by Tatiana Repkova

Arsenio School, director of the free daily 20 Minutes, announced in February that the newspaper would stop publishing announcements of prostitutes.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The newspaper industry has brought its financial troubles on itself, according to the chief executive of Craigslist, the company that has been accused of decimating the newspaper industry's advertising business.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The Saudi Research & Publishing Company is putting up thirty new Lexus cars in a bid to sign up more subscribers to its titles. Subscribers get the chance to win one of the cars in a weekly drawing over four months. SRPC is the publisher of local English-language daily Arab News, as well as a number of Arabic newspaper and magazine titles. http://www.ameinfo.com/111518.html; February 22, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

The tabloid market in Alberta got more crowded when Torstar Corp. and Metro International SA announced on February 21 the launch of free Metro daily newspapers in Calgary and Edmonton, raising the stakes in a battle with CanWest and Sun Media to attract readers in Canada's rapidly growing energy heartland.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The World Association of Newspapers has launched an initiative to develop a new measurement standard for both print and digital newspaper readership.

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by Tatiana Repkova

As the top 1,000 South Korean companies move their ad dollars online, the internet advertising business in South Korea will hit $1.04 billion in 2007, according to keyword advertising company Korea Overture. The company predicts that online advertising will jump 15.2% over 2006, even as the total overall advertising market tops out at $7.7 billion. Overture points to keyword advertising, which accounts for $654.6 million, 60% of the total online ad market. “The keyword ads business will chalk up a 21.5% growth this year. The segment will rack up notable expansion beyond next year,” said a spokesperson for Overture Korea as quoted in the Korea Times. “New types of keyword ads such as video-based ones are also sparking interest.” With 35 million internet users, South Korea makes up the fourth-largest online audience after the US, UK and Japan. Much of the online advertising growth comes from large portals like Overture partner NHN, which handles 75% of Korean search queries. The second-place portal, run by Google partner Daum Communications, recently released keyword-powered video advertising. www.adotas.com; http://www.fipp.com/Default.aspx?PageIndex=2002&ItemId=13564; 21 February 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

What is believed to be the first bilingual newspaper in Scotland for the Polish community was launched at the end of February. The 16-page full-colour tabloid newspaper, Gazeta z Highland, is being published by the Northern Times weekly in Golspie and will be a free with an initial distribution of 20,000. All the articles will be written in Polish with an English translation alongside. The first three editions will be quarterly, and then it is hoped to make it a monthly publication.

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by Tatiana Repkova

In Norway - and probably elsewhere - pdf editions of newspapers aren't popular. New figures from Norwegian Media Businesses' Association show that virtually nobody is interested in PDF versions of newspapers.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Chris Kubas has a question for newspapers considering a page-width reduction in order to cut costs: How will you protect against the potential loss of ad revenue?

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by Tatiana Repkova

The Omani newspaper TheWeek, has become the first in Oman to have an independent circulation audit. The audit was conducted by the U.S.-based, non-profit, BPA Worldwide. TheWeek is a free weekly newspaper published by Apex Publishing and Press Company. Apex’s Chief Executive Officer, Saleh Zakwani, told the Arab Press Network (APN) that as the number of publications is increasing, it is important to assure advertisers that circulation figures stand up to closer scrutiny. Two of Apex’s other English language publications, Oman Today and Business Today, will be audited in the future. Apex is also planning to audit its Arabic language weekly Al-Isbou’a. http://www.ijnet.org/Director.aspx?P=Article&ID=305996&LID=1; February 16, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

Axel Springer, publisher of popular German tabloid Bild, is set to invest 120 million euro into launching a tabloid in the French market, which will have to contend with France's tough privacy laws. The plans include a three-year investment of 120 million euro and Axel Springer has stated it can sell a million copies of the tabloid a day.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/login/News/633604/; February 16, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

"The most important finding is that newspapers are under-spending in the newsroom and over-spending in circulation and advertising. If you invest more in the newsroom, do you make more money? The answer is yes. If you lower the amount of money spent in the newsroom, then pretty soon the news product becomes so bad that you begin to lose money," Esther Thorson, director of research for the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute and associate dean for graduate studies in the Missouri School of Journalism, said.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Monster Worldwide Inc. has reached a deal with The New York Times Co. to sell and display help-wanted advertising online, landing the Internet job search provider a key ally as it expands its partnerships with traditional media companies.

