Thomson Reuters Corp. has reported a 66 percent increase in its third quarter profit, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Profits rose to US$227 million, or 32 cents a share, from $167 million (19 cents per share) last year.

Adjusted third quarter earnings rose from 43 cents last year, to 49 cents this year, according to results posted by the news and data provider.

Tom Glocer, CEO of Thomson Reuters, said he was especially pleased with the launch and adoption rate of the company's Eikon, a desktop platform for financial professionals, launched in September. New platforms, also including Thomson Reuters Elektron and WestlawNext, as well as upcoming platforms to serve the Tax & Accounting and Healthcare & Science units, "will arm our sales force with the tools needed to drive revenue and profit growth in 2011 and beyond."

Glocer told the Financial Times of the group's finances: "It has been a story of the substitution of technology instead of headcount growth."

The Associated Press' revenue from newspapers has declined by one third since 2008, from US$220 million a year to about $140 million, Poynter.org revealed yesterday. Newspapers' contribution to the wire service's revenue is now only 20 percent.

"We expect it will continue to drop another $5 million to $7 million a year" starting in 2011 and thereafter, said AP Chief Executive Officer and President Tom Curley, explaining that the company is subsidising "offerings with more profitable lines of business."

The AP is relying on areas of growth like commercial photos, software businesses and its television news feeds. "The latter part is getting some more attention, as the TV feeds will soon get a $30 million digital upgrade to its system," paidContent.org explained.

Last week, the AP announced a joint reporting project with the Associated Press Managing Editors association to increase the coverage on how cutbacks in state budgets are affecting services and people, The Washington Post revealed. The company will also introduce e-commerce and create some subscription-based products.

National Magazine Company (NatMag), the UK-based division of publisher Hearst, announced it is transferring its magazine websites to the Magnus publishing platform, which will permit the group to enhance user experience and pave the way for new sources of revenue, Commerce Tuned reported. According to NatMag, the move will urge the sharing of "development and best practices," Brand Republic reported.

The Web platform was launched by Hearst Magazines Digital Media, and combines the publisher's content management, syndication, subscription marketing, community features, universal user registration as well as promotional content, Brand Republic explained. Magnus is also hoped to boost search features and present advertisers with a "technically sophisticated environment in which to engage with their target audiences."

"Our investment in the Magnus platform will create many opportunities for NatMag's websites - from the creation of new revenue streams to providing users with a more efficient and faster service, which, in turn, will help generate significant growth in traffic and attract new advertisers," said Simon Home, NatMag general manager and finance director.

As The Independent launched i yesterday, free daily Metro has upped its efforts, as some may view the new paper "as a sort of upmarket Metro," MediaGuardian's Roy Greenslade noted today.

On Friday, Metro published its largest issue ever, at 96 pages in London and 80 pages in outlying regions. Metro, published by Associated Newspapers Ltd., reaches about 1.4 million people on an average weekday, while i, at 56 pages, is a sort of condensed version of the Independent, targets younger readers, and costs 20p. According to Press Gazette, executives at the Independent are hoping for a circulation of about 200,000 for i.

One of Metro's business advantages is that it has a tight hold on national advertising. And, executives at Metro say they "do not believe that people will choose to pay 20p for their rapid morning read when they can get Metro for free," Greenslade wrote. "The Independent's bosses, however, argue that there is a difference between regular Metro readers and the audience they expect to read i. That may be so, but it is clear that the description of i's potential market - time-poor, cash-rich, youngish and urban - is very similar indeed to Metro's current readers."

Russia's telephone operator Vimpelkom announced today that its Beeline network provider is teaming up with the country's largest social site, VKontakte, to offer free access to the mobile edition of the site, GZT.ru reported. According to Oksana Belyaeva, Vimpelkom director of marketing for new business tools, almost half of Beeline subscribers with mobile Web access use the Internet for social networking.

O.vkontakte.ru is a text-only site, as opposed to other mobile versions of the social network, meaning that pages are loaded much faster, GZT.ru reported. Extra material can be downloaded by users and the cost varies depending on the subscription package each user has. Vimpelkom's commercial interest lies in this factor, RIA Novosti informed.

Russian mobile operators are branching out into social networking features because there is a surging interest amongst the population, RIA Novosti explained. Another prominent provider, MTS, launched a mobile Facebook site (O.facebook.com) simultaneously alongside Vimpelkom during the summer. A third large operator, MegaFon, has ventures with VKontakte, but hasn't initiated free mobile access to either Facebook or its Russian counterpart yet.

Although no official numbers have been released by Times and Sunday Times owner News International, audience research company Nielsen has estimated that an average of 362,000 UK web users went behind the papers' paywalls between July and September, reported the Guardian.

