows what the “long-term side effects” to outsourcing are, media companies around the world are increasingly outsourcing to make ends meet and strengthen financials in difficult economic times, Reuters reported Tuesday.

MediaNews Group, a U.S.-based newspaper publisher, is that latest to look into outsourcing as a solution.

U.S.-based sports television network ESPN has launched its UK-oriented Web video player site ESPN360.com, Broadband TV News reported Thursday. ESPN360.com was introduced in Europe in January 2008 as part of its expansion plan on the continent.

Content to be available will include free news coverage as well as highlights and interviews from golf, tennis, the National Football League (NFL), the Major Baseball League (MBL), the National Hockey League (NHL) and X Games.

Online consumer expenditure grew at a slower rate throughout September this year, dropping down to 14.8 percent, according to data from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index. Online shopping is still popular, but it rose at a rate that is 72.3 percent slower than that in September 2007, New Media Age reported Thursday.

Since July, online consumer spending has been growing at a rate that is below 20 percent.

New York-based marketing communications firm Omnicom Group announced that its net profits grew year-on-year by almost 6 percent in the third quarter of 2008 and by more than 10 percent in the first nine months, AdWeek reported Tuesday.

Profits in the third quarter totalled US$213.6 million, compared to $202 million the same time in 2007. During the first nine months of 2008, net income added up to $729 million, whereas last year, this figure was $661.9 million.

The Dayton Daily News will cut newsroom employees in an effort to deal with a fluctuating and volatile market, the newspaper's owner, Cox Ohio Publishing, announced Monday, the Dayton Business Journal reported.

The newsroom cuts will hopefully make the Ohio, United States-based newspaper “more flexible and responsive to changing market conditions,” Kevin Riley, the newspaper's editor, stated in a news release.

The Associated Press launched a new client application of its Mobile News Network for BlackBerry smartphones from Research In Motion (RIM) on Monday, Business Wire reported.

Mobile News Network is a multimedia news portal. The new application can be downloaded for free at bb.apnews.com. First unveiled in May, the network works on all Blackberry devices.

A French-language newspaper has launched in Vanuatu and New Caledonia, Radio Australia reported Monday.

L'Hebdo Du Vanuatu will be published by the area's newspaper, the Daily Post.

Taiwan-based MP3 manufacturer Luxpro has taken Apple to court, accusing the company of behaving as a monopoly in order to get to where it is today, Macworld reported last week.

Luxpro said Apple “sought to stamp out the competition using various schemes” and “has repeatedly used unfair tactics against other smaller manufacturers,” when addressing the United States District Court Western District of Arkansas.

Marketing and advertising firm Titan Worldwide announced Monday that it has signed a multi-million dollar deal with UK-based digital advertising company Litelogic to provide large LED screens featuring ads on buses, Business Wire reported Monday.

Buses in New York and Chicago will be the first to offer LED “Evolution” screens equipped with GPS technology that will target specific audiences based on the location of the bus. The screens are powered by Litelogic’s Litecast software platform.

Top news channel CNN intends to significantly minimise the amount of material that it obtains from other news sources and plans to increase original reporting, Lenta.ru reported Monday.

According to Executive Vice President and Managing Director of CNN International Tony Madox, the gradual move towards more original reporting would allow the channel to expand its mobile and online services. He pointed out that the number of users who use these services has surged by 21 percent since last year, reaching 37 million people.

UK charity the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) reported that three out of four children in the United Kingdom have seen disturbing images on the Web, BBC News reported Monday. The NSPCC urged computer manufacturers and retailers to include security measures that would prevent the phenomenon and said that social networks and video hosting sites like YouTube should get rid of “offensive” content as soon as possible.

“Children are just a few clicks away from innocently stumbling across upsetting or even dangerous pictures and films such as adult sex scenes, violent dog fights, people self-harming and children being assaulted,” Zoe Hilton, the charity’s policy adviser, told the BBC.

The UK-based Cumbrian News Group will continue to launch more hyperlocal community Web sites over the next few weeks, following its launch of 13 others, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Monday.

