Bloggers and journalists have united to launch a Scandinavian citizen journalism portal to create a cross-regional Scandinavian news site, Kristine Lowe reported Tuesday from Oslo.

iNorden.org is “an attempt at setting new standards for civic journalism in our neck of the woods,” the site's founders stated.

The site was founded “in the absence of a media corporation with the foresight to utilise the fabulous opportunities online to create a cross-regional Scandinavian news site,” Lowe stated in her blog, citing Undercurrent. “ ... after all, the regions' languages are more similar than they are different.”

According to iNorden, Scandinavian countries have plenty of common arenas, and while the Internet is an “ideal channel for international dialogue,” there hasn't been a portal established for the countries to share.

“Even though an arena such as this would normally be initiated by the authorities or a sizeable media corporation, iNorden was founded by a group of concerned bloggers and journalists, who, like so many others recognised the absence of a Nordic common ground on the Internet – or anywhere, for that matter,” the site's founders stated on iNorden's Web site.

The Times and The Telegraph have taken their Fleet Street rivalries to the desert, this time vying for the attention of the United Arab Emirate's cutting edge business community, Emirates Today Online reported Tuesday.

The Times of London is currently holding a business forum in Dubai, and has been printing 15,000 copies a day in the city since May. On Monday, The Daily Telegraph launched a temporary online edition for Dubai that can be downloaded and printed.

The Times' business editor, James Harding, has brought his staff to Dubai for a week as part of the newspaper's Gulf Business forum. His journalists will stay in the UAE until Sunday to become better acquainted with the country's booming business sector.

“No British newspaper is well sourced in the Gulf in the way you would be in New York or even Tokyo,” Harding told Emirates Today. “The area is transforming itself into a hub for investment, trade, travel and leisure ... We have come here en masse to try to understand one of the world's biggest unfolding stories.”

An executive from The Telegraph told Emirates Today that its new online version is part of a commercial exercise to promote the paper's Web site; however, The Telegraph has “ no plans to publish a newspaper in Dubai.” The executive, who was not named by Emirates Today said that “this is not a newspaper we are distributing and is not a direct competition to other newspapers.”

ImpreMedia, the parent company of La Opinion in Los Angeles and El Diario La Prensa in New York City, is set to become the biggest Hispanic paper participant in Google's Print Ads and AdSense programs, according to a company statement Monday.

ImpreMedia's Spanish-language papers will join about 600 English-language papers in Google ad programmes.

"We're tapping into the ease and efficiency of Google's technology to enable small to mid-sized businesses to reach the Hispanic marketplace in six top Hispanic markets through one integrated source," said Erich Linker, ImpreMedia's senior vice president of national advertising sales in the statement.

The program enables ImpreMedia papers to access "small- and mid-sized companies who may be unfamiliar with, or have never before advertised in Spanish-language media," according to the company.

Besides papers mentioned above, other ImpreMedia papers joining the program include Hoy Nueva York in New York City; La Raza in Chicago; El Mensajero in San Francisco; and La Prensa in Orlando and Tampa, Editor & Publisher reported.

The BBC has set up a board for complaints following a phone-in featuring the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission.

Callers phoned in to the radio station 5 live to tell Sir Christopher Meyer their complaints against Scottish newspapers.

The long list of comments were made on the 5 live message board, here, AllMediaScotland reported.

Listen to Meyer's guest appearance here.

The first Ugandan newspaper was recently delivered to Bukwo, the newly created remote eastern border district.

The very first copies of Daily Monitor were delivered to five schools in Suam town council.

"We have been reading Kenyan newspapers and in fact the majority of our children don't know that there are newspapers in Uganda at all," said Martin Kiplagat, the acting chief administrative officer, according to AllAfrica.com.

The papers were delivered under the Daily Monitor's Newspapers in Education project of the Young Readers' Programme. A total of 550 copies will be sent to the district every Monday.

Bukwo District was separated from Kapchorwa District over a year ago. Most of its residents, who seldom travel out of Bukwo, had never seen a Ugandan newspaper.

Kiplagat said residents mainly trade in Kitale town in neighbouring Kenya because of the impassable road that connects the district to Kapchorwa.

"I have no words for Daily Monitor for being the first Ugandan newspaper to dare penetrate Bukwo. It is not easy to access this place," he said.

The product is meant for children, but many adults in Bukwo flocked to the schools to see a Ugandan paper.

Augustine Cherop, the District Education Officer, said that people at Suam, Kamet, Mugoyoni and Chepkwasta primary schools who received the first copies of the paper were ecstatic.

Gannett Co. Inc. and The Tribune Company announced Monday they will expand the Metromix brand of entertainment Web sites to a network across the United States.

Metromix LLC will launch Metromix.com in the top 30 media markets in the United States, as well as in other key metro areas, a joint release stated.

Terms were not disclosed, but the new entity will be equally owned by the two companies, Editor & Publisher reported.

Metromix, the “one-stop guide to resturants, bars clubs and events,” is currently available in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other Tribune markets, E&P reported.

