Daily Mail and General Trust previously announced it expected the 100 newspapers in its regional arm, Northcliffe Media, to return to growth at the end of this year. But now the UK publisher says the announcement was a bit premature, and it currently is unable to tell when the regional titles will recover from recent economic hardships, MediaGuardian reported today.

"We don't know yet, I have no idea as we don't have that visibility," Peter Williams, DMGT's finance director, told MediaGuardian. "It is a bit disappointing - certainly around Christmas, if trends had continued, we should have moved into revenue growth by the spring or summer. It has remained stubbornly slightly negative."
However, on Wednesday the Financial Times reported that DMGT did managed to beat expectations for the third quarter, thanks to growth in business operations and an improving national advertising landscape. Williams told the FT that retail has been the strongest sector. However, regionals saw advertising and circulation revenues down 4 percent and 5 percent, respectively.

DMGT's net debt is currently down to £970 million, the Scotsman reported.

The Arabic-language daily Arrouiah yesterday published its last print edition after its owners decided to shut it down due to a lack of advertising and increasing debts, The National reported.

This is third newspaper to close in Kuwait for economic reasons over the past 18 months. The first daily to fold was Assawt in February 2009, followed by Awan in May 2010, The Kuwait Times noted. Arrouiah "was the only daily newspaper in the Arab world that was voluntarily under Sharia censorship," editor-in-chief Saud al Sebeiei said while explaining that they "had refused hundreds of advertisements" for not being in compliance with the law.

A second reason for the closure, Al Sebeiei said, was that Qatari businessman Ghanim al Sadd, who is the chairman of Al Imtiaz Investment - the shareholding company that owns the newspaper - had withdrawn support for the publication.

"The government of Qatar supports the chairman, and [they say] there's no need for a newspaper in Kuwait," the editor said, according to The National.

National Canadian daily The Globe and Mail has launched an iPad news app, available for download at the iTunes App store, Editor & Publisher.com reported today.

After several internal discussions with media companies trying to figure out how users will interact with the content on the mobile device, the company decided to offer the app on a two month free trial to begin with, thanks to the sponsorship from three big advertising partners, GM Canada, Infiniti and Capital One. This sponsorship is part of a multi-platform deal that also allows users access to the Globe's other mobile inventory free for two months.

The newspaper's app was developed by Spreed Inc. of Toronto, and provides readers with content specifically selected for the iPad featuring breaking news and analysis, a daily photo gallery and the ability to download content for offline reading, according to the press release by Canada Newswire posted on DigitalJournal.com.

Brazilian newspapers increased their circulation in the first six months of 2010 to a daily average of 4.3 million copies, which represents a growth of 2 percent when compared with last year, according to the monitory agency IVC, EFE reported yesterday.

These results are good news for an industry that in 2009, after five years of solid growth, saw a circulation decline of 3.46 percent due to the economic crisis, Prnoticias.com noted.

However, IVC President Pedro Martins Silva said the growth could have been steeper if had not been for a decline in June's newspapers sales, the lowest since January 2008.

According to O Globo, Martins Silva attributed the sales decline to the results of the World Cup in South Africa. "A similar behavior was perceived in June 2006 [during Germany's World Coup], which brings up the hypothesis that the World Cup generated this change in the consumers' behavior," he said.

McClatchy Co. reported an 83 percent profit decline in the second quarter as the company suffered from both advertising and circulation downturn, Reuters reported.

Net income dropped to $7.3 million, or 9 cents a share, from $42.2 million, or 50 cents a share, year-over-year. Revenue fell to $342 million from $365.3 million, the Associated Press reported.

Advertising revenue dropped about 8.2 percent to $260.5 million. Circulation revenue declined 2.4 percent.

Just like many other players in the industry, the economic slowdown has drained ad revenues and pushed them to restructure to cut costs by slashing jobs. The industry has also been trying to transfer the traditional readers online. Circulation at McClatchy slipped 2.4 percent, compared to the same period last year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

According to Chief Executive Gary Pruitt in a statement, advertising revenue would be down again in the third quarter, but the drop would be less severe, Reuter reported.

The United Kingdom's most popular national daily website, Mail Online, hopes to turn profitable in 2011 by promoting growth in display advertising, MediaWeek.co.uk reported today.

