October 2009 Archives

The Washington Post Co. posted a third quarter profit, no thanks to its newspaper division, Reuters reported today. According to the report, the paper actually was an albatross, with print advertising revenue down by 28 percent.

Conversely, The Associated Press attributed the publisher's gains to deep cuts in the newsroom rather than any great strides in the company's broadcasting and educational divisions, the latter of which lags behind competitors.

In the style of some museums and restaurants, The Hannibal Courier-Post in February gave up on Mondays altogether, according to The Associated Press. Slicing the slow ad day from "Missouri's oldest daily" may have interrupted its record of continuous publication (since 1838) but, at least, it kept the newspaper as a whole in operation, according to its publisher Jack Whitaker.

The Courier-Post is not the only U.S. newspaper experimenting with changes in print delivery in search of continued viability as a going concern. Just yesterday, Superior Publishing Corp. announced it would also suspend one print day per week at its three Minnesota newspapers.

The Wall Street Journal yesterday advised the nine employees staffing its Boston office that, henceforth, the former heart of the financial newspaper's mutual fund coverage would be absorbed by its New York bureau, Mutual Fund Wire reported yesterday.

By way of explanation, Managing Editor Robert Thomson said the newspaper remains "in the midst of a profound downturn in advertising revenue," The Associated Press yesterday reported.

Canadian journalists took to the streets yesterday, clamoring for discretion in their collective bargaining process with La Presse, North America's largest French-language publication, Radio-Canada reported yesterday. The staffers say that as long as publishers leverage thinly-veiled threats of job loss reported in their pages to wage their labour-and-employment battle, workers will be forced to air publicly their side of the struggle, too.

"You feel the pressure, you feel your jobs are threatened, so, inevitably, you're weaker and the feeling is very palpable in the people and this fear becomes an asset to the employer," Karim Benessaieh was quoted by Radio-Canada as saying in French.

NBC's New York Telemundo station, WNJU, announced today it will restructure in order to better produce news for multiple platforms, MediaWeek reported. In doing so, the station has created a new position, vice president of content.

Better measuring online readership, meanwhile, is another important next step in a multi-platform world, the Guardian pointed out yesterday. "In a fragmented media world, the paper is just one way among many to publish a story," the article stated, using The New York Times as an example.

Metropolitan readership throughout New Zealand showed notable gains in the year ending September 30, even as the national average rose by less than 1 percent over the course of the same period, Scoop Business reported yesterday.

According to Nielsen Media Research which conducted the readership survey, the island nation has more than 150 metropolitan and community newspapers serving a population of 4.1 million. Annual advertising dollars for all media approach NZ$2.2 billion (US$1.6 billion)

Ten employees at Scottish newspaper the West Highland Free Press have taken over control from five shareholders who owned it, and the paper will henceforth be managed by a staff-centred trust, the BBC reported today.

The move toward employee ownership "marks a defining moment in UK newspaper ownership. At a time when the wider industry is in difficulty, I hope this sends out a clear message that there is a future for newspapers that provide quality and informed content of interest to its readership," said Paul Wood, director of the paper, according to Holdthefrontpage.co.uk.

After being closed down for 23 years, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat is being relaunched, but this time, online-only, the paper's publisher, Dan Rositano, announced today, The Associated Press reported. The newspaper's Web site will officially launch by beginning coverage Dec. 8, and will be free to users who register with their e-mail addresses.

The Globe-Democrat was founded in 1852, and today announced it will "be the number one digital source for breaking news and develop the reputation for being the first with the big stories. We will provide you with the opportunity to contribute and add personality to our coverage utilizing the latest technologies to deliver your news the way you want it."

The fragile rally enjoyed by U.S. media groups over the course of the summer may have come to an end, Editor & Publisher reported yesterday.

Shares of all newspaper companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange closed down on the session - most by double-digit percentages - following the Audit Bureau of Circulations first-ever double-digit percentage decline in overall newspaper circulation.

President and editor Guy Crevier announced today that half of La Presse's eight unions have agreed in principle to changes that would stave a promised closure of North America's largest French-language broadsheet on December 1, The Canadian Press reported yesterday.

The agreement follows Crevier's October 22 plea to employees, republished by Rue Frontenac, to reconsider their bargaining position in the face of the newspaper's financial disclosures made on October 16.

The few newspapers flourishing despite the general current decline in circulation appear to have one thing in common: they give readers what they want, but can't get anywhere else. It is this philosophy that drives today's launch of Appleton Journal, a print weekly aimed at delivering local news typically snubbed by other media, according to WLUK-TV.

"We're basically a scrapbook for moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas, that's all we are," said Times-Villager Newspaper Group General Manager Bart Landsverk. The Appleton Journal is the media group's fourth paid weekly serving Wisconsin's Fox Valley, in the United States.

Telecom market revenues in most countries were on the rise from 2004 to 2007, according to data from Ofcom. 

In Europe, Germany leads with the highest telecom market revenues among the four countries surveyed. However, its revenues dropped a little from £31.5 billion in 2004 to £30.4 billion in 2007, as both fixed line and mobile were down, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

An island newspaper went into receivership yesterday for failure to pay out a tort award of $191,000 (US$71,135), Caribarena reported today. Grenada Today, owned and operated by George Worme, had been ordered Thursday on appeal to establish a pay schedule with former prime minister Keith Mitchell by Tuesday or face liquidiation of its assets, according to The Gleaner.

The crippling libel award stems from a 2001 letter to the editor calling Mitchell corrupt and incompetent, The Associated Press reported yesterday. Despite the reader's published remark, Mitchell held his seat in public office from 1995 through 2008, according to CNW Telbec.

Gannett Co., Inc.'s (NYSE: GCI) Board of Directors today announced that a dividend of
4 cents per share would be paid on January 4, 2010 to shareholders of record as of
the close of business on December 11, 2009, Reuters reported today.

