The UK National Union of Journalists has offered several counter-proposals to Johnston Press in hopes to sway the regional publisher from its plans to centralise sub-editing, Press Gazette reported Friday.
The proposals are aimed at keeping jobs closer to the towns those copy editors serve.
Johnston Press earlier this month announced it will centralise sub-editing in its Midlands division.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 30, 2009 at 2:24 PM
Senior
executives at advertising, marketing and interactive companies expect the
economic recession to be a great opportunity for the industry, especially firms
in emerging marketing and media, according to the AdMedia Partners 15th annual
survey "Merger and Acquisitions Prospects for Marketing Services and
Internet Marketing Firms," Media Post reported.
Although overall
ad spending is estimated to drop 5 percent this year, respondents said a 5 percent
growth in interactive advertising, as well as their businesses, is expected. Most
online categories will increase too, especially word-of-mouth, social media,
search, mobile marketing and behavioural and contextual marketing.
As traditional media companies are losing value as readers migrate from print to the Web, and the global advertising and financial markets are recessive, that market value is not necessarily making its way to new media companies, Oliver Wyman's 2009 State of the Industry Report has discovered. Rather, that market value is going to other sectors, MSNBC reported Friday.
The study analyses movement in the top 450 communications, media and technology companies worldwide.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 30, 2009 at 2:08 PM
Of all main media, TV is the most-consumed among teenagers, according to WNA's
Gen World Study, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.
Eighty-five percent of the respondents consumed TV at least almost every day, followed by the
Internet with 62 percent. Listening to CDs, talking on mobile phones and
surfing online were also very common. Traditional media, like newspapers and
magazines, were read daily by 22 percent and 17 percent of teens, respectively.
Going to movies was the least common in the ranking.
Free daily Metro shuttered its edition in Spain on Friday as falling advertising revenue around the world impacts the print industry, Expatica reported.
Spain is also a place of "intense competition" in the newspaper industry, and the Sweden-based Metro will concentrate on growth in more profitable markets, said Per Mikael Jensen, chief executive of Metro International.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 30, 2009 at 1:03 PM
The
number of U.S. mobile game downloaders increased 17 percent from November 2007
to November 2008. This equaled 8.5 million people, or 3.8 percent of mobile
subscribers, comScore reported.
"The
rapid growth in smartphone adoption in the United States has provided a boost
for mobile gaming, as 34 percent of those downloading a game in November did so
using a smartphone," according to Mark Donovan, a senior analyst for comScore.
Gannett Co., Inc. will take a write-down of up to US$5.2 billion on fourth quarter financial results due to the declining market value of its newspapers, MarketWatch reported Friday.
Profits in the fourth quarter 2008 were down 36 percent, to $158 million (69 cents per share) for the largest newspaper publisher in the United States, while revenue was down 8.5 percent to $1.74 billion. At the same time in 2007, net income was $245.3 million ($1.06 per share).
Posted by Erina Lin on January 30, 2009 at 12:52 PM
Media
General Inc. on Thursday announced it lost US$85.5 million in the fourth quarter
due to an impairment charge and a serious publishing profit drop on depressing
ad sales. It also added that it was suspending its dividend, The Associated
Press reported.
The
company's shares dropped 68 cent, or 24 percent, to close at $2.16.
Television stations owned by NBC in the United States are using technology from Internet start-up Outside.in that allows users to zero in on their neighbourhoods, The Associated Press reported.
For example, rather than have one site for all of New York City, NBC will use Outside.in to create automatic subsections containing neighbourhood-related content.
Web start-up EveryBlock and The New York Times have teamed up to expand political news offerings on EveryBlock's New York site, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.
EveryBlock, created by Adrian Holovaty and funded by a grant from the Knight News Challenge, is a data-driven site that maps out news and information by city block. The new section on EveryBlock's New York site will notify users when one of their local officials is mentioned in The New York Times,
according to Journalism.co.uk.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 29, 2009 at 3:23 PM
Although online ad revenues continue to slide, online gaming sites reported display advertising up 29 percent in November 2008 year-over-year, according to the latest report by ComScore, The Los Angeles Times reported.
While overall Internet traffic increased 4 percent, that of online gaming sites boosted 27 percent to 86 million in December 2008. The time spent on the sites also rose 42 percent per visitor.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 29, 2009 at 2:44 PM
Yahoo! is planning to expand into television by developing a half-hour newsmagazine with Twentieth Television, a unit of News Corporation, The New York Times reported.
The idea was inspired by the Web site Yahoo! Buzz. The programme, which is named after the site, will be syndicated to television shows as early as this fall.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 29, 2009 at 2:28 PM
MediaNews Group Inc. announced Wednesday all non-union employees at its California papers will have to take one-week unpaid leave to help the company reduce costs as advertising sales slump, The Associated Press reported.
About 3,300 employees at more than 50 dailies and weeklies, including managers and executives, will be impacted, according to Charlie Kamen, vice president of human resources.
MediaNews Group Inc., which owns the Denver Post, says it will buy the Denver Newspaper Agency and only publish The Post, even if E.W. Scripps is able to sell the Rocky Mountain News. This would lead to a printing, distribution and marketing problem for the Rocky, which has shared those operations with the Post under a joint operating agreement through the DNA, the Denver Business Journal reported Thursday.
Scripps announced it will close down the Rocky if a buyer cannot be found.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 29, 2009 at 2:01 PM
McClatchy Co., the third largest newspaper publisher in the United States, on Tuesday announced it will suspend its quarterly dividend to save up cash to repay debts. This came after it paid its dividend for the first quarter, The Associated Press reported.
The publisher said it declared a 9 cent quarterly cash dividend payable on April 1 to shareholders as of March 11.
After being unable to find a buyer for several months, the Baltimore Examiner will close following its last issue, which is set to be distributed Feb. 15. The newspaper's Web site will also be closed then, The Baltimore Sun reported Thursday.
