The media tycoon who built an vast newspaper empire was convicted by a Chicago federal jury Friday of a count of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud and could face up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Conrad Black, 62, was acquitted of nine other charges, including racketeering and wire fraud, for a scheme to steal millions of dollars from shareholders of Hollinger International. Sentencing has been set for Nov. 30.

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The Mail on Sunday has threatened legal action against the Official U.K. Charts Company to try and force Prince's new album Planet Earth to be counted on the charts.

The newspaper, which paid Prince an estimated 250,000 pounds for the license, will give away 2.9 million copies of the new album; one will be included in each paper on Sunday. An extra 200,000 copies of the paper will be printed without the CD for foreign and bulk sales.

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The United States, the United Kingdom, northern Europe, Australasia, Japan and Korea are the hottest digital spots around the world, according to OECD and CIA.

Those hotter countries have Internet penetration of more than 60 percent, and mobile penetration over 70 percent.

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As Nielsen // Net Ratings has decided to rank a site's popularity based on time spent, rather than page views, tricks to increase page views are out, while tricks to keep users on the same page for longer are in.

And what better way to get a visitor to spend more time in one place than to expand video and podcast use, writes Philip Stone, for Follow the Media.

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Austrian publisher Styria Medien is planning the first free daily for Slovenia, one of the few places in the European market that doesn't already have one.

The new paper will be called Zurnal24, and will launch in the capital Ljubljana in the fall, with a circulation of at least 100,000.

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Northcliffe Media will not cut editorial jobs or resources, and will instead invest in digital operations of the 25 titles it is buying from Trinity Mirror in the southeast corner of England, Northcliffe's managing director has said.

Michael Pelosi said any “efficiency drives” would not affect editorial staff, but could affect “back-of-house” positions, such as those in human resources and administration. Northcliffe's parent company is Daily Mail and General Trust.

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Broadband penetration is expected exceed 20 percent in the United States and Europe by 2010, according to a study from Eurostat.

Western Europe and the United States, with 15 and 15.3 percent of broadband penetration in 2005, will reach 27.1 and 25 percent in 2010, with the growth rates of 81 and 63 percent, respectively, the study found.

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Web portals and local TV newcasts are the most frequently used news sources among the U.S. audience between age 18 and 34, according to the Carnegie Corporation.

Over 70 percent of the respondents said they watch local TV newcasts at least once a week, while about 62 percent said they use web portals as their news source at least on a weekly basis.

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Ifra, the international newspaper operations organisation based in Germany, has released four special reports and two research reports that explore production and technology topics.

The first report examines “local search,” which studies market developments and options for publishers who want to compete with search-engine giants.

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