The Dutch free daily DAG will launch a narrowcast channel that will be viewable in 1,200 cafés across the Netherlands, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

DAG is owned by PCM publishers and the telecom company KPN.

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Indonesia could see some 40,000 villages linked with fiber-optic networks, giving them telephone and Internet connections, should the nation's government open the project for approval in Surabaya, East Java on Nov. 30.

The project would link the entire archipelago with a fiber-optic network, which would be called the Palapa Ring Project, said Muhammad Nuh, Indonesia's information and communication minister.

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Although U.S. newspapers reported a print ad revenue fall in the third quarter, the number of visitors to the newspaper Web sites went up 3.7 percent, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

Over 59 million people, or 37.1 percent of all active online users, visited newspaper Web sites during the quarter, growing from 56.9 million a year ago, the Newspaper Association stated, citing data provided by Nielsen//NetRatings.

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Lithuanian free daily 15min has expanded content by adding new supplements, including the new bi-weekly 15min SAU, Newspaper Innovation reported.

The magazine-like supplement covers psychology, beauty, innovations, travel and housing.

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Fewer than four percent of Africans have an Internet connection, a depressing statistic Connect Africa, a summit of African politicians, international lenders and IT leaders, hopes to change.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) was able to persuade Microsoft to help monitor the progress of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) investment in the continent with an online application called Global View, based on Microsoft's Virtual Earth, but hosted by the ITU, Heise Online reported Wednesday.

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The Financial Mail in the United Kingdom is breaking fresh ground among national papers by launching a Polish supplement.

The business and personal finance section of the Mail on Sunday will launch reports in English and Polish, and as an online version at www.thisismoney.co.uk.

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Thanks to new advertising programmes and expected expansion into the mobile phone services arena, Google Inc. shares have eclipsed $700, adding $100 in less than a month.

Google stock rose $5.38 to $700.15 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading Wednesday morning in New York, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Even earlier in the morning, shares had reached $704.79.

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Trinity Mirror has hired News Corporation's mobile head from its Australian digital branch to lead its interactive group.

Rick Gleave will develop, test and launch Trinity Mirror's various content subscriptions services to mobile phones, MediaGuardian reported Wednesday.

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More than 10 percent of U.S. homes are receiving HD channels, according to new data from Nielsen.

The research firm also found that 11.3 percent, or 12.7 million, of 112.8 million U.S. homes not only have HD sets, but “have activated the service to receive the more pristine feed.” Some 13.7 percent have HD-compatible TVs, so the "turn-on" rate is significant.

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Rupert Murdoch opened his Eurocentral printing plant in Scotland today, announcing it is the “largest and fastest” in the world, MediaGuardian reported.

The first stage of the UK subsidiary News International's £650 million printing press modernisation programme was also unveiled by the chairman and chief executive of News Corporation Murdoch, who was joined by Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister.

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Bloggers and journalists have united to launch a Scandinavian citizen journalism portal to create a cross-regional Scandinavian news site, Kristine Lowe reported Tuesday from Oslo.

iNorden.org is “an attempt at setting new standards for civic journalism in our neck of the woods,” the site's founders stated.

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Rumours of Google’s mobile plans have haunted the media and technology sectors all year, but sources close to MocoNews have suggested that the online big shot is going to announce a mobile operating system in mid-November.

The Wall Street Journal received similar information, reporting that “within the next two weeks, Google is expected to announce its plans to bring Google-powered phones to market by the middle of next year.”

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The Times and The Telegraph have taken their Fleet Street rivalries to the desert, this time vying for the attention of the United Arab Emirate's cutting edge business community, Emirates Today Online reported Tuesday.

The Times of London is currently holding a business forum in Dubai, and has been printing 15,000 copies a day in the city since May. On Monday, The Daily Telegraph launched a temporary online edition for Dubai that can be downloaded and printed.

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France's Culture Minister said in an interview Friday that the planned sale of French business daily Les Echos to luxury goods maker LVMH is a “private matter,” which does not call for legislation.