The Examiner is a free paper delivered to homes and distributed from boxes and hawkers on street corners. Launched by Denver-based Clarity Media Group Inc. in 2006, executives had hoped the Examiner would profit from advertising packaged with the Washington Examiner.
Many mobile campaigns are done because marketers know they need to be in the mobile space, and the thought process often ends there, which ends up wasting time, effort and money, according to Russel Stromin, founder of mobile marketing solutions provider Strike Media.
However, to be a worthwhile investment, a strategy must be developed before the mobile marketing is executed, he states.
One option to ease the financial pain the newspaper industry is experiencing, and perhaps even make newspapers stronger, is to turn them into "nonprofit, endowed institutions," New York Times opinion contributors David Swensen and Michael Schmidt wrote Tuesday.
So far, actions taken by newspapers, such as refinancing debt, selling off assets and cutting staff have been "short term solutions to a systemic problem, Band-Aids for a gaping wound," according to Swensen and Schmidt.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 28, 2009 at 3:22 PM
Detroit daily newspapers, which canceled home delivery four days a week, now offer same-day mail delivery through the U.S. Postal Service, Media Buyer Planner reported.
Those subscribers who want to receive the Detroit Free Press or the Detroit News on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays can receive it by mail beginning March 30, according to Editor & Publisher.
The Financial Times has unveiled a new mobile Web site, but has not yet decided on a business model for the new site, paidContent UK reported Tuesday.
Although users accessing the site via their personal computers must subscribe to read more than 20 articles, like the old FT mobile site, the new one allows readers to view everything but one column for free "for the time being," according to FT.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 28, 2009 at 2:29 PM
As engagement ads are on the rise, Facebook is now testing a polling ad, which allows marketers to ask users a question and gather responses within the home page unit, Media Post reported.
In addition, users can view the results and the responses of friends.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 28, 2009 at 2:02 PM
The New York Times Co. announced its quarterly profit is down on an ad revenue slump, and confirmed its desire to sell its stake in the Boston Red Sox, Reuters reported.
The Times revealed a US$625 million shortfall in its pension obligations, and the ad sales are expected to deteriorate, the company said. However, shares went up 7.5 percent after the publisher confirmed the planned sale of the Red Sox stake and outperforming cost cutting.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 28, 2009 at 1:21 PM
Only less than 20 percent of British people said they trust newspapers, down from about three out of 10 last year. The figure was also below the global average, according to the report, the 10th annual Edelman Global Trust Barometer, published Tuesday, Press Gazette reported.
The study surveyed more than 4,500 college-educated adults who are interested in news. It found that those between ages 25 to 34 trust traditional media even more than those ages 35 to 64.
Landmark Publishing newspapers across North Carolina, U.S. including The Roanoke Times, The Virginian-Pilot and The News & Record will see its employees' salaries frozen for a year as well as a five day unpaid leave in 2009, The Baltimore Sun reported Wednesday.
President Michael Abernathy said the company, based in Shelbyville, Kentucky, is taking measures to save jobs amidst the economic recession.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 27, 2009 at 4:21 PM
The A$12
billion advertising industry in Australia will increase 1.7 percent in 2009. However,
with a price inflation of 5.2 percent, spending will actually drop 3.5 percent,
according to a new report by Aegis Media, The Australian reported.
Only the online
sector will mark a real growth of 9.7 percent, but the figure is cut to 5.7
percent if price inflation is considered.
AZ Medien Gruppe Managing Director Bodo Hombach said in an interview with German weekly magazine Wirtschaftswoche that the Germany-based company intends to continue expanding into the Russian market, gipp.ru reported Tuesday.
Last year, the group launched local newspaper Sloboda (which translates as "freedom word") in Tula, Russia, as well as three regional editions of title Rodnoi Gorod, Hombach said.
Sir Anthony O'Reilly announced on Monday he is willing to consider offers for The Independent, Times Online reported Tuesday.
"Does Sir Anthony want to sell The Independent? No. Is it formally for sale? No. But is it fair to say he is open to discussions with potential buyers? Yes he is," a "source close to Independent News & Media" told The Times.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 27, 2009 at 3:18 PM
Sixty-four percent of African Americans were online users
as of December 2008, up from 56 percent in the same period one year ago,
according to the the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project,
eMarketer reported.
In comparison, Web users accounted for 74 percent of
the total U.S. population in December 2008, slightly down one percent year-over-year.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 27, 2009 at 2:49 PM
APN News
& Media Ltd., the owner of more than 100 newspapers in Australia and New
Zealand, saw its stocks fall in Sydney trading, after the sale of its stake was
dumped by Independent News & Media Plc, Bloomberg reported.
Independent
News reached the decision after a review which considered its 39.1 percent
shareholding in APN has some "unsolicited expressions of interest," according
to APN in a statement filed with the Australian stock exchange.
Executive officers and the CEO of U.S. newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises won't receive pay increases, bonuses or long-term incentive plans this year, according to the company's annual U.S. government proxy filing, Reuters blogs reported Tuesday.
"For 2009, we have frozen NEO salaries ... due to difficult economic conditions affecting the Company, the publishing industry and the overall economy," the Davenport, Iowa-based Lee stated in the filing.
Visitors to the top 10 U.S. newspaper Web sites were up 16 percent year-over-year in December, reaching 40.1 million, Nielsen Online announced Tuesday, AFP reported.
The top online newspaper destination in the United States in December was NYTimes.com, The New York Times Web site, with 18.2 million uniques, a 6 percent increase over December 2007, according to Nielsen data. In second place was USA Today (usatoday.com), with 11.4 million uniques, a 15 percent increase; and in third place was The Washington Post (washingtonpost.com), with 9.5 million uniques, a 12 percent increase.
The worldwide domain registration industry is expected to slow during the next three years, while average prices for domain names will drop, The Australian reported Monday.
