Google announced Friday it has made deals with four international news agencies for its Google News site to publish their news stories.

Google News began at 6 p.m. GMT Friday to scan news articles from the Associated Press, Press Association, Agence France-Presse and Canadian Press, omitting any duplicated versions from the agencies that can be found on other news sites.

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The Sun is cutting its price from 35 pence to 20 pence in London and the south-east beginning Monday.

The move is aimed at keeping sales of News International’s red-top above 3 million copies per day. However, it may hit circulation revenue hard, because London and the country's south-east make up for about 20 percent of sales.

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The American Press Institute's Newspaper Next team spent a year researching patterns of disruption in the newspaper industry, resulting in the team's latest report, Blueprint for Transformation, which gives newspaper companies a practical innovation process, a strategic game plan and the field tests of those approaches.

The most basic roles of newspapers – fulfilling a civic mission to create an informed society, facilitate civic dialogue and be public watchdogs – has not changed. What has changed is the addition of more ways to disseminate that information and the ways to financially support it. Newspaper companies that cling to old ways of doing things will “sink into irrelevance,” as will newspaper companies that innovate poorly, the Newspaper Next (N2) report tells us.

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Online advertising revenue will pass radio’s for the first time, according to eMarketer’s recent study, Radio Trends: On Air and Online.

In 2007, Internet ad revenue is estimated to reach about $ 21.7 billion, compared to radio’s $20.4 billion.

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Advertising and sponsorship accounted for just over 73 percent of annual turnover and gross revenues in the UK's regional and local newspaper publishing groups in 2006, the latest Newspaper Society survey has found.

That near three-fourths majority is followed by circulation sales at 15.4 percent and contract printing at 5.1 percent, the survey reported. Other revenue for the UK's approximately 85 regional and local newspaper publishing groups include photo sales, IT services, training, rent, canteen, waste sales, editorial syndication and telephone promotions.

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The Polish media group Agora has appointed Marek Sowa as its new chief executive, responsible with pointing the company in the direction of growing its online advertising and finding a spot in local television.

Sowa, whose background is in television and electronic media, will take the reins from Wanda Rapaczynska, who took the company public in 1999.

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The four free daily titles in Italy have been found to have a joint advertising revenue of 62 million euro for the first half of 2007, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday.

Metro, Leggo, City and 24 Minuti were the four titles that could be measured by Nielsen//Netratings.

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The Sun plans to get into the local advertising market when it launches its revamped Web site next month.

The move, in which the Sun will take on local newspapers, is part of an extensive customisable service on its Web site.

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While most newspaper stocks peaked over three years ago and continue to sink, advertising is migrating to the Internet and circulation is weakening across the board, the only people who seem to want to get into the newspaper business these days are ... billionaires?

In his Turnaround Letter, published in Forbes, George Putnam points out that Rupert Murdoch, Sam Zell, Ron Burkle, Eli Broad and David Geffen are all billionaires, all very successful businessmen and have all recently tried to buy newspaper companies.

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As regional publishers invested heavily online but could not stop declines in circulation and print ad revenue last year, the UK's local newspaper industry lost about 225 million pounds in 2006, the Financial Times reported Thursday.

So far, the newspaper industry views 2006 as a low point, as most regional publishing groups have reported improvements this year and a slowing trend in ad revenue decline, according to a survey by the Newspaper Society of its members published Thursday.

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As new media projects mean higher investments, Swiss media group Tamedia AG saw first half net profit drop to 51.2 million Swiss francs (31.2 million euro) from 52.3 million.

Analysts had made the previous forecast of net profits for the group reaching between 49.4 and 54.8 million Swiss francs, or an average of 51.12 million.

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According to a new study by Marketing Daily, eight out of 10 Americans know what “blog” means, and nearly half have visited the blogosphere – some even on a daily basis.

"The high awareness is surprising given that blogging is an emerging media outlet. The segmentation on awareness and usage, and on people having their own blogs, is driven by age, with obviously younger people more active in blogging," said Tom Mularz, senior vice president at Synovate eNation, which conducted the online survey of 1,000 U.S. adults.