The regional publishers' sites offer users a chance to create their own pages and add content, and feature Cumberland news content. Local businesses are also advertising on the sites.

The Birmingham Post has relaunched today as a tabloid-sized, business focused newspaper to try to stop waning sales while also monetizing online traffic growth, paidContent:UK reported Friday.

The Trinity Mirror-owned newspaper, along with sister titles Birmingham Mail and Sunday Mercury, will see 65 editorial staff cuts as they move to a new £7.5 million newsroom and a new publishing system that aims to streamline editorial work while also focus more on online publishing, instead of separating print and online.

Telegraph Media Group has signed a commercial deal with Auto Trader to power a search engine for its redesigned Telegraph Motoring channel on Telegraph.co.uk, Brand Republic reported Friday.

Auto Trader's search engine will be for new and used cars and motorcycles. Auto Trader is owned by Trader Media Group, jointly owned by Guardian Media Group and Apax Partners, with GMG as the majority shareholder.

UK-based advertising firm WPP Group announced it will be purchasing a 33 percent stake in South African global marketing company Smollan Holdings, according to Share Cast Friday.

Johannesburg-based Smollan Holdings operates across the African continent and India. It also has strategic alliances in North and Central America, Europe, Asia and Australasia, M & A reported. The minority stake includes “market intelligence,” "customer contract” and “brand activation services" for several South African companies.

To deal with the current media environment and its impact on newspapers, publishers should prepare themselves for a hurricane, Force 5, Verdens Gang (VG) CEO Torry Pederson said at the annual Readership Conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Amsterdam Friday. Pederson also talked about how to manage the company's profits in such a tough times.

VG's print circulation has dropped over 20 percent since 2002. However, profit increased from 270 million Norwegian krone (€31 million) to 365 million krone (€41 million).

The Financial Times (FT) announced that it is launching an advertising campaign that includes nearly empty billboards to question the global trend of cutting advertising budgets across the industry, the Guardian reported Friday.

The initiative was developed by advertising firm DDB London and is expected to commence this coming Monday, featuring billboards that appear as though they were stripped bare, meanwhile containing a small area in the top corner that displays the FT logo. In addition, it would show the following phrase: “Global downturn. What's the first mistake businesses make?”

Financial services firm Standard & Poor’s predicted that magazine advertising will plunge until the the end of this year, despite media activity during the U.S. presidential elections. The company also said that newspaper profits and cash flow are expected to decrease “at rates that accelerate each quarter,” WWD Media reported Friday.

Struggling circulation levels that publications experience may be contributing to the trend. Increasing debt levels, surging Internet advertising expenditure, plummeting newsstand sales and mature market growth may contribute to a “near-term decline in credit risk,” according to WWD Media.

Tribune Co. may end its agreement with the Associated Press, dropping the news wire service at all of its newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times, beginning in October 2010, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday. "... Tribune is evaluating all of its expenses across the company and trying to be more efficient," the company said in a statement.

The U.S. newspaper company notified the AP earlier this week of its decision, as its contract with the news service requires a two years' termination notice. Should Tribune drop the AP, it would be the largest client ever to do so.

Free titles City Press, Metro and Metropolis were the most well read newspapers in Greece between March and September 2008, according to the latest research by Bari, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

City Press topped the list with a readership of 295,000, up 14 percent year-on-year from 2007.

In the United Kingdom, 27.4 million people watched more than three billion videos online in June 2008, an average of 117.7 videos per person, according to comScore Video Metrix, reported SFN's latest report, A Publishers Guide to New Technologies.

In September 2008, Google sites were the most popular video Web sites among all British users aged over 15 - nearly half said they have ever accessed them.

The Web site of the third-largest newspaper in Turkey has been blocked after a court ruled the newspaper had insulted Adnan Oktar, a Turkish writer who disputes the theory of evolution, the Guardian reported Thursday.

Oktar's spokeswoman told the Guardian the Vatan site's comments section included obscenities, which the paper did not remove after Oktar lawyers requested they do so. This is believed to be the first time a major Turkish newspaper's Web site has been blocked. However, about 850 sites are blocked in the country currently.

