The newspaper business is booming in much of the world, as new newspapers are springing up in developing countries, gaining both readers and advertising money, the International Herald Tribune reported Monday.

Despite difficulty in the newspaper industry in North America and Europe, circulation is rising in the double-digits at existing newspapers in Africa and much Asia, and new newspapers “are springing up from Rwanda to Tajikistan,” the IHT article states.

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U.S. cable television group Cablevision announced it is buying New York-based Newsday for US$650 million, beating out Rupert Murdoch's bid of $580 million, BBC News reported Monday.

Mort Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News, also bid $580.

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The International Newspaper Marketing Association is changing its name to the International Newsmedia Marketing Association, to “reflect the evolution of its member newspapers and lead the newspaper industry toward its multi-media future,” INMA said in a statement, Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

The board of directors of the Dallas-based organisation voted unanimously May 6 to make the change.

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As part of a newsroom reorganization, the London Evening will be putting an end to the position of media correspondent, the Guardian reported Monday.

Amar Singh, the last to hold the position, started at the paper in 2005, and has been promoted to senior reporter as the media role was axed.

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Facebook has raised US$100 million (£51 million) to expand its server capacity in order to deal with an explosive growing numbers of users.

The social networking site is borrowing $100 million from the venture loan company TriplePoint Capital to finance the plan, Media Guardian reported.

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Social network users in Europe will reach 107.4 million in 2012, up from 41.7 million in 2007, according to Datamonitor.

The UK is expected to be the biggest grower in social networking over the next five years, up from 9.6 million users in 2007 to 27.1 million in 2012.

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Homes in Singapore will be wired with a fibre optic link, hooking them up to broadband, the Straits Times reported Friday.

In as early as two years, the Fibre To The Home (FTTH) technology promises faster broadband access for all homes in Singapore.

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The E.W. Scripps Co. board has approved a plan to separate its media company into two public companies, to begin July 1, the Associated Press reported Friday.

Completion of the plan must still meet government regulatory approval.

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Google cares about copyright protections, and operates consistently with copyright law, Josh Cohen, Google News content specialist told the Toronto Star in a Q&A Friday.

Speaking at the 2008 Canadian Newspaper Association/Canadian Community Newspapers Association conference in Toronto, Cohen “delivered a message of peace and partnership,” Toronto News reporter Brett Popplewell reported Friday, telling the audience that although news content is “bigger than it's ever been ... how people are getting it is going through tremendous change.”

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Lower valuations for U.S. metro dailies have unfairly led to lower prices of small-market papers, according to the CEO of community newspaper publisher GateHouse Media Inc., Editor & Publisher reported Friday.

Newspapers' market valuations have “spilled too much into the small-market newspaper industry,” CEO Michael E. Reed said in a conference call with analysts. “What that means is there’s a fantastic opportunity in that space.”

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The Sun-Times Media Group said Wednesday its shares are expected to be delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its price doesn't meet the minimum, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and other newspapers in the area disclosed in late March that the NYSE had notified it that its shares were in danger of being delisted.

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Guardian News & Media has revealed more information on its plans to combine the newsrooms of the Guardian, Observer, and guardian.co.uk as it closes in on the goal to become a 24/7 multimedia operation by the end of the year, when it moves to its new location at Kings Place, the Guardian reported Friday.

The Web site and two newspapers will keep their own executive management teams, and the Observer will also retain its news desk and team of news reporters, as well as its editing operation, magazines and separate features department.

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China will own the biggest share of broadband per household in Asia throughout 2010, while Japan and South Korea are expected to lose shares gradually, consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has forecast.

In 2004, China owned 40 percent of overall broadband households in Asia Pacific, while Japan and South Korea accounted for 27 percent and 21 percent, respectively.

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As News Corporation Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch gave thanks to strength in his Australian businesses Thursday, he also kept an eye trained on New York newspaper Newsday.

News Corp. is sticking with its US$580 million bid for Newsday, the Chicago Tribune reported Thursday.

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Seoul's first free afternoon paper celebrated its first year in business last week, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

The City has a circulation of 400,000, while total circulation of free newspapers in Seoul is about two million.

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As the economic outlook for advertising remains uncertain, Trinity Mirror Plc announced it will remain cautious, but predicts its performance for the year will not change from previous forecasts, Reuters reported Thursday.

The British newspaper publisher stated it is still poised to deliver £7 million in cost savings by the end of 2008.

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Less than a year after New York's Avista Capital Partners bought the Minneapolis Star Tribune from the McClatchy Co., the investment has “gone so sour” that if there is no monetary infusion or Avista does not hold a firesale, bankruptcy may be the only way out, Followthemedia's Philip Stone wrote Thursday.

“One has to assume that the Avista people are not stupid – they went through the Star Tribune’s books, they saw the cash flow, they thought (they) knew what they were getting into, believing that the cash flow would handle debt and operate the business with very little need for any major cutbacks,” Stone states. “And yet in less than a year that investment has gone so sour that although the newspaper insists it is not in a bankruptcy situation and it can still handle debt this year, it has brought in a another private equity firm to analyse its balance sheet.”