Gannett reported consolidated 3Q revenues of US$1.34 billion, down 18 percent from a year ago but exceeding the company's forecast of $1.32 billion, TVB reported today. Net income was $73.8 million versus $158.1 million for 3Q08. The company declared 4 cent dividends in April and July as well. Gannett publishes 84 U.S. dailies, including USA Today, according to Business Wire.

As the advertising market in Australia begins to recover, so-called old media is also recovering, and doing relatively well, especially compared to those in the United States, The Australian reported Monday.

In the year to September 30, local newspapers in the country saw a small increase on ad revenue spending compared to January 2007, and radio also grew.

A major U.S. publisher has signed a five-year deal to update its technological infrastructure with a top name in information technology, according to PR Newswire.

The deal expands a pre-existing alliance through which Belo outsourced help desk and similar back-end functions to IBM about which Broadcast Engineering reported in 2006. Belo Corp. publishes daily print editions of The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal, The Press-Enterprise (Riverside, California) and the Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Texas).

The company also publishes specialty publications targeting young adults and the fast-growing Hispanic market, including Quick and Al Dia in Dallas/Fort Worth, and El D and La Prensa in Riverside. Belo also operates 30 websites associated with a variety of media outlets it owns.

In an ironic twist, a 60-year-old totalitarian government known for its virtually absolute control on its population's external communications has accused the world's most widely used free Internet search engine of curtailing freedom of information, The Associated Press reported today.

China, which tied for second to last place in Freedom House's 2009 index of Internet liberty, complained that from Wednesday through Friday attempts to link to People's Daily when listed among Google search results returned a warning that proceeding to the government-run publication could harm the user's computer because it contained corrupted software, Trading Markets reported today.

The road which lies ahead for the Bhutan Times just got tougher.

Three weeks ago, the country's only publicly-traded publisher changed hands as it faced a loss of Nu 5.39 million (US$115,790) South Asia Media reported Saturday. Then, along with new chairman and CEO Wancha Sangey, the newspaper secured written pledges from all employees to do their best to help bring the newspaper back from the economic brink. Now, half of those same employees abandoned ship Friday, citing irreconcilable differences over how much editorial control management should reasonably be permitted to exert for the sake of commerce.

The McClatchy Company today announced plans to expand a coupons-only programme it has yet to launch in actual practice.

The programme, called Sunday Select, which is slated to start November 15, entails directly mailing printed promotional materials to households in postal codes advertisers want to reach. The materials are virtually identical to those a newspaper subscriber would receive but are wrapped in an editorial broadsheet as opposed to the publisher's entire publication. Sunday Select differs from "junk mail" in that prospective recipients must sign up for the package of circulars or "opt in" in order to receive them.

The U.S. Justice Department has dropped its investigation into a newspaper merger slated for publications throughout Northwest Arkansas, the Fayeteville Flyer reported today.

The conclusion of the antitrust allegation signals that Wehco Media and Stephens Media LLC will join as scheduled on November 1, according to The Morning News. Whole Hog Sports reported today that the go-ahead came in the absence of an outside buyer for Stephens' flagship publication, The Morning News.

U.S. online advertising spending will rise to US$42 billion in 2013, up from $23.6 billion in 2008, according to November 2008 eMarketer data.

Search owns the biggest share, with 45.3 percent in 2008, and is expected to remain in the leading position, with 46.5 percent in 2013, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations today announced that circulation of U.S. newspapers from April through September declined 10 percent from the figures reported for the same six-month period last year, the Toronto Sun reported today.

Reuters today attributed the plunge to an increasing number of subscribers cancelling home delivery of a newspaper along with a reduction in the publishers' once common practice of issuing free or discounted copies in bulk. Bloomberg blamed, in part, rising prices of subscription for at-home delivery service.

Market watchers say the newspaper industry is faring better than predicted, at least in the land down under, perth now reported today.

Royal Bank of Scotland's analyst Fraser McLeish put "buy" recommendations on Fairfax Media and APN News & Media, The Australian reported today.

Mercedes-Benz USA's digital media specialist Beth Lange said the company will shift away from online newspaper ads to "more targeted and efficient" media buys next year to announce its basic models, The New York Times reported Sunday.

The same article called newspaper sites the patent-leather stilettos of the online ad world: reserved for special occasions while networks and exchanges like Advertising.com from AOL and DoubleClick Ad Exchange from Google do the daily duty of a work shoe.

A meeting conducted at The New York Times last week seemed to further prove to many people that the Apple Tablet does or will exist, when Executive Editor Bill Keller hypothetically discussed platforms on which Times content would be delivered in the future. However, it's not clear if Keller is talking based on inside information, or if he's just as convinced as the rest of the media that the Tablet will be unveiled next year, Engadget points out.

"...we need to figure out the right journalistic product to deliver to mobile platforms and devices. I'm hoping we can get the newsroom more actively involved in the challenge of delivering our best journalism in the form of Times Reader, iPhone apps, WAP or the impending Apple slate, or whatever comes after that," Keller said at the off-the-record meeting, a video of which was posted on the Times internal server, and after that, by the Nieman Journalism Lab, Gawker, Engadget and others.

Engadget, which dubbed the Tablet "the most important product that never was," reported that it may have found a photo of the SIM card tray supposedly designed for the Tablet, which is larger than the iPhone's SIM tray.

John Terry has apparently cleared any controversy with England's Football Association over striking a deal with Rupert Murdoch's Sun newspaper to write an occasional first-person column about Chelsea, the soccer team he captains, Mail Online reported yesterday. The Sun is a popular sport news destination in the United Kingdom.

Precise details about the frequency of the column and the compensation to be paid were not immediately available, though the contract purportedly entails a six-figure sum.

British book wholesaler Bertram Group reported £53.5m and pre-tax profits of £500,000 in its second full quarter since it was bought by Britain's biggest newspaper and magazine wholesaler, Smiths News, for £8.6m last April, the Eastern Daily Press reported today.

Michael Neil, managing director of Bertrams - which supplies books to major retailers, schools, universities and libraries - was quoted as saying: "We expected and budgeted to break-even for the rump of the financial year . . . . but things came into place much faster than we'd expected."

