Results matching “european free p”

Approximately 80% of the free dailies in France will survive versus just one third of bought dailies, according to media specialist Jean-Clément Texier (Director media & telecoms at BNP-Paribas).

Dropping advertising revenue coupled with the high startup and production costs are stagnating the market for French newspapers.

Free dailies in France have been growing steadily, 20 Minutes has taken first place in distribution volume with 16% of the market, placing it in higher circulation than other dailies such as Le Figaro, Le Parisien and Le Monde.  Free dailies have been growing steadily in the French market because of the lack of loyalty to purchased dailies due to their high cost caused by governmental regulations.

Free daily papers make up 7 percent of the daily worldwide press and 23 percent in Europe. The worldwide distribution of free dailies has grown by 173% in 5 years.

Edited by Lauren Drablier

Source: BBC, New York Times,  NYTimes.com,  French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs,  Freepublic.com, Lemonde.fr

Mini Dairio, a free daily from Spain, announces a complete makeover that features a more modern title with consistent use of color throughout the entire paper.

Kidsville News, a free national newspaper geared towards children, is scheduled for launching on Long Island this autumn. The paper will be published locally and will circulate at schools, in restaurants and amusement parks, reports the European Journalism Centre.

Publisher Alyssa Nightingale says that while the Web, newspapers and younger people might be an "unusual" blend, Kidsville News hopes to encourage an interest in current events and educational subjects. The paper also has sports content, puzzles, cartoons and games.  

Long Island companies would pay a fee for sponsorship, letting them get their name published in the paper and having some educational stories written about their respective industries.

Kidsville News Inc was established 10 years ago and in 2005, the company started to license the paper to local publishers who offered to pay a fee for rights.

The paper's circulation has grown with time, and nearly 1.3 million copies are distributed in 148 counties across the US.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Imprisoned Cuban journalists continue to report from jail, whether it is through the weekly telephone calls they are allowed or by passing on notes during prison visits.

Journalists José Ubaldo Izquierdo Hernández and Miguel Galván Gutiérrez, who are currently jailed in Havana's Güanajay prison, managed to provide information about the exploitation of prisoners who are used as free labor at a shoe factory in Havana.

Articles making use of the information were published on CubaNet and PayoLibre, Miami-based online news outlets, even if they were not written by Hernández and Gutiérrez.

Both journalists were convicted in March 2003, as part of a "massive crackdown against the opposition and independent press", reported Maria Salazar on the Commitee to Protect Journalists Blog. 

Source: European Journalism Centre, Commitee to Protect Journalists

Global traditional media outlets remain popular in Europe, In spite of the influx of online audiovisual content and the growing popularity of Internet portals as information sources.

A recent European Media and Marketing Survey (EMS) showed that The Financial Times remains the premier paid publication with 548,000 readers, with The International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal lagging behind.

Free dailies Metro and 20 Minutes have 2.5 million and 998,000 readers respectively.

A "solid performance" was also noted at the National Geographic, with its 2.14 million readers, making it the most popular magazine as it outranks Time, reported Le Figaro .

Inflight magazines such as Air France Magazine (1.1 million readers) and Lufthansa Magazine (1.4 million readers) are the most read, according to the survey.

Source: Le Figaro through IFRA Executive News Service

In an event appropriately titled the 1st Japan-China-South Korea Editors' Seminar, 41 senior editors and journalists from Japan, China and South Korea, met in Seoul for the first of such a gathering.

The event provided a forum for discussions on the Internet, the role of the media, and coverage of key issues, including free trade. The meetings theme was, "Developing New Collaborative Relations in Pursuit Of Deeper Mutual Understanding Among Media Circles."

Jin Dong-guang, chief of Korean-language broadcasting at state-owned China Radio International (CRI), noted that due to growing competition with U.S. and European media, it was crucial for the three countries to strengthen their cooperation. "Specifically," reported Pressnet, "Jin called for a system to share information among media in the three countries and to promote joint projects in newsgathering and content production, as well as in other fields."

The new forum is to be held every two years, with the next meeting set for Tokyo in 2010.

Source: Pressnet

South Africa's Media Institute has launched a web site devoted to press freedom in East Africa.

EastAfricaPress.com reports the latest news on free expression violations, hosts a journalist forum, and provides information about the East African Editors Forum and other top stories in media news.

The site is edited by Ugandan and Rwandan journalists, Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda and Eleneus Akanga.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Although some of the main findings of this year's Newsroom Barometer relate to trends of newsroom integration, the survey's results also revealed some major trends as to the future of the press and news in general.

The fact that a large share of editors believe the most common platform for news in the future will be online - and not print - is significant. It is also significant that a majority of them think the majority of news will be free in the future. Even more interesting though is the fact that these numbers have quickly grown since last year.

Among the main findings:

- A plurality - 44% - believe online will be the most common platform for reading news in the future, compared with 41% last year.  Thirty-one cited print (down from 35% last year), 12% mobile and 7% e-paper. The rest were unsure.
- A majority of editors - 56%- believe news in the future will be free, up from 48% from last year's survey. Only one third believe the news will remain paid for, while 11% were unsure.
- Two-thirds believe some editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom opposition to the practice.
- Perhaps one of the sadder findings of this year's Barometer, as only 45% of editors think journalism's quality will improve.