“Gannett and Tribune are a powerful combination of deep local market experience, superior content and national scale,” said Tim Landon, Tribune Interactive president, according to E&P. “With this partnership, we can grow Metromix into a true national brand, adding value for advertisers who want to reach a highly desirable demographic.”

Jack Williams, Gannett's digital president, said the partnership means “we can take the established and successful Metromix brand and deliver it – with full authority – to all the nation's top markets.”

Media buyers are happy with Yahoo's decision to open up its home page by adding outside links, but said the company should be moving faster to clear up barriers.

Yahoo last week started posting links to other news and content sites on the Featured section for the first time. The effort is aimed to open up the portal and make it the entry site for online users.

Most of the featured links still lead to other Yahoo sites, such as Yahoo's news or travel sections. However, after a series of testing, it has started linking to outside sources, including independent blogs, The Wall Street Journal, or popular sites like Vanityfair.com and Salon.com.

This move shows the broader strategy to transform Yahoo into a more open platform, in order to compete with Google and social networking rivals such as Facebook and MySpace. In addition, the movement includes inviting third-party developers to create new content and social applications for Yahoo.

Digital agency executives generally applauded Yahoo's new policy.

"The walled-garden approach doesn't work. So creating easier exit and entry points and getting people to come back to Yahoo and not hold them there is a smart strategy," said Scott Symonds, executive media director at AKQA, according to Media Post. "I think Yahoo is a great publisher and a great place to put quality brands, but I want to make sure it's keeping up with the marketplace."

The Sunday Times is the newspaper British readers spend the most time with, according to a National Readership Survey out Friday.

This is the first time the NRS revealed a set of data regarding the time spent reading papers, and will become a standard NRS data release, MediaGuardian reported Friday.

"There has been for many years a mistaken assumption that all we are reading for is two minutes - a drive-by read," said Roger Pratt, the NRS managing director, according to MediaGuardian. "This data shows that this is absolutely not the case. People do spend considerable amounts of their day reading newspapers."

According to the survey, people spend 102 minutes on average reading the Sunday Times, more than 10 minutes longer than the Observer (89 minutes) and the Sunday Telegraph (85 minutes).

The survey validated the idea that people spend more time with Sunday newspapers - 66 minutes on average reading the Mail on Sunday, 64 minutes with the Independent on Sunday and 61 minutes with the Sunday Express.

The Sunday Mirror takes up 46 minutes of readers' time, while the News of the World occupies 45 minutes. The People was read for 48 minutes and the Daily Star Sunday for 38 minutes.

NRS found that readers spent 70 minutes on average reading a Sunday paper, with over half taking an hour or more on it.

Journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald have protested the newspaper's use of its front page to promote Singapore Airlines Friday.

The broadsheet also devoted a four-page wraparound to Thursday's arrival of the airline's giant A380 airbus. The wraparound included a full-page Singapore Airlines advertisement and three smaller ads for the airline, as well as articles about the arrival of the world's largest passenger plane and other milestones in aviation, The Australian reported Friday.

After peeling back the wraparound, readers found another Herald front page containing other articles.

Protesting staff members said they believe the move breached the Fairfax editorial ethics policy, the paper's charter of editorial independence and the Media Entertainment Arts Alliance code of ethics.

“It shows that our masthead can be bought, it lets our readers down and it places the reputation of our reporters at risk,” said Ruth Pollard, Herald journalist and co-chairwoman of the Fairfax house committee, which held a staff meeting Friday to discuss the situation. “We're horrified ... It's an unprecedented low.”

A unanimous vote at the meeting “condemned Fairfax management for running the spread while a letter, signed by staff, has been sent to senior editors and Fairfax management,” The Australian reported.

The British government has dropped its proposals to tighten freedom of information legislation that would make rules more restrictive on cost limits for FOI requests and limit media access to coroners' courts and will instead investigate the idea for a freedom of expression audit for future legislation, the UK's Newspaper Society reported Thursday.

“We agree with Select Committee on Culture that a free press is a hallmark of our democracy, that there is no case for statutory regulation of the press, that self- regulation of the press should be maintained and that it is for publishers themselves to demonstrate by their decisions that they can sustain and bolster public confidence in the way information is gathered and used,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown said, according to the NS.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw will now be in charge of considering the idea of the audit across the government.

“The NS is delighted that the Government has abandoned the restrictions on freedom of information and open justice,” Santha Rasaiah, the NS's political, editorial and regulatory affairs director, said in a statement. “We are pleased that the proposal for a freedom of expression audit will be pursued. We hope that the principle will be immediately applied to existing proposals and Bills already before Parliament.”

The Sun's Web site is the latest to switch to Escenic CMS's content management platform.

More than 350 media sites in 14 countries have switched to Escenic Content Engine, including The Times Online and Die Welt, according to an Escenic statement.

The Sun made the announcement at the Online Publishers Association meeting at the beginning of the month, our partner site, Editorsweblog.org, reported Friday.

According to Escenic, Norway business portal Hegnar Online and Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet have also recently gone live on the Escenic platform.