More than three-fourths of all Singaporeans still read a daily newspaper, with nearly half of the overall population reading an English-language publication each day, the People's Daily reported today.

The figures remain largely stable as compared to findings from the Nielsen Media Index survey conducted the previous year. "This shows that there remains a core group of newspaper readers who continue with their habits regardless of the economic climate," Rebecca Tan, executive director of the Nielsen Company's media group in Singapore was quoted as saying by Asia One News.

As marketers and media look to extract information from consumers using social media, U.S. intelligence agencies are the next to move in on the new media, Information Week reported yesterday.

"In-Q-Tel, the investment firm established by the CIA to support U.S. intelligence agencies, has invested in Visible Technologies, a start-up that monitors social media content on the Web," the article stated. If government gets into the social media mix, will that cause consumers to turn away, worried about privacy, thus hindering targeted marketing efforts by media?

According to IDATE, there were more than 2.1 billion mobile customers globally in 2005, with 820 million from the Asia Pacific region, 691 million from Europe and 232 million and 224 million from Latin America and North America, respectively, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

In 2008, the total numbers climbed to more than 3.8 billion, with about 1.7 billion from the Asia Pacific, 938 million from Europe, 475 million from Africa and Middle East and 425 million from Latin America. North America's share dropped, to 294 million in 2008.

 

Time Warner Inc.'s business magazine will reduce the editions it publishes each year by more than 25 percent, Reuters India reported today. The reduction in editorial content comes as journalism advertising continues to struggle out of a yearlong slump. Yahoo! India reported today that management declined to comment on the matter, but that the company expected to cut some 600 jobs across various publications, amounting to more than six percent overall.

A non-profit news organisation in Chicago, made up by former Chicago Tribune staffers, will be responsible for two pages of local news for The New York Times's Chicago edition, which will begin publication in November, New York Times journalist Richard Perez-Pena reported today. The organisation, called the Chicago News Cooperative, is being supported by funding from a public television station and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

"The New York Times' strategy and intent is to provide local content to our existing readers in the Chicago metropolitan area," said Scott Heekin-Canedy, president of The New York Times, according to Crain's Chicago Business. "It will enhance our circulation retention and maybe even grow it a little bit."

New York's Newsday today announced that its online content will cost US$5 per week beyond the public service basics as of Wednesday. The move, which Newsday called "pioneering," follows a trend of paid content increasingly bandied about the news industry, Reuters reported today.

According to The New York Times, the Newsday paywall has limited revenue-raising potential: 75 percent of Long Island - the geographic region the newspaper chiefly serves - has been promised unfettered access to the Web site through a partnership with Optimum Online, the local cable company. Print subscribers retain unfettered access to online content as well.

The ongoing discussion regarding the future of newspapers in a world of online aggregation veered into familiar territory yesterday, when a prominent editor said the world's chief search engine pushed online newsreading promiscuity.

Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson said co-panelist, Google Vice President for Search Products Marissa Mayer, "unintentionally encourages promiscuity," during day two of the Web 2.0 conference held this week in San Francisco, Agence France-Presse reported today.

Media General, the U.S. media company which owns newspapers and TV stations concentrated in the Southeast, reported its total revenues were down 18 percent to US$158 million in the third quarter in 2009, compared to $193 million one year before, Media Post reported.

In terms of earnings, the company posted a net income loss of $62.4 million during the quarter, compared to a net income loss of $63.1 million in the first nine months of this year. The charge for goodwill and other asset impairment was $84.2 million.

The Associated Press is hoping enriched metadata will stop others from scraping its scoops, an e-newspaper hosting and design service announced yesterday.

TownNews.com is a newspaper-specific Web publisher founded in Bigfork, Montana in 1989. Since then, TownNews.com's services have apparently expanded beyond initially automating news content to include optimising Internet traffic and, now, providing security to those losing profits from posting their wares on the Web. The e-publisher yesterday struck an accord with the AP to offer TownNews.com clients the option of implementing a microformat known as hNews 0.1.

Advertising expenditure in Central and Eastern Europe is growing, from US$7 billion in 1997 to a projected $45 billion in 2011, according to ZenithOptimedia.

In 1997, TV was the medium with the biggest share, 48 percent, at $3.4 billion. It continues to grow and own a majority, expected to reach 56 percent, or $25.3 billion, in 2011, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.  

By all accounts, it was a red-letter day for the Wall Street Journal.

First, Reuters reported that the newspaper's digital division would be launching a specialty product, providing premium subscribers more specialised news in niche areas than the regular paper already delivers. Then, Editor & Publisher listed the newspaper's online edition as having drawn the second most unique visitors in September among all U.S. newspapers.

A media critic at Washingtonian magazine yesterday panned the recent redesign of the Washington Post's print edition, likening the newspaper's makeover to a moving of deck chairs on the Titanic. Harry Jaffe was especially critical of the switch from Postroman to Scotch Roman font, a script apparently used since the 1800s.

"The new type is thinner and will allow the Post to get more words on the page," Jaffe wrote. "Being less bold, it is slightly harder to read, especially for Boomers with fading eye sight [sic], and they make up the bulk of print readers."

Joining the very "ganjapreneurs" it assiduously covers, an alternative Denver weekly has developed a cottage industry of reviewing the burgeoning local medical marijuana industry, The Associated Press reported yesterday. To that end, Westword is looking for a full-time critic so that its present columnist can return to his other duties, the paper's editor-in-chief wrote October 6. The pay is meagre, but the post is legitimate, CNN reported Monday.

More than 120 candidates have applied for the position, which requires a medical ailment to entitle the critic to use the services of the clinics being rated, the Guardian reported today. The initial want ad, posted September 29 to the newspaper's online edition, follows several other targeted initiatives by the paper to serve this growing consumer base, including the permanent addition of a marijuana dispensary index to the newspaper's Web site.

Spanish media conglomerate PRISA is looking to expand into North America, and has made its first move to do so by acquiring a 12 percent stake in U.S. Hispanic TV network V-me Media Inc., Agence France-Presse reported yesterday.