“I met LVMH's head, Bernard Arnault. I received the staff of Les Echos and La Tribune. Guarantees have been given. This is a private matter. The journalists, I believe they are independent. I do not think its is necessary to adopt a law,” Christine Albanel told French daily Le Monde.

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ImpreMedia, the parent company of La Opinion in Los Angeles and El Diario La Prensa in New York City, is set to become the biggest Hispanic paper participant in Google's Print Ads and AdSense programs, according to a company statement Monday.

ImpreMedia's Spanish-language papers will join about 600 English-language papers in Google ad programmes.

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When The New York Times changes its tagline from “All the News That’s Fit to Print” to “All the News That’s Fit to Click,” there is no doubt that the publishing world is facing tremendous change.

According to The Newspapers and Magazines Online report from eMarketer, newspaper publishers in the past few years have experienced an ad revenue migration from print, especially classifieds, to online sites, such as AutoTrader, Craigslist, Monster and Zillow.com. Many magazines with million subscribers have been shut down in favour of branded Web sites.

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The BBC has set up a board for complaints following a phone-in featuring the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

Callers phoned in to the radio station 5 live to tell Sir Christopher Meyer their complaints against Scottish newspapers.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer will launch its electronic edition in January, according to Pressmart Media Ltd., which will develop and deliver the digital edition.

"Pressmart will co-develop, host and electronically deliver the print-replica eEdition of The Philadelphia Inquirer on its New Media Delivery Platform," the company said in a statement. "Offering Web 2.0 features that include blogs, podcasts, RSS and social media integration, the electronic edition will be delivered on multiple distribution channels to individuals, enterprises and academic institutions."

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The first Ugandan newspaper was recently delivered to Bukwo, the newly created remote eastern border district.

The very first copies of Daily Monitor were delivered to five schools in Suam town council.

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The privately owned Czech publisher Mladá Fronta AS announced Monday it will launch a free business daily newspaper, called E15, at the end of November.

E15 will be published five times a week, beginning at a circulation of 50,000 copies and will be styled partly after London's City A.M. free daily, according to the Associated Press.

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Gannett Co. Inc. and The Tribune Company announced Monday they will expand the Metromix brand of entertainment Web sites to a network across the United States.

Metromix LLC will launch Metromix.com in the top 30 media markets in the United States, as well as in other key metro areas, a joint release stated.

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Chicago RedEye, the free daily tabloid published by the Chicago Tribune, bumped up 50,000 copies to a distribution of 200,000, on its fifth anniversary on Monday.

With the 33 percent circulation increase, RedEye is now the daily with largest distribution in the Chicago area, the paper said.

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Media buyers are happy with Yahoo’s decision to open up its home page by adding outside links, but said the company should be moving faster to clear up barriers.

Yahoo last week started posting links to other news and content sites on the Featured section for the first time. The effort is aimed to open up the portal and make it the entry site for online users.

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Paris-based Publicis Groupe revealed results that CEO Maurice Levy termed as “good” for the third quarter of 2007, with “excellent double digit growth” among its two media networks, Starcom MediaVest Group and ZenithOptimedia Group and the recent buyout of digital network Digitas.

Revenues of Publicis increased 10.8 percent to $1.617 billion in the third quarter, compared with the disappointing results of the first half.

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The Sunday Times is the newspaper British readers spend the most time with, according to a National Readership Survey out Friday.

This is the first time the NRS revealed a set of data regarding the time spent reading papers, and will become a standard NRS data release, MediaGuardian reported Friday.

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The World Federation of Advertisers has asked the European Union to “closely examine” Google's proposed $3.1 billion (£1.5 billion) purchase of DoubleClick, which the group says has the potential to greatly reduce competition in Internet advertising, MediaGuardian reported Friday.

The WFA sent a letter to the European Union's commission asking the EU to analyse the proposed acquisition as well as Microsoft's $6 billion (£2.92 billion) buyout of aQuantive and WPP's takeover of RealMedia.

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Journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald have protested the newspaper's use of its front page to promote Singapore Airlines Friday.