Mobile subscribers worldwide are expected to keep growing from 2004 to 2013, according to Pyramid Research, SFN's latest report, Technologies Publishers Should Know reported.

In 2004, global mobile subscribers totalled only less than two billion. The numbers keep growing and are expected to reach four billion this year. In 2013, total mobile subscribers will increase to nearly six billion.

Digital media have many advantages, but in all the fuss over the latest technologies and the plethora of media available online, many people forget all the great things about print, American media critic William Powers told the annual Readership Conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Amsterdam Thursday.

“The world needs – desperately needs – what newspapers do,” said Powers, media columnist for U.S. magazine The Nation. Paper is a peaceful island amid the digital “chaos,” and an “emerging strength” that needs more attention, he said.

Almost 20 percent of U.S. households with television sets are not yet ready, completely or partly, for the transition to digital TV in February 2009, Bloomberg reported.

More than nine million homes would not have a compatible TV set if the switch happened today, while another 12.6 million households have at least one set unable to receive digital signals, according to Nielsen Co. in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg.

Polish media group Agora announced on Thursday that newspaper advertising spending is slowing 3 to 5 percent in the second half, a trend it expects to continue for the next few months, Reuters reported.

Agora owns Poland's largest daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, and had originally forecast the newspaper advertising sector to increase up to 5 percent in 2008. Andrzej Szymanski, a Warsaw-based analyst with BZ WBK, told Reuters that the current ad market climate could either “hover” at the same level, or it could lead to a drop in net profit.

Media General Inc.'s profits increased by more than two-fold during the third quarter, due to the U.S. media group's broadcast ads, the Associated Press reported Thursday.

The company announced its earnings in the three months ending Sept. 28 were at US$6.1 million, up from $2.5 million in the same quarter last year.

The Independent has added a new system to track unlicensed usage of its content online, Journalism.co.uk reported Wednesday.

iCopyright will help the newspaper guard its copyrighted content online, as well as create arrangements for licensing with other sites. The tracking system is also used by the Associated Press.

A Georgia Tech Information Security Center study has revealed that spam and “other botnet-based attacks” may soon hit mobile phone users, The Washington Post reported Thursday. The research suggested that this may be due to mobile devices engaging more with Web-based data.

Mobile phone botnets would attack the “core” of the network, said Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Patrick Traynor. “But because the mobile communications field is evolving so quickly, it presents a unique opportunity to design security properly - an opportunity we missed with the PC.”

Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN) announced Wednesday it will launch technology that will accommodate “emerging” high-speed wireless networks, reported Reuters Thursday.

The company said that it would be the first to provide “fourth-generation-ready” or 4G mobile network hardware for more than 10 operators by the end of this year. The hardware could be optimised to become Long-Term Evolution (LTE) with new software from 2009, which might make it cheaper for operators, according to Reuters.

FT Publishing has reported a 14-percent revenue increase year-on-year in the first nine months of 2008. Profits are expected to grow even if ad revenues stay stagnant, Press Gazette reported.

According to a trading update by parent company Pearson, the publisher still performed well, with ad revenues up one percent on 2007.

Mobile is rising and has become the fast growing channel in many countries, Fredrik Oscarson, Founder and Vice President, New Business Director, Mobiento, said in the session “Mobile content and revenue innovations” at the third World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo.

Mobile marketing generated US$1.8 billion dollars worldwide last year. However, it is predicted to reach $15 billion by 2011 and $24 billion two years later.

Making money from new revenue sources has become increasingly common for publishers. Martha Stone, director, Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project, pointed out several opportunities for newspaper publishers, including online and mobile advertising, video, citizen journalism as well as search engine optimisation, in the third World Digital Publishing Conference & Expo.

New pricing models are emerging, including a “cost per day” model, which has been bringing big revenue for major national dailies in several countries, including Aftonbladet in Sweden, VG in Norway, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times in the United States.

Newspaper companies have been increasingly investing in online over the past years, but as the U.S. economy falters, online revenue for U.S. newspaper Web sites is down for the first time in 17 quarters, The New York Times reported.