Terms of the sale were not disclosed; however PRISA did say it "provides for the future takeover" of V-me, which is ranked third, behind Univision and Telemundo, in national household broadcast distribution, according to the broadcaster.

eMarketer has revised its online ad spending forecast for 2009, from  a previously predicted 4.5 percent increase to $24.5 billion to a 2.9 percent decline to $22.8 billion, Media Post reported.

This revision partly echoed the estimates done earlier this month by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which reported a 5.3 percent drop in online ad spending to $10.9 billion in the first half of 2009 year-over-year.

Barnes & Noble has unveiled its new e-book reader, named 'Nook,' which features a colour touch screen and electronic paper display. It runs on Google's Android OS, and will also have AT&T wireless capability. The e-reader will go on sale in November, and retail for US$259, about the same price as the Kindle 2.

Wired touted the new e-reader as "hot, both inside and out," and warned readers who recently ordered a Kindle to "stop reading now or you're in for a giant dose of buyer's remorse."

Publisher Patrick J. Purcell yesterday announced the Boston Herald's intention to erect a paywall to access its online content as early as next year, the Boston Globe reported today. He acknowledged, however, that the success of such a venture rested on a joint effort.

"If the Globe doesn't do it, then it would be hard for us to do it,'' Purcell told the Herald. The Herald's last attempt to charge a fee for online content in 2001 did not meet with success. Twitter comments today discussed the move, with a majority of users stating that paying for The Herald online is largely unfavorable.

Several readers yesterday spontaneously offered to pay for access to The New York Times' online edition, even as the newspaper's own attempt to monetize the service several years ago ended in failure, the New York Observer reported today.

The readers' offers to pay were prompted by yesterday's announcement by The Times that it would seek 100 voluntary resignations or be forced to lay off as many staffers by year's end. Meanwhile, fewer readers urged the newspaper to keep its online edition available free of charge.

The Columbia Journalism Review yesterday published a brief treatise on the future of the newspaper industry which, in failing to mention social networking sites, apparently sparked a firestorm on Twitter, Poynter Online reported today.

"The Reconstruction of American Journalism," by industry veteran Leonard Downie Jr. and Columbia University professor Michael Schudson focuses instead on supplanting subscriber and advertising dollars with government subsidies and philanthropic support, Harvard University's Nieman Journalism Lab reported yesterday. The 39-page report also suggests that, despite the industry's current economic crisis, newspapers are not headed for extinction, but that community newspapers will fare far better than mammoth enterprises as the industry continues to evolve.

The New York Times announced today it is looking for 100 more newsroom staffers to resign voluntarily by year's end, The Associated Press reported today. Failing to meet its target through that approach, the newspaper will force the issue through more obligatory layoffs starting in December.

"I won't pretend that these staff cuts will not add to the burdens of journalists whose responsibilities have grown faster than their compensation," wrote Executive Editor Bill Keller in an e-mail to employees this afternoon.

Gannett Co.'s (GCI) profit plunged 53 percent in the third quarter due to an advertising slump. However, thanks to cost cuts, the publisher's results outperformed expectations, Dow Jones reported.

Gannett said in September it expected the third-quarter profit to greatly surpass Wall Street's forecasts, which brought in hopes that the toughest times for publishers and broadcasters may be over.

GateHouse Media, publisher of several hundred small-town print and online newspapers across the United States, announced last week that it would reverse paycuts imposed over the summer as early as Monday of next week, the Boston Herald reported Friday.

Meanwhile, the Boston Globe newspaper, which was taken off the New York Times Company's auction block last week due to its improved financial condition, is not likely to enjoy the same treatment, the Boston Herald reported Saturday.

In the first full month since London Lite - a free daily tabloid - faced no direct competition for readers, its circulation barely budged, Newspaper Innovation reported yesterday.

Cream on October 2 predicted that the likely closing of London Lite is foreshadowed by the recent shuttering of thelondonpaper, as well as London Evening Standard's move to a no-fee business model. London Lite, also free, is owned by Associated Newspapers, which has a 75% stake in the London Evening Standard. Much of Lite's editorial content is supplied by the Standard, Brand Republic reported October 2.

Bulk copies - distributed free or at heavily-discounted prices - may become a thing of the past soon for two UK newspapers. The Times Newspapers and Telegraph Media Group are reportedly planning to scrap the practice, the Guardian reported yesterday. The Guardian and Observer newspapers both cut their bulk copies in August, MediaWeek then reported.

Once thought to provide prospective subscribers a sampling of the paper's wares, while in fact boosting audited circulation figures, the practice has fallen in the face of severe cost-cutting measures of late, The Guardian article stated. Moreover, the cost of producing and issuing extra copies appears to have returned little in the way of actual sales, thus undermining the rationale for the longstanding industry practice.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch has increasingly pushed for paid online content, and last week announced that in the next fiscal year, the media conglomerate will continue to see advertising revenues dwindle. In its place, he said, consumers will be asked to pay for high quality journalism, all while trying to put a stop to "plagiarists and aggregators" of News Corp. content, The Age reported Sunday.

Using the News. Corp.-owned Wall Street Journal, as well as The Times and Sunday Times in the United Kingdom as evidence quality online content can succeed, Murdoch said he believes online subscription-based news "consumers will reward us with their loyalty for years to come and we will ultimately be able to better tailor our offerings to them while building new business models and generating more revenue."

VisionChina Media Inc. is expected to buy Digital Media Group, based in Shanghai, for US$160 million, Dow Jones reported today. Both boards have approved the acquisition.

Should the sale go through ownership of DMG would give VisionChina Media, an out-of-home digital TV advertising network, would have better access to the digital TV networks in China's mass transportation systems, according to the report.

Advertising expenditure in Western Europe, at $81.9 billion in 1997, is projected to reach $127.1 billion in 2011, according to ZenithOptimedia.

