March 2009 Archives

Google is collaborating with Sony Music, EMI, Warner Music and Universal Music to offer users in the Chinese market about 350,000 free MP3 downloads Media Guardian reported yesterday. The catalogue will be expanded to 1.1 million songs in the coming months.

Google has partnered with Chinese music site Top100.cn, which may help it compete with Chinese search site Baidu, which has a 76.9 percent share of the Chinese market, compared to Google's 16.6 percent share. A large amount of traffic on Baidu is from illegal music sharing.

Tribune Co. today announced the joint operation of the Hartford Courant and Hartford television stations WTIC-TV and WTXX-TV, beginning later this year, a press release posted by Fox Business announced. The media combination will be headed by Richard Graziano, senior vice president and general manager of WTIC-TV and WTXX-TV. He has been made Courant publisher, effective immediately.

"This is the future of media," Randy Michaels, Tribune's chief operating officer, stated in the press release. "Whether in print, over the air, or online - the delivery mechanism isn't as important as the unique, rich nature of the content provided. Bringing these media properties together will enable us to bring more resources to our news coverage, improving and expanding what we can offer readers, viewers and advertisers in the area."

Unable to compete with the likes of Wikipedia, Microsoft will close down both its MSN Encarta reference Web sites and its Encarta software, paidContent reported yesterday.

MSN Encarta Web sites around the world will be shuttered on Oct. 31, except for Encarta Japan, which will be closed Dec. 31. Microsoft will also stop selling Microsoft Student and Encarta Premium software by June, the company announced on its Web site.

Sun-Times Media Group Inc. today filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to "reestablish itself as a self-sustaining, profitable operation. That is worth fighting for, said Chairman Jeremy Halbreich, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The news group, which owns the Chicago paper and other suburban dailies and weeklies, filed for bankruptcy "with the aim of reorganising operations, setting a tax liability and making the company fit for a buyer," the Sun-Times article stated. The company owes the U.S. Internal Revenue Service US$608 million in taxes and penalties incurred by former owner Conrad Black, currently in prison for corporate theft. However, the STMG does not have bank debt.

British Culture Secretary Andy Burnham will hold a day-long conference on how newspapers can survive in a digital age, UPI reported. Scheduled for April, the conference will bring together both government and industry representatives.

Burnham's approach to rescuing the industry involved the revocation of restrictions on newspaper mergers and government advertising in newspapers. He also suggested government support in the industry transition "into the digital age."

The Huffington Post has revealed plans to fund an investigative journalism unit, AFP reported. With an initial budget of US$1.75 million, Ariana Huffington, founder huffingtonpost.com, said the unit is an attempt to prevent the media's role in democracy becoming a victim of the newspaper industry's financial crisis.

"As the newspaper industry continues to contract, one of the most commonly voiced fears is that serious investigative journalism will be among the victims of the scaleback... All who recognise the indispensable role good journalism plays in our democracy are looking for ways to preserve it during this transitional period for the media," Huffington told AFP.

A recent Pew survey shows that online journalists are more optimistic about their careers than those in more traditional media fields, yet they are concerned about the quality of journalism online even more than they are concerned about finding a profitable business model. Findings published on the Pew Research Center's site were collected in a survey of members of the Online News Association (ONA).

Many professionals believe the Internet is "changing the fundamental values of journalism," and taking it in the wrong direction. However, the majority of those surveyed were reticent to disapprove of the progress of online media, and confident that the news form would find a way of generating revenue, despite disappointing trends in advertising returns.

Although Internet sales increased significantly by 10.6 percent between 2007 and 2008, the economic recession is flattening growth, according to the Internet Advertising Revenue Report released Monday by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, The New York Times reported.

Cable television spending also rose by 7.8 percent, while non-Internet media revenue slid by 2.4 percent. Internet revenue dipped during Q1 and Q2 for the first time in four years and online advertising in 2008 grew much less than it did compared to the same time a year ago. On the other hand, digital video revenue more than doubled in 2008 from 2007, according to the report.

Although sponsorship advertising fell in Q4, online advertising from consumer-packaged good companies increased from $925 million in 2007 to $1.5 billion in 2008, The New York Times reported. This increase is "something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. People didn't think this would be the right space to be selling grocery-type products," said Peter S. Fader, a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Los Angeles area free Spanish language daily Hoy will now be published weekly, Newspaper Innovation reported. The paper, which was launched in August 2004, will continue to publish online, as well as its weekend edition Fin de Semana.

The New York edition of Hoy shut down at the end of 2008, leaving the Chicago edition, which boasts a circulation of 62,000 during the week and 300,000 for Fin de Semana, the only remaining Hoy that continues to publish daily. The decision comes following reports that decreases in advertising revenues are having an effect on ethnic media.

The Florida Communications Group (FCG) branch of Media General Inc. has laid of 53 employees at its various publications, including the Tampa Tribune, Editor & Publisher reported. The layoffs were reported to be mostly from operations, not the newsroom.

A three-day furlough has also been implemented by the FCG. The days, which are in addition to the 10 that were instated at the beginning of the year, will be taken between April and June.

The Tribune has reported that the FCG's publications are "under review" for potential closure following the shutting down of the group's publications, Skirt and Flair. Twelve vacant positions will also disappear and some news bureaux risk closing their doors. In a memo, FCG President John Schueler told employees that "Tampa Bay's economy is not recovering" and explained, "therefore we will need to further reduce our operating costs."

Some newspapers in Europe have been able to make money from readers, making them less dependant on advertising in a recession-pummelled economy, The New York Times reported Saturday. German publisher Axel Springer, for example, recently logged the highest yearly profit in its history.

CEO Mathias Dopfner told The Times that Axel-published Bild is not intimidated by the digital revolution and is looking for acquisition targets in Germany, Eastern Europe and perhaps in the United States. European publishers have dealt with the crisis by getting rid of unreliable advertisers, leaning more heavily on readers, creating launching new Web sites and strengthening Internet divisions.