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The Sunday Times announced it is closing its bureau in Northern Ireland, leaving the editor there looking for other job options.

Liam Clarke has worked at the Times for about 20 years, witnessing some of the biggest, most dangerous stories the paper covered during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. “His departure marks and end to one of the most turbulent news reporting careers on the paper, during which he frequently covered terrorism, extortion and crime,” writes the Guardian's Ben Dowell.

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The Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette has purchased The South County Commercial-Express, a weekly newspaper in Vicksburg, Mich., which serves Kalamazoo County's four southernmost townships.

The Commercial-Express, which is a combination of the former Vicksburg Commercial and the Schoolcraft Express, will operate with its current name remaining.

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Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and Dow Jones & Co. have cleared an antitrust waiting period early, which satisfies one of the conditions to closing the $5.6 billion buy-out deal.

The Premerger Notification Office of the Federal Trade Commission granted early termination of the waiting period, which is part of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act, on Tuesday. Ending the waiting period means News Corp. is one step closer to owning Dow Jones.

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Although three-fourths of its audience accesses the site from outside the United Kingdom, the Mail Online's commercial focus will remain on the UK, the editorial director has said.

Martin Clarke told Journalism.co.uk that even though traffic from the United States is high, “all our efforts are focused on the UK traffic.”

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Local newspapers and Yellow Pages publishers are making deals with online and mobile companies, for the chance to up-sell their local listings in the digital market.

In the latest deal, R.H. Donnelley dealt with Yahoo Local to offer its directory customers exposure on the Yahoo Local and Yahoo Map sites.

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French media giant Lagardère announced Wednesday it has bought the interactive media agency Nextedia for 50 million euro in cash.

Lagardère will pay additional earn-out payments in 2011 and 2013 for up to a maximum of 50 million euro, “contingent upon the attainment of specified profit targets,” according to a Lagardère statement.

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Lagardère Active said it has acquired the French online advertising company ID Regie in order to reinforce the position of its Lagardère Publicite unit in the Internet market. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The group said ID Regie sells advertising space for more than 30 Web sites, including Price Minister, Alapage, LDLC and Top Achat. In 2006, ID Regie doubled its gross operating profit to $1.1 million euro.

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The Mumbai based tabloid Mid-Day is looking to venture outside print and radio and into television broadcasting in an effort to further strengthen is Web presence.

Mid-Day, which has branched out into other cities, such as Bangalore and Delhi, also owns the private FM radio brand, Radio One.

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Associated Newspapers has secured a deal to lift circulation of its national morning freesheet Metro by 250,000 copies. The move is designed to beat rival News International.

The deal will increase Metro’s circulation in London by 205,000 copies to more than 750,000 and another 45,000 will be spread among eight editions in other cities throughout the United Kingdom.

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Belgian publisher Rossel is considering making an offer on French business daily La Tribune if its owner, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessey, decides to sell it, according to a report in Les Echos.

Speculators expect LVMH to sell La Tribune when it finishes its proposed acquisition of rival newspaper Les Echos from British media group Pearson Plc.

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The Russian newspaper known for its investigative reporting has begun posting English translations of select articles.

Novaya Gazeta's new English site, en.novayagazeta.ru, is currently designed for six articles, which the newspaper began posting Thursday.

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Portable media players with video capability are expected to outsell audio-only devices by the end of 2008, according to a study from In-Stat.

The report, estimating both unit sales and revenue throughout 2011, indicates overall demand for MP3 devices will stay strong.

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Moody’s Investors Service on Monday changed its outlook on the New York Times Co. from stale to negative, indicating growing pressure on the publisher’s advertising from other media and a decline in the housing market.

The media company's debt is likely to be downgraded over the next 12 to 18 months, the investors service said.

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The search for a new publisher of the Ventura County Star is under way, the newspaper and its parent company, E.W. Scripps Co., announced Monday.

Tim Gallagher became the newspaper's publisher in 2004, and will step down from the post in several weeks, continuing on as a part-time assistant to Scripps Howard Publishing President Mark Contreras.

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Advertisers from all over Africa are now eligible to enter their work as part of the Advertising Performance Excellence (APEX) awards.

