December 2008 Archives

The Editors Weblog staff will be on holiday through 5 January. We wish all of our readers a joyful holiday season. We look forward to giving you the best news in newspapers in 2009. Happy New Year! 

According to Brand Republic, Guardian News & Media will launch a news wire service for Arab speaking countries next year.

The service will be provided through Saudi newspaper, Al Sharq, which is based in Qatar.  The paper will translate up to 15 stories per day for media in the region.

Executive Editor of PBS's MediaShift Mark Glaser offered a "Guide to Alternative Models for Newspapers" in response to all the problems currently "plaguing" the business of daily newspapers in America.  He offers a selection of solutions: some which are already being used, some brand new.

First come blog networks, which aggregate blogs written by staffers, freelancers and readers.   Glaser cites LATimes.com as a site which has used blogs to help it drive more traffic, which could of course lead to more advertising revenue. 

Next is classified networks; Glaser explains that free online services such as Craigslist have usurped much of newspapers' classified ad businesses.  In order to entice people back, he thinks they will need to "super-charge listings and add extras galore."

DNA, an English language daily from Diligent Media whose slogan is "Read the World", has launched its sixth edition in Bengaluru.  It will be competing directly with The Times of India, as well as five other English papers.

Senior chief manager Sumit Rohatgi explained that the core target audience is 18-35, "since Bengaluru is one of the youngest cities in India."  

To say the least, 2008 proved a difficult year for newspapers in many nations. Rising printing and distribution costs, waning circulations and fragmented audiences continued to challenge a business model that seems increasingly outdated. And despite many promising advancements made by newspaper companies in Internet and mobile, revenues remain far behind those of print.

But the news is far from all negative. Below is some food for thought for newsroom executives everywhere, ways in which newspapers began adapting to the modern media landscape in 2008 that will continue through 2009.

INTERNET TRENDS BECOMING NEW TOOLS FOR JOURNALISM
2008 saw the continued proliferation of social and professional networking sites Facebook and LinkedIn, with newspapers and journalists, with newspapers and journalists, such as the New York Times well-known columnist Nicholas Kristof, creating their own profiles, applications and connecting with new audiences. User-Generated Content (UGC) continued to gather speed as well, with CNN's iReport in the US and LePost in France among many others around the world. A December report by the Bivings Group also noted that 58% of US newspapers now use some form of UGC.

But the biggest social media revelation to journalists came in the form of 140 characters. The social site, Twitter, which allows users to post short messages for all to see, officially became a widespread tool for journalists in 2008. For example, journalists covering the US Presidential Elections took live notes from conventions and rallies that readers could follow and that also helped to shape those journalists' main story. During the Mumbai terrorist attacks, "tweets", or Twitter messages, appeared as the first news of the attacks. Twitter feeds can also be aggregated, bringing all angles of those covering a certain event into one, comprehensible, instantly-updated record.

Another Internet trend is the "Personalized Web", evoked by newspaper experiments such as MyTimes and start-ups such as Netvibes that provide customizable pages based on RSS feeds and widgets. Arguably the boldest example of personalized news is the BBC's revamped homepage, released in March 2008, which allows users to create their own page based on the BBC information they use most. But personalized news seems to be picking up more slowly than social media. For one thing, Internet users are used to getting the information they seek from many Web pages and may not yet be ready to create their own pages. Secondly, search engines still rule, meaning that traffic to most news sites continues to come through Google, its competitors and their various news and alerts functions. So a customizable homepage like the BBC created, which could ultimately prove a competitor to search engines, remains to become a habit of the general Internet public.  

Personalized news and social media are just two examples of all of the innovation that is occurring in digital media. As technologies continue to rapidly develop, how are journalists and publishers going to keep up? Is it worth learning to use all of these tools if six months down the line they prove to be a fad? Are these technologies hurting or helping newsrooms gather and report news?

Chances are, in 2009 journalists everywhere will continue to experiment with the latest digital fads, and smart newsrooms will set aside R&D funds to play around with new ideas. Who knows? Despite predictions that 2009 will be a difficult year for newspapers, with a lot of hard work, calculated risk and a bit of luck, the industry could find the online golden egg that it has been seeking.

PROLIFERATION OF ONLINE-ONLY NEWS SITES
Perhaps filling in for the difficulties of the print product, more high-profile Internet-based sites began popping up in 2008. Perhaps most notably, The Huffington Post, launched in the summer of 2005, has already jumped to one of the US' top-30 news sites, bolstered by the US Presidential Elections, according to Nielsen Online. Media pundit, entrepreneur and Rupert Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff trumpeted the late-'07 launch of his news aggregator Newser as a "revolution in how people get their news." One year after Wolff's launch, he gained a competitor in Tina Brown, a former Vanity Fair and New Yorker editor, who launched her own, rapidly growing online-only site, The Daily Beast, a mixture of aggregated and original articles. And these are only the high-profile, American examples. The relatively low overhead costs of launching an online-based site combined with the ease of aggregating content and news commentary means that this trend will surely continue in 2009. But there is one problem with the sites mentioned above. Aggregation and commentary can only go so far: in an online environment, what happens to the investigative journalism that newspapers have provided for the past two centuries?

