As part of a €600 million aid package, the French government is buying newspaper subscriptions for young readers, the Christian Science Monitor reported today.

Readers between ages 18 and 24 will receive a one-year subscription to the paper of their choice as part of the bailout. The offer is open to the first 200,000 who sign up for "Mon Journal Offer," and they can choose from 60 newspapers.
Ouest France is an example of one newspaper that has grown young readership by giving away free newspapers. It began doing so four years ago, and increased readership for 18-to 24-year-olds by 22,000, with almost 12 percent resubscribing after their free subscription ended, according to the CSM.

For more on young readers, visit the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers' Young Readers programme.

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.

The New York Times saw a 7 percent decline in paid circulation between April and September, according to Nielsen figures, out Monday. However, its Web site, NYTimes.com, had 21 million unique users in the United States, while its mobile site had 40 million pageviews in September and more than two million readers downloaded the paper's iPhone app since it launched in July of last year.

Overall, U.S. newspaper readership dropped 10.6 percent on weekdays and 7.5 percent on Sundays in the six months ending Sept. 30, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations, The New York Times reported.

Teenagers use social media much more heavily than their parents think they do, according to a study by Common Sense Media, a non-profit firm that tracks media use by children, out this week.

A poll, conducted by The Benenson Strategy Group, showed that teens increasingly rely on social networking to connect with friends, classmates and people with similar interests, with 51 percent responding that they check social networking sites more than once a day. Meanwhile, just 23 percent of parents said they thought their kids check the sites more than once per day.

Other key findings, according to the poll:

- 22% of teens check social networking sites more than 10 times a day, while only 4% of parents believe kids are checking that much
- 28% have shared personal information they normally wouldn't have shared in public
- 25% have shared a profile with a false identity
- 39% have posted something they regretted
- 26% have pretended to be someone else online
- 54% have joined an online community or Facebook/MySpace group in support of a cause
- 34% have volunteered for a campaign, nonprofit, or charity

For the full poll results, visit Common Sense Media.

The National Digital Newspaper Program on Tuesday celebrated the digitalization of 1 million pages onto its government funded, free access Web site, the Associated Press reported.

This total has already increased to 1.2 million pages and staff believe the archive should eventually reach 20 million pages, extending back to 1836 and covering until 1922 where newspapers began to be copyrighted. The collection is available at the Library of Congress' Chronicling America Web site.

The project has allowed access to initial reactions to some of the most important events of 19th and early 20th century.

"Flying Machine that will Work: Ohio Boys have Solved a Big Mechanical Problem," reads the Palestine Daily Herald in Texas in 1903 and The San Francisco Call-Chronicle-Examiner threatened in 1906: "Entire City of San Francisco in Danger of Being Annihilated."

Some historic predictions were discovered to be a little off, as the Ocala Evening Star from Florida predicted the 1907 popularity of stuffed toys was a passing trend, "The Teddy bear craze is dying out," read the headline.

The site has catalogued both major daily newspapers as well as smaller local publications. Mark Sweeney, the projects co-coordinator, said this allows for an interesting perspective as "you can get a very different take on the news."