The broadsheet also devoted a four-page wraparound to Thursday's arrival of the airline's giant A380 airbus. The wraparound included a full-page Singapore Airlines advertisement and three smaller ads for the airline, as well as articles about the arrival of the world's largest passenger plane and other milestones in aviation, The Australian reported Friday.

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The board of The Associated Press on Thursday approved a major change on how it prices and packages news to U.S. newspapers.

Instead of offering news feeds defined by the volume of news delivered, the new plan will focus on a core service of all breaking news including national, state and international, with options for adding other services or purchasing stories individually.

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The British government has dropped its proposals to tighten freedom of information legislation that would make rules more restrictive on cost limits for FOI requests and limit media access to coroners' courts and will instead investigate the idea for a freedom of expression audit for future legislation, the UK's Newspaper Society reported Thursday.

“We agree with Select Committee on Culture that a free press is a hallmark of our democracy, that there is no case for statutory regulation of the press, that self- regulation of the press should be maintained and that it is for publishers themselves to demonstrate by their decisions that they can sustain and bolster public confidence in the way information is gathered and used,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, according to the NS.

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Swiss media group Tamedia AG will launch its free newspaper on Dec. 5. The new publication, named “News”, will have 334,000 copies published for the first edition, the group said in a statement.

The paper is a joint venture between Swiss local papers Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung and the national daily Tages-Anzeiger.

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The Sun's Web site is the latest to switch to Escenic CMS's content management platform.

More than 350 media sites in 14 countries have switched to Escenic Content Engine, including The Times Online and Die Welt, according to an Escenic statement.

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Japanese corporation Bridgestone has revealed its latest product - full-colour, bendable e-paper - which could be available as early as 2009.

The company has created a 0.29mm-thick, and 20sq cm measured display, which is able to show 4,096 colours.

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Will Metro International, the “Free Dailies King” be dethroned by other free dailies following in its footsteps?

BusinessWeek talked to analysts who say that this may be so, as competitors usually have businesses outside free dailies to fall back on. Not so with Metro.

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Wall Street analyst Paul Ginocchio has predicted that big metro papers will bounce back, but not until 2012.

The Deutsche Bank Securities analyst warned that if earnings do turn into black again, they'll be in margins far below the levels newspapers used to have in the 1990s.

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News International is investing millions of pounds in the property search engine Globrix, expected to launch in November.

Globrix searches across several property sites and locates all properties available in the United Kingdom. It will use the funding from News International to become a top property search site within its first year, News International reported Thursday.

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The E.W. Scripps Company reported third-quarter operating results Thursday, showing strong revenue and segment profit growth at Scripps Networks, which includes Food Network, HGTV and other national television networks.

The company's third-quarter revenue was $596 million, compared to $583 million the same period last year, PR Newswire reported.

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Journalists, textile workers, file clerks, computer programmers and photo lab technicians are all on the U.S. government's list of endangered career paths in the 21st century, MSNBC reported.

Despite the numbers of media outlets increasing, newspapers, where most U.S. reporters work, will have to cut costs and jobs as digital media increases and print weakens, the U.S. Labor Department says.

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Microsoft Corp. Wednesday announced its $240 million investment in a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook, a deal which places a $15 billion valuation on the three-year-old social network. By beating out Google after lengthy lobbying, Microsoft won exclusive global rights to sell third-party banner advertisings on the social networking site.

Microsoft has been able to sell ads on Facebook in the United States since August 2006. This move to expand to global market, however, is critical because 60 percent of Facebook’s 50 million registered users are overseas.

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A new standard to protect the intellectual property of anyone wishing to make content available on the Internet will be unveiled at a conference in New York next month after a year-long pilot project spearheaded by leading publishing groups from around the globe.

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Agora has launched a new e-mail service in partnership with Google, the Polish media company announced in a statement.

G.pl web mail is based on Google's popular Gmail, and uses Google's technology to provide high quality, extended capacity and functions, such as calendar synchronization, voice and text communicator (Google Talk) and documents sharing among G.pl and Gmail users, Agora stated Monday.