NOT-FOR-PROFIT JOURNALISM
Investigative journalism is expensive to produce. Money-wise, it has always been a loss-leader for newspapers. But with modern-day information ubiquity, investigative journalism is just a loss. Whereas once newspapers could claim ownership of a groundbreaking piece and sell papers and advertising around it, now readers are often unaware of the original source of the story they are reading on the Web. So what is going to happen to the type of watchdogging we need for democracy?

Several non-profit start-ups have begun to answer that question. In late 2007, former newspaper editor, Joel Kramer, took his print expertise and moved it online with the launch of the non-profit Minnpost.com. Former WSJ editor Paul Steiger did something similar with ProPublica. The Voice of San Diego, and other similar sites around the US, are making a name for themselves as "serious, original reporting by professional journalists," with the New York Times declaring the sites "stand out" amongst Internet news sites. Crowdsourcing site OfftheBus, a partnership between the Huffington Post and the non-profit NewAssignment.net, helped capture the 2008 Elections and the Knight News Challenge winner Spot.Us is collecting donations from the public to fund investigative stories. Even former Merrill Lynch newspaper analyst Lauren Rich Fine backed the non-profit model in 2008.

With this in mind, are the days of major metropolitan and national newspapers digging up the dirt on businessmen and politicians over? For the time being, no. But newsrooms everywhere are under extreme economic pressures and have been cutting core staff, making it even more difficult for newspapers to conduct the type of investigative journalism their communities need. Don't be surprised if more non-profit (no dividends to shareholders), Internet based (low operating costs) ventures spring up to fill the gaps.

COMPETING NEWSPAPERS PARTNERING UP
As many newspaper newsrooms are cutting staff, wire services should be in greater demand than ever. But 2008 saw a backlash against the world's biggest news agency, the Associated Press, by its members. Several publishers handed in their notice to the non-profit agency partially in response to price hikes and complaining of low value for their money.

In response to the AP mini-exodus, some papers, even those in competition with one another, began joining forces. Papers in Ohio and Florida whose geographical coverage overlaps are swapping stories and even combining bureaux. Not only will this help the papers save money, but it frees up time for reporters to cover issues not being covered elsewhere. In the current economic climate, this trend will continue, but not without its effects on the industry.

Some traditional news hounds would argue that two papers covering similar stories in a certain region add depth and uncover more facts that may otherwise be lost to readers. This may be true. But is it really worth having two reporters on the scene to gather one or two more different pieces of information when there may be other stories elsewhere? And what about the multitude of photojournalists that different organizations send to press conferences and like events where the story subjects don't move much? Is it really worth sending all of those photogs? Couldn't photos just be shared? Without a doubt, these are questions that cash-strapped publishers and editors are asking themselves right now. Expect to see more cross-corporation cooperation in 2009.

IS PRINT REALLY THREATENED?
We've said it before and we'll say it again: print is not going to die. But, considering the trend of the past year, print's reach will be considerably reduced, at least in Western nations.

During the last few months of 2008, publishers' struggle to maintain the high costs of printing and distribution has become apparent. In October, The Christian Science Monitor, a beacon of quality American journalism, announced that it would stop printing its daily edition. In mid-December, the Detroit Free Press, which recently won a broadcast award, decided to limit home delivery to Friday's and weekends while trimming the daily single-copy sale paper to one section. Most recently, the American Society of Newspaper Editors is considering dropping "paper" from its name.

What do these cuts mean for the news"paper" industry? As circulations drop across the Western world, it could mean substantial savings. Weekday papers often make a loss to begin with, so cutting the costs of printing those papers should cover any lost advertising revenue in those same papers.

Perhaps the question publishers should be asking themselves is "Do cutbacks on the paper product matter to readers"? Well, cutbacks will certainly change the face of the newspaper industry. But in the end, media houses are in the news "distribution" business, not the news"paper" business. As long as their news is published, media houses will have completed their service to the public.

The New York Times is to develop its website by launching a new "Instant Op-Ed" feature next month, according to Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal.  The new feature will enable NYTimes.com to post expert viewpoints on breaking news almost immediately.

"Our Op-Ed now is very rapid response, but it is at the most the next day," explained Rosenthal. "We are looking at a way to take advantage of the expandability of the Internet, the back and forth of it and the instantaneous nature of the Internet."  

Three editors and a Web producer are gathering a list of experts on a variety of issues, who will be ready to provide quick comments or columns on issues in the news.   There will be a dedicated Web space for the comments, and readers will also be able to comment. 

Rosenthal noted that this initiative is the first collaboration between the Times' editorial page and the news department.  Jill Abramson, managing editor, described the development as "a blended kind of journalism"  which "convenes outside voices" to discuss their news.  