The International Herald Tribune on Monday relaunched its Web site under the new Web address global.nytimes.com, and added "The Global Edition of The New York Times" under its masthead, emphasising its link to its parent company, Times Co. Global.nytimes.com will aim to combine "the international voice of the IHT with the worldwide breadth of reporting of The Times and the digital expertise of NYTimes.com," the company announced in a press release posted by MarketWatch.

The International Herald Tribune is the global edition of The New York Times. IHT.com now automatically redirects to global.nytimes.com and NYTimes.com users can set the Global Edition site as their preferred home page. The collaboration also features a new service, "Today's Headlines Global Edition," a twice daily e-mail service for both European and Asian morning editions.

Prominent Spanish daily newspaper, El País on Monday announced it will increase its cover price by 9.1 percent to €1.20 for its Monday to Saturday editions, Reuters reported.

Media group Prisa, which publishes the left leaning newspaper, left the price of the Sunday edition unchanged at €2.20. The move marks an attempt to offset the financial impact of the global recession and the subsequent decline in advertising revenue for newspapers.

"The increase will allow us to guarantee readers the news quality they demand and undertake future projects under a difficult backdrop given the world economic crisis and falls in advertising," the paper's front page announced, according to Reuters.

Both The New York Times Co. and The Washington Post Co. have announced cost-cutting strategies that include layoffs, pay-cuts and buyouts, Bloomberg reported.

The Times Co. said it will cut a total of 100 positions on the business side of the company as well as implement salary cuts of up to 5 percent for the rest of the year. The Times Co.'s pay cuts will affect non-union employees of The New York Times, Boston Globe and the papers' Web sites, along with corporate executives.

AOL's programming unit Media Glow has hired five newspaper journalists and one senior editor to work for its sports blog FanHouse, paidContent reported Sunday.

The staff additions are seen as a strategic move by the company, which seeks to capitalise on the lack of news coverage in areas that have been affected by newspaper closures and layoffs.

AOL programming SVP Marty Moe told paidContent writer David Kaplan that AOL doesn't "take any joy in the turmoil currently happening at newspapers, but we do see an increased role for FanHouse, as well as other channels." Reports say that FanHouse could hire more writers, as the site gets ready to cover the baseball season in the United States.

While ethnic orientated newspapers have continued to increase readership bases as mainstream papers suffered circulation declines, these papers serving immigrant and minority groups in the United States are now having to make similar staff cuts and closures as their larger counterparts, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

Newspapers that immigrant communities rely upon to stay informed and navigate American life have continually shown lasting readership strength as more immigrants arrive in the United States and older non-English speaking readers prefer print over the Internet. 

More than 500,000 copies of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News were distributed for free at more than 18,000 retail locations throughout Michigan on Monday, the Detroit Media Partnership announced in a press release.

The editions showcase the newspapers' new looks, which include reader-friendly condensed news formats, more local news and information in "at-a-glance formats," the release, posted by Fox Business, stated.  The newspapers' Web sites attract a weekly audience of 2.1 million people combined. The Detroit media partnership is also the advertising sales agent for several Detroit publications.

The state-owned Iranian newspaper Khorshid will close due to government plans to cut costs, according to the country's official news agency, IRNA, AFP reported Monday.

The newspaper closes months before the country's presidential elections, scheduled for June 12, which has put an end to criticism that the "pro-government"  newspaper would be an advantage in the election campaign of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has yet to make his candidacy official, according to the AFP report, posted by Asia One.

As advertising revenues fall globally, music Web sites that allow free listening but not downloading are facing challenges from labels that demand a share of advertising revenues, advance royalties and investment stakes, The Financial Times reported Sunday. The crisis has prompted beleaguered sites to seek out new and more affordable licensing terms.

SpiralFrog and Ruckus are examples of two casualties. Similarly, Yahoo recently stopped showing popular music videos in the UK because of exorbitant royalties. Apple's iTunes will reportedly face the same predicament next month, according to the FT.

Ink manufacturer US Ink has offered up a solution for newspapers and and their economic woes - flavoured advertising. The company, which sells ink to newspapers, has turned its clients towards advertising that allows the consumer to sample the product advertised via a flavored strip, the Hackensack Record reported Thursday.

Although not a new idea, the unique form of mass media advertising allows newspapers to tap a consumer base only available to physical distribution channels and could boost advertising revenue that has followed consumers online.

Micro-blogging site Twitter is proposing enhanced versions of the site for a fee to various businesses and corporations, Reuters reported Thursday.

Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter, told Reuters that "if these services are valuable to companies, we think they may want to pay for them." Twitter's strategy to generate revenue from the site has been much anticipated and comes in light of recent findings that many companies are opting for Twitter   as a communication tool over other networking sites.

Capitalising on its coverage of popular topics like Jade Goody's battle with cancer, the Web site of UK red top The Sun attracted more than 27 million users in February, making it the most popular UK Web site. Sun Online beat out the Web sites of the Guardian, Telegraph, Mail Online and Times Online, Media Guardian reported.

Although page views fell by 2 million compared to January's record number of 344 million, Sun Online Web sites like DreamTeamFC, Sun Bingo, Page3.com and the News of the World Web site contributed to Sun Online retaining its place as the newspaper Web site with the most individual page views.

A $3.5 million study, released by the Council for Research Excellence on Thursday, found TV to be the most dominant medium in terms of advertising and consumption, with the average American being exposed to five hours and nine minutes of TV everyday, The New York Times reported. The study found computer usage has surpassed radio as the second most used media, with print sitting in fourth. On total the survey revealed adults as exposed to screens for around 8.5 hours a day.

During the eight and a half hours of daily television, Internet and mobile video, the average American is subject to 61 minutes of advertising and promotions.