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Google is considering running illustrated advertisements with the results of Web image-queries, a step beyond its text-based ad business, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

“Matching graphical-display ads with image searches represents a large opportunity, and there's lot of potential for advertising revenue there,” Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, told Bloomberg Radio Wednesday. She added that the company at the same time must ensure such ads don't drive users away.

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The United States took the lead in terms of time spent online in January 2008, according to the data from Nielsen Online.

The data was derived from nine countries, including the United States, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Australia and Switzerland during January 2008.

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Global media reporting site Followthemedia will close May 16 unless €35,000 is raised, the group announced on its Web site.

Followthemedia has been reporting on media issues for four years, and counts 1.5 million visitors.

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Industrial action by journalists at French daily Le Monde has been suspended, after the newspaper's management announced job cuts could be fewer than previously suggested, the Guardian reported Wednesday.

The announcement by management was made Wednesday, following an editorial staff meeting at which employees were to vote on whether they would begin a longer strike next Tuesday.

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The idea that “free” news on the Internet is the cause for current financial woes in journalism is incorrect; on the contrary, a lot of money is generated by the news, very little of which makes it back to news providers, wrote Peter Osnos, senior fellow for media at The Century Foundation on Tuesday.

The fact that content creators are not receiving a fair amount is “no longer tolerable,” Osnos stated. “News is no more free these days than the 'complementary' bag of pretzels you get on a plane, after you’ve paid for the ticket.”

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Most newspaper editors around the world no longer think of their product as “print-only,” and are optimistic about the future of newspapers and their place in the multi-media revolution, according to the Newsroom Barometer, an annual survey of editors around the world, released Tuesday.

The second annual survey of 704 editors and senior news executives from 120 countries was conducted by Zogby International in March, and commissioned by Reuters and the World Editors Forum, a partner of the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project and also part of the World Association of Newspapers.

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Online advertising in Australia continued to march ahead in the first quarter this year, albeit at a slower pace than over the previous four years, The Australian reported.

The total Internet ad market grew 30.8 percent to AU$385 million in the first three months. Compared with the same period last year, it dropped from a 51-percent increase in 2007.

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As of Q1 2008, 31 percent of Britons ages 15 and older listened to the radio via a digital platform every week, including a digital audio broadcast on the radio, cable television or personal computer, according to the Radio Joint Audience Research estimates.

The growing audience also spent more time on digital radio. Weekly listening hours increased nine percent to reach 184 million in the first quarter, and digital radio now makes up 17.8 percent of all radio listening in the UK.

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News Media Corp. has bought the Arizona Silver Belt from GateHouse Media for an undisclosed amount, Editor & Publisher reported Tuesday.

“We did not see the Arizona operation as a good strategic or geographic fit and felt we could redeploy the capital more effectively elsewhere,” Michael Reed, GateHouse CEO said in a statement.

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The Lexington Herald-Leader Co. will offer buyout packages to employees in order to decrease its work force by an estimated four percent to deal with the decreasing advertising and circulation revenue, the Herald-Leader reported Wednesday.

Owned by the McClatchy Co., the Herald-Leader currently has 385 full-time employees and managers.

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Children in New Zealand are more media savvy than ever before, but know when they need to switch off the television, Internet or mobile phones, according to a new study, TVNZ reported Tuesday.

The country's Broadcast Minister Trevor Mallard on Tuesday released the Broadcasting Standards Authority report, Seen and Heard: Children's Media Use, Exposure, and Response.

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Sir Paul McCartney will give away his latest album with editions of the Mail on Sunday, Gigwise.com reported Tuesday.

The Beatle alum's album, “Memory Almost Full,” will be free with the May 18th edition of the newspaper. It was released on Starbucks' Hear Music label last year.

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The Charlotte (North Carolina) Observer will begin cutting staff numbers, offering voluntary buyouts to an unknown number of employees, the Sacramento Business Journal reported Monday.

The newspaper is making the cuts in an attempt to offset advertising revenue declines, the paper's Web site stated.

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MediaNews group, a newspaper company that publishes 57 U.S. dailies, has outsourced its customer care to a Philippines-based company, APAC, according to a company statement Saturday.

Joseph Santiago, chairman of the House committee on information and communications technology, said the decision will push MediaNews’ rivals to do the same in order to stay economically competitive.

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After their merger completion last month, Thomson Reuters is facing its first major industrial dispute, as Thomson’s UK journalists voted to hold an official ballot for industrial action.

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) had official recognition and a majority of membership among journalists in either Reuters or Thomson UK operations before the deal, Press Gazette reported.

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A year after the launch of the weekend edition of RedEye, 100,000 opt-in subscribers have requested home delivery of the Chicago Tribune's free daily tabloid, Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

Readers must request the weekend edition, which is home-delivered only.

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Newsknife, a site that rates news sites based on Google News performance, has released its May 2008 list of 155 sites in the U.S.