 

In 1997, newspapers had the biggest share, at 37.6 percent. However, newspapers' claim on the ad expenditure pie is shrinking, expected to continue to decrease to 27.1 percent in 2011, leaving the first spot to TV that year. Its actual expenditure is up a little from $30.8 billion to $34.4 billion, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

Although interest in and talk of e-readers has grown in the past year, sales of the devices "may prove more elusive, and more nuanced, than the supply-side enthusiasts (principally manufacturers of the various devices, e-commerce pundits, and other early-adopter types) care to admit," Jack McKeown, co-founder and former CEO of Perseus Books Group, wrote today in an article for paidContent.

Why?

Talk of e-readers, from press conferences to articles to blogs and more, have been dominated by these supply-side enthusiasts, he reasons, pointing out that e-readers are nowhere near the tipping point of adoption, when early majority demand sets in.

Defying earlier denials, media conglomerate Canwest is preparing to liquidate its newspaper assets, even as it expands its television presence. Within a month it will be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Through a partnership with U.S.-based Scripps Interactive, Canwest on Monday launches Do-It-Yourself Network, featuring shows such as Sweat Equity and Kitchen Impossible, the company announced today. Meanwhile, as part of its bankruptcy process, Canwest is bringing its newspaper holdings back into the fold in order to shield those assets from creditors as well, CBC News reported following Canwest's announcement.

The Greenspun Media Group, which owns both the Las Vegas Sun and Las Vegas Weekly, shut down its fledgling television enterprise effective Tuesday, Poynter Online reported Thursday. The project, which according to an earlier story by Poynter, sought to bring newspaper information to non-news readers, lasted a short four months.

The station, called 702.tv after one of Nevada's two area codes, launched July 2, in time for the national switch from analog to digital television in the United States. The station's programming was "reverse-engineered" entirely from Internet capabilities, said Greenspun Interactive President and Editor Rob Curley.

The Huffington Post is experimenting with packaging: that is, they expose online readers to different headlines for the same stories to see which one attracts the most clicks, Slate.fr reported Thursday. The practice of conducting a controlled marketing study such as this, known as A/B testing, is "considered a gold standard of user research," according to the Nieman Journalism Lab.

Tweaking titles according to unwitting reader feedback may be the secret behind HuffPo's inching past the Washington Post for most unique visitors last month, a figure reported first by Editor & Publisher.

Starting Friday, The New York Times will begin printing a biweekly supplement containing local coverage to its newspapers sold in San Francisco, Agence France-Presse reported Thursday. The surprising move comes even as U.S. newspaper readership hits an all-time low, per last year's annual state of the news media report by the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism.

"It's a highly educated, internationally minded audience, and our research out there shows there's a market need for a quality news product," said Paul Bascobert, Chief Marketing Officer of a unit of News Corporation that owns the Wall Street Journal, which announced similar plans earlier this year.

Facebook attracts more highly educated users than MySpace in the United States, and in Canada it is the top social media destination, according to new, unpublished research from Eszter Hargittai, associate professor of communication studies at Northwestern University, CBCnews.ca reported today.

However, the reason Facebook is tops in Canada has nothing to do with education, and likely has more to do with the fact that by the time social networking caught on in Canada, MySpace was "more for teenagers and not taken as seriously." Meanwhile, "Canadian academics who travelled to the U.S. started using Facebook and immigrants who came to large Canadian cities also were Facebook users," Rhonda McEwen, information studies professor at the University of Toronto, suggested to CBCnews.

Cost cutting and a tax adjustments have helped newspaper publisher McClatchy Co. in its third-quarter earnings, at a time when its advertising revenue has plunged, The Associated Press reported.

The publisher of The Miami Herald and 29 other dailies had its Shares up in the quarter, as investors believed that the toughest time of the recession were over for the newspaper industry.

New York Times Co leadership yesterday announced to staffers that the media company would no longer be selling its Boston Globe assets but would continue the search for a buyer for its Worcester Telegram & Gazette division, according to late-breaking news yesterday from the Boston Globe.

In a series of memoranda outlining the revised sale plan going forward, Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger and Chief Executive Janet Robinson congratulated Globe staffers for the success of the newspaper's restructuring earlier this year, which they credited with "significantly improv[ing] its financial footing." Nevertheless, it was a lack of adequate bids that ultimately prompted the projected sale's reversal, The Times reported shortly following the announcement.

Although people are increasingly using social networking and text messaging, it doesn't mean they are cutting down on e-mail usage. Rather, the rate at which the online population uses e-mail is growing at more than double the rate of growth for either social media or texting, the ExactTarget 2009 E-mail Utilization Whitepaper has found, according to Business Wire.

The total number of social media users is rapidly increasing, but often these users jump in quickly, only to curtail their use of social media over time," said Morgan Stewart, ExactTarget`s director of research and strategy, according to the release. "E-mail on the other hand, is woven into all online interaction, making it an essential tool that consumers continue to use more and more."

Bloomberg announced yesterday it has reached an agreement to buy BusinessWeek magazine from McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Globe & Mail reported today.

Norman Pearlstine, who formerly worked for Time Inc. and Wall Street Journal, will become BusinessWeek's chairman. He joined Bloomberg last year as chief content officer, according to Wednesday's report in paidContent. The deal is scheduled to close Dec. 1.

The debate over monetizing online news played out Tuesday at the Paley Center along the carrot versus stick line, paidContent reported Wednesday. Steve Brill, co-founder of startup Journalism Online represented the pro-paid side, while Vivian Schiller, president and CEO of non-profit National Public Radio (NPR), argues that payment should be optional.

At the live event, which was sold out but covered via Twitter, Brill explained that Journalism Online would be supported by a combination of ad and circulation revenue. Brill boasted that 1,200 affiliates have already signed letters of intent. Nevertheless, he maintained his stance that charging a fee would rehabituate news readers to pay for a valuable commodity.

Fans of a British daily beat back a legal gag that prevents media from reporting a question raised in parliament by firing up their social-networking associations, Sky News reported today.

