Agora SA, the largest publisher in Poland, announced it will buy Centrum Filmowe Helios SA, the third-biggest cinema operator in the country, in order to reduce dependence on the newspaper advertising market, Bloomberg reported.

According to the company's e-mailed statement Tuesday, Agora signed a preliminary agreement to acquire 84 percent of Helios for 25 million euros, or US$34 million.

"We are entering the cinema market, which has significant growth potential. Compared with other European Union countries, Poland has relatively low per capita ticket sales," said Agora Deputy Chief Executive Officer Zbigniew Bak in the statement. "

Agora, which publishes the nation's leading non-tabloid daily, had suffered from the declining advertising and circulation, but it has tried to focus on the Internet and other non-print media, and have already seen some successes, according to the Reuters articles posted on Interactive Investor.

According to UniCredit analyst Przemyslaw Sawala-Uryasz, "This means entering a market far less correlated with the media and advertising markets. I do not see this as a move to broaden the advertising base but as a move to diversify revenue."

John Yemma, the editor of The Christian Science Monitor, had some strong words for newspaper websites in an article he wrote for PaidContent: neither paywalls nor multimedia content will save you.

Although Yemma believes that content is king, no news organisation has formulated an appropriate response to the problem of losing the value of content on the Internet. Erecting paywalls, like the ones News Corp and the New York Times will in the near future, is just like "sandbagging the tops of levies on the Mississipi," but they are not the answer. Paywalls can't hold the flood back, and the "Internet flood never recedes."

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

Following USA Today's move to newsstands inside Starbucks coffee shops, The Wall Street Journal today announced its availability for purchase at 450 local Starbucks stores in the New York area, according to a Dow Jones press release, out today.

The Journal will also be available in the shops in certain parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and Pennsylvania. The New York Times was the first national U.S. newspaper to be distributed at Starbucks, with USA Today joining the coffee chain's distribution network at 6,500 Starbucks outlets across the country earlier this month. The distribution of The Journal at Starbucks is expected to coincide with the launch of its New York edition in April, Editor & Publisher reported.

"This strategic relationship is consistent with the Journal's plan to target New Yorkers, especially with the upcoming new section that will debut next month," Lynne Brennen, senior vice president of circulation for The Journal, stated in the press release. "The targeted distribution across New York area Starbucks stores allows us to serve our readers and is another platform for customers to sample its broad array of coverage."

Independent News and Media last week unveiled premium content across its 13 regional newspaper Web sites in Ireland.

The newspapers will continue carrying a considerable amount of free content across the newspaper Web sites, Patrick Lenehan, CTO of Independent Digital, told SFN. The non-newspaper sourced content was built up over the past 18 months.

Newspapers now under the freemium model include: the Kerryman, Corkman, Sligo Champion, Drogheda Independent, Fingal Independent, The Argus, Bray People, Carlow People, Enniscorthy Guardian, Gorey Guardian, New Ross Standard, Wicklow People and Wexford People.

"This is very much a trial. There are no plans to launch across our national newspaper brands (e.g. Independent.ie) as the national newspaper Web sites perform very well with an advertising supported model - in fact they are market leaders commercially," Lenehan stated in an e-mail.

The launch of the new freemium model was showcased to print readers with a full-page colour ad in each regional newspaper. The ad included a letter from the editor and information detailing which content would be paid, and which would be free.

The San Francisco Chronicle has entered into a content sharing agreement with Bloomberg and will expand its daily business news section, the California daily reported yesterday.

The new daily business section, called "Business Report," will be produced jointly by the Chronicle staff and the Bloomberg news team. Beginning Sunday, it will feature stories drafted by Chronicle reporters and content from the Bloomberg news service, in both the print edition of the Chronicle and Web sites of both groups, the San Francisco Business Journal reported. Financial details about the deal have not been disclosed by either party.

According to the Chronicle, the collaboration is the first of its kind in the United States, with Bloomberg producing stories, graphics and photos specifically for the Chronicle, along with data packages that focus on Bay Area's largest industries that include technology, biotechnology and financial services.

"By working with Bloomberg, the world's largest and most trusted information source for business news and reporting, we intend the Chronicle's daily business section to be an essential read for business, financial and technology coverage of Silicon Valley and the Bay Area," Frank Vega, Chronicle Chairman and Publisher stated in a press release.

