At leading media companies, like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, the majority of traffic now bypasses the homepage, writes Neiman Lab's Adrienne LaFrance. Newsrooms are increasingly finding that visitors to their sites are "coming in through the sidedoor" meaning homepages are perhaps less important than they once were. 

Media Network Carat is predicting that digital ad spending will surpass newspaper ad spending this year. Btobonline reports that "digital ad spending will garner a 15.3 percent share of the global ad market this year, up from a March projection of 14.5 percent."

Meanwhile time is of the essence for Time Inc.'s digital overhaul, according to the New York Post's Keith J. Kelly, who writes: "after operating profit tumbled more than 40 percent in the most recent quarter, there’s a new sense of urgency surrounding Time Inc. and its push to capture digital dollars."

Fairfax News and Media Company has posted losses of A$2.732 billion for the financial year 2011/12, after writing down its media businesses and plants and equipment (including printing presses in Tullamarine and Chullora that are to be shut down in 2014) by almost A$3 billion. The losses announced on Thursday for the year to June were seven times higher than those for the same period in 2010-11, which stood at $390.9 million. Fairfax is Australia’s oldest news publisher, and its titles include the country’s oldest paper, The Sydney Morning Herald

The company’s write-down of mastheads and goodwill comes in light of the woeful financial forecasts predicted for the next three years. In a statement following the release of the company’s full-year financial results, Fairfax Chief Executive Greg Hywood said: "The assessment of the carrying value of our intangible assets - mastheads, goodwill and customer relationships - is based on the three-year outlook for each of our business units. That outlook worsened considerably over the course of the second half of the year as the cyclical downturn became more pronounced, and our confidence in a sustained improvement in market conditions reduced."

Commenting on the present state of the advertising market, Hywood expressed his belief that never in his 30-year career had it been in such a bad condition, but he also added that the present drop in advertising revenue was part of a “cycle” and would “inevitably pass.”

In an article on Adweek's website, Lucia Moses looks at the hugely successful but low-budget approach that US-based publisher Condé Nast has taken in expanding its empire overseas.

In the UK, Robert Andrews on the paidContent website writes that Johnston Press, which publishes some 230 regional newspapers, is gaining ground with its new digital strategy and its use of online outsourcing.

AFP is reporting that the Foreign Correspondents' Clubs of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong have expressed alarm over recent reports of intimidation against foreign journalists working in China.

On the MediaShift Idea Lab website, Heather Ford discusses how Wikipedia manages sources for breaking news.

The New York Times reports that while "most Western broadcasting and newspaper companies are retrenching, China’s state-run news media giants are rapidly expanding in Africaand across the developing world." The article states the efforts are aimed at improving China’s image and influence around the globe.

Rappler, a news startup in the Philippines, is taking a social media approach to news and using a "mood meter" with its stories in an attempt to understand the role of emotion in newsaccording to an article from Adrienne LaFrance on theNieman Lab website.

Twitter could face legal action in India if the website fails to comply with the government's demand to censor objectionable contentposted by users, according to a report from The Times of India.