Recently by Emily Dilling

Since the fax machine was invented by Scottish inventor and mechanic Alexander Bain in 1843, publishers have been interested in the possibility of alternative forms of delivering their newspapers. Nearly 100 years after Bain received a British patent for his invention, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch conducted the first experiment with home printing. In 1939, it sent its paper to facsimile printers in readers' homes. Similar attempts were made in the 1940s, 50s and later in the 80s, as fax machines become more prevalent in homes and offices.

While experiments with home printing technology applications became mostly obsolete with the advent of the Internet, changes in newspaper printing and delivery is leading newspaper publishers to once again explore alternative methods of printing.

A bankruptcy court judge has accepted the Minneapolis Star Tribune's reorganisation plan, which could enable the paper to be independent of chapter 11 bankruptcy protection within the next few months, the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal reported.

The plan remains to be approved by creditors who will vote on whether or not to accept the proposed reorganisation that would give more than 95 percent of the company's stake to an investment group.

The Bay State Banner, Boston's only African American-owned newspaper, will resume printing after almost a month's hiatus due to large decreases in advertising revenue, the Boston Herald reported.

Financial support for the publication has been made possible by a $200,000 loan from the city, which the Banner's publisher Mel Miller accepted from mayor Thomas M. Menino, while pledging to maintain the paper's independence despite the government's aid.

An announcement yesterday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel confirmed the acceptance of buyout offers by 29 full-time and five part-time staffers, Editor & Publisher reported.

Though no names have been released, several employees who opted for the buyout offer are suspected to be longtime staff members of the newspaper. Reports include veteran columnists, reporters and critics of the paper in the list of staff that will be leaving the paper.

The deadline to accept the buyout was Monday night, with layoffs to follow if not enough employees accept the deal. The buyouts mark a third attempt by the paper to reduce staff and costs. Greg Pearson of the newsroom employees union has reported that executives for the Journal Sentinel expect to have to cut "substantially more" positions.

Schenectady, New York's Daily Gazette will once again charge for online content that has been offered for free since 2007, The Associated Press reported.

Beginning August 3, the electronic edition of the paper and other online content will be uniquely available to home delivery subscribers or those who pay a US$2.95 monthly subscription fee. Selected blogs and featured breaking news will be posted on a free site.

Judy Patrick, the Gazette's managing editor, said the decision was made due to disappointing online advertising revenue and expressed the paper's intention to keep the integrity of the paper's content as well as reward paying readers by once again charging to use the site.

A deal struck between Microsoft and Yahoo offers few advantages to newspapers in the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, Ken Doctor wrote in a piece for iStockAnalyst.

Mike Silver, the Consortium's executive director, told Doctor "we would expect that with Yahoo now focused on display advertising, the response (to newspaper company needs) should be stronger."

The Trinity Mirror has reported decreases in operating profit due to declining advertising revenue; however, those ad revenue losses are slowing, The Financial Times reported.

The newspaper publisher's adjusted operating profits fell from £80.5 million to £49.1 million over the course of about six and a half months. Revenue dropped from £460.8 million to £383 million and the Mirror attributes £65.6 million of that fall to lost ad revenue. However, the numbers beat market expectations for the first half of the year.

The Starkville Dispatch, launched earlier this month, is the first free daily to serve the southern U.S. state of Mississippi, Newspaper Innovation reported.

The daily is an affiliate of the paid-for Dispatch title which already circulates in other areas of the "Golden Triangle" including Mississippi and western Alabama.

Strikes planned to take place at the UK's Trinity Mirror newspapers in Birmingham on Thursday have been called off by the National Union of Journalists, Press Gazette reported.

The proposed strike was met with strong opposition from Trinity Mirror upper staff members, with managing director Georgina Harvey calling the decision to strike "reckless and negligent." However, the reason for the strike's cancellation is due not to its negative reception but rather to a confirmation on the part of the publisher that no posts would be job cuts at the Birmingham-based papers.

Times Publishing Co. announced in a press release an offer to sell GOVERNING and all associated properties, including a monthly magazine, Web site, and event-based products.

GOVERNING's magazine has a circulation of 80,000 subscribers along with its companion Web site "which is visited by an equally large and influential audience." The publication also sponsors the Public Officials of the Year Awards.

Times Publishing has recently sold its CQ Press books as well as its Congressional Quarterly.

Attributor, a start-up that offers ad revenue sharing services to newspapers and blogs, "wants to bring the ad networks into the mix, to allow them to be the revenue distributor that looks not only at the site that offered up the news story but also the news outlet that created the story," ZDNet Senior Editor Sam Diaz commented in his blog.

Diaz applauds the start-up's business model, saying the proactive approach to generating revenue from news aggregation is sorely lacking amongst newspaper executives who, according to Diaz, "knew only one way to respond: cry foul" when they saw their old business models being challenged. 

The UK's public broadcasting station, the BBC, will team up with four major national newspapers in order to provide video content for their online editions c21media.net reported.

The videos will be embedded in the sites of the participating papers; The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and Independent. Video content will appear along with the papers' own unique content on politics, business, science and technology.  

A recent survey conducted by top10-broadband.co.uk found that Virgin Media is the top ISP to use Twitter "most effectively," TechWatch.co.uk reported.

Among the top ISPs on the list following Virgin were  BT, Vodaphone, TalkTalk and Be. The companies' use of Twitter seems mainly for customer service purposes, which the employ to "defend themselves" on the site against users Tweets complaining about their broadband service.

Two major Australian newspapers have threatened to pull their advertisements on Google as a form of protest against the recently launched Google Maps Real Estate service, an aggregator of real estate listings found on other sites, The Inquisitr reported.

Australia's News Ltd. and the Fairfax group, which own prominent real estate sites, are on the defense against the new site, which they see as a competitor to their respective Realestate.com.au and Domain.

The Edmonton Sun announced to readers that it would be "taking a bit off the top" of their print edition, reducing the paper's size by an inch, the Edmonton Sun reported.

The paper justified the change in its announcement, pointing out that the reduced size would save 5.8 million pounds of paper, and called the modification "great for the environment and, in today's tough economy, a necessary reduction in newspaper production expenses."

Publisher and CEO of the Sun Gordon Norrie said that while the format of the paper would be changing, the content would remain the same and continue to be delivered "in the same informative and engaging manner."