Nielsen estimates that 1.78 million monthly unique visitors from the UK went to the two papers' homepages, meaning that of these, just over one-fifth are going on to access subscription content, the Guardian added. In the three months until June 2010, the traffic to the Times Online site, predecessor to TheTimes.co.uk and SundayTimes.co.uk, was just over 3 million.

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

Being able to buy an issue or subscription on one device, and then access it across devices makes sense for device and app users. And, for the most part, it also makes sense for the makers of gadgets - Apple, Amazon, and others. However, it doesn't make sense for publishers looking to sell their own multi-platform subscriptions, paidContent's Staci Kramer wrote yesterday.

It is in the publisher's best interest to control their customer relationships and their brands across devices. Amazon announced its vision is to allow customers to "buy once, read everywhere" - a stance that could lead to content creators locking horns with device-makers.

Image via Melville House Publishing

For example, Kramer writes: "The NYT has invested considerable resources in an iPad app that eventually will be part of its metered plans. Selling subscriptions on the Kindle or Nook makes sense. Selling one that works on an iPad and competes with that, not so much."

Amazon has also said that in the future, it will allow users to lend e-books on the Kindle for 14 days, depending on the publisher's discretion, Retail Digital reported today.

Facebook Inc. and Groupon Inc. investor Mail.ru Group Ltd. Has filed a US$876 million IPO to go public on the London Stock Exchange, Bloomberg reported today.

The Russian Internet group is publishing for a valuation of up to $5.7 billion, the Wall Street Journal noted. It is looking to sell 3.03 million new shares and 28.59 million existing shares in the form of global depositary receipts at between $23.70 and $27.70 per GDR. If it's successful, the IPO will be the largest in the United Kingdom since July, when mining fund Vallar Plc raised $1 billion. Mail.ru could raise up to $83.1 million, and the company's owners could make up to $792 million from selling their stake in the IPO.

However, the valuation looks to be "too high" - more expensive than Internet companies anywhere but China, analysts told the WSJ.

"Such a valuation must assume significant growth of all the assets and the additional value from the synergies between them," Andrey Bogdanov, analyst at Gazprombank, told Reuters.

The Moscow-based Mail.ru owns 2.4 percent of Facebook, 5.1 percent of Groupon and 1.5 percent of Zynga Game Network, according to Bloomberg.

The Independent's new daily i launches today. Billed as the first quality daily to launch in Britain in 25 years, it aims to provide a full news service "in a way that is fully accessible," Independent deputy editor Adam Leigh told the Editors Weblog. It is not a new paper in terms of content, rather will almost entirely consist of repurposed and repackaged Independent content, presented in a new and more concise format. Media commentator for the Guardian Roy Greenslade described it as it as "quite simply, a populist alter ego to the Independent."

"Daily briefing is a phrase that we've used a lot while we've been developing it," said Leigh, who will be specifically involved with i, while the Independent's other deputy editor Dan Gledhill focuses on the main edition of the Independent. However, he stressed, it is more than that; it is "a newspaper first and foremost and it will cover a range of different content for a range of moments throughout the day." Many of the news stories near the front of the paper will only be one paragraph long, but throughout the 56-page paper there will also be longer pieces, or "places to pause," as Leigh put it.

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

Tech companies may be on the verge of investing in alternative energy sources. According to the Washington Post, Google is set to invest in an offshore wind energy farm in the United States. Meanwhile, Georgian designer Archil Vardidze proposed an iPhone 6 concept that features a solar-powered device, Concept Phones wrote.

The concept outlines the same single-button approach as current models, but also introduces a model that is slightly longer and wider, Uber Gizmo informed. Furthermore, it has an aluminum casing, an external antenna as well as a solar panel at the back for extra battery life. TFTS added that the design also incorporates a USB/charger docking station, a camera at the front and an LED flash cam at the back.

On the other hand, Google is much closer to harnessing more eco-friendly sources. DelmarvaNow explained that Google intends to buy a 37.5 percent stake in the Atlantic Wind Connection project. The initiative amounts to around US$500 million and Google may be proposing nearly $200 million at first.

USA TODAY continues to be the top in total daily print circulation in the United States, the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations reported today, the Gannett-owned newspaper announced in a press release.

The national U.S. daily's print circulation was up to 1,812,092 for the period ending Sept. 30, and saw an increase of an average of 3,461 copies per day since the last ABC report, in March. Following USA TODAY is the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, the press release stated. However, the Wall Street Journal came in first when it comes to electronic editions, at 449,139, paidContent reported.

Image: Fast Company

In second place for e-editions in the United States was the Detroit Free Press, at 99,613, followed by The New York Times (71,697), the San Jose Mercury News (69,499) and the Detroit News (50,573).