Writing on Twitter, Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger thanked fellow users for their "fantastic support," adding that this was a "[g]reat victory for free speech," according to in the news. The issue sought to be suppressed related to the oil company Trafigura. Twitter complaints brought the censorship attempt to a sudden standstill.

Unlike their counterparts in Europe and the United States, Brazilians are reading newspapers more than ever. According to the Instituto Verificador de Circulacao, the country's equivalent of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, total circulation of newspapers grew 12 percent in 2007 - much higher than the worldwide average of a 2.7 percent increase.

Even in 2008, although the economy was down, newspaper sales still rose 5 percent to 4.35 million in daily circulation, MediaGuardian reported.

Two young German businessmen today announced they will launch the first personalised newspaper in Europe in which subscribers can choose the topics they want in their newspaper, and then receive a paper made up of only those types of articles, Agence France-Presse reported. The content will be culled from large German newspapers, such a Bild and Handelsblatt, as well as non-European titles, like The New York Times.

The newspaper, called niiu, will include both English-language and German-language news, said the entrepreneurs, Hendrik Tiedemann, 27, and Wanja Soeren Oberhof, 23.

The future of one of China's best-selling investigative magazines is at stake in an increasingly public battle for control that pits its envelope-pushing editor against the Chinese government, Reuters reported Tuesday. Caijing magazine, the mainland's most influential and profitable business publication, has experienced a mass exodus of reporters and editors, according to the China Economic Review.

It speculated that the exodus may be part of a negotiation strategy by Caijing's founder and managing editor, Hu Shuli, in seeking to wrest economic control of the publication from the Stock Exchange Executive Council, a quasi-independent publicity organ of the Communist-party government whose shares are traded as that of a media investment group on the Hong Kong stock exchange. Hu has an enviable reputation in journalism, winning the Louis Lyons Award from Harvard University's Nieman Foundation in 2007, Bloomberg reported Tuesday.

Shares of McClatchy Co. (MNI), the third largest newspaper publisher in the United States, have been inching steadily higher for a week, climbing today to an 11 and a half month peak due to increased trading volume, Trading Markets reported Tuesday.

The surge may have been sparked by rumours of a merger with Google, Inc.

The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey has halved its newsroom staff in the past year, and its editor just announced his retirement. Now the paper is asking for 50 more buyouts, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.

A memo to staffers from publisher George Arwady published Tuesday by The New York Times promises involuntary layoffs if the stated buyout goal is not met. For many years, the Newhouse-owned newspaper kept unions at bay by promising lifetime employment, but the recent difficulties if the journalism industry in the United States has resulted in substantial qualification of that commitment, as well as an outright reversal in some instances.

The U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission on Friday sanctioned Canadian attorney Peter Y. Atkinson for covertly diverting to himself US$285,000 in connection with the sale of several U.S. newspapers, Trading Markets reported Friday.

Atkinson, currently incarcerated in Pennsylvania for the same activity, was general counsel and a board member of media holding company Hollinger Inc., of Canada, as well as an executive at Hollinger International of Chicago, now known as Sun-Times Media Group.

When the Audit Bureau of Circulations releases the latest numbers on Oct. 26, it will show that USA Today's circulation fell 17% to 1.88 million for the six months ending September 2009, a drop of about 390,000 copies, Editor & Publisher reported Friday.

After USA Today's announcement, Dow Jones, the Journal's parent company, declined to declare its own circulation figures for the period, but spokesman Robert Christie said, "The Journal is now the largest newspaper by circulation," The Associated Press reported Saturday.

Scripps Networks' success is fueling speculation it is an acquisition target of larger media companies, the Knoxville News Sentinel reported today.

Scripps Networks Interactive CEO Ken Lowe made this joke at a recent investor conference: "I keep saying that somebody sneaks into the yard at night and puts [up] a 'For Sale' sign, and we get up in the morning and the place is not for sale."

Although the Knight Foundation has received a record number of entries, it has extended the deadline for its fourth annual Knight News Challenge by two months to December 15. The extension was done to reach out to communities of entrepreneurs and software developers to "further increase the diversity of ideas," according to Matt Thompson, interim online community manager of the foundation.

Gary Kebbel, programme director of the News Challenge, told the Niemen Journalism Lab that although total applications were down 20 percent compared to last year, due to ending a commercial section of the contest, applications to the open-source competition were up.

News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch today told the Chinese government it should follow India's example and open its media market up to outside competition, The Times of India reported.

Murdoch told the first World Media Summit in Beijing that India's opening up its market to foreign competitors served as a creative and financial catalyst, and China should learn from this example.

Flurry, a mobile application analyst reports that in its most recent study of user retention across 19 categories over a 90-day period, news and reference apps enjoyed the most staying power and frequency of visits.

CNN's new iPhone app is creating quite a stir by following an old publishing model - charge a small fee ($1.99) and include ads, the Huffington Post reported yesterday. The commotion surrounding the app, released September 29, is caused by violating the existing expectation that free apps can include ads, but paid apps should not.

Other media outlets have had less luck charging anything for news content. The Associated Press, for instance, reports trying to charge $2.99 for a BlackBerry application this year. The download rate was less than a tenth of what the app usually attracts, said Jane Seagrave, the AP's senior vice president for global product development. Since dropping the fee, the AP has seen its downloads soar, she said.

Not content to leave success to chance, 13 New York Times staffers have spent almost four years analysing the myriad of ways the newspaper might better use new media to connect with existing and potential readers, Editor & Publisher reported yesterday.

The NYT's research and development team is organised into three main categories: core technology development, emerging platforms, and analytics and audience generation.

A radical transformation of the newspaper editorial and business models is underway, and it goes far beyond the current "pay wall" debate about charging for on-line content.

These strategies call for reorganising editorial and business departments, focusing on premium content, and above all, good storytelling, according to the Innovation International Media Consulting Group, which will make a major presentation around these ideas at the World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2009, to be held in Hyderabad, India, from 30 November to 3 December next.