The decision to extend entry outside South Africa, to the rest of the continent, was made by the custodians of the awards, the Association for Communication and Advertising (ACA). Entries for APEX 2008 will be accepted until Nov. 16.

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A group of 10 led by an ethnic Chechen organised crime boss that includes serving government officers will be charged in connection with the killing of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, Russian authorities announced Monday.

Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general, told a press conference that there is evidence the group also took part in killing U.S. journalist Paul Klebnikov.

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After agreeing to add News Digital Media to its content network, Google Inc. will run text-based advertising on the Web sites of The Daily Telegraph, The Australian and The Herald Sun, among others.

The deal could earn millions in pay-per-click revenue that would be shared between Google and NDM, The Australian reported Monday. Revenue from paid search ads Google generates on news Web sites operated by NDM, owned by News Limited, will also be shared.

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ClickFacts has launched its new set of tools to help ad networks monitor participating publishers.

The Advertising Networks Verification Suite can continuously check if publishers run prohibited content, are involved in click fraud, forcefully install spyware on visitors’ computers or other “rogue” activities. And, if necessary, the suite can even remove them from the network.

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Overall, newspaper sales in Ireland remained constant during the first half of the year, according to the latest report from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

For daily titles, the Irish Times was stable, with sales at 118,150. The Irish Independent fell slightly, to 160,818.

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Indonesian newspapers and educators wanting to promote English language usage are looking to the New Straits Times Newspaper-in-Education programme in Kuala Lumpur as an example.

A group of Indonesian reporters, teachers and NIE managers visited Balai Berita in the capital city Friday to find out how the newspaper is promoting the programme, the New Straits Times reported Monday.

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Former Minneapolis Star Tribune editor and publisher, Joel Kramer, announced Monday he will launch a not-for-profit news site, MinnPost.com, to serve the Twin Cities later this year.

This site, which will publish news Monday through Friday, will be built around original reporting from professional journalists, along with a function similar to blog entries, which allow editors to converse with readers.

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The Mail Online is the second most popular newspaper Web site in the United Kingdom, second only to the Guardian, according to data from the Audit Bureau of Circulation Electronic.

More than 11,865,000 unique visitors accessed Mail Online in July, according to traffic data released last week by ABCe. The site will join the Guardian, the Sun, the Times and the Telegraph in reporting monthly Web traffic.

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The Sun-Times Media Group Inc. said today its recovering funds from Canadian investment may delay because of difficulties in the commercial paper market.

The company, previously known as Hollinger International until last year, owns the Chicago Sun-Times and other local papers in the Chicago region. An internal company source said it has a $95 million investment in Canadian asset-backed commercial paper trusts.

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Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp., as well as others providing blogging technology in China, have agreed to control and censor blogs in the country.

In an accord with the Internet Society of China, part of the Information Industry Ministry, the companies have agreed to register users under their real names, and may be forced to censor posts and identify bloggers. The Internet giants have already provided Chinese police with information about their clients, resulting in arrests, in the past.

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The Daily Telegraph's former editor has announced he will launch a national newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, creating 200 jobs around the world.

Martin Newland is working on setting up the newsroom and planning the design and title of the paper, which will be based in Abu Dhabi. Currently, there is no launch date, but Newland has said it will be “months, not years away,” and that the paper's future is “assured” by significant investment from the investment wing of the Abu Dhabi government, according to Press Gazette.

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Malaysia’s Muslim-led government has banned a Tamil-language newspaper for one month for printing a caricature of Jesus holding a cigarette and a can of beer.

According to the Internal Security Ministry, the publishing permit of the daily, Makkal Osai Tamil, will be suspended for a month starting Friday.

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U.S. mobile users surf online 12 times a month on average, while 64 percent have sent a text message.

Although the numbers are growing and above average now, U.S. mobile Internet usage still lags behind other parts of the world, according to a global mobile marketing study by Universal McCann.

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The Daily Mail will pay £45,000 plus VAT in legal fees after an agreement was reached over a libel action brought by Sikh police officer Gurpal Virdi.