Source: Editor and Publisher

The Massachussetts-based Eagle-Tribune is the second newspaper to partner with Helium, a citizen journalism outlet, to provide hyper-local content and promote civil discourse for its readership.  The State Journal-Register, based in Illinois, has been using the site since September and more partners are expected to be announced soon.  

Helium hosts a "freelance Marketplace" which allows publishers to commission custom content from freelance writers, or browse and use existing content.  The Eagle-Tribune intends to identify a group of community stringers through this, hence giving "a greater voice to the people" that live in the paper's market, according to Eagle-Tribune publisher Al Getler. 

Cox, publisher of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Austin American-Statesman and 15 other papers, was the latest in string of publishers to announce that it would be closing its Washington bureau.  

Cox's bureau will not close until April 1 but others such as Advance Publications, owner of The Star-Ledger of Newark amongst others, and Copley Press, owner of The San Diego Union-Tribune, have already closed.  And many who remain have significantly cut back on both Washington staff and coverage.  The Tribune Company has merged the bureaus of its various papers, reducing staff numbers to 32 compared with 70 a year ago.  

This may seem surprising considering the upcoming inauguration of an eagerly anticipated new president, but in light of newspapers' severe financial difficulties, many are choosing to focus on local coverage rather than national or international events, as the latter can always be more easily found online. Besides, bureaus in Washington are expensive.  

Consulting firm Deloitte has released a report showing that the 14-25 demographic watches a considerable amount less television than its older peers. Whereas Generation X (26-42) watches 19.2 hours of TV per week, the Millennial generation average a mere 10.5 hours in front of the boob tube. Still, this generation consumes the most media of any other demographic. Surprising figures? Not really.

With all of the interactive options Millennials have (video games, social media, mobile phones, MP3 players, etc.), sitting in front of a screen controlled by traditional "gatekeepers" seems less appealing. Getting their fingers dirty on newsprint that doesn't give the chance to talk back, even more so. Obviously, the trend of already declining newspaper circulations will only perpetuate as Millennials grow older and their grandparents pass-on.

But all is not negative for traditional media, whose audiences have never been bigger thanks to their Internet presence. The Bivings Group recently released a report indiciating that the large majority of newspapers are "getting it" on the Web, integrating social media and RSS, eliminating registration pages and opening their articles to reader comments.

An even brighter light shines on these promising developments when considering Internet ad spend. UK based-bank Barclay's released its US ad forecasts this week, expecting a 6.1% increase in Internet advertising. Although this rate is a huge drop from the 20-30% increases Internet advertising has been experiencing for several years, the global economic crisis combined with the fact that TV and newspaper advertising will drop 10% and 17% respectively means Internet-based companies can remain optimistic that ad revenues will continue to fill their coffers.

Of course, even increasing Internet revenues are not coming close to making up for lost ad revenues of media companies through traditional outlets. Content production and journalism in general are suffering because of massive staff layoffs. And perhaps to make things worse, Barclay's predicts that the bulk of Internet ad jump in 2009 will go to search, up 20%, compared with a 4% rise in display advertising. Some traditional media companies may not like it, but they're going to have to share more revenues with Google and the like. Still, that's not all bad. As they leave the paper on the doorstep and the TV off, most Millennials only find traditional media through Google to begin with, which may mean search engines are the only way traditional media houses will remain relevant. 

Sources: Reuters through European Journalism Centre, Seeking Alpha, Read Write Web  

A report entitled "Size Doesn't Matter" concludes that news sites on the Internet can be profitable, if they reach a certain amount of readers, according to Advertising Age.

Online media-research company ContentNext looked at independently run, low budget sites like Drudge Report to media giants Google News.  

Cost-intensive operations by major publications such as the New York Times, AdAge reports, as well as small website operations, can be self-sustaining, according to the report's author Lauren Rich Fine.  

The challenge is getting enough readers to create "a discernable enough brand to make advertisers seek them out."

Nielson Online is reporting that the top 10 newspaper sites saw an increase in visitors last month, supporting the case for publishers to "continue to invest online and realign their business focus," communications director Alex Burmaster said.

Media Week is reporting that, on average, the UK's leading newspaper websites saw an increase in page views by 23% than November 2007, and "outperformed the wider online marketplace."

Despite the grim outlook for print publications, online versions have been thriving this year, Burmaster said.  The panel-based research comes following the report by Deloitte predicting that one in 10 newspapers will either cut print frequency, move entirely online or shut down in the next year.

The Guardian was the leader with 3.4 million unique UK visitors, followed by the Telegraph with 3.1 million visitors.  News International online versions of titles The Times and The Sun, followed by the Daily Mail, rounded out the top five.

Source: Media Week

India's language dailies are "tapping into the mix of sentiment and technology," as the Internet serves a means of "keeping in touch with one's roots" and staying informed as more people spread around the globe.

Internet "penetration" is increasing in rural areas, adding to the base of nearly 50 million users in mostly urban settings, Exchange4Media is reporting.

Newspapers had been launching their online versions as "customary add-ons to their main dailies," Exchange reports, but more papers have started to launch newer verticals as well as sub-domains, enabling them to "have better control over classifieds" and use the online medium effectively and profitably.