The site sampled 109,702 listings by 3,942 sites for 689 news items in 2008, and judged performance based on how often they appeared on Google News.

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Mobile instant messaging (MIM) will replace text messaging (SMS) and eventually e-mail as the most popular mobile non-voice communication application, according to a recent global survey by TNS Global.

Currently, only eight percent of global mobile phone users surveyed use MIM. However, the study found that once users adopt MIM, it becomes the primary communications method and replaces other messaging tools.

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The Baltimore Sun Media Group Interactive (BSMG) has launched a new local Web site, bringing together local newspapers to create the site, Editor & Publisher reported Monday.

ExploreHoward.com is a service of Patuxent Publishing and BSMG, and contains complete weekly content from Howard County's the Columbia Flier, Howard County Times, The View from Ellicott City and The View from Western Howard County.

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Microsoft Corp. on Saturday withdraw its US$42 billion takeover offer for Yahoo!, after the companies failed to agree on how much the Internet firm was worth, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The unexpected breakdown came shortly after their chief executives met in Seattle one day earlier. The companies had finally engaged in talks since Microsoft said it would raise billions more for the deal in January.

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The Associated Press and more than 100 of the news agency's member newspapers on Monday launched a service aimed at making news stories available on Apple's iPhone and other mobile devices, the AP reported.

Currently 107 newspapers are participating in the Mobile News Network, including the San Francisco Chronicle and The Miami Herald.

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Dutch citizen photojournalism Web site Skoeps will be closing down, after being unsuccessful at finding a sustainable business model, Reuters reported Friday.

Skoeps is owned by Dutch media groups PCM Uitgevers and Talpa Media, and has 7,500 registered users.

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Top Swiss free newspaper, 20 Minuten, distributed a new free discount magazine Monday in Zurich, Newspaper Innovation reported.

The magazine, 20's best, showcases 26 products, and gives readers special discount offers for those products.

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Thomson employees voted unanimously to hold a strike ballot, after management at the financial news wire would not agree to use voluntary instead of compulsory redundancies as they look to make job cuts, the Guardian reported Friday.

Thomson recently merged with rival news agency Reuters.

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Media Wales will not go through with its plan to launch a Welsh-language news Web site, HoldtheFrontPage.co.uk reported Friday.

Media Wales publishes the Western Mail and other south Wales titles.

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The Glasgow-based Sunday Post will be printed in Madrid beginning this weekend, in hopes of improving sales overseas of just more than 500 copies, allmediaSCOTLAND.com reported Friday.

Copies will be available to people on the coasts of Spain, as well as the Balearic Islands, the Algarve and Tenerlife.

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In a struggling economy, there have been 290,671 job cuts in U.S. during the first four months of this year, up nine percent from the same period last year.

Media industry layoffs, however, jumped to 57 percent more than last year at 7,949 for the four-month period, according to a survey from global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The 2007 full-year layoffs numbered 11,700 in the industry.

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New media became increasingly necessary to Americans from 2002 to 2007, while traditional media forms lost ground, according to a Pew Internet and American Life Project survey.

According to the latest survey in 2007, more than half of respondents said they could not live without their mobile phones, followed by 45 percent who say they couldn't give up the Internet. The Blackberry/wireless e-mail devices category, though only picked by 36 percent, has grown six-fold since 2002.

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Business researcher Henry Blodget on Wednesday predicted in his online column that U.S. print newspaper circulation will drop to about 50 million this year – the lowest it has been since 1946. As circulation drops to extreme lows in a period in which the U.S. population has doubled, this means “per-capita newspaper consumption has been cut in half,” Blodget stated.

So where are all the ad dollars going? Online, of course.

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The All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) has set a minimum cover price formula for newspapers in Pakistan, and newspapers that violate the new rule will be denied distribution in Akhbar Markets, Dawn reported.

The formula, effective Wednesday, was decided in collaboration with the Akhbar Farosh Federation, a press release from APNS stated.

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The Audit Bureau of Circulations Electronic (ABCe) may report mobile traffic to its member Web sites in the future, and is currently considering the move, Journalism.co.uk reported Thursday.

ABCe will discuss how metrics, which are approved by Joint Industry Commission for Web Standards (JICWEBS), would be enacted to best measure and report mobile traffic.

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American Community Newspapers (ACN) reported a net loss of US$4.5 million in the first quarter, while the publisher's revenue slid 11.7 percent, Editor & Publisher reported Thursday.

Revenue fell mainly due to poor performances from the Texas-based publisher's 44 papers in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

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The U.S. online newspaper audience has grown from 38.97 million in December 2004 to 63.05 million in December 2007, an increase of more than 60 percent over three years, according to the MegaPanel Data from Nielsen Online.

Active reach for online newspapers has also risen, from 26 percent in December 2004 to over 38 percent in December 2007.

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution plans to cut its distribution area from 74 to 49 counties, which will result in 62 job losses, AJC.com reported.

This move will decrease its circulation by about 2.2 percent daily and 1.9 percent Sunday, the company said Wednesday.

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