Today is International Women’s Day, but while we are surrounded by examples of inspiring female journalists – Marie Colvin, killed in Syria last month, for one – many news organisations still have a long way to go when it comes to supporting their female members.

A study by VIDA: Women in the Literary Arts compared the number of bylines published in major literary magazines by women and by men and found that the majority are dominated by male voices. Bylines at the London Review of Books were 14% female last year, said VIDA. At the New York Review of Books, just 12.5% of articles in 2011 were written by women. Granta, which was 53% female, was the only exception to the rule.

The Columbia Journalism Review reported earlier this week that the percentage of female bylines at most of the magazines in VIDA’s study isn’t just small; it’s shrinking. Comparing the 2011 VIDA data with that of 2010 showed that the proportion of stories written by female journalists had fallen at The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and the Boston Review.

Earlier this week, New York Times' staff members of the New York Newspaper Guild protested, lining in the hallway, outside the Page One meeting room. As the Huffington Post reported, the incident demonstrated staffers' dismay over their contract negotiations, which have been going on for over a year, including negotiators' calls for freezing their pension plans and ending their independent health insurance.

Pearson Plc, the publisher of the Financial Times newspaper and Penguin books, has a capacity to make £1 billion in acquisitions ($1.6 billion) as the digital publishing revenue grows, Bloomberg said. "The digital publishing business grew 18 percent to 2 billion pounds to make up a third of Pearson's sales last year after revenue from Penguin e-books doubled and digital subscriptions to the Financial Times and online learning programs for students increased by more than 20 percent", the article said.

Bizcommunity.com reported yesterday that South African Sunday tabloid Scoop! is set to close down after being launched just four months ago. The website also announces that Cape Argus, another South African paper, is being reduced in size from broadsheet to compact.

Journalists at the FT, who have voted in favour of strike action in a dispute over pay, have told the company's chief executive that disagreement could be "extremely damaging to the FT brand and to relations in the newsroom." FT management has called the vote in favour of industrial action "unwarranted and unreasonable," writes Press Gazette.

The Guardian announces that its reporter Nick Davies has been named as the winner of the Paul Foot award for investigative journalism for his work in uncovering phone hacking at the News of the World.

French journalist Edith Bouvier and UK photographer Paul Conroy have both been smuggled out of the besieged Syrian city of Homs into Lebanon, the BBC reports.

Stephen Farrell discusses conflict reporting in the 'post-embed era' in the New York Times blog At War.

The Knight News Challenge has opened, inviting entries via Tumblr on the theme of 'Networks.' The first round application, which consists of seven questions, will close on 17 March.

The Leveson Inquiry continues: see the Guardian's extensive coverage here as the paper's star investigative reporter Nick Davies gives evidence.

For more industry news please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service