Free Italian afternoon daily 24 Minuti will stop publishing on April 1 due to "current market conditions," Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

Giancarlo Cerutti, chairman of the Il Sole 24 Ore Group, which owns the paper, said the market has given the company no alternative.

Newsprint firm AbitibiBowater has extended its restructuring plan deadline, Thunder Bay Television reported Thurday.

AbitibiBowater, which has been attempting to avoid bankruptcy in the light of falling newsprint prices, was meant to formulate a plan to attend to billions of dollars of debt. The original deadline for the plan, 11:59 on Wednesday, has now been pushed to 5 p.m. Friday.

With decreasing revenues and increased competition from digital terrestrial channels, Spanish's TV station La Sexta is looking to collaborate with other Spanish TV broadcasters, said CEO Jose Miguel Contreras, Dow Jones reported Thursday.

The overall TV advertising market in Spain had decreased 25 percent in the first quarter of 2008 compared to a year ago, Contreras said.

Music and entertainment magazine Blender will stop publication after its April issue, but will continue with its Web site, blender.com, its owner, Alpha Media Group, announced on Thursday, The New York Times reported.

"We went as far as we could in a difficult environment," said Alpha Media spokeswoman Nora Haynes. Thirty people will be laid off as a result of the publication's closure.

In a letter to shareholders yesterday, Washington Post Co. Chairman Donald E. Graham revealed that the loss of "substantial money" in 2009 will involve further cost cutting measures at the Washington Post, the paper reported today. This comes on top of a US$24.9 million operating loss for 2008. However, the company is not prepared to write the newspaper off just yet.

"The familiar problems of the newspaper industry - declining readership and the loss of classified - are now made worse by bankrupt advertisers," Graham stated in the letter. "The newspaper will lose substantial money in 2009. Some will be non-cash accelerated depreciation because we will be closing a printing plant. Most will be real losses."

Executive directors of UK regional newspaper publisher Johnston Press agreed to forgo bonuses for 2008, due to a fall in earnings, Media Guardian reported Wednesday.

The executives also saw total pay decline by about 46 percent; however, basic salaries did increase. Tim Bowdler, the company's former chief executive, for example, saw his total remuneration fall 46 percent from his 2007 earnings, but his basic salary increased by £17,000, according to the 2008 annual report.

A bipartisan group of MPs in Britain has launched an inquiry into the future of local and regional journalism in response to recent cutbacks and job losses, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

In preparation for a series of face-to-face meetings, the culture, media, and sport select committee has asked for comments from those in the industry before meetings on the issue begin later this year. The talks are in reaction to the more than 1,000 journalism jobs that have been cut from regional newspapers since last summer, as well as the dozens of papers that have been shut down.

Four Michigan markets are set to lose daily editions of their newspapers, with only three days a week seeing print versions in Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, and twice weekly in Ann Arbor, according to The New York Times. Advance Publications is closing the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News in late July. It will be replaced Web-based news operation, AnnArbor.com and a two day a week printing company.

All 272 employees at The Ann Arbor News will lose their jobs and be asked to reapply at the two new establishments. The new staff size is undecided, but "there will be by far fewer positions," said Laurel Champion, publisher of The Ann Arbor News.

The Bakersfield Californian plans to lay off 26 workers and introduce a 5 percent company-wide pay cut in order to balance its budget in light of decreasing advertising revenue, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

The cutbacks will reduce the paper's staff by about 12 percent, including 14 positions cut from the newsroom. The layoffs are the second in a series that began in December, when the paper and one of its subsidiaries laid off 25 workers.

In a major restructuring plan, the Financial Times' Newsroom 2009 project will see new "news integrator" positions created, as well as the introduction of a three-stage editorial process for all channels, journalism.co.uk reported Tuesday.

The news integrators will lead on the UK News/World, UK companies/ICN and features desks. According to the Newsroom 2009 plans, there will be no new redundancies due to the changes.

In order to end workflow inefficiencies, staff, including correspondents outside London, will be trained in online production so that they are able to work for the more digitally focused newsroom, taking on tasks such as online production, according to journalism.co.uk.

Google has made changes to its algorithms to make it easier for users to find more relevant results, as the changes are aimed to better understand "associations and concepts related to your search," offering related search results on the same page, the search giant announced on its blog Tuesday.

For searches three words or longer, a snippet from the relevant page will tell the user whether the page is worth looking at, by highlighting the words from the search in bold on the page.

Democratic Senator Benjamin Cardin introduced on Tuesday a bill to allow newspapers to restructure as nonprofits, granting a variety of tax breaks to those "struggling to stay afloat," Cardin said, Reuters reported. Although no one has come forward to co-sponsor the bill, it has created a bit of a buzz in the media.

Under the Newspaper Revitalization Act, newspapers would operate as nonprofits for educational purposes under the U.S. tax code, which is how public broadcast companies work.

Twitter Inc. has partnered with advertising network Federated Media to launch "ExecTweets" on Monday, Business First reported. The ExecTweets page, exectweets.com, collects tweets from corporate executives, and may be a way for Twitter to finally make money.

The site allows visitors to search for word clouds of most frequently used words on ExecTweets, and users can also vote tweets up or down, as well as suggest executives that should be featured on the site. The page was built by Federated Media, and is sponsored by Microsoft Corp.

In an effort to reach the entire population in next year's U.S. census, the Census Bureau plans to spend US$250 million on promoting participation in the population survey. Most of this money will be dedicated to advertising across the media board, utilising both traditional and social media platforms, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.

The media blitz is specifically targeted at traditionally hard to reach demographics. Almost a quarter of the funding is aimed at news outlets whose target audiences are the Asian, black and Hispanic populations. $26 million will be spent on the Asian and Hispanic populations utilizing television, radio and online media. With another $10 million devoted to black community, which typically is undercounted, Federal News Radio reported.

