The Associated Press is closing down its “asap” service in October, saying the multimedia service failed to gain enough traction with newspaper clients, the AP has announced.

The asap service was launched in September 2005 as a way for the AP to target a younger audience, between the ages of 18 and 34, but has evolved into a venue to feature multimedia packages.

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Richard Stott, 63, former editor of the Daily Mirror, died early this morning at home of pancreatic cancer, according to an announcement by his family.

Stott wrote columns for the News of the World, and more recently the Sunday Mirror, which he continued writing until shortly before his death. His last column in the Sunday Mirror was published June 3.

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A department editor at Azerbaijani newspaper Bizim Yol (Our Way) has been sentenced to three months in prison in a closed court hearing Thursday for taking $35,000 in bribes from a Labour and Social Protection Ministry employee.

Mushvig Huseynov was detained Tuesday by Azerbaijani National Security Ministry officials and was sentenced at Narimanov District Court by Judge Gulnara Tagizade. Huseynov is expected to make an appeal within three days, and has not admitted guilt.

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The Daily Mirror Wednesday said that by using the Terrorism Act to arrest two of its staff, the British Transport Police has jeopardised the future of investigative journalism in Britain.

Mirror undercover reporter Tom Parry and photographer Roger Allen were released early Wednesday morning on bail, after the police used the act to arrest them at the Stonebridge Park rail depot in northwest London Tuesday. They are scheduled to reappear in court in September.

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As search engines try to balance between wanting to dig into users' private information to improve their businesses and the consumers' and privacy groups' concerns over the risk of leaking confidential information, the battle of search engines is changing.

Major search engine companies are now competing partially based on how well they can provide privacy policies to protect users.

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Tamedia AG and Editpress have announced they will launch a daily newspaper together in Luxembourg by the end of this year.

The newspaper, to be called LEssentiel, will target young, urban readers with spending power.

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As of Friday evening, the editor-in-chief of the Hindustan Times will no longer work there.

Chaitanya Kalbag joined HT Media, which publishes the Times, in Sept. of 2006 after serving as managing editor of Reuters Asia.

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Macau has the highest mobile penetration in the world, according to a new study.

“2007 Asia - Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in Hong Kong and Macau” by Research and Markets has found that although Macau had a fixed line saturation a little over 35 percent a few years ago, the mobile penetration has already reached 137 percent, making it the highest penetrated in the world.

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Global Voice editor and Inmediahk.net blogger OiWan Lam is facing a 12-month imprisonment or HK$400,000 fine for posting and linking to images which authorities consider “indecent.”

Lam is protesting the standard the government has to determine obscenity by publishing the art photograph and articles. Flickr, where Lam linked the images from, has limited Hong Kong users access of the Photos Lam referred, as well as other possibly obscene images.

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Former newspaper baron Conrad Black will stay out of jail until his November sentencing for his obstruction of justice and fraud convictions, a Chicago judge ruled Thursday.

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Dow Jones's chief executive, who has led the company's negotiations with News Corp. over its $5 billion buyout offer, explained in a memo to employees why the company's future could be “even brighter” if the deal is approved.

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The Audit Bureau of Circulation has announced it will begin offering combined print and Web readership data of U.S. Newspapers.

Web and print numbers combined will be much more positive than print alone; however, an emerging question is whether advertisers will buy into it. Usually advertisers are guided by circulation when they buy print, and they pay much more for print readers than for Web readers. So, although the total readership is up, will advertisers look at the figure, or just concentrate on merely print and online numbers, like they always have?

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A Dow Jones board member could face civil charges in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigation of insider trading linked to News Corp.'s bid for the company.

David Li is chairman and chief executive of the Bank of East Asia. The bank received a “Wells notice,” about Li. The notice indicates the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is considering the recommendation to take action against him.

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Google has bested Yahoo! and Microsoft in revenue earned per share in the second quarter of 2007, according to the white paper “Market Share Trends within the Engines, and Their Impact on Brand Marketers,” from SearchIgnite and RBC Capital Markets.