The expected slowdown of selling .coms and .nets, however, is not expected to stop the release of new domain names this year.
Although many young adults currently get much of their news from across the Web, especially social networking sites like Facebook, they will likely switch to newspapers and other traditional media in the next five years, a new study from the University of Texas states, DC Politics Examiner reported Sunday.
The number ofuniversity-educated adults between ages 18 and 29 in the United States who read a newspaper regularly will likely go up from the current 14 percent to 41 percent in 2013, according to the study.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 26, 2009 at 3:14 PM
Trinity Mirror announced it will work with Pluck, the provider of social media capabilities to publishers, to build accessible online communities to improve reader interaction on its newspaper Web sites, including Mirror.co.uk, DailyRecord.co.uk and LiverpoolEcho.co.uk, The Business Wire reported.
"At the heart of our strategy is providing our users with a really engaging experience online," said David Black, Trinity Mirror's Group Director of Digital Publishing.
Before Google Inc. announced a week ago it would drop its Print Ads programme, British start-up firm MediaEquals had "approached" the online giant, wanting to take the project over, The Associated Press reported Monday.
The Print Ads project,
to be shuttered by Google Feb. 28, launched in November 2006 with 50 newspaper partners, and has grown to include more than 800 newspapers in the United States. Print Ads Director Spencer Spinnell announced that Google had "hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we - or our partners - wanted."
Oklahoma's largest two newspapers announced they will share some news content, including some reporting and news gathering work, Tulsa Today reported Monday.
The Oklahoman and Tulsa World made the announcement Friday, and stated poor economic conditions led to their decision to share some news articles, photos and other content to better serve readers across the state, with less money.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 26, 2009 at 2:13 PM
Jay Adelson, CEO of the social media site Digg, announced Thursday the company will lay off a "very small" portion of its workforce. It will, however, hire a new direct sales force and head of sales to increase profitability in 2009, CNet reported.
The job eliminations at the 75-person firm will be "microscopic in size," a figure later confirmed by Adelson of about 10 percent. He added that the company will focus on profitability and growth this year, and is developing its own ad support structure, according to Adelson's post.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 26, 2009 at 2:09 PM
One of the key issues the media industry will face in 2009 is the rising cost of hosting user-generated content online, according to the latest forecasts from Deloitte, World Screen reported.
Storing content online is becoming more and more costly. The largest sites could allocate more than US$100 million a year to host user-generated content. However, "the ability to realise revenue from that content remains a challenge," said Deloitte. "Advertisers are generally reluctant to place ads next to any content that could damage a client's brand." So, Web sites may need to charge users for uploading or sharing content.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 26, 2009 at 1:50 PM
For most companies, although customer feedback is collectible online right now, only a few of them actually monitor and utilise it, according to a new CMO Council study, Ad Week reported.
Only 16 percent of the 500 marketing chiefs surveyed check online message boards for complaints and feedback, even though 58 percent believe that "the Internet and social media have changed the level of influence and expectations of their customers."
Google Inc.'s net income in the fourth quarter of 2008 was down 70 percent from the same time in 2007, from US$1.2 billion to $382 million, paidContent reported. However, despite the fall, the earnings still beat analysts' expectations.
Revenues for the quarter were $5.7 billion, up 18 percent from the fourth quarter in 2007.
A court has ordered the publisher of Lebanon's only English-language daily, The Daily Star, to close the paper because of financial problems, The Associated Press reported Friday.
The paper's Beirut offices were "shut and sealed" less than two hours after the court gave the order, on Jan. 14, said the paper's publisher, Jamil Mroue.
A North Carolina newspaper, launched in 2007, has decreased its printing schedule from five days a week to three, in order to cut down on costs, the Winston-Salem Journal reported Friday.
The Messenger, based in Mount Airy, North Carolina, will be home-delivered on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays, and will no longer be printed on Tuesdays or Thursdays.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 23, 2009 at 1:49 PM
Yahoo! decided to freeze annual pay raises, as the online ad market has slowed down, Bloomberg reported Thursday.
Yahoo's annual bonus programme and some workers, including those getting promotions, will not be impacted, spokesman Brad Williams told Bloomberg in a telephone interview.
In a new plan to aid newspapers, the French government will give all 18-year-olds free subscriptions to the newspaper of their choice, President Nicolas Sarkozy announced Friday, AFP reported.
The economic crisis as been especially troubling for newspapers, and many French media experts have branded the industry downturn a "threat to French democratic debate," leading to the government's set-up of a national conference on the industry's future, according to AFP.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 23, 2009 at 1:07 PM
Moody's Investors Service Friday downgraded the senior unsecured rating for the New York Times Co. to non-investment grade, due to concerns over ad revenue declines, The Associated Press reported.
Moody's reduced the rating from "Baa3" to "Ba3," a non-investment, or "junk" grade. It also downgraded the commercial paper rating to "Not Prime" from "Prime-3," and the corporate family rating to "Ba3."
Posted by Erina Lin on January 23, 2009 at 12:47 PM
From 2006 to 2009, Internet ad spending will grow stronger than other sectors in North America, Western Europe and the Asia Pacific region, according to ZenithOptimedia, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.
In the Asia Pacific region, cinema and outdoor will also see high growth rates. In North America, cinema, TV, magazines, and outdoor are growing steadily. As for Western Europe, Internet is the only media with an accelerated growth potential.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 23, 2009 at 12:15 PM
The global online audience ages 15 and older accessing the Internet from home and work computers reached one billion in December 2008, according to the data from the comScore World Metrix audience measurement service released Friday.
Forty-one percent of global online users came from the Asia-Pacific region, while 28 percent came from Europe, and 18 percent from North America. Users from Latin America and the Middle East & Africa accounted for niche, with 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively.
News about what is hurting the newspaper business, from advertising downturns to the global economy to readers migrating from print to the Web are everywhere, but what is talked about less is the topic of debt. And debt, the Nieman Journalism Lab points out, is at the root of the industry's problem.