The Associated Press announced Tuesday it may charge a premium to release news first to certain subscribers of its online service. Because a key strand of AP's mission and copyright protection is to deliver content as soon as verifiable facts become available, the promise of early delivery of a scoop to some actually entails AP delaying delivery of what it has gathered to others.

The planned news embargo is one of several moves by the non-profit organisation to recover from financial reversals in the face of instant reporting by hyperlocal outlets publishing to the web.

The New York Times will soon host a series of chats with popular authors and celebrated thinkers, Fox News reported today.

The conversations, to be conducted at TheTimesCenter in Manhattan, will be broadcast live to cinemas throughout the United States and Canada. The event, called, TimesTalks LIVE, invites advance questions from audience members, who must pay up to $17 to attend.

A newspaper app in May was deemed too risque for the iPhone store, Geek.com reported. Nevertheless, an interactive app called Puff! which lets users blow on the smartphone and watch a girl's skirt puff up recently made the grade.

TechCrunch observed that the iPhone's imbalanced rating system inexplicably denies users factual matter while letting in frivolous content. Publishers have long decried the mysterious selection process which governs the inclusion and hierarchy of web content.

Amazon is lowering its price on e-reader Kindle 2 to US$259, and at the same time other e-readers are on the market for more affordable prices ($199 for the Sony Reader Pocket Edition, for example), PC World reported today. The lower prices and wider range of content and distribution have created media buzz about the e-reader category, which is likely to translate to sales, according to Forrester Research.

In the United States, e-reader sales are rising faster than experts had predicted, and are expected to reach three million by the end of the year, according to Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps.

Two percent, or two hours per month, of all TV viewing in the United States happens outside traditional TV devices, Media Post reported.

According to a recent survey conducted by Horowitz Associates, 2 percent represents two hours out of the overall 130.2 hours American TV viewers watch in a month.

The Federal Communications Commission issued an administrative order Friday granting U.S. newspapers an additional 90 days to file broadcast waivers.

The waivers would lift, temporarily, longstanding restrictions on joint ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market. The rules themselves come under review in 2010. The new waiver application deadline is January 7, 2010.

The U.S. government today published guidelines for participating in "From Town Crier to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?," an upcoming conference concerning the economic future of newspapers.

Some bloggers are concerned that the talks are aimed at pushing back the incursion of new media on the traditional industry or developing a bailout plan for ailing newspaper conglomerates.

Associated Press President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Curley remarked at a Foreign Correspondents' Club in Hong Kong that he welcomed a war between Microsoft and Google for dominance of the online search market, Agence France-Presse reported Tuesday.

The AP boss said the battle - sparked by Microsoft's June union with Yahoo! -- represents "a turning point in the traditional media's efforts to adapt to the Internet," according to Editor & Publisher, which also published the story.

Promising to "[j]azz up your blog, at no cost, with millions of premium, relevant, fresh and legal images to choose from," PicApp today announced it has taken another step toward "solidifying its position as the ultimate source for images online," TechCrunch reported Tuesday.

The step entails a partnership with WordPress, which is apparently the online self-publishing home of choice, boasting more than 7.5 million bloggers to its credit.

The U.S. Olympic Committee is protesting an effort by the parent company of The Olympian, McClatchy Co., to trademark the newspaper's name, the Olympia, Washington newspaper reported Monday.

The Chicago Tribune observed that the move by USOC is "like the guy at the end of bar whose counter-argument to being called an angry drunk is always to start throwing punches."

Although they're not where they once were, traditional newspaper and television advertising are making a comeback, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch said at a conference in Tokyo today, Dow Jones reported.

"It may be that (Internet advertising) has become something of a secular trend, but we are seeing newspaper advertising coming back, though not yet to its previous levels," Murdoch said. "Television is still the strongest way to advertise."

Murdoch told conference-goers during a Q&A session that in Australia, News Corp. is seeing some advertising making its way from the Internet back to print newspapers, according to Dow Jones.

Time Inc. is enlisting magazine publishers in the United States to launch a "jointly run digital newsstand next year," Reuters UK reported over the weekend. Time Warner, which owns Time, has been in talks with Conde Nast, which shuttered four magazines today, as well as Hearst Corp., a source told Reuters.

paidContent's Rafat Ali reported today that the joint venture would be something of a Hulu-type model, but for magazines. A source told Ali the project has less to do with revenue splits and consumer data, and more to do with "trying to develop new formats and standards so that when the devices come in, the mag industry is ready."

According to the new IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, published by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), U.S. Internet ad revenues totalled US$10.9 billion in the first half of 2009, down 5.3 percent year-over-year.

The biggest contributors still went to search and display-related advertising. Search revenues increased slightly over last year to more than $5.1 billion in the first six months of 2009, while display-related advertising, including display ads, rich media, digital video and sponsorship, reached nearly $3.8 billion, slipping 1.1 percent year-over-year.

Blog networks are more exciting to advertisers these days than print publications, the The New York Times observed Monday, noting however that start-ups such as Curbed does not have the sales force necessary to sell local ads.

"I don't envy the people who knock on doors asking Bob's Dry Cleaner for ads," said Lockhart Steele, founder of Curbed, to which more big-city readers are turning for real estate, dining and shopping coverage than print newspapers, New York Convergence also reported.

After selling down its stake in Australian broadcaster Network Ten, debt-laden Canwest Global Communications Corp. (CGS-T 0.23-0.04-14.81%) has turned to unloading its Canadian newspaper division, Editor & Publisher reported Monday. Canwest on Friday denied the story.

According to the Globe and Mail, National Post CEO Paul Godfrey had lined up financial support for the purchase as Canwest's bankruptcy reorganisation proceeds.

Search giant Yahoo Inc. bought a full page ad on the Times of India's front page today to tout its new 'It's You' campaign, which it says will personalise each user's experience on Yahoo, TechCrunch reported. Why a newspaper ad?

The Times of India is the largest English-language newspaper in the country, with a circulation of 3.14 million in 2008. Yahoo, meanwhile, reaches 26 million of India's 35 million-strong online population, according to comScore.