The online edition of Next, a new newspaper, has been launched in Lagos, Nigeria before the print publication.

Garcia Media describes it as a "light launch," or beta version, of the publication.  The site will not be run up to its full potential for some time, according to the blog.

The publication is under the leadership of publisher and creator Dele Olojede, a Nigerian Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and former foreign editor for Newsday.  He plans to recruit young journalistic talent to produce a "youthful, inspiring and service-oriented" newspaper.

The Web site, www.234next.com, used resources from the Garcia Media team to help with development of layout and content, as well as newsroom training.

Source: Garcia Media via IFRA

James Rainey of the LA Times finds that the conjunction of the decision by Detroit's two daily newspapers to reduce the days of home delivery, and the American Society of Newspaper Editors vote to take "paper" out of its name in April, indicates an embrace of "the shift of many readers and advertisers to the Internet," Rainey notes.

But a shift in newspaper delivery could have more serious implications for the industry as a whole.

How much longer will newspapers be able to actually deliver the news? Rainey wonders, as does the rest of the industry.  The Internet is where many believe the news industry is headed, as evidence by the Christian Science Monitor's decision to go online-only and print a single Sunday edition.  

Detroit's papers argue it's better to alter their delivery system than to "further cut the news staffs."  The move will save millions for the papers, owners said.

But the break from the 400-year-old delivery system, Rainey notes, is the kind of move that there's no going back on.

Four online community news sites will be expanding their staff and coverage after receiving a $390,000 grant by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Given the current state of the news industry, who is cutting costs by cutting staff and coverage, "citizens are receiving less of the news they need to lead informed lives and hold their governments accountable," Knight Foundation journalism program director Gary Kebbel said in a statement.  

The "young, online-only sites" that Knight has funded, investigative ventures the MinnPost, Voice of San Diego, Chi-town Daily News and the St. Louis Beacon, help "fill the void" for readers, Kebbel said.

The foundation has announced its efforts to find "new models for delivering news and information," adding to its $100 million in grants for initiatives.

Source: Editor and Publisher

Taking on Independent columnist Johann Hari, Media Guardian's Roy Greenslade finds that the "newspapers-versus-bloggers argument is entirely false," and that there is a future for the industry with the involvement of citizen journalists.

Hari uses the financial state of the industry, following the bankruptcy of the Tribune Co. and the arrival of the Internet, to form a new paradox: "more people are reading quality newspapers than ever before," he writes, and yet, "newspapers are dying."  The reason for this is, Hari says, because "we don't just want it all, we want it free."

There will be an "aching hole where newsgathering used to be," Hari writes, because the leftover sources of news--online sources, such as bloggers--don't have the resources necessary to "make sense of the world."

Greenslade disputes the "us versus them" attitude that many professional journalists take toward bloggers and other citizen journalists.  The future of journalism, Greenslade writes, lies in "participation" between the professionals and citizens.

Traditional newspaper owners are "clinging desperately to an outmoded model," and journalists are following suit, Greenslade writes.  The future of news organizations will be "very different," but there need not be a "hole" if traditional sources fail.  

"We should be finding ways to fill it," Greenslade concludes, building business models to provide resources for the future.

Source: Media Guardian

Slate's Jack Shafer points out that the reason the world is bombarded with news of the newspaper industry's woes is because "they have easy access to a megaphone."

The seeming non-stop coverage as newspaper after newspaper folds, goes bankrupt, or cuts staff and print editions.  The media industry has "harbored" the "self-pitying" journalists, through Internet blogs and newspaper columns.  Some papers seem to be banking on the demise, devoting sections to coverage of the industry's struggle.

The rise of the digital age is the "underlying cause of grief" for newspapers, and is the reason that many others are without a job, Shafer says.  Only, the journalists of the world get a larger soapbox on which to stand.  Shafer wonders how often have they lamented the demise of other services, products and industries.

A California daily has formed "The Oakland Press Institute for Citizen Journalism," in response to the "changing face" of the industry, according to an editor.

The Oakland Press is looking to its readers to help "tell stories better, quicker and more completely," according to executive editor Glenn Gilbert, by offering instruction in news writing, videography, basics of reporting for news and sports, and still photography.

Instances of citizen journalism are increasing throughout the industry and around the world, from small local news additions to large-scale updates on such instances as the Mumbai terror attacks, which used social media, fueled by citizen journalists, to help cover the events.

Many publishers are wondering how long it will be until newspapers go entirely online, and how long a publication like that could survive "on its own," Poynter's Ernst Poulsen writes.

But after going bankrupt in a competition with major media companies, free paper Nyhedsavisen has a web site that is doing relatively well.

Although Avisen.dk's numbers have gone down, their readership is younger, and "surprisingly" strong.

The site's content is far from pablum, focusing instead on brand awareness, targeting a younger audience, according to Kristoffer Gravgaard, CEO of Newspaq, the site's recent owner.  