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The Guardian America site was launched Tuesday, aimed to meet the needs of a growing U.S. audience, according to its editors.

Michael Tomasky, editor of the Guardianamerica.com site, said it would include the best of the UK site and also “political and cultural coverage of the States that is more geared toward a US audience’s interests.”

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Strikes by public transport workers in France meant two free dailies, MatinPlus and Direct Soir, were not published last Thursday and Friday, Newspaper Innovation reported Wednesday.

Both free dailies are published by Vincent Bolloré.

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John Mulholland will take the reins from Roger Alton as editor of The Observer at the end of the year.

Previously at the Guardian, Alton has been at The Observer for more than 20 years, and has served as arts editor, features editor, editor of Weekend magazine and assistant editor. Mulholland is currently deputy editor at The Observer, Press Gazette reported Wednesday.

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GateHouse Media Inc. said Tuesday it has agreed to buy several daily and non-daily publications from Morris Publishing Group for $115 million.

GateHouse Media said the acquisition is expected to generate “an incremental $14 million of adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization,” according to Finanz Nachrichten.

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Susan L. Decker, Yahoo’s President, said that the company would emphasize partnerships with popular local search engines in South Korea in order to maintain Yahoo's strong position in the country’s online search market.

"South Korea's Internet market is expected to rise 20 percent on average annually over the next four years. South Korea is a single largest market except that of the U.S.," Decker said, unveiling her intention Tuesday for a bigger stake in the world's most Internet-savvy country.

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Reuters and Nokia Research Center (NRC) are teaming up on a mobile journalism project that could change how journalists file news when they're on the go.

The new mobile application is based on a lightweight toolkit that gives journalists everything they need to file and publish news from the most remote regions in the world. It is the first project the NRC and Reuters are showcasing after collaborating on long-term research, PR Newswire reported.

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In Asia, South Korea is the country with highest Internet penetration, beating even Japan, while China has the most monthly unique users but the Internet reach is still very low, according to the “China: Online Overview” report from eMarketer.

South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are the top three countries with Internet penetration over 60 percent, while China and India lag far behind, with the online reach of merely nine and three percent, respectively.

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HT Media Ltd. and The Wall Street Journal's joint venture, Mint, is set to launch its third edition in Bangalore in the next month, an expansion that comes within eight months of being launched, Agencyfaqs reported Tuesday.

Mint is the fifth business daily to hit newsstands in India, and the third from media giant HT.

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Fairfax Media is closing its printing press in Warrnambool, in Victoria's south west, causing up to 20 job losses there.

The closing is part of an effort to combine the company's regional printing plants, ABC News in Australia reported.

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MediaNews Group Inc. announced Monday that Hearst Corp. bought its stake for $317 million as part of a deal between these two private publishing groups involving several papers in San Francisco area.

According to the terms of the deal, which was first announced last year and completed Friday, MediaNews picked up newspapers that Hearst acquired from McClatchy Co. as an exchange for Hearst’s 31 percent interest in MediaNews's operations outside the Bay Area.

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Billionaire Sam Zell, who plans to buy the Tribune Company, told a group of newspaper executives Monday that part of the industry's problems are due to complacency, comparing the industry to Nero fiddling while Rome burned, the Canadian Press reported.

“I think the newspaper industry has stood there and watched while other media enterprises have taken our bacon and run with it,” he told the Inland Press Association. “It's too much complacency.”

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The New York Times Company announced Tuesday that total revenues from continuing operations were up five percent in September compared with the same period last year.

Ad revenues increased 5.5 percent and circulation revenues rose 4.1 percent.

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Newspapers and magazines in Ireland record circulation figures monthly, but release those figures just twice a year. Releasing the data more often could mean more lucrative advertising deals, Ireland's Sunday Business Post reported Sunday.

In fact, advertisers could begin asking for these figures more frequently due to the ever-growing number of people using electronic media, and should the Irish media resist, they could be left behind, ABC's Martyn Gates told the Post.