The Mail agreed to pay Virdi's lawyers and print an apology for an article published about him in April last year.

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Australian wireless broadband company Unwired is experiencing slower-than-expected development of new technology, causing a 12-month setback in the company's business plan.

Unwired was planning to begin using the technology this year, but due to the glitch it will be unable to upgrade its networks to the global mobile WiMax standared before late in 2009.

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Digital media platforms may be the hottest on the market, but some consumer research indicates they still have a long way to go before persuading customers of their advertising effectiveness.

In order to evaluate the efficacy of using a wide range of communications platforms to reach consumers, the 2007 release of Compose, a collaboration of WPP Group's Kantar Media Research unit and Netherlands-based Pointlogic, shows that among 33 channels – from traditional media like TV, radio and print, to new media and marketing channels like sampling or direct marketing – most consumers still find mainstream media to have the greatest influence.

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Newspaper Innovation, the Web site dedicated to information on free dailies around the world, reported today that Seoul's eighth free daily focuses on economics.

Launched in July, IlIlKyungJe (the Daily Economic), has a circulation of about 100,000.

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In its latest tweak to the way it does business, the Chicago Sun-Times is partnering with Clickshare Service Corp. for access control on the newspaper's Web site and subscription management in hopes of increasing paid circulation and adding value to the paper in the eyes of existing customers.

The Sun-Times Media Group Inc. is launching an electronic edition of its flagship Chicago newspaper that will only be available to print subscribers, after recently contracting with the Chicago Tribune for home delivery in the city as well as both home subscriptions and single-copies in the city's suburbs.

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In an affidavit filed this week, the Nigerian federal government is claiming it owns all of Sun Publishing Limited, which publishes the daily Sun newspaper.

The government filed the affidavit in response to the publishing firm's preliminary objection seeking a court order to stop the freeze on three bank accounts used to operate the company.

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Fairfax Media is making up for 'lost years' of corporate stagnancy by heavily pursuing takeovers in the last 18 months, chairman Ron Walker has said, announcing a 9.9 percent comparable profit increase to $251.1 million for the year through June 30.

However, the result, described as “satisfactory” by the media group, did not excite investors, The Age, which is owned by Fairfax, reported Friday.

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The Wall Street Journal Online has named Almar Latour its new managing editor, effective Sept. 4. Latour will replace Bill Grueskin, who was recently appointed deputy managing editor of The Wall Street Journal.

Latour, 36, was previously the bureau chief for the technology group based in New York, in charge of the Journal's print and online edition integration.

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A number of new locally focused publications in the Chicago area are coming to the market, in hopes of engaging more readers by providing news tailored to their immediate needs and relevant to issues they face in their daily lives.

In addition, McGraw-Hill announced this Wednesday that BusinessWeek will launch a local version, BusinessWeek Chicago, in November. This publication will be distributed to over 60,000 Chicago-based BusinessWeek subscribers, along with the original national edition.

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Google’s YouTube has launched a new ad model which allows advertisers, such as New Line Cinema and BMW, to run rich media and video ads within either professional or user-generated content.

The new InVideo ads are semi-transparent overlays appearing at the bottom of the video player. The rich media animations show up 15 seconds after the selected content starts, and overlays up to 10 seconds. The ads also have interactive functionality, which allows users to click an advertiser’s URL to launch a new player on the original window, or to go back to the content at any time.

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Publishers of two free dailies will pay for 64 recycling bins that will be placed across central London, it was agreed Wednesday.

Westminster City Council threatened earlier this year to ban the papers, London Lite, published by Associated Newspapers, and rival thelondonpaper, published by News International, if they did not help clean up thousands of discarded newspapers left around the city each night.

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In an effort to fill a gap he thinks current Arab-American newspapers are missing, self-syndicated columnist Ray Hanania is launching a national newspaper, the Arab American Times.

The newspaper will “focus on features, profiles, culture and society of Arabs in America, something I think is needed,” Hanania said.

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On the same day Daily Telegraph editor Will Lewis announced a list of personnel changes, including new digital and political reporting teams, education editor Liz Lightfoot and royal correspondent Caroline Davies left the paper.