The site has been moved from a "fairly tabloid position" and now covers subjects relating to its audience, such as mobile phones, crime, bicycle traffic and youth economy, Gravgaard said, which gives the site an advantage.

Gravgaard finds that online newspapers will not only survive, but thrive in the new economy, he said.  

Source: Poynter

Wisconsin newspaper, Sussex Sun has been renamed Living.  In addition, all other publications owned by the media group have been renamed including: Living Mukwonago Chief, Living Lake Country Reporter, Living Oconomowoc Focus, Living Kettle Moraine Index, Living Lake Country Sunday and Living Kettle Moraine Sunday.

The Living newspapers have also undergone a series of changes including a new reader guide, a mailing label window in order to assure prompt delivery and a new nameplate designed to look more modern and incorporate the company logo.  The front page has also undergone a few changes, including a more "dynamic" layout with more art and photography.

The Wall Street Journal is planning new online ventures to improve and monetize its site, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to improved site customization and search, the paper is also exploring an "à la carte" payment service for features, which MarketingVOX finds could "offset the cost of online content provided for free."

Editor Robert Thomson has declared that the Journal's most important test is to tailor online content to suit readers' needs, and how the paper will charge them for that service.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors has scheduled an April vote to decide whether or not to drop "paper" out of their title and become ipso facto the American Society of News Editors.

Under the new guidelines, editors of news websites and journalism educators would be allowed to join, according to the ASNE website.

Editors Weblog reported last month that Dallas Morning News and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram were planning to start sharing more editorial content.

The newspapers have started exchanging arts coverage.  According to FollowtheMedia, the Morning News does not have a visual arts critic, so it is "using reviews by that critic for the Star-Telegram; The Star-Telegram doesn't have a classical music critic so it uses reviews by the Morning News' music critic."

Yesterday, sports daily L'Equipe announced that it has partnered with French developer, F4 to launch the first ever large-scale, multi-player videogame on their website. 

The game titled, "Empire of Sport" that can be downloaded for free on the paper's website and users can pick between seven sports they would like to play.

Detroit Media Partnership CEO David Hunke has declared that the company is "committed" to publishing two dailies in Detroit, never considering shutting down The Detroit Daily News amidst its current financial situation, according to Editor and Publisher.

The partnership has announced radical changes to the content and distribution of Detroit's two dailies, the News and The Detroit Free Press, foregoing home delivery except for Thursday, Friday and Sunday editions, and printing a one-section newspaper for single-copy sales the rest of the week.

The main criticism of the industry is that it does "little, incremental changes," Hunke said, and the changes will ensure the papers' survival.

The Rocky Mountain News' staff has created a Web site to rally public support following an announcement by E.W. Scripps Co. that the Denver daily was up for sale and would close the paper if there were no buyers.

IwantMyRocky.com is a forum for readers to propose methods and "share memories" from Colorado's oldest business.

"If we can't save the Rocky," columnist at the 149-year-old paper, Mike Littwin, writes, "We can, at minimum, make some noise before we go."

Staffers have sent out emails and messages to readers and community members urging them to protest the ultimatum offered by Scripps, saying that the timing of the sale is far from optimal during an economic recession in the holiday season.

The site's function is a chance for readers and staffers to express "why the newspaper is important to them," and the role it has played in the community.

Source: Colorado Independent

Quebec's free daily, 24 heures (24 hours) has launched a website.  In addition the paper has launched a mobile site, accessible at m.24heures.ca.

The new site aims to offer readers the possibility of following the news throughout the day.

Source: Infopresse via IFRA

Brian Till, one of the US's youngest syndicated columnists, had an epiphany during his discussions about the decline in American journalism.  

Although he spends "hours a day reading news," and has countless resources at his disposal, he has only purchased "bout a dozen American papers in the last year." Till finds that, ipso facto, his actions have helped diminish the newspaper industry.  

"I am the murderer of news," he writes, along with his generation, who has failed to recognize the role they've played. Growing up with free news, Till writes, has left his generation clueless to the fact that they were the "free riders killing the industry."

The Guardian is reporting that France 24 will provide English-language video content to the UK's Independent.  France 24 will offer daily video news reports to the Independent's website.

The deal is part of the Independents move to "boost its web video output."

According to FollowtheMedia, the recently announced content sharing deal between Reuters and Politico could prove to be underestimated.  FTM predicts that it is a deal that should "really worry the Associated Press" and that CNN's proposed wire service "should now just fade away."

Reuters and the AP are the most popular news agencies, however, Reuters is used mainly outside of the United States.  The deal with Politico will now introduce Reuters to the American newspaper market, which could severely hurt the AP.  The AP has recently been suffering from declining subscriptions due to a number of issues.

The Knight Foundation has supplied University of Minnesota researcher Christine Greenhow and Seattle-based news aggregator NewsCloud with a grant to launch two social media publications on social networking site Facebook, according to a press release.

Newspapers have been recently emerging as strong contenders for TV awards, formerly dominated by traditional broadcast news organizations, even though most newspapers have only been using video on their Web sites for a few years.

