Online advertisers now are allocating their budgets across more sites, and paying lower rates in many cases, placing pricing pressure on established online players.

Several companies already met the challenges when the reports showed weakness in online ad revenue from banners and other display ads.

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Newspaper publisher APN News & Media began outsourcing editorial production work Sunday, and will extend the plan to five daily and three weekly newspapers by the end of the year, APN deputy chief executive Rick Neville said.

An outside contractor will be in charge of news editing and layout operations at The New Zealand Herald, the country's biggest daily, and several regional dailies, he said.

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The government in Kazakhstan appears to have taken over the newspaper Karavan, the International Press Institute announced Monday.

The weekly newspaper received a letter, dated Aug. 6, from the printing house Asia Press stating it would no longer produce the paper. Karavan's management received a letter at the same time from the office's landlord, stating they must vacate immediately.

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The media group Lagardère has agreed to sell its regional daily newspaper group in southern France to Hersant Media Group for 160 million euro, Lagardère Group executives announced Monday.

The companies began negotiating the deal July 19. Top titles in the newspaper group include La Provence, Nice Matin, Var Matin, Corse Matin and Marseille Plus.

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Mixing Google Maps with crime data, The Los Angeles Times has launched the Homicide Map on its Web site, which plots all of the cases listed in the newspaper's Homicide Report column.

The map pinpoints on a map and lists by category all of crime reporter Jill Leovy's daily homicide reports, showing 515 homicides in Los Angeles County so far this year.

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Gannett is launching more than 100 mobile Internet sites in order to reinforce its local presence. The free sites, covering 84 daily newspapers, 19 local broadcast sites and USA Today, will feature news, sports, weather and other local information.

The content will be provided by Gannett’s Information Centers, which generate content from various Gannett media sources, including print, television, Internet and mobile.

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Google is closing down its service for online video sales and rental, a 19-month experiment doomed by free online video sites such as YouTube.

The decision, confirmed Friday, reinforces Google’s intention to concentrate on an ad format development to capitalize on the popularity of online video. The company has already earned a lot from advertising, but most of it comes from traditional text-based messages along with search results or other written content online.

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A part-time television producer who allegedly faked a story about steam buns filled with cardboard was sentenced to one year in jail and fined 1,000 yuan Sunday, Chinese state media have reported.

Zi Beijia's so-called expose on Beijing TV showing a street vendor filling a bun with pre-soaked cardboard was aired July 8. Zi later said he bought the cardboard and hired four migrant workers to act out a choreographed scene.

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