The Houston Chronicle will cut 12 percent of its workforce, the Hearst Co.-owned paper's publisher and president, Jack Sweeney, announced Tuesday, the newspaper reported on its Web site, Chron.com. Editor Jeff Cohen explained that the newsroom will be restructured, losing about 90 staffers.

The Chronicle will offer employees affected by the layoff severance packages which include two weeks of pay for every one year of service up to one year's pay, as well as career transition services.

Hearst also owns the recently online-only Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the struggling San Francisco Chronicle.

The Boston Globe's deadline for employees to apply for a buyout passed on Friday, but employees still have a seven day grace period to change their minds, the Boston Business Journal reported Tuesday.

The Globe announced in January that it needed to cuts 50 of its 433 newsroom positions in response to the recession and the paper's financial problems. A memo issued by editor Marty Baron explained that he hoped to reach the goal of 50 job cuts "through voluntary departures."

U.S. newspaper and television company Media General on Monday announced the restructuring of the firm to five geographic regions, replacing its current traditional structure that groups media by division - publishing, broadcast and interactive, Mediaweek reported. The restructure will go into effect in early July.

The five regions are Virginia and Tennessee, Florida, mid-South, North Carolina and Ohio and Rhode Island. The restructuring also includes a sixth business segment, which will hold  interactive advertising services, and include the Blockdot, DealTake and NetInformer Web sites.

After mandatory, week-long unpaid furloughs saved Gannett Co Inc. US$20 million, the U.S. newspaper publisher has instituted a second round of furloughs in April, May and June to cut more costs, according to a company memo obtained by Reuters Monday.

This new round of furloughs will vary based on location and division of the company, according to a memo to employees from CEO Craig Dubow. Other measures include a temporary salary reduction for some employees with salaries over $90,000, and a one-year freeze on wages and salaries beginning April 1.

On Monday, Cox Enterprises Inc. tendered an offer of US$3.80 per share of the remaining publicly held shares of Cox Radio Inc., which, when including expenses and fees, comes to a total of $69.1 million, The Associated Press reported.

Cox Enterprises Inc. currently holds an estimated 78 percent equity stake in Cox Radio and a voting interest of almost 97 percent. If the transaction is successful, Cox Radio will become a subsidiary of the privately owned Cox Enterprises.

Mainstream companies are increasingly choosing to use Twitter as a communication tool, which especially poses a threat to social networking sites MySpace and Facebook, which over the past year have worked to gain interest from companies as communication platforms, paidContent reported Monday.

For example, BusinessWeek, SalesForce.com and Best Buy have all incorporated Twitter feeds into their own Web sites and customer relations activities, according to paidContent.

Media companies are not advancing quickly enough to meet the needs and expectations of today's digital consumer, which also puts advertisers at a disadvantage, according to a study released Monday by IBM, Market Wire reported.

With the growth of online and digital formats and the concurrent decline of traditional forms of advertising revenue, the study, "Beyond Advertising: Choosing a Strategic Path to the Digital Consumer," warns that media companies that do not evolve their business model to provide a simultaneous marketing service will fall further behind the needs of the digital consumer and advertiser.

Michigan's Ann Arbor News plans to close in July and be replaced by AnnArbor.com, an online site that will produce news and other content for the Web on a daily basis and in a print version twice-weekly, The Detroit News reported Tuesday.

The closure comes amid a series of other Michigan papers announcing cancellation of home delivery, reduced wages, or shut downs. The Flint Journal, the Saginaw News and the Bay City Times will from now on publish print editions on Thursdays, Fridays and Sunday partnered with daily Web editions. Other Michigan papers plan to continue publishing daily, while consolidating some operations and reducing employee pay and benefits.

Time Warner Inc., looking to make its presence better felt in Central and Eastern Europe,  agreed Monday to purchase a 31 percent stake in Central European Media Enterprises Ltd. for US$241.5 million, Dow Jones Newswires reported Monday.

Time Warner's cash resources come from the $9.25 billion it received from selling its cable arm. The company said that it would use $2 billion to pay off debts.

As part of McClatchy Co.'s restructuring plan, job cuts and reduced wages will be implemented at newspapers in Lexington, Kentucky, and Charlotte, North Carolina, the Associated Press reported.

The Lexington Herald-Leader plans to lay off 49 full-time employees, about 15 percent of its staff, and cut the salary of remaining employees. Four part-time employees will also lose their jobs.

The Charlotte Observer will cut 60 full-time and 22 part-time employees across departments. Nineteen of the full-time positions and 11 of the part-time positions will be from the newsroom. The Observer has also announced pay cuts for remaining employees, with cutbacks in hours for some. Weeklong furloughs have also been proposed if economic conditions don't improve, the AP reported.

Four major players in French radio broadcasting will unite as Bureau de la radio, to "promote the medium and lobby government and advertisers," followthemedia.com reported Monday.

The four members, which own nearly all the national private radio channels, include RTL, NRJ Group, Lagardère Active and NextRadioTV.

The group would like to raise the ceiling on the 1994 ownership caps that were set to make sure that radio broadcasting did not get concentrated in a few hands. Radio Bureau is modelled on the American Radio Advertising Bureau, and replaces the Independent Trade Union of Private Radio Régies, according to followthemedia.

Based on an ongoing assessment of the effect of new investments on the market, the BBC Trust has authorised a £30.7 million budget hike over the next three years for BBC Online - £22 million pounds less than requested, Journalism.co.uk reported Friday.

The BBC has been asked to save £1.9 billion from now until march 2012, a decision partly influenced by the economic recession. BBC's reduced budget will likely include a pay freeze for upper level management this year, and, at the most, "modest pay increases for other staff."

Speaking at Thursday's MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit, BBC's Director-General Mark Thompson said that in three years, the BBC must axe £400 million from its budget so it does not not exceed its borrowing allowance, according to Journalism.co.uk.