The Detroit Free Press won the News and Documentary Emmy this year for a video news feature, "40 Years of 'Respect'", which looks at the history of Aretha Franklin's famous song and its significance for the people of Detroit.

Nancy Andrews, managing editor for digital media at the Free Press, commented on their success: "We start with the premise that we're storytellers, with strong visuals and a compelling story to begin with."

The World Economic Forum is using several social media tools to promote and coordinate discussion for its annual meeting in Davos-Klosters in January 2009, according to the Guardian.

WEF has launched tools on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and an OpenForum wiki for discussion, as well as a photo group on Flickr and videocasts and press conferences on their Web site and Mogulus and Qik.  

The tools invite web users to "discuss key issues on the economy, US politics, business ethics and the environment" in the weeks leading up to the forum.

The forum has also opened a YouTube channel for the second year and will broadcast some of the most popular comments during sessions at the meeting.  

The first year of the forum's social media initiative was a success, with more than five million video views and responses from leading politicians such as Israeli president Shimon Peres and former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

Source: Guardian via EJC

Is the recent Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich scandal proof that the newspaper industry still has relevance?    

Blagojevich's efforts to remove editorial members of the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times' David Carr argues, show that the newspaper still has an impact--if a governor is willing to allegedly extort money in return for favorable press, then the paper must be doing something right.  

The scandal, he says, is justification for investigative journalism through a print medium.  A daily paper is a "civic necessity." If a community lacks a proper outlet, or was "too diminished" for full reporting, then what would have been the result in Illinois?

"Who says the modern American newspaper doesn't matter?" Carr asks.

TJ Sullivan.  In his LA Observed column "Native Intelligence," Sullivan argues the opposite point.

"Newspapers don't matter," he writes. "Otherwise people would be reading them."

After the Tribune Company, owned by Sam Zell, filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 last week, the newspaper industry now sees the hard road ahead as they try and cope with the "structural revolution" taking place.  As Russ Smith puts it, "the demise of the print media industry has been evident for years, but its rapid acceleration in 2008 is still shocking on an emotional level."

Several Times Co. newspapers are worried about what is to come.  According to James Rainey, an LA Times staff writer, "in the ragtag old Los Angeles Times newsroom, emotions run as threadbare as the quarter-century-old carpet."

A year after taking over the Wall Street Journal, Rupert Murdoch, behind the media giant News Corp., has preserved the editorial quality and productivity of his paper, making some of his harshest critics reconsider their stance.

Despite the economic recession and obvious pitfalls for the newspaper industry, the Journal has "increased its staff and the number of pages it prints each day," according to the Associated Press.

In what editor Robert Thomson calls "the early stages of world domination," the Journal has made efforts to adapt to new technologies and change the perception of the typically financial supplement to the first read for a broader audience.

Today, the Guardian has moved from its old headquarters in Farringdon Road to a new spot in King's Cross.

According to the paper's editor, Alan Rusbridger, there are four reasons for the paper's move.  First, they had outgrown the old headquarters.  Second, the buildings they were in before were "showing their age" and they needed a new digital friendly space.  Finally, they decided it was time to reorganize the work space and the manner in which they worked.

At a recent meeting in Paris, head of Google News, Josh Cohen, met with the French media as part of an initiative by the French government to seek solutions for the survival of newspapers.

According to Pierre Conte, president of PubliPrint, "for all publishers, in the last few months, something in our relationship with Google has been broken.  Six months ago, we thought we had finally found the right business model, but now, with the current crisis, the change has happened very quickly in our mind with the new Google...You are becoming our worst enemy".

Najam Sethi, Editor-in-Chief of Friday Times and Daily Times in Pakistan, has been awarded the 2009 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World Association of Newspapers.

Mr Sethi, whose newspapers advocate liberal and secular ideas in a country too-often torn by religious extremism, was honoured for his outstanding defence and promotion of press freedom under difficult circumstances and constant personal danger.

In an interview with UK newspaper The Guardian, Telegraph Assistant Editor Brian MacArthur, British Journalism Review Editor Bill Hagerty, Society of Editors Executive Director Bob Satchwell and Nation Union of Journalists General Secretary Jeremy Dear.mused over the possibility of the government aiding the troubled newspaper industry.

Times Record News of Wichita Falls, Texas launched an e-edition of its newspaper, designed to be "the printed version of the paper showcased in an electronic format," according to the paper's website.

The paper stated that the e-edition will be very different than the web site.  It will serve as "an answer to the increasing attraction to the Internet, in that the e-edition has navigability, giving you the ability to explore the daily paper as it is laid out, piece by piece, story by story, ad by ad. It's all there."

At the Third Annual Arab Press Forum held in Beirut, Lebanon by the World Association of Newspapers, some of the Arab World's top editors and publishers joined to discuss the state of the press. The underlying theme of each conference session was the difficulties that Arab newspapers face in publishing news under governments that often repress journalists.

