ICANN, the non-profit organisation responsible for controlling the Internet address system, has released the names of everyone who has applied for new domains, which have become available as part of a program designed to increase competition online.

ICANN writes that, although there are currently hundreds of country-specific domains being used, there are just 22 “generics” in operation, such as .com or .org.

This is changing now, as ICANN called for applications for new domains earlier this year. Reuters describes the initiative as a push to “break the near-monopoly of the .com top-level domain.”

When the chance to apply closed at the end of May, a total of 1,930 applications had been received. ICANN has now released the names of the bidders, which include several new organisations. As Poynter reports, the Guardian, the BBC, HBO and FOX are just some of the media companies that have applied for the new domains.

With applications costing $185,000 dollars a piece, plus additional running costs, this represents a serious investment, particularly for those organisations that have gone after several new suffixes. The Guardian has applied for .gdn .guardian .guardianmedia .observer and .theguardian – a total spend of $925,000 not including running expenses. 

It may be that the money is spent in vain. Reuters notes, “previous small-scale experiments in liberalizing domains led to low take-up of suffixes such as .museum, .jobs and .travel.”

Mathew Ingram at GigaOm complains “What the ICANN decision feels like to some is a gigantic land grab by domain registrars who have gotten tired of fighting over a few remaining .com and .org names.”

He also laments “some companies will have to spend a lot of time and effort snapping up all the variations on their corporate name, their product names, and anything else that might be associated with their business. That’s going to put a lot of cash not just in domain registrars’ pockets, but also in the pockets of cyber-squatters.”

But Nieman Lab notes that the ownership of a new domain might offer a new revenue stream for the Boston Globe, which, with the endorsement of the City of Boston, has applied for the domain .boston. If the bid is successful, the Globe will have to pay the company OpenRegistry to operate the domain, but it still stands to make money through selling .boston addresses to other clients.

Nieman Lab quotes Jeff Moriarty, digital products vice president at the Globe, who says, “it’s obviously important for a business like ours to look for new opportunities and new ways to serve the community and businesses... This is an opportunity to represent both.”

In an article for ReadWriteWeb, Dan Rowinski writes, “the newspaper has always thought of itself as central to the lives of those who reside in and associate with the city, and by owning .Boston, it views itself as the gateway to all things Boston online.”

Sources: ICANN, Reuters, Poynter, GigaOm, ReadWriteWeb, NiemanLab

Not content with a soon-to-be-launched video streaming network and a host of new European editions, the Huffington Post is releasing a new weekly iPad magazine tomorrow named “Huffington.”

The New York Times previews the new publication, noting that some content will be pulled from huffingtonpost.com, but other articles will also be “new and separate from that of the rest of the site”. The magazine, which is only available though the Apple store, will feature a mix of long-form pieces (of between 4,000 and 8,000 words), photos, commentary, reviews, illustrations, videos and data visualisations.

“From the beginning we wanted to do something that felt like a print magazine," says Huffington’s creative director Josh Klenert (formerly of Billboard), quoted by Joe Pompeo at Capital New York.

This ambition seems seem to have been successful: Lauren Indvik at Mashable compares the content of Huffington to that of Newsweek, and describes it as “clean, stylish and in-depth”. But despite the print comparisons, there is a strong interactive element to the app, which allows for outbound linking, live commenting and sharing, as Poynter describes.

Pompeo writes that the current format of the magazine represents a departure from the Huffington Post’s original plans. In March, Forbes reported that Huffington was conceived as a free app that would mirror the content from the website quite closely, with only a few original articles.

Huffington has a staff of 24 journalists and editors, and will be run by Timothy L. O’Brien, a former Times editor. Mashable notes that other former New York Times staff are also on board.

The first edition of the ipad magazine is free, after which Huffington will cost 99¢ an issue, $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year. The first month is free for monthly subscribers, and Pompeo notes that readers can get an extra free month if they hand over their post code and email addresses to the magazine – information that Apple does not automatically share with publishers.