Sure, the above problems are certainly doing damage, but "acquisitions and corporate financing have created the conditions that led to much of the pain (newspaper companies) have inflicted on the papers they own," the Nieman Lab, a Harvard University project, contends.
The Tulsa World, published by World Publishing, has filed a lawsuit against Renegade Publishing, Inc., the owner of newspaper Urban Tulsa, as well as its publisher, Keith Skrzypczak, and columnist Michael D. Bates, the Tulsa Beacon reported Thursday.
The defamation lawsuit is being brought on because an article written by Bates states the Tulsa World hid a drop in its circulation from its advertisers, the newspaper announced.
The inauguration of Barack Obama as U.S. president lifted newspaper sales Wednesday, as readers bought copies, many times more than one, as a reminder that sometimes, only print will do.
Readers told The Associated Press the newspapers would serve as important keepsakes, saying they planned to put them in scrapbooks, tuck them away in safe places, frame them or send copies to family and friends.
Chicago-based Web start-up The Printed Blog is set to launch weekly newspapers containing reprinted blog postings on Tuesday in Chicago and San Francisco, Brand Republic reported Thursday.
Each newspaper will run the blog postings and other user-generated content, such as photos, along with about 200 advertisements.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 22, 2009 at 1:43 PM
Newspaper ad revenue in Poland was up by 5 percent year-over-year in 2008, according to a report by Wirtualnamedia.pl, Warsaw Business Journal reported.
The titles with the biggest percentage gain were Dziennik, a broadsheet, and Fakt, a tabloid.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 22, 2009 at 1:39 PM
The Dundee Courier and Evening Telegraph, as well as its Web site, owned by DC Thomson, are to outsource its national sales to advertising house Mediaforce, HoldtheFrontPage reported.
Last month Northcliffe Media decided to outsource its national advertising to Mediaforce.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 22, 2009 at 1:15 PM
Indian newspaper publisher HT Media expects ad revenue to flow in the first quarter, prior to the general elections. It will, however, cut the number of pages in order to slash costs, Reuters reported.
The company reported a nearly 80 percent drop in net profit to 78 million rupees, and 3.4 billion rupees in revenue in the last quarter of 2008. Margins were impacted due to increasing newsprint cost and ad revenue declines, according to Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Verma.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 22, 2009 at 12:41 PM
Site load time seemed to be the biggest issue for global mobile Internet users, according to a study conducted by the Online Publishers Association, OPA Europe and TNS in December 2006, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.
It is easier to launch new titles when the economy is down rather than when it is doing well, the editor of the Financial Timess Ltd.'s latest magazine, This is Africa, told Journalism.co.uk.
"I've launched (previous titles) at the peak of the market and it was absolutely impossible," Peter Guest said. On the "loser slopes it's a hell of a lot easier."
Carlos Slim Helu, one of the world's wealthiest people, agreed earlier this week to loan the New York Times Company US$250 million. In tough economic times, Slim was able to drive a hard bargain, netting a 14 percent interest rate that adds up to $26 million in payments to him each year. The deal also means Slim gets warrants that are convertible to up to 17 percent of the company's equity.
However, Slim's deal with the Times Co. is unlike any previous scheme in which wealthy businessmen and women have invested in newspapers, and is also not about placing a bet on how far or fast the newspaper industry's financials will fall, according to Richard Siklos, Fortune magazine's editor-at-large.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 21, 2009 at 2:42 PM
After the closure of Obzor, another Ukraine free daily, 15minut, went out of business at the end of December 2008. The last issue was released on December 24, Newspaper Innovation reported.
There used to be three free dailies in Ukraine. Right now, only the evening paper, Vecherkom, still exists. However, a new title, called Pulse, may have launched in Kiev.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 21, 2009 at 2:21 PM
Lee Enterprises Inc. announced its first-quarter earnings Tuesday, which showed its profit down 69 percent on an aggravated ad sales slump, The Associated Press reported.
Net income after paying preferred dividends decreased from US$22.1 million, or 48 cents per share, to $6.8 million, or 15 cents per share year-over-year.
Russian billionaire and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev has agreed to buy a controlling stake in UK newspaper the Evening Standard for a mere £1, due to the newspaper's loss-making status, Press Association reported Wednesday. The Daily Mail & General Trust-owned newspaper is also expected to see revenues dwindle in the coming years.
DMGT will hand over the 75.1 percent share in the London weekday newspaper to Lebedev's company, Evening Press, which he formed with his son Evgeny. DMGT's Associated Newspapers division will continue to hold the minority 24.9 percent share in the new firm, now called Evening Standard Ltd.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 21, 2009 at 12:18 PM
The Los Angeles Times, the fourth largest circulated U.S. paper, intends to eliminate more jobs by March to slash costs, according to a letter to the union, Bloomberg reported.
"Time is of the essence and the company intends to implement the cutbacks no later than March 15," according to Russ Newton, senior vice president of operations, in the letter. "The pressroom will be impacted by this decision."
The World Association of Newspapers has decided to postpone its World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo, scheduled to be held in Hyderabad, India from 22 to 25 March, until December, due to the impact of the global financial downturn on newspaper companies.
"These events have been hugely successful in recent years, with growing participation and great programmes. We want our first Congress and Forum in India, the world¹s biggest democracy and a flourishing press market, to continue this trend. But the economic conditions simply don¹t allow that at this precise moment," said Timothy Balding, CEO of the Paris-based WAN.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 21, 2009 at 11:58 AM
Polish publisher Agora has written down 27.2 million zlotys (US$8 million) for its purchase of Trader.com, according to the company, Reuters reported Wednesday.
This charge is related to its 120 million zlotys purchase in 2008, and will influence the company's fourth-quarter results.