In the third session, entitled Opportunities and Choices Facing Arab Newspaper Editors, panelists presented some ideas that could be useful for editors around the world:

The chief executive of media research firm Enders Analysis is calling on the UK government to relax the competition rules to allow media companies to diversify and survive, according to Press Gazette.

Claire Enders predicts "catastrophic" results if something is not done.  In five years, a third of the country's newspapers, two national newspapers and half the jobs of the regional media will be gone. 

In a move that could violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality, Internet giant Google has approached online carriers to create a "fast lane" for its content, according to the Wall Street Journal.

FCC guidelines state that all cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines "are supposed to treat all traffic the same," Reuters is reporting.  Google's previous stance has been one of "equal network access for all content providers."

The OpenEdge proposal would accelerate Google's service for users by placing them directly within the network of the service providers.

Google made the offer to WSJ and said that other companies could strike "similar deals," the newspaper reported.

Source: Reuters

Politico and Reuters have teamed up for coverage of US politics, Congress, lobbying and the White House, according to The Guardian.

The project means that 120 Washington-based journalists will be working full-time for both Reuters and Politico by the end of January.  Currently there are only 30 Politico journalists.

Following the trend of blog series from Media Bistro, Gawker and the Poynter Institute which provide an overview of goings-on in the media industry, Journalism.co.uk is launching a web page that aggregates articles, videos and images tracking job cuts across the industry.

The New York Times is also reporting a Twitter feed, The Media Is Dying, which documents "media hirings and firings in one-sentence bursts of text," verifying most posts and labeling others as "rumors."

The Journalism.co.uk page uses Dipity to plot journalism job losses since April 2008, "across all media and around the world," and invites updates and commentary from users.  Updates are posted on Twitter via the RSS feed.

The page was launched following a Deloitte report on the bleak outlook for newspapers, which predicts that one out every 10 publications will reduce print frequency, go entirely online or shut down in 2009.

Source:  Journalism.co.uk, EJC and New York Times

Missouri University professors, analyzing the recent bankruptcy filing by the Tribune Co., are declaring, as are others in the industry, that the company's failing is not a harbinger for newspapers.

"This really isn't a reflective trend at all," said Tom Warhover, the MU Print and Digital News faculty chairman and the executive editor of the Columbia Missourian. "That's not to say newspaper companies are doing great, but there are other indicators of trends for newspapers, and this is not a good one to use."

The Evening Standard has partnered with LynkU.com to launch a fashion shopping channel for the paper's website, thisislondon.co.uk.

According to Robert Gorton, chief executive of LynkU.com, "We are looking forward to providing the readers of ThisisLondon with a one-stop portal of fashion with the greatest range of fashion shops and designers from the high street and online."  They are also planning on offering "exclusive promotions" up until Christmas.

Free daily newspapers have a "marginal" market presence in Africa, when compared to other continents. According to Newspaper Innovation, free dailies are only published in Botswana, South Africa, Egypt and Morocco and their circulation is "rather low."

Indian media firm Sharp Vision Media, based in Haryana, announced the launch of a regional evening newspaper Abhi-Abhi. The eveninger is printed in as a full-colour broadsheet on 12 pages, priced at INR1.5 (US$0.03), and is aimed towards a younger audience aged between 20 and 30 years. 

Singapore free daily newspaper Today, owned by MediaCorp, plans to slash its weekend circulation down to 150,000 copies. MediaCorp Press Managing Director Philip Koh says that in light of the recent economic turmoil across the industry "every cent matters."

Blogger Rick Anderson delves into the topic of how the newspaper model will transform, adapt and evolve into a new medium.  Gathering opinions from Seattle newspaper industry members, Anderson writes, the "mainstream newspaper of tomorrow sounds a lot like the alternative weekly of today."

The old newspaper model is "dead man walking," according to biz journalist Bill Richards.  Newspapers "haven't had to innovate for 100 years," said publisher of the Stranger, Tim Keck, and therein lies the problem. 

Search engine giant Google announces that its newly launched Chrome browser is no longer in "beta," reports AFP. Google may keep its software in beta for relatively long periods, but the firm says that Chrome met stability and performance aims in a brief time frame.

The BBC has announced plans to share content with the Telegraph Media Group.  According to The Guardian, the deal would "see the iPlayer video catch-up service embedded on the Telegraph.co.uk website."

The "non-exclusive pilot scheme" is part of the BBC's content sharing venture that could be extended to other newspaper groups.  The BBC announced that it plans to enter into more partnerships with media organizations. 

A number of Latvian newspapers were printed as a commemorative issue with black crosses on the front page in order to protest the government's initiative to augment the Value Added Tax (VAT) on production costs by 21 percent.

Latvia's Association of Press Publishers warns that the move may place the country's newspapers on the verge of bankruptcy.

Source: Lenta.ru

The rise in "purchasing power" of the Brazilian middle class, or Class C, has led to a newspaper "boom" in the country, Huffington Post is reporting.  

Although Brazilians still buy fewer papers compared with Americans, per capita, as incomes and literacy rates rise, Brazil is catching up in its newspaper markets.