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The Sun announced its mobile phone offering to readers Monday, making it the first UK national newspaper to launch a ".mobi" domain name with content to mobile users.

The site, www.thesun.mobi, allows readers to access it over mobile phones or portable devices, and covers a simple version of contents on the Sun's Web site.

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MediaNews Group will create Web sites separate from its 57 dailies in an attempt to reach younger readers and increase the percentage of sales that come from the Web from the current seven percent to 20 percent within the next five years.

MediaNews owns the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News, among others.

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Tribune Co. stock on Friday dropped the hardest in five years, after the Los Angeles Times reported that the planned $8 billion purchase by Sam Zell is in peril.

The Federal Communications Commission is considering possible changes in media-ownership regulations, which may cause the Tribune deal to not close on time, the Times stated.

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The Financial Times saw a nine percent bump in ad revenues for the first nine months of the year, while its owner, Pearson Plc, has reported a 20 percent jump in operating profits.

Pearson said it expects to “achieve a strong underlying growth on its key financial measures for the full year,” and currently all of its businesses are trading either in line or ahead of forecasts, Brand Republic reported Monday.

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Both MySpace and Facebook each lost over one million users in September compared with the previous month, according to Nielsen Online.

The unique user for MySpace dropped by nearly three percent to 58.6 million in September versus the 60.3 million in August. That marked the first time since June that MySpace saw unique user figures at less than 60 million.

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At least 33 interactive digital media research projects have been given $14 million in funding in the past year in Singapore, The Straits Times reported.

The funding is part of $500 million the government put aside last year to place Singapore in a top position to grow into a hub for interactive digital media (IDM).

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Advertising will appear on the BBC.com Web site beginning next month.

BBC Worldwide will soon be able to bring in revenues from its global audience following approval for the controversial plan from the BBC Trust.

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The World Editor & Marketeer conference and Expo, organised by the World Association of Newspapers, ended Friday as a celebration of newspapers' future, in print and as a growing multimedia business.

“Newspapers are a growth business, with circulation, free dailies, market share, advertising revenues and newspaper online consumption continuing to grow, as do the number of newspaper titles,” said Eamonn Byrne, business director for the WAN.

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As it prepares for its expected December acquisition by News Corp., Dow Jones & Co. reported revenues jumped nearly 20 percent in the third quarter to $493 million, thanks to a 50 percent acquisition of Factivia.

Without the acquisition, revenue would have increased only about 1.8 percent, as print advertising continued to decline in the quarter. Excluding a comparison to 2006's high earnings per share due to a major tax gain that year, as well as a charge for costs relating to the upcoming merger, Dow Jones also saw earnings of $23.1 million, or $0.27 per share – that's a 145 percent increase from third quarter 2006, when profit was at $9.4 million and $0.11 per share, paidContent reported Thursday.

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Kif?, the first free independent commuter newspaper on the public transport system in Malta, was launched Wednesday, patronised by the Ministry of Urban Development and Roads, the Malta Transport Authority and the Public Transport Association.

The publication will be issued on the public transport system and readers can pick up a copy every Thursday morning on their commute.

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Two Village Voice Media executives were arrested in Phoenix Thursday on charges that a story published earlier that day in The Phoenix New Times, owned by Village Voice, revealed grand jury secrets.

Jim Larkin, chief executive, and Michael Lacey, the executive editor, were arrested at their homes Thursday night because of an article they wrote revealing that the Village Voice Media company, its executives, reporters and names of the readers of its Web site had been subpoenaed by a special prosecutor, the New York Times reported Friday.

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Free newspapers are a major force in print, particularly in Europe, where two-thirds of the 42 million copies every workday are published.

Piet Bakker, one of the world's leading researchers on the subject, provided an overview of the free newspaper phenomenon and their impact on newspaper markets at the World Editor & Marketeer conference in Amsterdam.

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Advertising supports journalism – we all know that. But what happens when a specific advertiser is courted to sponsor a specific piece of journalism? Is it a viable new business model, or does the ad depreciate the value of the journalism it is meant to support?