Looking 10 years into the future, what do you think will be the most common way of reading the news in your country?

Editors increasingly see online as the platform of reference for news in the future (44% compared to 40% last year), now significantly more so than print (30.6% compared to 35% last year).
Overall, 63% thought a type of digital platform will be the most common format, including 11.5% for mobile and 7% for e-paper, a relatively high figure combined (18.5%) for technologies that are still relatively uncommon. Results for mobile and e-paper stayed stable, indicating that news executives perceived few major evolutions in these technologies over the last year.

Do you think that the majority of news (print and online) will be free in the future?

A clear majority of respondents (56%) believe that the majority of news will be free in the future, a significant evolution, as only 47% answered 'Yes' last year. Only a third of respondents (33%) believe news will remain paid for. The future of the paid-for model - paid by users directly - is increasingly put into question, even by those who produce it.
Respondents from Western Europe, the cradle of the paid-for model, were less likely to believe in free news (48%). North American respondents were on par with the average, at 58.5%. The shift towards the free news model is more apparent when it comes to 'emerging' newspaper markets: in South America, Eastern Europe, Russia, the Middle East and Asia combined, 61% of respondents believed news would be free.

One might have expected Western European and North American editors to be more open to the free news model (after giving birth to freesheets and free online news), but many still think that users should pay for a quality editorial product.

Do you think it very likely, somewhat likely, not very likely, or not all likely that in the future some traditional editorial functions will be outsourced?

Surprisingly, nearly two thirds of respondents (64%) believed that in the future traditional editorial functions will be outsourced, despite frequent newsroom resistance to such announcements. Granted, 44% of editors thought it be merely "somewhat likely," but this shows editors are conscious of - maybe not thrilled by - the growing trend of outsourcing.

One might have expected that North Americans and Europeans (West and East) particularly believe in the outsourcing trend (as the ones primarily concerned by outsourcing due to higher staff costs), but the results pointed in the opposite direction. On average, respondents from other regions of the world were more likely to believe in the outsourcing of editorial tasks in the future.

Over the next 10 years, do you think that the quality of journalism will:

A near majority thought that journalism's quality would improve (45% versus 27% who thought it would worsen). Yet while this is positive, it also means 55% of respondents didn't affirm that journalism would improve: the finding illustrates both the relative confidence and the uncertainties of this transitional period for the newspaper industry. Furthermore, this number is slightly down from last year, when 50% of respondents thought the quality of journalism would improve.

The hardships for the North American newspaper industry continue to be felt, as a mere 30% of respondents thought that journalism's quality would improve. Similarly, Russians and Eastern Europeans (34%) and West Europeans (45.5%) were skeptical.


Read Part 1: Presentation - main results, the integrated newsroom will be the norm
Read Part 2: Multimedia, multi-skilled and integrated
Read Part 3: The future of the press
Read Part 4: Who participated in the survey?
Read Part 5: Comments by John Zogby and WEF President George Brock
Read Part 6: Threats to newspapers, areas of investment, more results

Press freedom appears to be shrinking in eastern Europe, as evidenced by a series of recent laws constraining free speech rights.  

The latest repressive legislation comes out of Slovakia, where a new media law, set to come into practice on June 1, will give anyone named in an article "sweeping rights to an equally prominent rebuttal," reports the Economist.  Media watchdogs have condemned the law and Slovakian newspapers are protesting by publishing issues with blank, black-framed front pages.

Right-of-reply rules are common in some European nations, but Slovakia's is the most punitive. While the Slovakian government insists the law will make the media more responsible, the concern is the potential exploitation of the law by Slovakia's Prime Minister, Robert Fico, who has a tumultuous relationship with the media.  

Bulgaria and Romania as well have laws on the books that criminalize defamation of public figures. In 2007, 100 cases went to court in Bulgaria for attacks against "honor and dignity," up from 60 the year before. And as of last year, Romania's constitutional court restored legislation making "insult" illegal, although press freedom is also curtailed by the ownership of mainstream media by politically active tycoons.   

Moreover, the annual report of Freedom House, a New York-based lobby group, shows the sharpest decline in media freedom in the world in eastern Europe, behind Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Granted the situation is not as bad as in Russia, where Vladimir Putin shut down a paper after it ran a scandalous story on his love life. It is though a worrisome trend in a region has prided itself on its newfound freedom.

Source: Economist   

In August 2007, a European newspaper aggregator venture, dubbed Imooty.eu, was launched in beta version (read background here, based on a profile by the Online Journalism Review). Over the weekend, Imooty has launched a new headline aggregator widget for newspapers to implement on their sites (pictured left - see their widget platform here).

Imooty's "plan is really to develop a powerful tool for news syndication," said co-founder Kristoffer Lassen (who founded the site with Blaise Bourgeois). "The purpose is to democratize access to the most important mainstream information sources of Europe." The site now aggregates RSS feeds with latest headlines from about 450 newspapers in 19 European countries.