Online revenue in the second quarter of 2008 dropped 2.4 percent, to US$777 million – the only year-on-year decrease recorded since the Newspaper Association of America started measuring newspapers' online earnings in 2003, the group reported.

Marketing budgets in the United Kingdom are plummeting as 35 percent of advertisers said they cut back their budgets in the third quarter, according to the latest Bellwether Report.

The quarterly report, issued by The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, the UK's agency association, is based on marketers' online responses and has become one of the key indicators of the health of the British marketing economy, AdAge reported.

After the Hart post offices in Northeast England were closed in July, Hartlepool Mail stepped in to help deliver local news, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Wednesday.

The newspaper will now be delivered to St. Mary Magdalene church, after a plea from Rev Janet Burbury and Rev John Lund that the villagers were lacking newspapers.

Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray announced on Tuesday he plans to launch a new Marathi-language newspaper in India, The Times of India reported Wednesday.

“Some ground work has been done and other details are being worked out,” Raj said.

Several U.S. publishers have joined the Nokia Media Network, a mobile ad network that reaches millions of mobile consumers, the company announced in a press release Wednesday.

Fox News, A&E Network, Bio Channel, History and The Hollywood Reporter have joined other publishers, such as Reuters, CNet, Hearst, Agence-France Press, Unidad Editorial and AccuWeather, strengthening the ad network's reach in the United States.

Fast food and drinks advertisements in UK newspapers and magazines have increased since 2003, according to a government report. Five years ago, print titles in the United Kingdom had a 5 percent share in the specific advertising market, but by 2007, the figure grew to 11 percent, RaisingKids.co.uk reported.

Other media, such as radio, cinema and the Web saw an 11 percent surge in fast food and drinks ads. Meanwhile, the same ads dropped by nearly 50 percent on television last year.

The BBC reported that its iPlayer content will be available to more mobile devices after it resolved DRM (Digital Rights Management) concerns. Its shows may now be viewed anywhere, but for a limited period of time, probably up to about 30 days, Tech Radar reported Tuesday.

The media outlet has made a deal with technology and licensing firms CMLA, Core Media and Intertrust so that it can use OMA DRM 2.0, a rights management feature for mobile platforms.

Online peer-to-peer TV service Joost announced its relaunch featuring Adobe Flash software that will focus on “in-browser content consumption,” Beta News reported Tuesday. The site will also have new social media services, according to Brand Republic.

In the past, users had to download and install a desktop tool in order to watch the content. Now, they will have the option of directly streaming the content. Joost users can also share videos and communicate with other users, comment on videos and look at what other users are watching.

The Associated Press has instituted a hiring freeze to “keep spending in line with revenue,” Editor & Publisher reported.

The memo detailing the hiring freeze states that although “newspaper revenue accounts for a lower proportion of AP's total revenue than it has in the past, it still represents 25 percent of our revenue and so remains important to us ... We remain financially secure, but our cash flow will be affected and, as a result, we will be cautious with new initiatives while looking for opportunities to economise.”

A free Romanian evening daily will launch Friday, with a print run of more than 25,000 copies, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

Adevarul de Seara (The Evening Adevarul) will be launched by paid morning paper Adevarul in five markets, including Bucharest and Cluj.

The credit crisis and ensuing financial instabilities in the U.S. and world markets are causing pain in Silicon Valley, as established companies must deal with decreasing demand while start-ups must lower costs due and buckle down for long-term slowdowns, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Last week, Sequoia Capital told the heads of its portfolio companies to look for cost-cutting measures while aiming to become profitable, according to the Wall Street Journal report on Friday. Sequoia has invested in companies like Google Inc. and YouTube.

USA Today announced Friday it will raise its newsstand price by 25 cents to US$1, in order to compensate for rising newsprint costs, the Associated Press reported in an article, posted by Yahoo! Finance.

The 33 percent price increase could affect the highest-circulation paper in the United States more than the same type of hike would affect the other two national papers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, because USA Today relies on single-copy sales more than other two titles do.