Le Monde announced Tuesday that, starting March 29, it will be offering a new subscription package encompassing all media on which the top French newspaper is offered. Currently, the site offers free access to much of its online content, articles from that day's print newspaper, which are relegated to a subscription-only archive the next day, and there is a free iPhone

The move comes as part of an effort to create what application, which has received over 1.4 million downloads to date. Upon the implementation of a paywall, Le Monde's print edition will no longer be available online to anyone but web subscribers.Eric Fotterino, CEO of Le Monde, calls a "global brand."

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

Outliving expectations from the newspaper industry, The Moscow Times plans to become a full colour publication from April, Newspaper Innovation reported yesterday.

Remarking its 17-year history as the longest surviving free European English daily, the publication aims to promote its colour version, by advertising in the print and online versions of its newspaper with a hope to increase readership, promote loyalty and maximise advertising opportunities by adding an emotional element to its photographs, Independent Media Russia reported.

Being distributed at hotels and business centers, the circulation of the newspaper is around 35,000, according to Newspaper Innovation. The free daily was initially launched by Independent Media and later sold to Finnish publisher, Sanoma. Users can still access and download the black and white version of the newspaper after registering on its Web site.

An event showcasing best journalistic photographs by the publication's photographers will be held at the Kofemania café on Bolshaya Nikitskaya street, as a unique continuation of the redesigned paper launch campaign efforts.

With an aim to increase readership and promote loyalty, many programmes have been developed to retain existing customers and attract new ones with favourable subscription offers, Independent Media Russia reported.

Spot.Us, the California-based community-funded journalism site, is looking at new business models, it was reported in eMedia Vitals. Spot.Us allows the public to fund the stories they want: freelance journalists submit pitches or readers provide tips, a price is set for the story and Spot.Us enables the public donation process.

At the SXSW technology festival, Spot.Us founder David Cohn suggested that he was planning to offer readers alternative ways to fund stories, according to eMedia Vitals. As well as donating cash, readers could perform some kind of advertising-related task for a company such as filling out a survey, taking a quiz or watching a video, and then be awarded credits which they could put towards funding stories.

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

UK daily The Sun has launched a new print and outdoor advertising campaign touting its columnists and its lower cover price in the south east region, MarketingWeek reported yesterday.

The campaign was designed to promote the News International tabloid's lower cover price of 20 pence, down from 30 pence, as well as to capture the different writing styles of its columnists, according to MarketingWeek. Each ad features an iconic portrait photograph of a columnist along with a short tagline that reflects that writer's unique style.

The promotional pricing offered by The Sun puts pressure on its rivals, The Daily Mirror, priced at 45p and The Daily Star at 20p, according to MediaWeek. While circulation revenues are declining overall for the UK newspaper industry, the News International tile aims to increase its readership by offering promotional pricing in different regions. The latest slash in cover price will be seen in the Central TV region encompassing Birmingham and Oxford, with the title priced at 20p from 30p.

However, the time span for this aggressive promotional pricing strategy remains indefinite.

The daily has seen a fall in circulation, thrice over the past 4 months below the 3million mark, and the recent ABC audit for February indicates a circulation decline by 3.6 percent to 2,972,763, MediaWeek reported.

On Monday, Google officially removed its search site from Chinese servers, submerging the country in a partial Google blackout much sooner than expected

The company still hosts some Google services, such as Google Docs and Google News, in China, but it has moved its search operations off the mainland to Hong Kong. Because of China's "One Country, Two Systems" policy, Hong Kong has many of its own laws, which don't include the censorship requirements that the Beijing government has imposed upon Google. When Chinese users on the mainland attempt to go to Google.cn, they are directed to Google.co.hk, which aims to bypass those requirements. and drawing both outrage and praise for the act.

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

Worldwide, bloggers have reached 184 million people, according to Universal McCann in March 2008, while 26.4 million of them were from United States. Additionally, there were 346 million people worldwide who read blogs, or 77 percent of active Internet users, 60.3 million of which came from the United States, SFN's World Digital Media Trends 2009 reported.

According to comScore's data in August 2008, there were 77.7 million unique visitors in the United States, out of the total 188.9 million online population.

eMarketer's data shows that in May 2008, there were 94.1 million U.S. blog readers, or half of the Internet users. The number of bloggers reached 22.6 million, which represents 12 percent of all online users, according to the report, World Digital Media Trends 2009, released by SFN and the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers.