Official industry auditor ABC will restructure in an effort to better monitor the changing multi-platform media industry, Media Week has reported.

Account teams managing print-based, traditional media, will now also be responsible for all ABC platforms, especially online.

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Portugal's top press distribution company, the Vasp Group, has been putting several international newspapers on newsstands in real time during the past two months; sometimes the newspapers are for sale in Lisbon even before they're available in their home cities.

Thanks to digital developments, The Washington Post, Folha de São Paulo, Tribune de Geneve and The Evening Standard are available in Portugal on the day they're published in their country of origin, with The Post and Folha actually hitting newsstands in Lisbon about four hours before they go on sale in Washington, D.C. or São Paulo, due to time differences.

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The Internet is growing rapidly in China's rural areas, allowing more farmers and migrant workers to access news, music, videos and more online, Asia Media reported Thursday.

National Development and Reform Commission statistics found that as of June, 37.4 million people living in rural areas of China are using the Internet, a 14.3 million increase from six months prior. In the first half of 2007, the percent of the country's rural population accessing the Internet increased from 3.1 percent to 5.1 percent, Xinhua reported.

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Luxembourg's first free daily was launched Wednesday, as free Ukranian daily 15 Minut launched three more editions in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkiv and Lviv, Newspaper Innovation reported.

L'Essentiel, in Luxembourg, brings the number of European countries with free dailies to 32, and circulation to more than 28 million.

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Within just a few years, mobile phones have transited from a privilege of few to a technology everyone embraces. A study about phone usage across Europe even showed that one-fourth of young Britons say they are "addicted" to their phones, with more text messaging going on in Britain than any other European country.

Conducted by the London School of Economics and mobile retailer Carphone Warehouse, the survey found that Britain was one of the most advanced European countries in terms of using handsets, with hi-tech uses more commonplace in Britain than anywhere else in Europe.

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According to a new report, Bear Stearns suggests that newspaper holding companies in Florida and California will likely see ad revenue weakened as the real estate market declines.

"Already struggling with the secular challenges of declining circulation and shifts in ad spending away from print, the cyclical hit of the weak housing market and the ripple effect we believe will occur into retail should continue to weigh on earnings into the first half of 2008," wrote Alexia Quadrani, a Bear Stearns analyst.

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