Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, announced in a staff memo Tuesday that “there are going to be layoffs in the newsroom, for the first time in recent memory.”

He also stated that “a hiring freeze will continue, with open positions filled internally, and next year we also expect to eliminate a few management jobs in administrative areas.”

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Yahoo and Adobe PDF have teamed up to launch a new ad product that aims to allow publishers to include text-based, contextual advertisements with PDF-based content, as well as giving advertisers “a new channel with a web-like ability to track ad metrics,” paidContent reported today.

Ads for Adobe PDF Powered by Yahoo! will launch overnight, and is also expected to give readers more access to content in PDFs, once limited to paid subscribers only.

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Trinity Mirror Plc has bought Globespan Media Ltd. for up to 5.9 million stg. – an initial 0.9 million stg and a deferred amount of up to 5 million stg on the condition of achieving specified operating profits over during the next 30 months.

The newspaper group has said it expects Globespan's revenues to hit at least four million stg in the first year of ownership, Thomson reported Thursday.

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A daily news publication will debut in Beijing Tuesday – the first giveaway paper distributed at the city's massive public transportation stations.

The metro daily was developed from an earlier entertainment paper, the Star Daily. This 16- to 32-page daily will be distributed to subway passengers for free from Monday through Friday, according to the Beijing Evening News.

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Agence France-Presse has bought 30 percent of the citizen journalism platform Scooplive, which will be renamed Citizenside.

AFP will not be a part of making editorial decisions for the site, which allows users to publish and sell video and photos for commission, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.

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Mobile ad platform Amobee Media Systems has received a minority investment from wireless giant Vodafone. Previous investors in the company came from Accel Partners, Sequoia Capital and Globespan Capital.

Amobee launched its first consumer trial last year. Since then, it has partnered with carriers such as Vodafone in Greece, the Czech Republic and Spain.

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Belo Corp. announced Wednesday the new executives for its newspaper group after a spinoff in early 2008.

The U.S. company Belo owns four daily newspapers, including The Dallas Morning News, and 20 television stations. Following the spinoff, the newspapers will be held separately by a publicly traded company, A.H. Belo Corporation.

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