The introduction of new technology in which non-editorial page designers work next to page editors with journalism training is leading UK publishing group Archant to merge its two Ipswich daily papers, Press Gazette reported Tuesday.

The East Anglian Daily Times and the Evening Star will begin operating as a combined newsroom in early 2009, after Archant implements the new content management system, Atex/Polopoly. (Note: Atex supports SFN as one of the project's strategic business partners).

Low advertising sales and record high prices in printing paper are causing major changes in Iceland's newspaper market, namely the merger of two newspaper rivals, IceNews-Daily News reported Saturday. Publishing companies Arvakur hf. and 365 hf., formerly Dagsbrun hf., have agreed to merge newspapers Frettabladid and Morgunbladid.

Under the new contract, Frettabladid will become the freely distributed sister paper of Morgunbladid, and 24 Stundir (the current holder of that title) will merge into Morgunbladid itself, a paid-for newspaper.

Taiwan-based manufacturer HTC and U.S. network provider T-Mobile previously predicted the sales of the "Google phone" to reach 700,000 by Christmas this year. However, nearly 1.5 million U.S. citizens have already pre-ordered the G1 smartphone, which functions with Google’s Android technology, CNet France reported Monday.

The 500,000 T-Mobile G1 phones that have been released have already been bought, leading T-Mobile to order a million additional phones.

LG Electronics will launch an updated version of its Prada-branded smartphone that would feature a sliding Qwerty keyboard, PC World reported Sunday. The addition of the keyboard may help the Prada handset compete better against rivals such as Apple’s iPhone.

Additional elements include 7.2M bps (bits per second) HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) connectivity, Wi-Fi, a full HTML Internet browser and a 5-megapixel camera with a Schneider-Kreuznach lens.

Daily Latvian Russian-language newspaper Telegraf announced on Friday that its new owner is AO News media group, Novo News reported Monday. The firm acquired the publication from its former Latvian owner, Valerijs Belokon.

AO News media group assured the paper’s readers and journalists that it does not intend to “interfere with the politics” of the paper or to destroy its structure, reported Novo News on Monday. “We did not choose this newspaper accidentally; we choose it because we do consider it to be the most objective and professional source of information on the Latvian mass media market. We plan to develop the newspaper, come up with new plans and create satellite publications,” said ex-politician Janis Jurkans, head of the AO News Media Group Council.

The United Arab Emirates is planning to launch a new regional multi-media centre in Abu Dhabi early next year that will aim to instruct, develop and encourage local talent in fields like broadcasting, film production, publishing and journalism, Reuters reported Sunday.

The media hub, named TwoFour54, has already enlisted help from outlets like The Financial Times, BBC, CNN, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Harper Collins, Rotana Studios, Random House and C Sky Pictures.

The Independent’s circulation dropped 12.13 percent year-on-year after raising its price and re-launching in full-colour in September, Media Guardian reported Friday.

The newspaper's circulation averages is down to about 220,957 daily. Over the August holiday period, circulation was down 3.95 percent month-on-month according to figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Even though economies around the globe are hurting, the online advertising market worldwide is expected to increase by 23 percent to US$43.3 billion this year, according to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), The Hollywood Reporter reported.

Despite of the financial crisis, turnover with ad banners, sponsored links and other online ad formats. will grow 13 percent to $18.6 billion in the United States, making the country the largest market worldwide.

As the financial market plunged last week, UBS on Thursday cut its third-quarter and 2009 estimates for Internet companies, which rely on online advertising and consumer spending.

UBS analyst Ben Schachter lowered earnings projections and price targets for Yahoo, Google, ValueClick and eBay. He said Google is “the best-positioned to weather the economic downturn because of continued demand for search advertising,” according to Media Post.

During the ongoing Paris Motor Show, French mobile network provider Orange has sparked interest among mobile Web users by mentioning that it has teamed up with Toyota to release an Internet modem intended to be used in the car, FranceMobiles.com reported Thursday.

The modem, named Flybox, will be available on demand in the Toyota Avensis and the Lancia Delta models starting in early 2009.