The Denver Newspaper Agency and The Denver Post will begin having contract concession talks, the Rocky Mountain News reported Tuesday. An auditor recently decided the agency needs to cut costs to avoid bankruptcy.
The decision came after a meeting in which union employees for the Rocky Mountain News tried to persuade units of the Denver Newspaper Guild to begin negotiations until owner E.W. Scripps makes a decision on whether it will sell or close down the Rocky. The Denver Newspaper Agency is a partnership that publishes the Rocky and the Denver Post.
In a push to focus more on editorial content and advertising sales, Media General Inc. will centralise its production and distribution services for its 24 daily newspapers, as well as 275 weeklies and niche publications, the Tampa Bay Business Journal reported.
The move "will allow publishers and managers to focus on content, sales and new products, including online opportunities," Graham Woodlief, president of Media General's publishing division, said in a statement.
The 62nd World Association of Newspapers and 16th World Editors Forum have been postponed to later this year, as the global economic crisis has led to extremely low registration numbers.
The management at WAN, of which Shaping the Future of the Newspaper is a project of, believes newspaper companies will learn to better operate under the weight of the crisis as the year passes, and will be more likely to invest in conferences as important tools toward the end of the year. The events were scheduled to take place March 22 through 25 in Hyderabad, India.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 20, 2009 at 3:48 PM
After several online mega-deals in 2007, the total value of Internet media mergers and acquisitions dropped 62 percent to US$16.9 billion in 2008, according to a new report by Peachtree Media Advisors in New York, Media Post reported.
The Internet-related M&A dollars fell from $44.4 billion in 2007, even though the number of deals was up 15 percent to 707.
Google will end its Print Ads product beginning Feb. 28, Print Ads Director Spencer Spinnell announced Tuesday.
"While we hoped that Print Ads would create a new revenue stream for newspapers and produce more relevant advertising for consumers, the product has not created the impact that we -- or our partners -- wanted," the announcement stated.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 20, 2009 at 3:23 PM
American online users are spending more time on the Web, both on a daily and weekly basis, according to a recent study by Harris Interactive, eMarketer reported.
In 2008, at-home online access time far outstripped at-work access. Both are expected to grow this year.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 20, 2009 at 2:09 PM
Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. dropped to its lowest over a decade as investors concerned earnings will be impacted by economic recession and ad slump this year, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.
The shares were down 4 cents, or 1.5 percent, to S$2.67 at 10:45 a.m. Tuesday in Singapore trade, compared to a 2.3 percent drop on the benchmark Straits Times Index. It hit the lowest point since Aug. 4, 1998.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 20, 2009 at 1:56 PM
Fairfax Media, the second-largest newspaper publisher in Australia, sold its Southern Star TV production and distribution business for A$75 million to Endemol, Scoop reported.
The funds will be used to repay debt and improve its balance sheet.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 19, 2009 at 10:38 PM
The Internet has surpassed newspapers in terms of an outlet for national and international news, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Media Post reported.
The latest research showed that 40 percent of the respondents said they get most of their national and international news online, compared to merely 24 percent in September 2007. It was the first time more people chose the Web than printed newspapers.
Last year, watching online videos, downloading television programmes and making phone calls online saw the largest year-on-year increase among adult Internet users in the United States, Mediamark Research & Intelligence research has found.
Although just 3.2 percent of adults said they downloaded a TV show in the last 30 days, that is a 141.4 percent increase over 2007.
Outdoor advertising is forecast to grow in 2009 in South Africa, especially the digital outdoor sector, according to Biz '09 Trend Report, Biz-Community Africa reported Friday.
Although the global economic turndown is likely to pull outdoor down slightly, the outdoor multi-messaging is expected to increase overall, with advertisers expected to "rediscover" the platform as "very effective," the report states.
Although MacQuarie Media Group won a court battle with Australia's media regulator last week over digital licenses in Darwin and Tasmania, the group still decided to sell its digital TV station licences late Monday, The Australian reported Tuesday.
MacQuarie Media's 50 percent stake in Darwin Digital Television was sold to Paul Ramsay's Prime Media Group, a regional affiliate of Seven Networks. Its 35.1 percent stake in Tasmanian Digital TV was sold to Bruce Gordon's WIN Television.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 19, 2009 at 9:49 PM
Gannett Co. Inc., which has tried furloughs to avoid layoffs, may have to sell The Tucson Citizen anyway, The Washington Business Journal reported.
The company announced it is taking bids on certain assets of the Arizona paper. However, if there is no sale by March 21, the publication will be closed and employees will be laid off.
UK newspaper group Johnston Press is planning to centralise sub-editing in its Midlands division into three operations in Northampton, Peterborough and Milton Keynes, but reporters will stay local, Press Gazette reported Monday.
Centralising sub-editing into three operations in the area will result in 49 job losses. Sub-editing currently being done at Anglia Newspapers and Lincolnshire Newspapers will now be done in Peterborough, sub-editing at Buckingham, Aylesbury and Hemel Hempstead will be done in Milton Keynes and sub-editing in Banbury, Daventry, Leamington and Rugby will be done in Northampton.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 19, 2009 at 5:32 PM
Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is in talks to invest about US$250 million in The New York Times Co., to help the company offset the advertising slump, according to its flagship paper, Bloomberg reported.
According to The Times report on Sunday, Slim may buy 10-year notes which can be transferred into common stock and receive a special annual dividend of up to 10 percent high on the investment.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 19, 2009 at 5:08 PM
YouTube began offering video downloads over the weekend on President-elect Barack Obama's ChangeDotGov channel, the San Jose Business Journal reported Monday.
Under the video on Obama's channel, there are small "Click to download" links. Users can click them to download the video to their computers or devices, instead of just streaming online.
Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev is in "advanced talks" to buy a 76 percent stake in the Evening Standard, AFP reported.
The Evening Standard is London's only paid evening paper, and is owned by Associated Newspapers, which also publishes the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday. Should the deal go through, the group would continue to own the remaining 24 percent.