This report revealed that Google has a 76 percent market share, regardless of only 60 percent of ad impressions. Because of Google’s continual tweaking of quality score algorithms and minimum bid requirements, its revenue per search keeps on growing. On the other hand, Yahoo! had 34 percent of searches among its network even though it held 18.3 percent of media spend in the second quarter this year.

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Broadband penetration has a strong correlation with household income, according to the “Broadband Access and Service in the Home 2007” study by Leichtman Research Group.

53 percent of U.S. households subscribe to a broadband Internet service at home. So far this year, broadband accounts for about 72 percent of all Internet subscriptions at home, compared with 60 percent last year.

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As emerging evidence has begun to cast doubt on initial explanations for the deaths last week of two Reuters staff members, the news service has asked the Pentagon to conduct an investigation into the killings.

Photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and driver Saeed Chmagh, 40, were killed in Baghdad Thursday in what witnesses have said was a U.S. helicopter attack that a preliminary police report described as “random American bombardment.” The U.S. military said in a statement that the incident was a firefight with insurgents, and the killings are being investigated.

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The Financial Times Group and CNBC are discussing sharing news resources to uphold Web operations, according to people familiar with these two companies.

A possibility is that the Financial Times could use video clips from CNBC on its website, www.ft.com, and in return, CNBC would have access to Financial Times articles on its website, www.cnbc.com.

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The media tycoon who built an vast newspaper empire was convicted by a Chicago federal jury Friday of a count of obstruction of justice and three counts of mail fraud and could face up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine.

Conrad Black, 62, was acquitted of nine other charges, including racketeering and wire fraud, for a scheme to steal millions of dollars from shareholders of Hollinger International. Sentencing has been set for Nov. 30.

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Austrian publisher Styria Medien is planning the first free daily for Slovenia, one of the few places in the European market that doesn't already have one.

The new paper will be called Zurnal24, and will launch in the capital Ljubljana in the fall, with a circulation of at least 100,000.

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Web portals and local TV newcasts are the most frequently used news sources among the U.S. audience between age 18 and 34, according to the Carnegie Corporation.

Over 70 percent of the respondents said they watch local TV newcasts at least once a week, while about 62 percent said they use web portals as their news source at least on a weekly basis.

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Young audiences are spending more time listening to the radio, and radio profits are up in Europe, a recent study has found.

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TV advertising in the United Kingdom will decline one percent after falling four percent last year, and should be flat next year, according to WPP’s Group M media planning and buying arm. Radio advertising will be flat this year and grow one percent in 2008, the group predicts.

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The Daily Afrikaans newspaper Beeld has launched a mobile addition to add a “third avenue” to reach readers.

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A Reuters photographer and driver were killed in Baghdad Thursday.

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Eleven percent of total U.S. e-commerce is done by Hispanics, and that percentage is expected to grow, according to the “Hispanic Shoppers Online, 2007” report by Jupiter Research.

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Wikipedia has added nearly 20 million unique monthly visitors in the past year, making it the top destination for online news and information, according to Nielsen//NetRatings.

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Spending on and by teenagers will exceed $208 billion in 2011, from $189.7 billion in 2006, despite an estimated 3 percent decline in the 12-to-17-year-old segment by 2011, according to a recent report.

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London's Westminster Council says Associated Newspapers Ltd. and News Corp. are creating “a mountain” of garbage on the city's West End, and have threatened to penalize the publishers if they don't do something to help clean up the mess.

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The Tribune Company will expand its local entertainment guide Metromix throughout its newspaper chain. The Metromix site will be up and running in New York City this week, and it has already been introduced at the Los Angeles Times, the company has announced.

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Due to a time limitation statute, the owners of the Herald group of newspapers can not be ordered to honour quality pledges they made when they first bought the Herald, a commission in Scotland has stated.

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A mother in Canada is asking the question: Are children being taken advantage of by large newspaper companies?

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