The ad's tag line states "The Internet is under new management. Yours." The smaller print below states "A homepage that lets you add whatever you love, an inbox that knows what you like (and don't) and a freedom to access it from your mobile. Say hello to the new Yahoo! Take charge today at www.yahoo.in," according to Universal Broadcasting News.

Today is shaping up to be a crucial day for Sun-Times Media Group Inc. (STMG), the Chicago Tribune observed Sunday.

By 5 p.m., the STMG and its unions will know whether other buyers have emerged to challenge Chicago financier Jim Tyree's US$26.5 million offer for the Chicago Sun-Times and more than 50 suburban newspapers, paidContent also reported.

Mobile Internet usage in the United States is up, mostly driven by smartphones like the iPhone, according to a Nielsen report. However, only about one out of four wireless subscribers logged onto the mobile Web in July, Media Week reported.

According to Nielsen, mobile Internet users accounted for 56.9 million in July, up 34 percent from 42.5 million last year.

More than 180 years as a paid-for newspaper will end as the London Evening Standard positions itself as a free newspaper, the paper announced today.

Russian owner Alexander Lebedev, who purchased 75.1 percent of the Evening Standard in January, called the London Evening Standard the first leading quality newspaper to go free and was sure others would follow, according to redOrbit.com.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's scandals stemming from his alleged involvement with prostitutes began earlier this year. And since his wife demanded a divorce in a newspaper article in early May, newspapers are facing threats and costly legal battles, Bloomberg News reported today. And although the scandals are helping newspaper sales, the boost is short term.

"Berlusconi is intimidating journalists with lawyers inside and outside the country," Stephan Russ Mohl, director of the European Journalism Observatory and professor of journalism and media management at the University of Lugano, Switzerland, told Bloomberg.

The Washington Post on Wednesday ended a 47-year-old relationship with the Los Angeles Times in favour of an alliance with Bloomberg News to supply content for a joint wire service, the newspaper announced Thursday.

The move follows a range of changes at The Post, including absorption of its business coverage into the main section of the newsroom.

The Rocky Mountain Independent, the second attempt by former Rocky Mountain News staffers to start an online news publication, announced Thursday it will stop producing new content on Monday, the Denver Business Journal reported today. The Independent was launched in July.

"Our experiment has ended, and we would like to thank all of you who became members of the website to support us," said a letter signed Rocky Mountain Independent owners. "We have put everything we've made into producing content, but the economic reality is that we cannot produce enough content on that budget to justify charging a membership fee."

PPF Media has been getting a lot of international attention lately for its hyperlocal news project in the Czech Republic that is built around Starbucks-style "news cafes" in local communities. CEO Roman Gallo provided an update Friday at the 2015 Newsroom Conference, and the project seems to be working.
 
Thirteen weeks after launch in four Czech regions, circulation of the paid-for weeklies is growing, as it web traffic. And the cafes are quickly becoming a centre of community life, with meetings, concerts, dance lessons and other events organised for local residents.
 
Editorial staff sit in the middle of the cafes, without walls or doors, allowing regular interaction with local residents. Fifty percent of new subscriptions come from people who come in for coffee and conversaton.
 
 "The readers can go there and be in contact.," said Gallo.  "For the editorial team, they're much more open to talk to people, to understand the problems of the people in the region."
 
If the success continues, the company expects a year-long nationwide rollout of 220 weeklies, 89 news cafes and 700 websites.
 
Bertrand Pecquerie, Director of the World Editors Forum, which organised the 2015 Newsroom Conference, said hyperlocal news was a clear trend for newspapers. "Print isn't dead, and hyperlocal news is the future of newspapers, with new players," he said.
 
Community newspapers have been around for decades, but there are several innovations, in addition to the news cafes, that make PPF's Nase Adresa project different:
 
- About a third of the content is provided by local communities - fishermen, firemen, mothers with young children etc. - but none of it goes into the paper or websites without input from a journalist, called a "community manager."
 
"This is a total change for journalists," said Gallo. "Our journalists are not traditional journalist who see something and tell the community about it. We changed the job - they're trainers, coaches, they work with the communities."
 
- The weekly papers and websites are standardized in terms of layout, graphics and features. "We call it 'Media MacDonald's', we have very strong rules, that must be fulfilled at the local level," said Gallo.
 
- A central editor oversees all publications, and support is also centralized through the Futuroom media training complex, which not only provides training but also infographics, data mining and other services (the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers is a partner in Futuroom).
 
While the news cafes and other innovations makes the project worth watching, the strategy is, in fact, based on something very traditional for newspapers.
 
"The advantage of the publishing company is unique content, which you can't find anywhere else, and it has to be credible content," said Gallo. "That's the model that worked for newspapers for 100 years, and I have no doubt it will work for another 100 years."
 
Follow the 2015 Newsroom Conference on Twitter.
 

UK publisher Daily Mail and General Trust announced Tuesday it has cut the rate of decline in ad revenue in half at its flagship daily, the Daily Mail, the Times Online reported yesterday.

Advertising at the title in September was down 10 to 12 percent, versus a 21 percent decline in July and August. However, the DMGT's finance director said he "refused to call the bottom, in case it turns out we are on a ledge," according to the Times article.

Google often touts the massive traffic it drives to newspaper Web sites - 1 billion click throughs from Google News per month. But what if that traffic is all but worthless?

That was the heart of the debate today in the opening session of the 2015 Newsroom Conference, organised by the World Editors Forum at PPF Media's Futuroom complex in Prague. Santiago de la Mora, head of print content partnerships for Google News in Europe, cited the massive traffic figure. But Matt Kelly, associate editor of the Daily Mirror and mirror.co.uk, questions its value.

Metro Canada launched English-language mobile versions for iPhones and Blackberries in September, and will release French versions in October, Newspaper Innovation reported this week.

Metro will also begin using 2D barcodes in print versions, to allow readers to scan the barcodes with their mobiles and receive additional information on the subjects.