U.S. online newspaper revenues fell 2.9 percent year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2008, to US$822 million, according to eMarketer analyst Carol Krol in her latest report. And if that wasn't bad enough, eMarketer predicts online newspaper revenues will continue to slide another 4.7 percent, to $3 billion in 2009, paidContent reported Friday.
However, traffic growth and time spent online continues to climb. Newspaper Web sites counted 68.3 million monthly unique users, or 41.4 percent of all Internet users, in the third quarter of 2008, according to eMarketer, which cites Nielsen Online data.
Prominent social network MySpace is reportedly developing e-mail for its 125 million users, after having already moved its staff to company e-mail accounts with "@myspace-inc.com," TechCrunch reported Thursday. MySpace users will have e-mails assigned according to their account names, such as "accountname@myspace.com."
"We actively listen to the feedback we receive from our users and are constantly evaluating new ways to enhance the messaging experience for our community. Our recent collaboration with Google to introduce the first search and sort mail functionality into MySpace was extremely well received. We do not comment on company rumors or speculation but will share more details on additional product plans when we have news," MySpace said in a statement, according to TechCrunch.
Previously planned reductions in Detroit Free Press home delivery means the newspaper's workers are exempt from owner Gannett Co., Inc.'s request for union employees to take a week of unpaid leave, Crain's Detroit Business reported.
"Detroit's in the midst of this whole strategic plan, and we can't afford to be off," said David Hunke, CEO of the Detroit Newspaper Partnership Inc., in which Gannett is a 95 percent stakeholder.
Global advertising expenditure rose by 2.9 percent between July and September 2008 compared to the same period in the previous year, the latest data from Nielsen Media Research shows, Brand Republic reported Friday.
The trend was spurred by the Asia Pacific region, which saw a 7.8 percent increase in ad spend. In the region, the rise in ad spend was seen largely across China (with 16.9 percent), Indonesia (with 16.7 percent) and Hong Kong (with 13 percent).
U.S. newspaper The Boston Globe will be cutting its news and editorial staff by 12 percent, or nearly 50 full-time positions, the newspaper reported Friday.
There will be voluntary buyouts for 397 full-time news staff to over across the next few weeks. However, if targets aren't met through the buyouts then the paper may lay off union and management employees.
Search engine giant Google Inc. announced Wednesday that it will shut down three engineering offices and laying off 100 recruiters as a result of the economic slump, the Associated Press reported late Thursday.
The Internet firm also intends to close engineering offices in Austin, Texas; Lulea, Sweden and Trondheim, Norway, affecting 70 people.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 16, 2009 at 5:05 PM
Mobile Internet does not seem to be a cannibalisation of PC Internet, according to a study conducted by Online Publishers Association, OPA Europe and TNS in December 2006. More than 95 percent of global mobile Web users did not reduce their time surfing online on computers, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.
Eighteen percent of global mobile Internet users said they actually spend more time online via computers after accessing mobile Internet, while another 78 percent said they spent same time on the Internet on their PCs. Only 4 percent said their time on PC Internet was shrinking after having the mobile Internet.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 15, 2009 at 10:38 PM
Belden Associates, a Dallas-based company providing newspapers with proprietary marketing, editorial and circulation research for 68 years, will close, according to CEO Sammy Papert Wednesday, Editor & Publisher reported.
In recent years "newspapers had a declining appetite for proprietary audience research that would help them understand existing audiences and identify new ones," Papert added, Media Post reported.
Al Jazeera Network will make some of its Arabic and English video footage available online for free, the network announced on the Creative Commons Web site.
The network will allow viewers and other broadcasters to share and reuse the footage, which will be licensed under the non-profit sharing system Creative Commons, for free.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 15, 2009 at 10:10 PM
eMarketer is dim on the outlook for U.S. newspaper publishers. "Their business model is broken and advertisers are bailing," AdWeek reported.
Newspaper ad sales would plummet 16.4 percent to $37.9 billion in 2008, and will fall to $28.4 billion by 2012. Its revenue decline is more quickly than in any other major medium's.
After losing US$14 million in 2008, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and may cut its print edition and go online-only to save itself, Pudget Sound Business Journal's TechFlash reported Wednesday.
The newspaper's publisher, Roger Oglesby, has asked employees for ideas on how to change the Post-Intelligencer into an online-only operation, much like The Christian Science Monitor did at the end of 2008.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 15, 2009 at 9:30 PM
Analysts downgraded estimates on both price and earnings for West Australian Newspapers (WAN) in the 2009 financial year, The Australian reported.
According to UBS media analysts Lauren Moran and Richard Eary in a report, the economic boom in West Australia in recent years "had insulated The West Australian from problems affecting other newspaper publishers."
The Tribune Co. is in talks with the Washington Post Co. for foreign and national coverage for the Tribune's eight leading dailies across the United States. Should an agreement be made, Tribune would pay the Post for the coverage. Meanwhile, the New York Daily News has agreed to use GlobalPost for its foreign coverage, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Should the agreements go through, foreign news coverage at three of the biggest 10 newspapers in the United States would drastically change.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 15, 2009 at 9:06 PM
Despite a still niche reach, blogs on the top 10 U.S. newspaper sites had a tremendous growth from Dec. 2005 to Dec. 2006, according to Nielsen NetRatings, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2007 reported.
The top 10 newspaper sites in the United States reached 27.4 million unique audience in Dec. 2005. The number increased to 29.9 million after one year.
Those interested in buying the Rocky Mountain News from the E.W. Scripps Co. have been asked to submit bids by the end of the business day Friday, the Associated Press reported. However, the deadline may be pushed back into at least next week, the Rocky Mountain News reported Thursday.
A timeframe for evaluating bids has not been set up, but as the deadline looms, Scripps spokesman
Tim King told the AP bids will be looked at quickly.