For the first time in three years, Craigslist beat out MySpace in the United States last week as the most sought out term on the Internet, according to online tracking firm Hitwise, CNET News reported Friday.

Searches for "Craigslist" were up 105 percent for the week ending March 14, compared to the same time last year, which may mean consumers are increasingly shopping for deals online, according to Hitwise data.

During the past year, bartering has jumped 100 percent on the site, ads for garage sales have doubled, ads for roommates have increased by 65 percent and for sale ads have risen 75 percent, Craigslist spokeswoman Susan MacTavish Best told CNET News.

As newspapers increasingly outsource functions, even those in editorial departments, TV stations may also soon follow suit. Two Chicago area television may begin considering farming out their sportscasts to reduce costs, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.

What differentiates one sportscast from another, is "mostly the writing, the reading and the rapport of those who bring it to us," the Tribune's Phil Rosenthal pointed out in his column. "The question these days is how much the audience will care when they begin to see the score."

Shared use of generic, raw footage, which can be separately edited and used by multiple stations may be a stepping stone to cut costs. Further down the line comes full outsourcing of functions, such as making a deal with an outside firm to produce and deliver the sports segment, according to the Tribune.

Business people in San Francisco have offered to help turn the San Francisco Chronicle into a nonprofit, reports Poynter Online.

Investment banker Warren Hellman and other area business people are behind the idea. Speaking with the San Francisco Business Times, attorney and power broker William Coblentz said he had spoken with Hellman concerning the nonprofit possibility and then presented it to William R. Hearst III. Coblentz, who has been a director for 30 years with the McClatchy Company, said the basic plan would be for a nonprofit organisation to take the reigns at the Chronicle, with support from the local business community. Current owner Hearst Corp., would continue to offer some philanthropic support.

As major media companies search for new sources of revenue in the advertising starved economy, they are asking Google to push their professional, original content to the top of the search engine's undifferentiated plethora of results, reports Ad Age.

Publishers have taken issue with the criteria Google uses to select the top results, such as the PageRank system, which is based on how many links a page has. As publishers attempt to generate new forms of income in the online world they are especially at odds with Google's preference against paid content sites.

Newsprint firm AbitibiBowater is making efforts to avoid bankruptcy due to the falling price of newsprint, reports The New York Times. A failure to reach an agreement with the company's bondholders could result in the company having to file for bankruptcy protection.

In 2008, newsprint consumption dropped by an average of 14 percent, with daily newspapers seeing a 16 percent decline in readership. The decrease in demand has left AbitibiBowater in a difficult position regarding its substantial debt - most of which was accrued when Abitibi Consolidated, of Montreal, and Bowater, of Greenville, South Carolina, merged in 2007.

U.S. newspaper publisher Freedom Communications plans to implement one-week furloughs for all but its most recently hired employees, reports Editor & Publisher.

According to a staff memo from President and CEO Scott Flanders, five unpaid furlough days will be required of nearly all employees at Freedom's 100 papers, with the exception of those who have been hired in the last six months "because, as new associates to the organization, this is the ramp-up period where they are still learning the role and our preference was not to interrupt the process."

The required days off are scheduled to take place from April 1 to June 30. Flanders explained his decision in the memo saying, "like other businesses, including those in our industry, we need to take additional steps sooner rather than later to try to combat this tough economic environment."

The Daily Mail and General Trust plans to cut 1,000 jobs across its newspaper division as advertising revenue continues to decline in the print sector, reports BBC News.

In a trading update, the company revealed cost cuts across its newspaper division, including the Daily Mail and free daily Metro, as expected advertising revenue during the first quarter is set to drop by 24 percent.

With the close of the Rocky Mountain News last month, the Denver Newspaper Agency has announced planned staff cuts of around 200, reports The Associated Press.

The publishing agency was in charge of the non-editorial joint operation of both the Rocky Mountain News and The Denver Post since the two merged into a joint operating agreement in 2001. However the News closed its doors on February 27.

Although Microsoft Corp.'s effort to buy Yahoo Inc. was unsuccessful under former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang's control, Microsoft' CEO Steve Ballmer is once again hopeful for a possible deal, now that Carol Bartz has taken Yahoo's helm, Reuters reported Thursday.

"Unless I'm fooling myself, over time I would expect a there's a good opportunity for a deal," Ballmer said at the McGraw-Hill Media Summit in New York, according to Reuters.

The rapid growth of "data visualisation," the process of converting technological code and raw data into unique, legible, interactive information, is fundamentally changing the narrative way in which news, information, products and services are displayed and consumed, Advertising Age reported Thursday.

Google has paved the way for the coordination of an interactive service, brand name and advertising in the one product. As it organises the world's online existence, for example, it aggregates everyday news, maps the earth, the oceans, the moon and is the bibliographer for the world's books, it includes advertising at every step. 

The Seattle Times Co. plans to help Hearst Corp. transition its folded Seattle Post-Intelligencer into the online-only seattlepi.com format, Editor & Publisher reported Friday.

The Times Co. has agreed to provide "consulting and transition services" to Hearst Corp. under terms of a document terminating their joint operating agreement (JOA). Seattlepi.com launched on Wednesday, and will receive consultation services from Times Co. for 30 days.

Speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Media summit, BBC Director General Mark Thompson said the company needs to reach savings of US$580 million over the next three years on top of the $760 million that has been shaved in recent years, AdWeek reported Friday. Thompson said the BBC will also pursue collaborative efforts with commercial media.

UK politicians and broadcasting executives have questioned the BBC's guaranteed $5.1 billion annual license fee income while commercial rivals are seeing their revenue greatly reduced.

During a debate in the UK House of Commons which addressed the future of newspapers, Brian Binley, a Conservative MP for Northampton South, spoke of the importance of the future of newspapers, The Northampton Chronicle reported Thursday.

During the debate, politicians made reference to the more than 900 jobs that have been lost in England's local newspaper industry since June last year, as well as the forced closures and relocations of several papers.