Beginning in January, magazine publishers in the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to publish official online figures at the same time they publish their daily and monthly print circulation figures for six month periods, Press Gazette reported Thursday. Currently, regional newspaper publishers only have this option.

The UK Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) announced that magazine publishers would also have the chance to obtain additional information upon request and would be provided with visual content depicting publications’ Web activity.

Mobile broadband access revenues are growing in Europe, according to data from Exane BNP Paribas, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

Mobile broadband access revenues in Europe only totalled less than €2.5 billion in 2006. However, it those revenues are expected to increase steadily throughout 2010.

The deadline to submit applications for the Knight News Challenge, a U.S.-based foundation that gives away US$5 million a year for grants in digital, open-source innovation, is November 1.

Applicants must use or create a digital, open-source technology as their code base, the project should serve the public interest and it should benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

Russian financial daily Vedomosti announced that it will be published in a larger format as of this week and would include 20 new sections, Gipp.ru reported Thursday.

The move is a response to the growing interest towards news and analysis regarding the global financial crisis. According to Vedomosti, subscriptions in the last two months have risen.

Social networking site Bebo has sent messages and multimedia content from 501 of its members into outer space, Metro.co.uk reported Thursday. Regular users and famous personalities, such as UK’s Radio One DJ Scott Mills, got a chance to broadcast text and images that they thought “best reflects life on Earth.”

Earlier this year, the social network teamed up with production firm RDF Digital to launch a competition for the A Message From Earth initiative, wrote Pocket-lint.co.uk Thursday. The chosen content was transferred early Thursday morning from a radio telescope in Ukraine.

Due to financial troubles, The Columbian newspaper will move out of its new offices and back into the old ones, the Seattle Times reported on Thursday.

The title, based in Clark County, Washington, United States, will either lease or sell the US$30 million building, which opened in January, said the newspaper's publisher, Scott Campbell.

UK television station ITN (Independent Television News) will collaborate with a group of universities as part of a programme to digitise a century of broadcast news reports, making more than 3,000 hours of archived footage available online to students, Press Gazette reported Friday.

Nfo.ac.uk, the new site, offers historic news clips from ITN sources, the archive news licensing service that provides content from ITN and Reuters. NewsFilm Online is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC).

U.S. social networking sites still rank among the most popular online destinations, especially among younger audiences, according to eMarketer.

Leading players MySpace and Facebook combined will make up 72 percent of the total U.S. social network ad spending, or more than US$ 1 billion, this year, according to AdWeek.

Yahoo Inc.’s shares fell to their lowest level in five years on Wednesday due to a slowdown in core advertising, the San Jose Mercury News reported Thursday. The Internet firm’s shares dropped nearly 6 percent, closing at US$13.80 after being down to $13.20 in the morning.

Susquehanna Financial Group analyst Marianne Wolk predicted that there is a risk that the Yahoo-Google ad deal may not go through, as a result of Yahoo’s “deteriorating fundamentals.” The two sides said they are delaying the venture, which would have permitted Google to sell ads on Yahoo sites in North America.

News aggregation and community Web site Newsvine has seen registration skyrocket by 963 percent in the past year, Beet.TV reported Wednesday. In the same period, unique users have gone up by 269 percent.

Newsvine was bought by MSNBC almost a year ago.

The role social media plays in how customers receive and send information is leading many companies to create social media solutions, Market Wire reported Thursday.

According to a study by the Aberdeen Group, “Sales 2.0: Social Media for Knowledge Management and Sales Collaboration,” 59 percent of Best-in-Class companies have made “social media collaboration tools” within their sales department a priority. Meanwhile, 35 percent of other companies do so.

3G mobile phone sales and subscribers in Europe are expected to grow by 2010, according to data from Exane BNP Paribas, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

3G mobile phone sales in Europe increase from about 30 million in 2006 to 140 million in 2010.

German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) is hoping to better monetize its text, videos and pictures through a deal with Attributor, an online content monitor, paidContent:UK reported Wednesday.

According to dpa, it is the third largest news agency in the world, and the deal allows it to follow in the footsteps Reuters and Press Association, which also have partnered with the California-based Attributor.

