As Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. released its financial results for the fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2007, Murdoch also announced he hopes to close the $5.6 billion buy-out deal with Dow Jones & Co. within three to four months.

News Corp. saw an 8.6 percent increase in fourth quarter consolidated revenue, to $7.37 billion from $6.82 billion. Operating income grew 18 percent from $1.03 billion to $1.2 billion, while net income rose 4.5 percent from $852 million to $890 million in this quarter.

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News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch announced Wednesday during the company's fiscal fourth quarter conference call he plans to sell Dow Jones' Ottaway newspaper group, once the $5.6 billion sale is complete.

“We will be selling the local newspapers fairly quickly,” Murdoch is quoted by Editor & Publisher as saying during the call. “Outside of that, we are keeping everything and developing it.”

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Trinity Mirror may be considering more “reverse publishing” hyper-local products, the company's regional editorial director has hinted, Press Gazette reported Thursday.

Neil Benson said the Teesside Evening Gazette has been successful after launching six free newspapers made up of content from the region's 20 local citizen journalism Web sites since December 2005.

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U.S. media company Scripps has bought the audio and video sharing site Pickle.com for $4.7 million.

Scripps, which last month bought the cooking Web site Recipezaar.com for $25 million, aims to build its user content platform into the specialist sites.

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Global press freedom organisation Reporters Without Borders has sent a letter to Kenya's president, asking him not to sign a new media bill passed by the country's Parliament.

Under the law, journalists would be forced to reveal their sources, which the organisation told President Mwai Kibaki would lead to “disastrous consequences for Kenyan democracy.”

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Two student journalists have been killed in separate incidents in the northern Sri Lankan city of Jaffna.

Nilakshan Sahapavan, 22, editor of Chaa'laram and student at the Jaffna University Media Research and Training Centre was killed by an unidentified gunman Aug. 1. Thanikasalam Sasirooban, 25, a trainee journalist for the Daily Mirror, was gunned down while traveling home on his motorbike Aug. 2.

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In a strange new deal, the Sun-Times Media Group Inc. announced Wednesday that one of its biggest competitors, the Chicago Tribune, will deliver its flagship newspaper, the Chicago Sun-Times, and 10 other suburban Chicago papers owned by the newspaper publisher.

Although the Sun-Times will continue selling single copies of the tabloid-style newspaper in Chicago, the Tribune will deliver both home subscriptions of Sun-Times publications and single copies of the newspaper in the city's suburbs.

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The Sarasota Herald-Tribune will cut jobs as it reshapes its features section and consolidates four regional offices.

The Herald-Tribune, owned by the New York Times Regional Media Group, is the largest of the four daily titles the Times owns in Florida.

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