The newspaper will not comment on why the two quit, but it is understood they left Tuesday without giving notice.

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AKQA, a San Francisco-based digital ad firm, has ticked off one item on its long shopping list, buying search marketing company Searchrev. Financial terms were not disclosed.

According to an inside source, Searchrev’s annual revenue is less than $10 million. However, AKQA also plans to establish the largest independent digital marketing concern in the nation, and the company believes the Searchrev buyout will pay off.

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China's General Administration of Press and Publication has announced it will begin a two month campaign aimed at cracking down on so-called fake news, during which authorities will inspect every newspaper and magazine in the country, and also punish journalists caught accepting bribery or extorting money in exchange for positive coverage.

The campaign's purpose is to help the country's media regain credibility after a Beijing Television reporter was found to have made up a story about food vendors selling steam buns filled with cardboard.

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Media giant Reuters Group Plc announced Tuesday it will buy San Francisco-based investment research group StarMine for an undisclosed amount.

The British media group, which is being taken over by Canadian publishing company Thomson Corp., said StarMine's analytics will be added to its Reuters Knowledge product.

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Google has acquired a stake in Tianya Club, one of China's largest online forums, the site announced Monday. The size of the stake was not disclosed.

This deal apparently links to a new Chinese Q&A community site, Wenda, which is a joint venture between the two. Its format will be similar to the retired Google Answers, or the Russian Otvety, which resurfaced earlier this year.

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Voting to approve the company's $8.2 billion plan to go private, 97 percent of Tribune Co. shares were cast Tuesday morning in favor of Chicago real-estate mogul Sam Zell's buyout plan of $34 per share.

The Chicago media holding company has bought half the company's outstanding shares at the $34 price tag, and although shareholders have formally approved the deal, Wall Street speculators are skeptical the deal will even go through.

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The Des Moines Register tops the list of newspaper penetration for both daily and Sunday readership (based on DMA) in the United States, according to a new Scarborough Research.

The Iowa newspaper has an almost 50 percent reach on a daily basis. The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, The Honolulu Advertiser and The Post-Standard (Syracuse, N.Y.) follow, all reaching more than 39 percent of adults, the study found.

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Due to lower demand resulting in a reduction in its print run and distribution points for the summer months, free Dublin newspaper Herald AM dropped 23 percent in circulation during July.

Media buyers expect a return to more normal levels beginning in September.

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The Times-Union of Jacksonville, Fla., will lay off 60 workers across several departments, but not in the newsroom, according to the paper’s report today.

Publisher Carl Cannon said that the reason for the layoffs, announced on Monday, is “nearly a year of declining revenue from real estate advertising.”

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Nokia has launched its second Vernacular news portal in India, in association with one of the country's foremost media groups, Bhaskar Group.

The news portal will be accessible anywhere, and available in four languages: Hindi, Malayalam, Gujarati and English.

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Schibsted, the biggest media group in Norway, has bought the online marketing and traffic firm WebTraffic. The financial terms were not disclosed.

WebTraffic, based in Sweden, works with webmasters by providing them with guaranteed traffic to their websites.

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Two UK regional papers, the Norwich Evening News and the Swindon Advertiser, have appointed new editors.

Norwich Evening News, an Archant-owned newspaper, appointed James Foster as the new editor. Foster’s move follows the departure of David Bourn, who quit the post in May.

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As Tribune Co. shareholders prepare to gather in Chicago Tuesday to vote on the $8.2 billion plan that would take the company private, speculators question whether the deal will even go through.

Since April, when Tribune accepted real-estate tycoon Sam Zell's offer to go private, the company's debt has continued to mount, making the $34 per share deal tough to go through, according to industry analysts.

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The Prime Minister of Mauritania's bodyguards physically attacked radio journalist Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Moghdad two days before newspaper editor Sidi Mohamed Ould Ebbe was charged with “libeling the First Lady” over the weekend.

Reporters Without Borders condemned both actions in Mauritania in a statement released Monday, following Saturday's charges against Ebbe and Thursday's beating of Moghdad.