The New York Times writes that first edition of Huffington is sponsored wholly by Toyota. Paul Carr at Pando Daily suggests that snagging this big backer on its first edition “bodes well” for the financial success of the magazine. The Times is more doubtful though, noting, “online magazines, like the News Corporation’s The Daily, have struggled to attract ads and attention.”

But Carr writes that Huffington can easily expect to break even, considering that its editorial costs will be kept low, since it will be using existing Huffington Post staff to create content. If the magazine is a success, he says that it is “inevitable” that the Huffington Post will launch more digital magazines in the same mould.

O'Brien certainly implies this is the case. “We have talked about having a stable of apps, a stable of magazines," he says, quoted by Capital New York, "That's something we're gonna be aggressive about."

Sources: New York Times, Capital New York, Pando Daily, Poynter, Mashable, Huffington Post, SFN Blog, Forbes

The Guardian correspondent in Athens, Jon Henley, reports that former journalists from Greece’s second-largest paper Eleftherotypia – which, due to lack of money, has only published two editions since December last year – are returning to work unpaid to put out third special edition of the paper, which will be published the day before the country’s general election. Henley writes that this could well be the paper’s final edition, and notes that former Eleftherotypia journalists have not been paid since August 2011.

AFP writes that former British prime minister John Major has directly contradicted Rupert Murdoch’s assertion before the Leveson Inquiry that he had "never asked a prime minister for anything." John Major told the inquiry today that, during a dinner in 1997, Murdoch had demanded Major change his policy on Europe, reports AFP.

Mathew Ingram at GigaOm writes that news organisations may have something to learn from a student newspaper at the University of Oregon, named the Daily Emerald, which chose to go digital first, “not because it has to, but because it sees that as the future, and ultimately a better way to serve its readers.”

Steve Myers at Poynter reports that layoffs have begun at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, where the printing schedule is being cut back to three days a week.

For more industry news, please see WAN-IFRA's Executive News Service.

In the digital age it makes sense for English-language news brands to focus on expanding their global audience: English as an international language is growing, print audiences in Europe and North American are declining, and digital technology makes is relatively cheap to publish in a foreign market (at least compared to the cost of printing costly international editions). All good reasons to try to grow your international readership.

As Nieman Lab pointed out in an article published earlier this week, The New York Times is a brand that is already “an established worldwide player.” However, the article suggests that the paper is still “trying to figure out its place in the international mediascape.” One small part of this process is the paper’s new India Ink blog.

Launched nine months ago, India Ink is a “blog-style account of Indian news — including politics, culture, sports, lifestyle, and the arts,” says Nieman. Run by reporter Heather Timmons, who is aided by four other full-time journalists from The New York Times India team, India Ink helps to improve the Times’ coverage of India, both by expanding on stories in the main paper and by pre-empting them, the article says. Nieman Lab gives the example of India Ink following up on a Times story about mango season in India with advice to the Indian community around the world about where they could buy the fruit. Nieman also offers the example of the Times’ coverage of the Agni 5 missile launch, which benefited from the fact that India Ink had already done reporting on Indian reactions to the missile test.

Despite ads for India Ink targeted specifically at readers within India, the article says that the blog has a wide readership among the global Indian diaspora, rather than just inside India itself: 50% of readers are based in the US, 40% in India, and 10% in other locations, according to Timmons’ estimates. Nevertheless, it still helps to establish the paper’s position as a global brand.

The New York Times is by no means the only English-language news brand to launch an Indian product. As previously reported, the Daily Mail launched an India sub-site earlier this year. Mail Online India blends the Daily Mail’s coverage with that of Mail Today, a Delhi-based paper that the Mail’s parent company DMGT part owns. Nieman also names the Financial Times, the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal as examples of western news organisations with a presence in India.

India is also not the only international market that The New York Times is looking to enter. The Times also launched Science Times China, a monthly Science magazine written in Chinese and sold in China, in February, representing another instance of its global expansion.  

Sources: Nieman Lab, Guardian, sfnblog (1) (2) (3)