Recently by Leah McBride Mensching

Public relations professionals and advertisers are meeting consumers on social media, where younger consumers and professionals spend an increasing amount of time, the Bangkok Post reported. According to January figures, Thailand is Facebook's second-highest growing market, with more than 150,000 new accounts set up weekly.

In New Zealand, a new survey found that 70 percent of respondents feel social media is a good way to communicate with customers, TVNZ reported. However, the Communication Agencies Association of New Zealand study also found that firms are reluctant to spend money on social media marketing budgets, with 85 percent of businesses saying they plan to invest 5 percent or less of their marketing budgets on social media in 2010.

Newspapers today are multimedia brands that have positioned themselves strategically in the digital landscape, where news is currency and newspapers have a lot of it, according to new research from industry marketing body The Newspaper Works.

"Newspapers have become stronger and more relevant in the digital age with newspaper Web sites complementing print editions and enhancing the relationship between newspaper brands and their readers," the report states. Newspapers Today Part 2 is a follow-up to a previous report, released in 2007 by the industry body for Australian newspaper publishers.

Throughout the advertising downturn over the past couple years, preprinted inserts, which often contain coupons along with ads, held up reasonably well. However, inserts are increasingly facing digital competition, and because they make up half of retail advertising, newspapers need to address this issue, the Newspaper Association of America stated in a white paper published in late October.

The report was little-noticed, Poynter's Rick Edmonds wrote today, but newspapers are beginning to put strategies in place.

Sunday newspaper The Observer is set to relaunch this week with a greater focus on news analysis as well as culture and lifestyle.

The slimmed-down four-section paper will drop its separate Escape, Cash and Business sections. Instead, it will contain four sections: an expanded main newspaper, a Berliner-size New Review supplement, Sport, and Observer Magazine. The New Review will continue to focus on arts and culture with increased coverage of film, music, architecture and books. A new Discover section within the review will be devoted to science, nature and technology. Observer Magazine will cover food, fashion, relationships, gardening, ethical living and travel.

For more on this story, visit our sister publication, editorsweblog.org.

Google will no longer target ads on a query-by-query basis, and will instead use hours of search history to target ads to users when they use search keywords, the search giant announced in a blog post Wednesday. This means Google will store each query in order to display targeted ads related to that keyword hours later, on the search page or a site that uses Google ads.

"We've recently started to expand the use of the query words in referral URLs to a few hours so we can so we can continue to deliver more relevant ads," the blog post stated. "After a short period of time (a few hours) the query words are no longer used for the purposes of matching ads. Of course, users can continue to opt out of our advertising cookie at any time here."

The Daily Telegraph, Guardian, Times and Independent all reported year-on-year circulation percentage declines in the double digits for January, Media Guardian reported today. The declines come as most have ended bulk distribution.

Last month, the Daily Telegraph's year-on-year circulation fell 11.76 percent (to 691,128), the first time it has dipped below 700,000 since the Audit Bureau of Circulations began its record in 1962. The Times saw a year-on-year circulation drop of 17.69 percent (to 508,250), the Guardian saw a year-on-year decline of 15.76 percent (to 302,285), and the Independent's year-on-year sales were down 13.78 percent (to 185,815).

More details have been released about the MediaNews paywall plans, which will charge for investigations and analysis but not for breaking news, Poynter Online reports.

Vice president for content development Howard Saltz said that investigations, enterprise, analysis, columns and reviews will be behind the paywall. "The kind of content that goes behind a wall is the kind of content that paid, professional journalists do," he told Poynter, "the kinds of things that you really couldn't count on bloggers and Web enthusiasts to do." Articles will be free if it's necessary to remain competitive with other news sources, including breaking news and multimedia, he said.

For more on this story, visit our sister publication, editorsweblog.org.

Google announced it will build "ultra" high-speed broadband networks across the United States, paidContent reported.

The online search giant said it will offer Internet speeds of one gigabit per second, about 100 times faster than what most Americans are used to. However, the service will only be offered to very few customers, 50,000 and 500,000 people.

The Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project will publish a report in early spring on how newspapers can become more environmentally friendly, a step that publishers are finding cuts costs in the long run, gives them a competitive edge for the future and is increasingly demanded by readers. The report will discuss steps both large and small that newspaper companies can take to go green, as well as offer case studies and research to better inform green decision-making across the value chain.

SFN today launched a three question survey, and we invite you to take it, so we can better detail newspapers' green strategies both current and future. To show our thanks, we will send you a free copy of this valuable report when it is published - just fill in your contact details after completing the survey.

Click here to take the survey.

French daily newspaper Le Figaro has announced details of its plans to charge for online content, offering three different tiers of subscriptions.

The three levels will be called Connect, Select and Business. Connect is a free subscription that allows access to free email newsletters with general, cultural and financial news. It also enables users to comment on articles and create a personalised front page.

For more on this story, visit our sister publication, editorsweblog.org.

Google News stopped hosting new Associated Press articles in late December, but quietly began hosting them again yesterday. The Wall Street Journal's Russell Adams was the first to notice.

A Google spokesman told Adams: "We have a licensing agreement with the Associated Press that permits us to host its content on Google properties such as Google News. The licensing agreement is the subject of ongoing discussion so we won't be commenting further at this time."

Building a great system takes time, which is why The New York Times isn't in a hurry to launch its metered paywall this year, President and CEO Janet Robinson said in an earnings call today, paidContent reported.

The new system will "keep us connected to search driven Web" by being flexible between paid and free content, she said. 

McClatchy Co. will not put up paywalls, and is instead "comfortable" with an ad-supported online model, CEO Gary Pruitt announced today, MediaPost reported.

However, the U.S. newspaper publisher will continue experimenting, offering paid content relating to state government news (which will target wealthy lobbyists) at its newspaper in Raleigh, North Carolina, for example.

Google unveiled Google Buzz today, a feature that will allow Gmail users to create status updates, and also read and comment on friends' updates, The Associated Press reported.

The feature is aimed at helping Google compete with social networking site Facebook, which now has more than 400 million users around the world.

Rupert Murdoch owns News Corp., the Sulzberger family controls The New York Times and Sam Zell bought the Tribune Co. Much of the media industry is owned by billionaires, but what will happen if financial woes push them out of media?

"Nobody likes to admit this, but much of the best of contemporary journalism has been produced, and continues to get produced, simply because of the largess - and the emotional needs - of a small group of rich people," Simon Dumenco wrote for AdAge yesterday.