The chairman and chief executive of French advertising giant Publicis, said he expects “a difficult fourth quarter ... and a very difficult year 2009" Reuters reported him telling La Tribune Thursday.

Maurice Levy pointed out that the firm would be keeping that thought in mind when establishing its budgets for the coming year. He added that Publicis had a budget of €2 billion (US$2.7 billion), which he termed as “superior to our needs.”

Research by UK media regulator Ofcom has shown that the number of ethnic minorities working in the broadcasting field is growing, The Stage reported Thursday. The study also showed that fewer women are getting hired for TV and radio.

Ethnic minorities in the sector amounted to 9 percent in 2006 and 8.8 percent in 2005. Last year, however, the figure surged to 9.3 percent of all employees in TV and radio. According to theStage.co.uk, at the senior level they accounted for 6.6 percent of all staff, with 9.5 percent in high positions in radio and 6.8 percent in TV.

People using the Internet as an exclusive source of news tend to consume more information, but cover fewer topic areas, according to a study on how Australians consume news by Total Advertising and Communications.

According to the study, this trend, called "thintelligence," as exclusively online news consumers become more intelligent or knowledgeable about very niche topics, but, "from an overall perspective, our understanding of world and national events is a bit more superficial," The Australian reported Monday.

Monster Worldwide, Inc. has bought the top online recruitment site in one of the world's fastest growing job markets, the company announced in a press release Tuesday.

The parent company of Monster.com bought the remaining 55 percent stake in the recruitment site, ChinaHR, for US$174 million in cash.

YouTube plans to sell music and video games and to experiment with new advertising formats to generate more revenue, executives said Tuesday.

The video sharing site is now tapping into e-commerce by selling media-related products featured on the millions of videos, including music, films, TV shows, video games, books and concert tickets, Reuters reported.

Microsoft Corp. is set to launch a beta version of MSN Video in Korean, possibly next month, The Korea Herald reported, according to the article posted on Asia Media.

The local version of MSN Video in Korea features a user-generated video service similar to Google's YouTube. In addition, Microsoft offers news, sports and entertainment videos on the site by partnering with local media firms.

Weekly news magazine The Week will launch in Australia on October 31, in hopes that its “approach to news suits our information-saturated, time-starved age,” The Age reported.

Despite the fact that Australia's oldest news magazine, The Bulletin, closed earlier this year, and Fairfax Media is cutting 550 jobs, The Week, which launched in England in 1995, hopes to find success in Australia by filling in a niche.

Google may want to buy EveryBlock.com, a start-up created by Adrian Holovaty that he funded by winning a grant called the Knight News Challenge, according to a ValleyWag report on Tuesday.

Holovaty's ChicagoCrime.org is a mash-up of using Google Maps to view local crime statistics in Chicago. For EveryBlock.com, Holovaty took that concept one step further to map out as much news information as possible for every city block, such as real estate listings, crime, business information, and all news reports related to each block.

United Kingdom-based Cumbrian Newspapers is looking to centralise its newspaper planning operations at a centre in Carlisle, a move that could cause two other operations posts to close, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Wednesday.

Cumbrian Newspapers owns two evening titles, the News and Star (located in Carlisle) and the North West Evening Mail (in Barrow), along with other weeklies.

The New York Times will shut down the Web site of its sister paper, the International Herald Tribune, and host that content on NYTimes.com, the newspaper announced to staff in an e-mail on Tuesday, Forbes reported.

The New York Times is hoping to become more global and increase traffic on NYTimes.com, and will also look to “reassign or relocate people” at the IHT, the e-mail stated.

Facebook and MySpace are the most popular mobile social networking sites, according to a survey conducted by ABI Research, CNET reported Monday.

The survey found that 46 percent of the social networking users have visited the sites on a mobile device. Nearly 70 percent of this group visited MySpace on the mobile phone, while 67 percent visited Facebook.

Mozilla CEO John Lilly announced that his company would soon be testing the alpha version of a browser created for mobile devices, Trusted Reviews reported Tuesday. The move may increase competition for other browsers like Safari and Opera.

