Parent company of The Dallas Morning News, A.H. Belo Corporation, reported a US$8.7 million loss in its first quarter as an independent firm, The Dallas Morning News reported Tuesday.

During the period from January to March, A.H. Belo also saw revenue slide nine percent from the same quarter the year before, to $160.2 million.

“A.H. Belo is navigating through a challenging operating environment, but I am confident about the quality of our markets long-term, the strengths of AHC's brands and our ability to continue to transform AHC in an Internet-centric media world,” Robert W. Decherd, the company's chairman, president and chief executive, told The Dallas Morning News.

Newspaper company A.H. Belo was spun off from Belo in February.

In a letter to shareholders Decherd stated that “we continue to be on of the most aggressive companies in the newspaper business – if not the most aggressive – in focusing the circulation of our core newspapers on readers who matter the most to advertisers,” The Dallas Morning News reported.

Media conglomerate Cox Enterprises Inc., which foresees shrinking newspaper and television audiences and plans to keep an eye on the online market, spent US$300 million to buy a startup, the Associated Press reported.

The deal with Adify Corp., announced Tuesday, represents the latest evolution for the media company, which began over a century ago with one newspaper in Ohio, and later expanded to new areas including radio, television and cable systems in the United States.

"We're absolutely convinced at Cox that online revenue is continuing to grow," said John Dyer, Cox executive vice president for finance. "If you look at Cox's history, we've not necessarily been the first into a space. ... But we've prided ourselves in the course of history in being early investors."

After this acquisition, Cox can get a technology platform which helps Web sites more successfully sell higher-priced ads to targeted audiences, according to the article posted on Yahoo! News.

Adify already runs several ad networks, including one for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc. and another of hundreds of independent financial blogs assembled by the online unit of Forbes Inc.

Cox is exploring its own specialty ad networks around such Web assets as cable TV's Travel Channel, the AutoTrader.com classifieds site and the Kudzu local search portal, the Associated Press reported.

Adify will remain its headquarter in San Bruno, Calif. after the deal is done.

The Financial Times will on Tuesday launch a Middle East regional edition, which will be based in the United Arab Emirates, the Guardian reported Monday.

Every Tuesday and Thursday there will be page dedicated to the Middle East, and the new regional edition will feature a new masthead specific to the edition.

Enhanced coverage will come from London and be overseen by Roula Khalaf, the Financial Times' Middle East editor, while regional editorial and commercial teams will work from Abu Dhabi, the Guardian reported.

The Pearson-owned financial paper has been printing its European edition in Dubai since 2003, with a print run of about 4,000 copies. The first print run for the new edition will be about the same, but in the future the Financial Times hopes it will be tripled, as the regional edition will big a bigger opportunity for regional advertisers, according to the Guardian.

The regional edition will “provide a further boost to our global circulation and provide a quality advertising vehicle for businesses seeking to reach senior decision makers in the Middle East,” John Ridding, chief executive of the Financial Times, told the Guardian.

The Financial Times has already dedicated editions for the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, Asia, and the United States, and is printed in 24 cities throughout the world.

There are currently 28 million HDTV households in the United States, which is about one-fourth of the population, according to a Frank N. Magid Associates study conducted in March 2008.

According to eMarketer, during the 2007-2008 holiday and Super Bowl season, 5.5 million households bought their first HDTV set, while another 3 million homes added their second HDTV.

The demand will be driven by current HDTV owners - almost 40 percent of HDTV owners said they plan to purchase another one in the next 12 months.

"Consumers who become accustomed to the sleek and contemporary appearance of their first HD set are now looking to bring that benefit into other rooms in their home," said Maryann Baldwin, vice president at Magid Media Features, according to eMarketer.

Other factors driving its growth include price drops, the upcoming Summer Olympics, and a mistaken belief among some consumers that an HDTV set is required for the digital transition in 2009, eMarketer reported.

Editorial staff at The New York Times are bracing themselves for layoffs in the next 10 days, the New York Post reported Friday.

About 50 unionized journalists have accepted buyout offers, and another 20 non-union journalists have done the same. This means “the ax could fall on as many as 30 editorial people in the company's first-ever mass firing of journalists in its 156-year history,” the Post reported.

A poor ad market led Executive Editor William Keller to cut 100 editorial jobs, and urged people to take a buy-out offer. A week ago, Assistant Managing Editor William Schmidt sent a memo stating he was nearly positive the company will have to make involuntary job cuts. “With just 70 people stepping forward for buyouts, it is very likely that 30 newsroom staffers will be forced out in coming days,” the Post article stated.

“We're bracing for it,” the Post quoted an “insider with some knowledge of the developments” as saying.

The deadline for non-union employees to accept buyouts was Monday, and Tuesday for unionized employees. Buyout deals offer three weeks severance pay for each year worked.

The new free Dutch business daily, De Financiële Pers, was a two-day test run, an editorial in Friday's edition stated, Newspaper Innovation reported Friday,

De Financiële Pers is a business spin-off of free daily De Pers, which De Pers launched in a joint venture with business platform IEX.nl.