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Government officials in Thailand are illegally blocking Web sites and using threats and intimidation tactics against webmasters, legal experts and webmasters have announced.

The country's controversial Cyber Crime Act, pushed through by the military-appointed government July 19, allows the government to block a Web site only through a court order, said Paiboon Amornpinyokiart, a legal expert.

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Broadcaster NextRadioTV is one of several to be offered a chance to buy French financial newspaper La Tribune from LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, but is not interested according to the company's CEO.

Alain Weill said the newspaper got in touch with his company, “to ask if we wanted to look at the prospectus, which we did.”

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A worsening credit market is likely to force Dow Jones & Co. to pay more to refinance debt, the company's chief executive, Richard Zannino announced Friday.

The company has a “three-year term debt facility to roll over, and with spreads widening we'll likely pay more to refinance it,” Zannino is quoted as saying in an e-mail interview with Reuters. He was responding to questions about the state of deteriorating credit conditions that began in the U.S. subprime mortgage market, Reuters reported.

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MySpace, Blogger and YouTube are tops with U.S. audiences, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings report, which shows the top U.S. social networking, blogs and video sites in July.

MySpace, with 61 million in unique audiences, has remained the most popular U.S. social networking site, with a 33 percent growth from 46 million in unique audiences in the same period one year ago. Facebook ranked second, with nearly 20 million unique users. However, it showed a dramatic 129 percent growth compared to July 2006. Other sites worth observing are Club Penguin, LinkedIn, and Buzznet.com, all of which grew more than 200 percent each.

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eBay has added yet another of its free classifieds brands to the United States, just weeks after launching the free classifieds site Kijiji.

Gumtree, a top online classifieds platform in Australia, the United Kingdom, Poland and South Africa, launched this week in three U.S. cities: Boston, Chicago and New York. Together with Kijiji and eBay's 25 percent stake in Craigslist, eBay will be behind two and a fourth classifieds sites in the United States, putting it in a better position to take over the free online classifieds market, should it go the way of the online auction.

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Readership is up for the Czech Republic's top two general dailies, Lidové noviny and MF Dnes, for the first half of 2007, the latest readership survey Media Projekt 2007 by Publicitas has found.

The country's best selling general interest daily MF Dnes saw readership go up by 80,000 readers from last year, to 1,128,000 readers for the period between January and June this year. Lidové noviny, considered to be the Czech Republic's highest regarded daily, also saw readership climb, but by 7,000 readers. That daily's numbers grew to 239,000 in 2007, from 232,000 in 2006.

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The New York Times Company has reported its July revenue declined 3.5 percent, but its Web site NYTimes.com still had a cheerful traffic growth from 12.53 million in June to over 14 million in July, securing its spot as the number one U.S. newspaper site, according to the figures released by Nielsen//Net Ratings.

Print advertising revenue continued to decrease, but both the circulation revenue and online advertising revenue grew four percent.

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Four U.S. journalists have filed a lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard (HP), claiming they suffered a “serious invasion of privacy,” when private investigators hired by HP assumed false identities to acquire their personal phone records.

Reporters from the Associated Press and the technology Web site CNET are among a dozen people targeted in an investigation ordered by HP's former chairwoman, Patricia Dunn, into who was leaking boardroom information. Dunn lost her job due to the incident, and California's attorney general brought charges against HP, which the company settled for $14.5 million. Charges against Dunn were dismissed in March.

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Microsoft ranks as the top U.S. parent company, with more than 121 million home and work online unique audiences and an average two-hour time spent per user, according to the latest Nielsen//NetRatings report on July 2007 data for top sites by parent company and top brands.

Google was ranked number two, with Yahoo!, Time Warner, News Corp. Online and eBay following.

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The Sunday Times has given a copy of South African Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang's health records to the Cape Town Medi-Clinic.

The newspaper handed over its only copy of the records, which contained information on the minister's 2005 hospital stay, the topic of a recent exposé by the newspaper which alleged Tshabalala-Msimang drank alcohol and threw tantrums while in the hospital. Meanwhile, the minister and the clinic have filed an application with the Johannesburg High Court against the Sunday Times.

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