Imooty.eu, a newspaper and blog aggregator

Unlike services such as Factiva or LexisNexis, which are geared towards professionals and have costly fees, Imooty aims to provide a mainstream and free news search resource. Newspapers' RSS feeds that are featured on the homepage are generally chosen for their prominent size and influence, but sometimes also for their known expertise in a particular domain (Morgenbladet in Norway for its 'Culture' coverage).

Users can conveniently view latest headlines by country, newspaper, or category of news. A tab enables users to view recent blog headlines - about 700-800 have enrolled so far. Users can also customize search fields by these same criteria.

Does it still make sense to distinguish 'News' and 'Blogs', at a time when some blogs do original reporting and some traditional news brands are turning to lighter, blog-style news?

"It's basically to make a distinction between news brands as we know them today and independent reporters," said Lassen. The line between both may be getting blurry - especially concerning newspaper blogs, but Lassen believes the news consumption and expectations are different between blogs and news sites, although both may be news.

Pros and cons of Imooty for newspapers

Imooty has launched a specific section called 'Newspaper Universe', so that partnering newspapers can directly upload their feeds and customize them. "You decide how your newspaper brand will appear on the  Imooty platform."

Pros:
- Reach: Imooty "puts newspapers in touch with users who normally wouldn't use them," said Lassen. Through Imooty, readers who are geographically distant, or on the other side of the political spectrum, can discover new titles.
- Mobile: Imooty offers a mobile platform that can be of interest to newspapers.
- Revenue share: Imooty's revenue model will be based on redirecting readers to newspapers' premium (archived) content, and it will share revenues with papers.

"Cons":
- "I can see how, under the old news paradigm, some newspaper people might feel threatened by the model, because it's possibly taking away from local focus. But then again, these are new times, and people relate to media in different ways," said Lassen.



No editorializing, unlike major online news portals

News featured on the homepage is ranked by 'clicks' for individual newspapers and recency for headlines: there is no editorializing of content or of the RSS feeds by Imooty. But as Lassen said in his OJR interview, "readers now demand concise information that directly addresses their personal "need to know" requirements in an age when people are swamped by news sources." So why not give readers editorial guidance?

"That's the role of the big Internet brands. Google does this, by editorializing their pages," said Lassen.

"Our philosophy is to show the user the way news is from the different publications. We don't editorialize. The purpose is to give a panoramic view of what's actually out there."

News aggregation and Imooty: a resource for news professionals

In that respect, Imooty may be of greater use to news junkies or journalists than to the general public, at least in its first steps.

"You really have to be a news-interested person to be interested in Imooty, but it can be a starting point for ordinary news users as well."

"A lot of people like to have a pre-packaged news product," said Lassen. Although the trend towards news aggregation is increasingly visible, newspapers' role is also to provide their news judgment to sort news in an organized manner.

Future developments

Imooty is working to develop its multimedia offerings, including its mobile platform, podcasts and IPTV. According to Lassen, "this is also the direction newspapers are going in," because text-based content will be less prominent on mobiles. Imooty has launched a mobile site in beta.

According to Lassen, Imooty now has about 15,000 unique visitors and 50,000 page views monthly.

Imooty is still in full development and is still in the process of signing on official newspaper partners. This weekend it launched its imooty headline aggregator widget, which can be implemented by news sites that wish to open up their doors to other relevant sources.

Source: Kristoffer Lassen, co-founder Imooty.eu

The European Union has come out against the worldwide trend of using religious defamation laws to limit press freedom.

EU diplomats convened in Geneva Wednesday to deliberate strategies to protect free speech in spite of growing legal barriers.

The worrying trend can found on a global scale across all media formats. Although the context differs in each case, examples of restriction on religious grounds can be found in Morocco, Jordan, Belarus and Malaysia.

At the conference, Germany voiced particular concern over a recently signed Arab charter limiting broadcaster's rights.  

According the International Herald Tribune, many Islamic countries are pushing for stricter anti-religious defamation laws, a byproduct of the intense controversy over the prophet Muhammad cartoons.

Source: International Herald Tribune

Reporters Without Borders is launching on March 12th the first International Online Free Expression Day, organized under UNESCO patronage, which will be accompanied by the organization's second "24-hour online demo against Internet censorship."

Reporters Without Borders has created virtual representations of nine countries with government censorship, and is calling on internet users to protest web censorship by creating an online avatar and joining an online demonstration. Demonstrations will take place in Burma, China, North Korea, Egypt, Cuba, Eritrea, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, or Vietnam.

According to the European Journalism Centre, 63 cyber-dissidents are currently imprisoned worldwide.

Source: European Journalism Centre

Freesheets are the most-read dailies in Denmark, with 24timer leading all newspapers in the second half of 2007 with 535,000 daily readers. Free paper MetroXpress comes close with 507,000.

The most-read paid-for paper, Jyllands Posten, comes in third place with 505,000 readers. And free dailies Nyhedsavisen and Urban are fourth and fifth.

More interestingly, it seems free papers are starting to compete for readership, whereas the circulations for paid-for newspapers remained relatively stable in 2007, according to Newspaper Innovation (although Jyllands Posten lost 7% of readers year-on-year.)

However, compared to 2003, paid p