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A new form of electronic paper demonstrated at 3GSM in Barcelona could bring newspapers to mobile phones in the coming year. The invention, patented by Philips but built by spin-off company Polymer Vision, consists of a layer of small spheres, coloured grey on one side and white on the other. They are rotated to display text and images on the paper, but critically use no power when not creating a new image. This technique has been manufactured in a thin strip that is perfectly flexible, allowing the screen to be wrapped around a mobile phone. The screen on show at 3SGM had been wrapped and unwrapped 750,000 times with no degradation in quality.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2183252/paper-brings-newspapers-mobile; February 14, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

New technology means colour e-paper tablet newspapers and magazines could be possible in two years, developers have claimed. Mike Nelson, general manager of sales for Fujitsu Europe, told an industry conference in London, that colour e-paper technology, on which portable tablet newspapers could be carried, will be ready for use in two years.

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by Tatiana Repkova

A Belgian court dealt a blow to Google on February 13 by ruling against the U.S. Internet giant in a copyright case lodged by French-language Belgian newspapers and closely watched by other media.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Yahoo launched in December YouWitnessNews, a Web siteWeb site that posts offerings from users after the submissions pass muster with professional editors.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Participants in Hungary's Newspapers in Education spring programme will be using an innovative textbook developed by the Hungarian Newspaper Publishers Association in conjunction with the National Institute of Public Education.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The German Newspaper Publishers Association (BDZV), together with its marketing association, ZMG, launched a major image campaign for newspapers in December 2006.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Media tycoon Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. suffered a drop February 7 in quarterly earnings compared to a year earlier, when it had reaped an exceptional tax gain. Murdoch said that nevertheless, the media and entertainment group's performance during its second fiscal quarter "was a success both financially and strategically." News Corp.'s net profit for the October-December quarter came to 822 million dollars compared to 1.07 billion in the same period of 2005, when it benefited from a hefty tax gain on its non-US earnings. Excluding that exceptional gain, the company said its net profit in the quarter rose 18 percent while its earnings per share came to 26 cents, in line with Wall Street forecasts. News Corp.'s revenues also advanced by 18 percent in the period to 7.84 billion dollars in the quarter. AFP; February 7, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

Europe's biggest telecom groups are aiming to create a mobile phone search engine that could challenge Yahoo! and Google, the U.S. giants. Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and one American network, Cingular, are among the companies that will come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry's biggest annual trade show in Barcelona in February. Declining call revenues are driving network operators together to compete against Google and Yahoo! search engines.

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by Tatiana Repkova

According to the sixth annual CDMS, The Times of India is the most read general interest daily in the print media space, with a 72 percent average issue readership in 2006.

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by Tatiana Repkova

Alarmed by a growing trend among police and administrative organizations to withhold the names of crime and accident victims, the Editorial Affairs Committee of the Japanese Newspaper Association (NSK) has issued a booklet titled “Real Names and News Reporting.”

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by Tatiana Repkova

A report from Pricewaterhousecoopers LLC (PwC) sees 2007 as another strong year for European media mergers and acquisitions.

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by Tatiana Repkova

The publishing house de Telegraaf Tidjschriften Groep (TTG) will launche Vrouw, a new women's supplement inserted in the Saturday edition of the daily newspaper De Telegraaf. The first issue will be published on March 31, 2007 with a circulation of 883,000 copies. http://www.publicitas.com/display.asp?id=6.8&chp=6.6&foot=6.9&cpny=*&LIB2=PPNRequestNews(3)&initlib=no&PARAM1=17988&navig=no&statinfo=news; February 1, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

Beginning February 5, Delhi's first morning tabloid, Metro Now, priced at Re 1 for 48 pages, will be rolled out from Monday to Saturday. The tabloid will be launched by Metropolitan Media; a 50/50 joint venture between HT Media and The Times of India Group. Metropolitan is an independent company floated by the JV.

“Metro Now is a complete newspaper targeted at the youth aged 25-30, residing in Delhi NCR. The morning tabloid is a new concept in Delhi and we seriously see the need and opportunity to segment the market,” said Sameer Kapoor, president of the Metropolitan Media Company.

Although the tabloid will carry all the news, a major focus will be on Delhi centric news. The editorial team for the newspaper currently comprises around 50 people. Kamlesh Singh, formerly the deputy editor at CNN-IBN, has will serve as editor, while Soni Sanghwan, formerly an associate editor at CNN-IBN, has joined the Metro Now team as deputy editor. http://www.agencyfaqs.com/perl/news/index.html?sid=16984; February 1, 2007

by Tatiana Repkova

The Korea Times has signed an agreement to exchange stories with The Economic Times, an Indian business and financial daily, as ties between Korea and India expand and the demand for news about the two countries rises.

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