A Memphis editor found out that things don't always work out in the best interest of journalism or advertising. Chris Peck, of the Memphis Commercial Appeal, told Editor & Publisher Thursday his paper found itself on “treacherous ground” when its advertising department pursued Federal Express to sponsor a six-part series titled “Memphis and the World,” set to run for six Sundays beginning in November.

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Publishers at the 2nd World Digital Publishing Conference in Amsterdam Thursday agreed on one thing when it comes to newspapers' uncertain future: the pace of development is always increasing, and being able to adapt to that constant change is vital to each newspaper's survival and success.

“I can't tell you what products and services will be available in five years. I have some ideas, but it is nonsense to guess,” Birger Magnus, deputy CEO of Schibsted, the Norway-based publishing group, told conference-goers. “The only thing we know is the speed of change is increasing, we have to be flexible and adapt.”

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Singapore and China have inked 17 agreements to develop the interactive digital media (IDM) industries in the two countries.

The agreements were signed by Singapore's Media Development Authority (MDA) and China's State Administration for Film, Radio and Television, which means both countries will be “well poised to capture a slice of the IDM market,” Asia Media reported Thursday.

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Asians will drive the evolution of content and applications online, which are now dominated by English-speaking users, said Vinton Cerf, Google's vice president, at the World Knowledge Forum in Seoul Wednesday.

"The number of people using the Internet will only increase in Asia, so will their languages, culture and contents on the network," Cerf added.

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Overall, readership in Denmark is on the upswing, with free dailies claiming the top three spots, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

24timer counted 594,000 readers, MetroXpres has 571,000 and Nyhedsavisen has 503,000, according to September readership data.

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Aegis, the UK-based agency holding company Thursday announced its acquisition of Implicom, a Paris-based firm specialising in sales promotion and direct marketing media. With about $4.6 million gross assets, Implicom will ally with Aegis Media unit, which oversees media networks like Carat, Isobar, Vizeum and Posterscope, and happens to be the dominant media buyer in France.

"Its expertise will help us further broaden our market-leading offer in France, where Aegis Media is the number one player," said Robert Lerwill, the group's CEO, according to Media Post. He said that Implicom would be part of an "integrated" offering.

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What will the newspaper look like in 2020? The Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project asked 22 futurists, academics, industry insiders, internet pioneers and other media experts to envision the newspaper of the future, and their responses say much about the present state of the newspaper business.

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Top Spanish newspaper El Pais already prints a Latin American edition in Buenos Aires and Mexico City, but will expand distribution in the region to further its place in the market, ultimately using the print version's reach as a vehicle to establish a global brand on the Internet, the head of media group Prisa told Reuters in a report Wednesday.

Prisa is not aiming for El Pais to compete with local dailies already established in Spanish-speaking markets, but to “capture an educated elite of the sort won over by The Economist in that magazine's transformation from a British to a world-wide publication,” the Reuters article stated.

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A Russian Federal Security Service officer has been charged Wednesday in connection with the 2006 murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

FSB Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov has been charged with providing Politkovskaya's killers with her home address prior to her Oct. 7, 2006 slaying in her Moscow apartment building, Itar-Tass reported Wednesday, citing a source close to the investigation, United Press International stated in an article.

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The East Valley Tribune, an Arizona daily which serves the Scottsdale/Mesa/Tempe area, this week announced major changes to its content and business model.

The paper will move all local news to the front page, and increase the number of local editions from two to four. It will also convert the new front local news section to a smaller size and distribute it for free in selected areas. Moreover, paid subscribers will keep receiving full content in print and Web in a "premium" package.

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Gannett Co. reported Wednesday profits fell 10 percent in the third-quarter, due to a slump in classified advertising sales and television revenue.

Net income dropped $234 million, or $1.01 per share, for the largest newspaper publisher in the United States. The third quarter in 2006 saw net income at $261.4 million, or $1.11 per share. Sales dropped 3.8 percent to $1.81 billion, but earnings per share b