The purchase of the Blethen Maine Newspapers, part of the Seattle Newspaper group, by an investment group, has been negotiated at a minimal price based mostly on the value of the real estate being transferred as part of the deal, reports the Morning Sentinel.

Investors would have the potential to pay off debt within three years through the sale of real estate and through cash flow generated by the newspapers. It's possible they could make a profit estimated to be five times net earnings should the business be sold in the future, the documents suggest.

The Lexington Newspaper Guild has agreed to allow the Lexington Herald-Leader to cut 14 union-covered jobs in its newsroom, as well as cut wages by percent for all Guild-covered workers, The Seattle Times reported Thursday.

The cuts follow the paper's parent company, McCLatchy Co.'s, announced restructuring plan that includes cutting its workforce by 15 percent, totalling approximately 1,600 jobs.

 

The union also approved a week-long, unpaid furlough for union-covered employees, which make up 75 full and part-time employees at the Lexington, Kentucky newspaper.

Other than the BBC, UK commercial radio may be living out the last two decades of its existence, Claire Enders, founder of UK research service Enders Analysis, told the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit Thursday, MediaGuardian reported.

Enders based her statement on the shift to online news dissemination and a sharp decline in offline advertising that have rendered many commercial radio stations unprofitable.

Sony's eBook store will carry 500,000 public domain books scanned by Google, InformationWeek reported Thursday. Sony now has more than 600,000 e-titles, compared to Kindle's 245,000, which also sells newspapers, magazines and content from blogs.

In the days of startup eBook companies like SoftBook and NuvoMedia, e-book technology was hindered by constraints including "clunky hardware, lack of an e-commerce ecosystem, and too few publishing partners," InformationWeek reported.

Despite the continuing economic recession and the industry's financial issues, publishing companies continue to expand their online cooperative digital distribution and ad sales platforms, MediaPost reported Tuesday.

QuadrantOne, the online ad sales company formed by four major U.S. newspaper publishers  Tribune Co., Gannett Co., Inc., Hearst Corp. and The New York Times Co. in February 2008 has recently announced new higher management hirings and new publicity campaigns. 

The San Diego Union-Tribune, on the market since July, announced Wednesday it was purchased by California-based Platinum Equity, a private firm, Dow Jones reported. The purchase price was not disclosed.

Although the near term financial prognosis for the newspaper is generally not considered optimistic, Platinum Equity has a "long history of creating value," under "difficult market transitions," Louis Samson, principal of the equity firm reportedly told the newspaper.

The newspaper sector's financial woes have been exacerbated in the last few months, with the September collapse of Lehman Bros. Other victims have included the Tribune Co., The LA Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and many other important dailies, Dow Jones reported in an article posted by CNN Money.

Content still takes up the most time spent online in U.S., and continued to grow in 2007, according to the OPA Internet Activity Index, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

 

By December 2007, it accounted for nearly half of online time.

Princeton University economists Sam Schulhofer-Whold and Miguel Garrido have released the results of their yet to be published study "Do Newspapers Matter?" which analysed the "consequences of closing a newspaper," namely the Cincinatti, Ohio-based Cincinnati Post, which was also read by those living in the city's southern suburbs, in the state of Kentucky. The results revealed a disturbing influence on the operation of democracy in the state of Kentucky, reports Miller-McCune.

The Cincinnati Post closed its doors in January 2007. While being the much smaller Cincinnati paper, closing with a circulation of 27,000 against the 200,000 reader base of the Cincinnati Enquirer, the paper had strong support from readers in the city's southern suburbs, and became a major outlet of news in the area.

The United States newspaper industry has found support in Washington in Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Attorney General Eric Holder.

Pelosi sent a letter Monday to Holder urging him to consider the financial situation of newspapers when reviewing requests for mergers and takeovers, reports MSNBC. "I think it's important for this nation to maintain a healthy newspaper industry. So to the extent that we have to look at our enforcement policies and conform them to the realities that that industry faces, that's something that I'm going to be willing to do," Holder told reporters in response to Pelosi, according to Reuters.

The media buying and research group Aegis plans to eliminate 5 percent of its workforce worldwide, totalling roughly 780 positions, Media Guardian reported Thursday. The job cuts are part of the company's £40 million cost saving plan designed to deal with the economic crisis facing the newspaper industry.

John Napier, an Aegis chairman and chief executive said he believes cost cutting across 40 countries has "positioned the company well to respond to challenging market conditions" and aim to "selectively address capacity, resource and variable cost elements." The cuts are hoped to save the company £20 million in 2009.

 

As part of U.S. publisher McClatchy Co.'s restructuring scheme that included cutting 1,600 jobs across its newspapaers, The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer has announced it will cut 20 staff positions, Macon.com reported Thursday. The cutbacks mark the third time in less than a year the company has reduced staff numbers.

Meanwhile, McClatchy paper the Miami Herald will lose 175 employees in this round of cuts, as well as leave 30 vacant positions unfilled. The Kansas City Star will cut 150 positions, or 15 percent of its workforce. Full restructuring plan details were announced March 9 in a McClatchy press release, which stated that "each newspaper will determine how best to implement the savings in its market, while retaining its strategic focus on sales, news and online operations."

In the wake of Trinity Mirror's plans to merge production of the Daily Record and Sunday Mail, which could lead to 70 job losses, ballots will be sent Friday to union members on whether to strike or take lesser measures, allmediaScotland reported.

The move has also been initiated because some of the job cuts may be compulsory; however, the company has said its goal is that all downsizing will be done on a voluntary basis.

Google and the European Pressphoto Agency reached an agreement Tuesday in which Google will display EPA content on Google News, enabling users to find original content from the eight national news agencies that own the EPA, The Economic Times reported Wednesday. Online services are available from Epa's eleven shareholding agencies.