“We want to make sure that the Web on mobile is more like the Web than what the mobile industry offers today, which is closed, separate networks and not a very good information-getting experience for the user,” Lilly said.

A Korean government poll released in late September found 77 percent of Koreans used the Web. Each spent 13.7 hours online on average on a weekly basis, The Korea Herald reported, according to an article posted on Asia Media.

About 35,360,000 Koreans used the Internet, up 0.8 percent from a year ago, according to the survey conducted by The Korea Communications Commission and the National Internet Development Agency of Korea. It surveyed 41,466 Koreans older than age three during June and July 2008, with a 0.47-percent margin of error.

French mobile network provider Orange announced it has bought a license to operate in Armenia as well as to offer GSM and 3G services. Orange invested more than €51 million in the initiative, Le Revenu reported Tuesday.

The project is planned to be officially launched in the upcoming months, after Armenian authorities analyse the regulations behind the license and the frequencies Orange intends to use.

Global advertising expenditure will only grow by 4.3 percent this year, as opposed to the predicted 6.6 percent, La Tribune reported Tuesday. Since last year, expenditure has grown to reach US$506.3 billion (€373 billion).

According to a study by media services group ZenithOptimedia, owned by Publicis, the lowest ad spending will be in 2008 and in 2009. Next year, the figure is expected to grow by 4 percent instead of 6.

Swiss free daily .ch will get a makeover at the end of October, as its home delivery will be stopped, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.

The free daily, launched in September 2007, will be mostly available in public transportation centres, where it will compete head-to-head with 20 Minuten and News.

Newsquest has proposed a restructure at its North and East London titles that would result in 12 positions being cut, which union officials claim would put the newspapers at risk, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Tuesday.

The cut would affect the Waltham Forest Guardian, Wanstead and Woodford Guardian, and Epping Forest Guardian.

The East Valley Tribune will lay off 142 people, reduce its publication schedule to four days a week and begin free distribution, due to dwindling advertising and lower readership numbers, the Arizona, United States-based newspaper announced Monday.

As of January, the company said it would end its presence in Scottsdale and Tempe and close its Scottsdale newsroom in order to concentrate on other East Valley areas, the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.

Google has launched an enhanced blog tracking service, which allows user to find out worth reading comments among a bunch of them, AFP reported, according to the article posted on Yahoo Tech News.

The new service, called Google Blog Search tool, was rolled out last week. It competes against Techmeme, Polymeme, Wikio and other "memetrackers" which enable sorting and organising blog posts into categories.

Newspaper recycling bins are being set up in several stations around London in an attempt to get readers to recycle their newspapers, Brand Republic reported Monday.

Associated Newspapers, which owns free daily Metro, is placing the bins in Watford, West Ruislip, Stanmore, Cockfosters, Hainault and High Barnet stations.

Newspapers in Australia that are still profitable are “being butchered,” Michael Gawenda, former editor-in-chief of The Age and director of Melbourne University's Centre for Advanced Journalism, stated in opinion piece, out Tuesday.

“The editorial cuts announced by Fairfax Media recently, in response to a dramatic fall in advertising revenue, were chilling. A failure of imagination and commitment, a result of a lack of experience and knowledge and love of newspapers, has taken Fairfax, owner of The Age, down the slash and burn path, a path tried by newspapers in other places that has led to even more rapid declines in circulation and readership and, ultimately, profitability,” Gawenda stated.

Gannett Co., Inc. has borrowed US$1.2 billion "demonstrating the growing rush by businesses to lock in funding as commercial paper markets shut down around them," the Financial Times reported Saturday.

Gannett is the largest U.S. newspaper publisher, as measured by total daily circulation. Its assets include flagship USA Today and the weekly USA Weekend, along with many others.

Monthly digital marketing magazine Revolution will be redesigned for the first time in 11 years as part of a makeover to emphasise its "smarter digital marketing" edge, Press Gazette reported Monday.

The magazine will also relaunch its Web site, revolutionmagazine.co.uk, early next year.