Carol Bartz, former chief executive of design software maker Autodesk and a director at Cisco, was appointed CEO of Yahoo! on Tuesday, The New York Times reported.
Bartz told analysts that although Yahoo! is facing challenges, the company also has a "huge opportunity," thanks to its well-known brand and position in the market. Bartz said she plans to turn the company's attention outward, and experts believe her appointment signals big change for the company.
Gannett Co.'s non-union employees in the United States must take an unpaid week off from work during this quarter, the nation's largest newspaper company announced Wednesday, Dow Jones reported.
The unpaid week is an effort "to preserve our operations and continue to deliver for our customers while confronting the issues raised by some of the most difficult economic conditions we have ever experienced," Craig Dubow, chairman and chief executive of the company, told employees in an e-mail.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 14, 2009 at 6:59 PM
Italy's two biggest newspaper companies, RCS MediaGroup and Gruppo Editoriale l'Espresso, have formed an online advertising consortium to boost online revenues when print faces recession, Reuters reported Wednesday.
This consortium, called Premium Publisher Network, is the first of its kind in Europe, and will be open for other groups to join.
The Chicago Tribune will begin appearing in tabloid format beginning Monday for weekday sales at newsstands, newspaper boxes and in commuter stations, in an effort to increase single-copy sales, The Tribune announced in an Associated Press article Tuesday. Home-delivered copies will remain in broadsheet format.
"Many news consumers have asked for a more convenient version of the paper that contains all of the same great news and information," Tony Hunter, CEO of Chicago Tribune Media Group, said in a statement.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 14, 2009 at 5:05 PM
Singapore's Straits Times launched a new iPhone application Monday, which allows mobile readers to access all the latest breaking news stories as they are published on the StraitsTimes.com through a free download via Apple's iTunes programme.
Launching the mobile application is important, now that mobiles have reached critical mass in Singapore, The Straits Times reported.
Free evening daily in German Switzerland Blick am Abend has upped distribution from 211,000 to 270,000, according to the latest official audit, Newspaper Innovation reported Tuesday.
Blick am Abend is the free evening sister paper of paid tabloid Blick.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 14, 2009 at 4:29 PM
Huffington Post is buying comedy news site 236.com, part of a joint venture between Huffington Post and IAC created in Nov. 2007, paidContent reported.
This deal will integrate 236.com into Huffington Post as a vertical channel.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 14, 2009 at 4:20 PM
Jagran Prakashan, publishers of the Indian paper Dainik Jagran, has unveiled a news mobile portal in Hindi, Wap.Jagran.com, afaqs! reported.
The title already has a portal offering national, international, sports, business and breaking news, but with the mobile location-based technology, it now can provide district-level news to people across the country.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2009 at 9:11 PM
According to comScore's year-end numbers, MySpace is still leading in the U.S. online social networking market, but Facebook is growing, although slowly, CNet reported.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch estimated that if the current growth rate remains, Facebook's U.S. audience will exceed MySpace's early in 2010.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2009 at 8:58 PM
Singapore Press Holdings Ltd., the biggest newspaper publisher in Singapore, saw share prices drop after releasing its first-quarter profit figures, Bloomberg reported.
The stock fell 3 percent at S$2.93, the biggest drop since Dec. 11. The Straits Times Index was down 0.8 percent. Its net income declined 35 percent from to S$73 million ($49 million) a year earlier, according to the company after the close of trading Monday.
Singapore's Media Development Authority has given S$7.6 million in funding to five new media projects in an effort to support local media creating innovative new business models, services and applications for the global market, The Straits Times reported Monday.
The five projects were selected from 26 proposals submitted to the Call for New Media Applications and Services Projects competition, which closed in September 2008. They are expected to net $70 million in investments and create 300 new jobs in local media.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2009 at 8:20 PM
Google widened its U.S. usage share of online search in December 2008, up to 72.1 percent of all queries from 65.9 percent in the same period one year ago, according to Hitwise.
Other three key search engine players all lost in the overall share. Yahoo! came in second after a distant gap, with a 17.8 percent share, down from 20.9 percent in December 2007. Microsoft came next with 5.6 percent, down from 7 percent, while Ask.com reported a share of 3.4 percent, down from 4.1 percent, NYTimes reported.
Cox Enterprises has named Doug Franklin the new publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the AJC reported Tuesday. Franklin currently serves as the executive vice president of Cox Newspapers, and will continue to hold that position, while adding the AJC duties.
Franklin has also been a publisher of Cox newspapers in Dayton, Ohio, and Palm Beach, Florida. He is replacing John Mellott, AJC publisher since 2004, who is retiring.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 13, 2009 at 7:58 PM
The Globe and Mail plans to cut 80 to 90 jobs, or 10 percent of employees, according to Publisher and Chief Executive Officer Phillip Crawley, Bloomberg reported.
The move is being made to reduce costs and offset the loss of advertising sales.
Rival newspapers The Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star-Telegram will team up for some of their sports coverage to cut expenses and duplication of work, The Associated Press reported Tuesday.
In autumn 2008, the two papers also signed a joint distribution agreement, and at the end of the year began sharing some photos and arts coverage.
The Britain-based Mecom group is believed to have sold its German newspapers for €152 million to M. DuMont Schauberg, Amanda Andrews reported in her Telegraph.co.uk blog on Monday.
Mecom, which owns titles across Europe, is understood to be in the final phase of discussions with the buyer, based in Cologne, and an announcement is "expected soon." The sale includes the titles Berliner Zeitung and Hamburger Morgenpost.
Media news is saturated with stories about how print businesses are faring online, but one Web start-up is doing just the opposite. The Printed Blog is launching a twice-daily free print newspaper to be made available in cities across the United States, Wired reported Monday.
