The deadline to submit applications for the Knight News Challenge, a U.S.-based foundation that gives away US$5 million a year for grants in digital, open-source innovation, is November 1.

Applicants must use or create a digital, open-source technology as their code base, the project should serve the public interest and it should benefit one or more specific geographic communities.

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The San Francisco-based Social Media Club announced Wednesday that 42 industry leaders will form an interim board of directors, MarketWatch reported.

The new media and advocacy organisation aims to promote “media literacy; support of industry standards efforts such as Creative Commons licensing, Microformats, Data Portability and OpenID; discussion and promotion of ethical behaviour; and sharing our knowledge among our members and the industry community at large,” said Chris Heuer, founder of the SMC and partner at the Conversation Group.

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The Newspaper Association of America, which represents U.S. newspaper publishers, has called off its annual Mid-Year Media Review, a presentation for financial analysts, due to low attendance numbers, Reuters reported Wednesday.

The conference usually takes place in June, but as investors become less interested in the newspaper sector, many publicly traded newspaper owners are opting for the Deutsche Bank Media & Telecommunications Conference in New York, June 9 and 10.

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The Canadian Newspaper Association and the Canadian Community Newspapers Association will gradually merge their operations during the next two years, Media in Canada reported.

The two associations together represent more than 830 daily, weekly and community newspapers across Canada.

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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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The Newspaper Association of America spent almost US$1.6 million last year lobbying the U.S. government on issues ranging from advertising to freedom of information requests, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

According to a disclosure form from the Senate's public records office, the NAA spent a total of $1,578,000 (€1,071,428) in 2007, lobbying the government on issues such as “whether drug companies are allowed to market directly to consumers, the laws forcing government agencies to provide reporters with requested information, rules on how many properties media companies can own and whether telemarketers can call people who do not want to be called,” the AP stated.

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The Czech Publishers Association has announced it will launch an autumn campaign to promote the daily press and help educate advertisers on how to better use daily newspapers for publicity.

The campaign will aim to support publicity performance growth in daily newspapers as well as readership rates, Jiří Hořčica, account manager at the public relations agency Bison & Rose, stated in a press release, according to a Czech Business Weekly article.

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Japan's Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association Wednesday announced Tsuneo Watanabe and Toshitada Nakae are the winners of the Newspaper Cultural Award for the current fiscal year.

Watanabe is chairman of the board and editor-in-chief of The Yomiuri Shimbun Holdings. Nakae is the former president of The Asahi Shimbun.

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Beating out The Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and The Sunday Mail, The Age Wednesday night was voted the Pacific region's major newspaper of the year.

The award was given at the Pacific Area Newspaper Publishers' Association's 38th annual conference in Melbourne.

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Newspapers' online audiences are growing twice as fast as the Internet's general audience, according to research by Nielsen//NetRatings for the Newspaper Association of America.

This new research is being used to support the NAA's new ad campaign, Newspaper: The Multi-Medium. The campaign aims to attract marketers to newspaper Web sites based on the apparent higher earning power and sophistication of newspaper readers compared to average web surfers.

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Ifra, the international newspaper operations organisation based in Germany, has released four special reports and two research reports that explore production and technology topics.

The first report examines “local search,” which studies market developments and options for publishers who want to compete with search-engine giants.

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The Belfast Telegraph won the newspaper of the year award in the UK's premier Regional Press Awards for the second year in a row.

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by Tatiana Repkova

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