The Daily Mail and General Trust's newspaper division also witnessed an increase in digital ad revenues by 46 percent, and a surge in advertising on consumer titles by 13 percent, MediaGuardian reported yesterday.

Image Source: MediaWeek.co.uk

"Display advertising in itself is about delivering eyeballs, and we've always believed that if you get the eyeballs then you can sell the inventory," Peter Williams, finance director at DMGT, told MediaWeek. "It is important to remember online does not require anything like the same [advertising] yields as the [print] newspaper does."

Along with traditional display advertising, the services such as Money Mail and increase in sponsored links on specific sections of the news site have begun to generate significant revenue as well.

European newspaper group Mecom beat market expectations with a €29.5 million (£24.6 million) pre-tax profits, or a 48 percent leap, in the first half of the year, Media Guardian reported.

Mecom, which has presence in Denmark, Poland, the Netherlands and Norway - posted its total group revenues almost flat at €708 million. Circulation revenues increased 2 percent to €280 million, which helped offset a 3 percent decline in total ad revenues.

Overall print ad revenues fell by 5 percent, while online newspaper advertising, which now contributes about 10 percent of total ad revenue, rose by 47 percent.

"We are well advanced in making the business overall more efficient," said Chief Executive David Montgomery, Reuters reported. "The new operating model is taking shape."

The company's share price surged almost 7 percent in early trading after the financial result was released.

French hotel chain Sofitel will now offer the daily press to its guests through an iPad application, "in a move that could mean a fresh start for the dwindling tradition of the morning newspaper in hotels," The Independent revealed today.

The newspaper service, called "The Kiosk," provides a selection of six publications per country. For now, there will be media from France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United States, the company announced in a press release.

Some of dailies included by Sofitel are Le Monde, The Wall Street Journal, El Pais, The Financial Times, Die Welt and La Repubblica.

According to The Independent, the service is only available for those "staying in the top end suites in Paris, London, Munich and Brussels," where each guest is provided with an iPad.

The French chain, which plans to expand The Kiosk to all of its locations, explained that the new service is both "environmentally friendly" and convenient for the guests.

Last year, Marriott hotels stopped offering daily papers to guests. Only those who request it receive The Wall Street Journal, USA Today or local newspapers.

Four Bolivian organisations, which represent newspapers, journalists and editors, have requested the derogation of the recently approved electoral law as it violates the Constitution and threats freedom of speech, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported yesterday.

The law, signed on June 30 by President Evo Morales, does not allow candidates to the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Tribunal to give interviews and limits media from publishing electoral polls. According to EFE, it also prohibits the publication of partial results and documents that have not been approved by the Electoral Power.

The National Press Association, the National Journalist Association of Bolivia, the Bolivian Association of Radios and La Paz Association of Journalists said in a joint press release that they only recognise press law approved in 1925 and rejected governmental pressure towards media and journalists.

U.S. newspapers will completely change they way they report circulation beginning October 1, following changes to circulation rules made by the Audit Bureau of Circulations' board, Editor & Publisher reported today.

The changes include newspapers now being able to count one subscribers multiple times; for example, a subscriber may be counted once for his print subscription, once for his e-reader subscription, and so on. This also includes online, mobile and other subscriptions. Another major change is that newspapers may include "branded editions" (products published under a different name, such as a commuter daily) in their total average circulation. "The board's aim is to establish a foundation for the future as more newspapers move to bundled print/digital subscription offers and hybrid publishing plans," the ABC board announced in a press release.

A.H. Belo Corp., the publisher of The Dallas Morning News, The Providence Journal and many others, Monday announced its second-quarter loss was smaller year-to-year, but its ad revenue was still in a decline, the Associated Press reported.

The company's net loss in the second quarter totaled $171,000, or 1 cent a share, much less than that of $7.1 million, or 34 cents a share, one year ago.

Revenue was down 5 percent to $121.6 million from $127.5 million year-over-year.

Advertising, which is the main source of revenue for the company, fell 12 percent to $77 million. Circulation revenue grew 7 percent to $35.5 million, partly due to the price changes in Dallas, AP reported.

The digital revenue was down 4.3 percent to $9.3 million, while non-classified digital revenue rose 2.5 percent to $4.2 million, Media Post reported.

"We continue to manage the business to maximise operating cash flow over the long-term and monetize real estate in transactions that create value for shareholders at appropriate prices," according to the company's chairman and CEO Robert Decherd.