Founded by business productivity software entrepreneur Joshua Karp, the Printed Blog will publish local blog posts in its print edition, the first issue of which is set to launch Jan. 27 in two Chicago neighbourhoods and one area of San Francisco, and will be handed out at public transportation stops. A New York edition is also planned.
UK newspaper The Daily Mirror on Monday raised its price by 5 pence to 45 pence, MediaGuardian reported. Competitor The Sun responded by publishing an advertisement that promotes its price over that of the Daily Mirror.
"Regrettably, the price of your favourite paper has gone up today. We, like the rest of the world, have been affected by the credit crunch. The downturn has led to a dramatic rise in production and distribution costs," said Daily Mirror announced on its page 2.
Hearst Corp. will sell its Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper after losing US$14 million in 2008, Bloomberg reported. If a buyer cannot be found within 60 days, Hearst plans to either take the paper online-only and cut jobs, or shut the paper down, the New York-based publisher announced in a statement.
"Our losses have reached an unacceptable level," Steven Swartz, president of Hearst's newspaper unit, said in the statement Friday. The newspaper has had operating losses since 2000.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 12, 2009 at 7:51 PM
According to eMarketer's prediction in mid 2008, British social network ad spending would reach £175 million ($322 million) in 2009. However, the research company revises it by cutting down about 20 percent, although it'll still be a healthy growth over the total estimated £115 million ($212 million) for 2008.
MySpace, the worldwide biggest social network among English speakers, has its British market share dropped by one-half in the year ending in June 2008, from over 29 percent to less than 15 percent, according to Hitwise, eMarketer reported.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 12, 2009 at 7:26 PM
According to a recent survey by Deloitte, people between ages 14 to 25 think of computers as more of an entertainment device than they do televisions, World Screen reported.
The survey, called State of the Media Democracy, stated that people in the Millennial generation also belong to a "global early-adopter generation."
Boston Globe alum Charles Sennott's GlobalPost.com, a Web start-up offering foreign news coverage, launched Monday, the Associated Press reported.
Sennott started the ad-supported free Web site to offer foreign coverage to newspapers having to close outlying bureaux. Journalists working for GlobalPost have previously worked for U.S. news outlets such as the Washington Post, Associated Press and CNN.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 12, 2009 at 4:58 PM
The Boston Globe will soon join start selling front-page ads in order to generate additional income, according to the paper.
This initiative will begin during the first quarter of this year, but there are some details still needed to be worked on, including price, size, and location, said spokesman Bob Powers Wednesday.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 9, 2009 at 8:30 PM
Newspapers and magazines in France that are suffering from declining readership and profits need to overhaul in the Web era, according to new study, Bloomberg reported.
The print media, which receive €1 billion ($1.37 billion) in state aid and tax breaks each year, have to reduce costs and adjust editorial and copyright policies, according to the 68-page "Green Book" commissioned by President Nicolas Sarkozy.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 9, 2009 at 8:02 PM
Mobile video still reached only very few people in the U.S., but the numbers are in a rise, according to a new report issued by Nielsen, Media Week reported.
According to the study, only 10.3 million, or 5 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers access video content on their phones in a given month. However, the numbers increase 14 percent from 2007, mostly thanks to more Internet-friendly phones available in the market.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 9, 2009 at 7:13 PM
U.S. retail marketing spending increased 12 percent year-over-year on search ad campaigns in the last quarter of 2008, according to a report from SearchIgnite, Media Post reported.
According to Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite, most retail marketers allocate their budgets more in the first half of the quarter instead of the second, which was unusual. "In previous years, typically we see retail marketers increase budgets in the second half of the fourth quarter," he added.
Print classifieds at Fairfax Media's two major Australian newspapers were hit hard last month, as employment, auto and real estate advertisements spiralled, The Australian reported Saturday, January 10.
The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, in Melbourne, saw a 38 percent drop in weekly classified pages, part of which was due to total weekly pages dropping by 2.8 percent. Meanwhile, the Sydney radio ad market also fell.
London paid newspaper the Evening Standard has been seeing year-on-year increases in circulation for the past four months, escalating by 0.97 percent to 287,173 copies per day in December 2008, The Guardian reported Friday.
Last month, the Daily Mail and General Trust-owned paper slashed its daily editions from three to two and decreased the quantity of newsagents that distribute the title.
Internet cafes are out, and wireless is in, as Wi-Fi hotspots are dotting more of Indonesia and leading wireless to double in the past year, The Jakarta Post reported Thursday.
"Since we lowered our prices a year ago, customers using the Speedy dedicated line have risen from 5,000 in 2007 to 14,000 in 2008," said I Ketut Purwa, public relations secretary of the Bali branch of Telkom Indonesia.
Michael E. Schroeder, the former editor of New York's Newsday, will buy two Connecticut-based Journal Register Co. newspapers, saving them from closure Jan. 15, the Republican-American reported Thursday.
Local and state officials had tried to save the papers, promising potential buyers tax incentives and programmes that aid in keeping local businesses open.
The Sun Times Media Group will close 12 of its Pioneer Press suburban weeklies in the week beginning Jan. 12 as part of its plan to cut US$55 million in yearly operating costs, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.
The Sun-Times parent company is asking union employees to take a 7 percent pay cut, Crain's Chicago Business reported.
Posted by Erina Lin on January 8, 2009 at 10:28 PM
Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) has extended its location-based advertising (LBA) SMS service to SingTel and StarHub, Brand Republic Asia reported.
The service was launched in November 2007 and has previously only partnered with M1. With all three telecom players in the country participating, it is expected to reach up to more than four million subscribers, or 80 percent of Singapore's population.
Devices using the U.S. network provider Verizon Wireless will employ Microsoft's Live Search as the default search engine instead of Google, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Fortune reported.
The "strategically critical" deal will be implemented in the first half of 2009 and will last for five years, according to Fortune. Microsoft's competitor Yahoo! has agreements with mobile phone operators companies AT&T and T-Mobile while Google's search engine serves network provider Sprint.