If the overall response from audiences and advertisers is good, De Financiële Pers will be relaunched “for real” at a later date, according to Newspaper Innovation.

Circulation for the test-run was 25,000 and the paper was given out in business centers throughout the Netherlands.

De Pers stated in an editorial that it is looking forward to launch the paper for good, and when it does, it is expected to compete with the paid Financieele Dagblad, Newspaper Innovation reported.

Trinity Mirror will shut down eight loss-making free weekly newspapers in Derby and Peterborough, including the Peterborough Herald and Post and the Derby Trader, the Guardian reported Thursday.

When the company's offices in Derby and Peterborough close, 23 employees, including six in editorial, will be made redundant.

Trinity said it has no further plans to close other publications within the division, such as the Birmingham Mail and the Coventry Evening Telegraph, the Guardian reported.

“It is a very sad day when newspaper titles close and we looked hard alternative measures to try and prevent this decision,” Steve Brown, regional managing director of Trinity Mirror Midlands, told the Guardian. “However, the remaining titles in the Trinity Mirror Midlands marketplace remain strong and the management team is focused on continuing to grow audiences and products across the rest of the region.”

For another article on this topic, visit our partner site, Editorsweblog.org.

E.W. Scripps Co announced its first-quarter profit is up 23 percent, with revenue gains at its cable-television and Internet units, Bloomberg reported Friday.

However, the company's newspaper units marked a revenue drop in this period.

Net income was up to US$84.1 million, or 51 cents per share, from $68.5 million, or 42 cents, a year earlier. Sales increased 6.8 percent to $642.5 million, exceeding the $623.5 million estimates from analysts, Bloomberg reported.

The HGTV and Food Network channels were the key revenue drivers at the cable-TV unit, while revenue dropped at the newspaper business. Scripps plans to separate the cable and interactive businesses from its 15 daily papers and 10 local broadcast TV stations by the end of the current quarter.

"Scripps's cable-TV channels are still getting some good pricing. Cable is growing its audience, while traditional media continues to lose share. For newspaper and network TV, there's no stopping the bleeding in the near term,'' said Brian Shipman, an analyst at Jefferies & Co.

Scripps price rose 49 cents to $43.79 Wednesday in New York Stock Exchange. The shares have declined 2.7 percent this year, according to Bloomberg.

Dutch free daily De Pers has launched spin-off business daily De Financiële Pers today, Newspaper Innovation reported Thursday.

The paper will be distributed throughout business centres in major cities.

De Pers and Internet business platform IEX.nl created De Financiële Pers through a joint venture, according to Newspaper Innovation.

Circulation of the new business daily is unknown, however; the first issue had 32 pages.

De Financiële Pers is the fifth national free daily in the Netherlands, after Metro, Spits, De Pers and DAG, Newspaper Innovation reported.

The global spending (both consumer and advertiser) on mobile media services will exceed US$102 billion by 2012, up from $47 billion in 2007, according to a Strategy Analytics forecast.

Consumers will account for the majority of this spending in the near-term, according to research firm eMarketer.

The consumers who are accessing this content will boost from 406 million in 2007 to 870 million in 2012.

"The combination of falling mobile data pricing, an increasingly open approach from network operators towards partnering with popular consumer media brands, the lowering of barriers to off-portal service accessibility and improvements in device usability will lead to an improved environment for mobile content and service adoption," said Nitesh Patel, senior analyst at Strategy Analytics, according to eMarketer.

"Consequently, over the next five years we project continued growth in consumer acceptance and spending across a range of media applications distributed over cellular networks, particularly Web access, video, music and mobile TV," Patel added.

By definition, mobile media services include mobile Internet access, video and music, eMarketer reported.

The future is unpredictable, but that doesn't mean you can't do something about it. That message is particularly important for the newspaper industry and is the basis of "Scenario Planning for Newspaper Companies," the latest report from the SFN project.

Scenario planning – the practice of imagining a variety of possible futures and planning strategies to cope with them -- allows businesses to take a pro-active approach and prepare for many contingencies.

The SFN report is based on interviews with eight of the world's most prominent publishers, a two-day scenario planning seminar involving executives from 15 countries, and research developed for the SFN project, which identifies, analyses and publicises all important breakthroughs and opportunities that can benefit newspapers all over the world.

An executive summary of the report can be found here.

The process described in the report began with interviews about the future of newspapers with eight leading publishers: Janet Robinson, President of The New York Times: Francis Tiong, CEO of Ming Pao in Hong Kong and Malaysia; Nelson Sirotsky, CEO of RBS in Brazil; Tomas Brunegard, CEO of Stampen Group in Sweden; Olav Mugaas, CEO of Aftenposten in Norway; David Kirk, CEO of Fairfax Media in Australia; Eugen Russ, CEO of Vorarlberger Medienhaus in Austria, and Jim Moroney, CEO of the Dallas Morning News in the United States.