"EPA, the participating agencies and Google will benefit from the monetisation of our original articles and photos hosted by Google, and users will benefit from the user-friendly approach to this type of display of news agency content," said Jörg Schierenbeck, managing director of EPA, The Times reported.

Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Information and Culture will begin its promotion of electronic journalism and online based media as it looks to fill an important gap in the local media industry, according to Zawya.com.

Saudi journalists are reported to be in support of the move, but they will not be able to launch online news ventures until the measure is approved by the government. Opening the Internet to journalists as a source and forum will be fundamental to developing news outlets in the country. This development will hinge on the expansion and introduction of new technology and the utilisation of contemporary online media.

The Tucson Citizen will not shut down as announced pending negotiations between the paper's publisher, Gannett Co. Inc., and two interested buyers The Associated Press reported.

Robert J. Dickey, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing, said the negotiations will be finished by Saturday, thus extending the paper's life span from the original March 21 deadline for sale or closure.

Protesting against the threat of upcoming job cuts, about 800 BBC journalists will go on a two-day strike in April, Media Guardian reported Monday. The corporation's London-based journalists covering Hindi, Nepali, and Urdu radio news programmes and Web sites have already held a day-long strike over the proposed cuts.

All BBC services will be unavailable on April 3 and April 9. Of the 1,100 union members who participated in the vote, 77 percent voted for the strike. The union has almost 4,000 members.

A recent poll of newspaper publishers showed that top executives see product and audience development to be the most important growth strategies for the next five years. The World Association of Newspapers will host a week-long study tour to inspire new revenue-making and audience building with targeted print and digital product strategies in Denver, Colorado, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Bakersfield, California.

Participants will learn from the most successful product and audience development companies from the Rocky Mountains and westward including Yahoo!, Adify, the Denver Post, Printcasting.com, ASTECH InterMedia, Media Management Center, Hewlett Packard, and the Bakersfield Californian. All told, the presentations will cover all links on the value chain of developing products and audience, including editorial, advertising, marketing, research, business development, management, production and distribution.

Business publisher Crain Communications has laid off 150 staff members and is implementing a 10 percent salary cut, paidContent reported Tuesday.

The cutbacks follow the company's shutdown of the publication Financial Week (along with its online counterpart FinancialWeek.com), Business Insurance Europe, and Automotive News Europe.

 

There have been no reports regarding whether the job cuts will affect the business or editorial department of the company.

A recent study has shown that free French daily 20 Minutes is the best-read newspaper in France, Newspaper Innovation reported. The rise in circulation likely had to do with the French 2008 presidential election, the blog noted, adding that "readers turn to paid more when they are in search of election and other political news; free newspapers seem to be less important in that respect."

20 Minutes comes in first with 2.7 million readers, followed by the paid sports paper L'Equipe with 2.6 million and the free daily Metro, which counts 2.5 million readers.

The Press Complaints Commission, the British regulatory body for newspapers and magazines, announced it has noticed a lapse in the accuracy of reporting as journalism heads online, with a record number of complaints in 2008, according to Press Gazette. The Commission is also wary of the affects recent cutbacks at newspapers will have on journalistic standards.

As part of its annual report, the PCC published the details of  its 4,700 complaints for 2008, an 8 percent increase from the year before. For the second year running, online stories were the source of a majority of the gripes.

The Washington Post plans to drop its business section, combining it with the front section for its Monday through Saturday editions Bloomberg reported Friday.

The decision is intended to curtail newsprint costs. The changes, including the reduction of the stock price listings to half a page, will be effective March 30.

As part of a online focused strategy, Detroit Media Partnership newspapers, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, will launch a trial distribution of the papers on electronic readers through a partnership with Plastic Logic, Newspapers & Technology reported.

The papers, which currently print more than 470,000 weekday copies, will combine and be released as one 32 page electronic section. The Plastic Logic readers operate on a 8 by 11 inch display and are not to be commercially released until 2010. 

Gannett Company Inc., the United States' largest newspaper publisher, appears to have made a relatively successful transition into online revenue generation, Seeking Alpha reported Monday. Its flagship paper, USA Today, reported a 27 percent growth in online advertising for February against this time last year.

This is the largest increase in online advertising by any national newspaper, especially amongst recession related closures, bankruptcies, staff cuts and sales. As a result Gannett's shares jumped 14 percent.

Social Web sites like Twitter and Facebook are surpassing e-mail in terms of popularity, and occupy the fourth position in this regard after search, portals and software applications, according a study by Nielsen, the Chicago Tribune reported Monday.

Although e-mail is fast, it is just not fast enough for a growing number of users. Meanwhile, social media have more limited space, which "forces you to get to the point," the Tribune stated. "E-mail is still king at the office, but we're all embracing social media and other forms of communication. Sometimes, we still actually talk to each other!"

 A report on NPR's radio show On the Media details how papers that cater to growing immigrant populations are reporting wide readership despite the bleak financial climate.

On the Media's Brooke Gladstone interviewed Alberto Vourvoulias, the executive editor of the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario La Prensa, based in New York, who explained that the paper has been the fastest-growing newspaper in America two out of the last three years.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer will move its content completely to the Web after the paper's parent company, Hearst Corp., failed to find a buyer for the 146 year-old paper, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

The last print edition ran on Monday with the headline "You've meant the world to us." The edition was to be delivered accompanied by 20 to 24 pages of photos documenting the paper's history.

The Philadelphia City Council Committee on Law and Government yesterday approved legislation that could allow the city to avoid newspapers when advertising public information, according to Philly.com.

Currently the city charter requires that public information, such as new legislation, be published in three of the city's newspapers with paid circulation. However, with recent bankruptcies of Philadelphia newspapers the Daily News and Inquirer, the new legislation proposes to ask voters during the primary election in May if the city should be given more flexibility when advertising information.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism today published its annual report on the State of the News Media labelling 2009 as the "bleakest" it has seen since the group began doing annual studies six years ago, AFP reported. The report describes U.S. newspapers as "perilously close to free fall" and in desperate need of an economically viable business model to survive in a digital world.

The report offers insight into the business lives of newspapers, online media, network, cable and local television news as well as news magazines, radio and the ethnic press.

Metro, London's free, daily, today celebrated its 10th birthday with the inclusion of a 12 page chronicle of its first decade, reports Media Guardian.

Daily Mail and Associated Newspapers launched Metro in 1999 after the success of the free newspaper model in Sweden. They secured a 10 year distribution deal with the London Underground to make the paper available, free every morning at tube stations.

Despite declines in advertising revenue affecting most areas of the media industry, cable news increased its advertising spending by 27 percent in 2008, in what Rick Edmonds calls a "banner year" in his article on Poynter Online.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism's sixth edition of its State of the News Media electronic yearbook details the surprising successes of cable television, revealing it as what Edmonds calls "the exception to the overall negative or mixed picture" of other forms of media. Cable television saw its audience grow by 38 percent in 2008, an increase which is not likely to be sustained in the coming year.

A good deal of cable televisions success is attributed to the public's interest in the presidential campaign and election, but credit most also be given to the high profitability of the business. Fees paid by subscribers effectively offset dependency on advertisers and packages that are sold to consumers also ensure income, as they are difficult and complicated for clients to cancel.

A group of former staff members for Denver's Rocky Mountain News will partner with three entrepreneurs to launch a subscription drive for online news venture INDenverTimes.com, the group's Web site iwantmyrocky.com announced Monday. The group aims to have 50,000 subscribers by April 23, what would have been the 150th anniversary of the Rocky Mountain News, so the site can be up and running by May 4.

"INDenverTimes is an effort to reinvent the newspaper for the Internet age, featuring many of the reporters, editors, designers and other journalists that the Denver community has come to depend on for coverage of local and national news, sports and the arts. News will be free, but the subscription will invite readers inside the newsroom as never before through news analysis, insight, online chats and other features," the announcement states.

E.W. Scripps Co. closed the loss-making Rocky Mountain News in late February.

Adknowledge, the behavioural targeting advertiser, announced on Friday its US$11.6 million purchase of the Media Division of MIVA, Inc, according to a company press release. The acquisition is one of a number of recent purchases made by the advertising network as it looks to expand its multi-channel advertising base.

Adknowledge plans to "quickly combine MIVA Media's strong industry position and experience with Adknowledge's core predictive targeting technology to improve results for MIVA Media's advertisers," Scott Lynn, CEO of Adknowledge, said in the statement.

Arizona's oldest newspaper, The Tucson Citizen, will shut down Saturday after 138 years in the business, The Associated Press reported Sunday.

Gannett Co. Inc., which has owned the paper since 1976, has been looking to sell off certain assets of the paper since January. Robert J. Dickey, president of Gannett's U.S. Community Publishing, said the loss-making paper was a drain on Gannett's operations.

According to a comScore Plan Matrix demographic profile conducted in the summer of 2007, U.S. newspaper readers skewed as being older generations, while younger people are more likely to be either light users, or even non-readers, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2008 reported.

 

The index of heavy readers in the age group 65+ is almost three times higher than the overall index, and it's higher than the average in the age group 55-64 and 45-54, too.

 

In the younger generations, the index of heavy or medium readers is much lower, while that of light readers and non-readers is much higher than their counterparts in older groups.

 

This indicates that younger Americans are less committed to printed newspapers.

 

The Online Publishers Association plans to introduce three new display units which are hoped to liven up their online ads, reports paidContent.org.

The units include features such as a "fixed panel," which scrolls up and down a Web page along with the user, an "XXL Box" which is not only extra large but also permits the user to turn pages within the ad, and a "pushdown" which initially fills up half the screen and then rolls up to the top. The units are designed to allow advertisers to display their ads in a more creative way, but also to provide publishers with increased revenue from fewer ads.

New York Daily News will partner with platform Salespider.com to launch a new small business social network, MarketWire announced in a press release Friday.

The platform will allow New York Daily News readers to reach, connect and network with 500,000 small businesses, and will also offer for download sales information, government grant and free access to business tools, according to the release, posted by MSNBC.

In a move to  simplify and better integrate the print and online marketplace, E.W. Scripps Company will adopt a new print and online classified ad platform, thanks to its partnership with online classified ad company AdPay, Media Week reported Thursday.

The AdPay network offers classified and display ads integrated with retail inventory as well as Web-to-Web, Web-to-print and print-to-Web capabilities, said Rusty Coats, vice president of interactive for Scripps.

By June 1, Scripps expects 19 of its newspapers to be on the AdPay platform. The sites will aggregate searches of content from other sites as well as combine the order-entry system for both print and online ads, Media Week reported. Ad placement will also be facilitated by the fact that they can simultaneously be added to the Web site, newspaper and AdPay's national classified network.

Sir Anthony O'Reilly, chief executive of Independent News & Media, announced he will hand over control of the company to his son, Gavin, Reuters reported Friday.

Gavin O'Reilly, also president of the World Association of Newspapers' executive committee and board, will take over a company with debt of €1.4 billion, of which a €200 million bond is due in May. Despite the 96 percent rise in shares to 20 cents following the announcement, INM still plans on restructuring, projecting a reduction of its board members to 10 from 17.

Zimbabwe is set to have its first independent daily newspaper in six years, with the planned launch of the NewsDay, newzimbabwe.com reported Thursday. African Media entrepreneur Trevor Ncube announced a US$4 million investment in the paper and describes it as a "litmus test" for the purported liberalisation of the country under the new unity government.

In 2003 Zimbabwe's largest and last privately owned daily newspaper, The Daily News, was forced into closure by the government. Many weekly papers suffered the same fate, as Robert Mugabe closed any forum for opposition support.