In the wake of the Blagojevich corruption scandal, community news site, Windy Citizen, is trying a new approach to online coverage.

One of their pages, Blagojevitter, has real time Twitter updates using a customized widget from Monittor.  In addition, there is a graphic, based on the 78-page official complaint against the governor, that is generated by analyzing text and turning into art.

The New York Times Co. has launched a new site, part of Boston.com, which is designed as a "pilot for hyper-local sites in towns and cities of greater Boston."

The new hyper-local community site that was launched is for the town Newton, Massachusetts and provides access to news, information and local resources.

Mobile phones are the primary way of accessing the Internet for people in "emerging markets," or those with poor fixed-line telecommunications, mobile technology companies are reporting.

It could be inferred from the information that in emerging nations, focus on the mobile market would produce higher revenues for advertisers or even news organizations trying to increase readership.

Countries such as Indonesia have many areas "lacking high-speed cable broadband connections, DSL lines or even regular phone lines for dial-up service," the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

Improvements in mobile technology have made it easier and quicker to go online via cell phones.  The cost can also be cheaper than buying a computer or paying for home Internet service.

Gannett has just launched ContentOne, an initiative which will "upend the traditional thinking about content in our industry, both in how we gather it and how we sell it," according to Gannett president, Craig Dubow.  

The initiative is a "venture as a system for content development, sharing and information gathering, which is meant to eliminate content redundancies across its papers in order to better focus on deep local content," according to Clickz.

Are there any newspapers willing to move completely online, foregoing the current struggle for a print edition?  This is the question journalist Gary Andrews asks, analyzed by Media Guardian's Roy Greenslade.  

Netvibes, a leading widget and personalized start page platform, has launched magazine-style formats for start pages and widgets that will "completely transform the way people visualize RSS feed content."  The project was launched in collaboration with CondéNast and French newspaper, Le Parisien.

With the new design widgets can be resized and displayed across new layouts.  RSS feeds can now display text, photo and video content in four different ways.  According to eMediaWire the change is a paroxysm for online news, "widgets can finally break out of the traditional column-only format, enabling branded media content to be published exactly the way it was meant to be seen."

Bebo announced the release of its new social media tool, Social Inbox, which is designed to collect and organize feeds from networking sites such as Twitter and Flickr, email services and other sites such as YouTube.  

The service encourages online news consumption, including a localized RSS feed reader for global news, and a media favorites section lists what friends are watching and listening to, with content from over 500 media companies including the BBC, CBS and ESPN.  

The new platform aims to solve the "main problem facing consumers online, namely a cluttered social networking experience."  

Source: Brand Republic

Brazil's Metrô News, the oldest Metro publication in the world, has been redesigned.

Launched in Sao Paolo in 1974, the paper has overcome an August 2008 strike and is now distributing 120,000 copies daily.

Metro International and Destak, both in Brazil since 2007, are publishing editions in Sao Paolo with a circulation of 150,000 each.

Source:  Newspaper Innovation

European Union leaders are considering a €200 billion economic rescue plan which includes €1 billion to bring high-speed Internet access to rural areas.

The proposal will be considered during a two-day meeting of EU government leaders beginning today, and support of the plan is "not assured," according to the International Herald Tribune.  The proposal, if passed, would undoubtedly provide an opportunity for greater mobile media connectivity.

Media Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade expressed his "hunch" in London's Evening Standard that at least one large British newspaper company will be forced to follow in the footsteps of the Tribune Company early next year and declare bankruptcy.  

He did not speculate on which would be first, but said that the Tribune's collapse is ringing "alarm bells" for the British newspaper industry as well as the US, and that rival publishers have been coming together to discuss ways to survive the coming year. 

British publishers have already been carrying out severe cuts to compensate for plunging revenues, and next year is generally expected to be worse than this one.  Cutting costs is in itself a risky business, as it could reduce quality and subsequently reduce sales, Greenslade stressed.  

Source: Evening Standard

In a memo to staff obtained by Politico, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth discusses the long-term strategy of the paper: to make its product "indispensable" to its customers.

The strategy includes three-pillars, to focus the paper "on Washington, for Washingtonians and those affected by it," to provide "utility, engagement and convenience for local readers" and "extend the brand with new products and new platforms." 

Paid Content is reporting that three major news sites in the UK have updated their mobile content.

Telegraph.co.uk has added video to its Android application.  Available on T-Mobile's G1, a finance update, Business Bullet, will be the first of the paper's vidcasts.

Nokia's Internet Radio application has added the BBC's World Service.  The application streams Internet radio stations over a mobile network or WiFi, with three versions available through the English BBC World Service or the 24-hour rolling news service in English and BBC Arabic.

News International is relaunching The Sun's mobile website, with new features including user rating of stories and more color.  News International is also planning relaunches for News of the World and Times Online mobile websites.

Source:  Paid Content

Journalist Dana Willhoit has just announced the launch of thepressreleasesite.com, a press release writing and distribution service.

The site is  "staffed entirely by former newspaper reporters," according to a press release.  No one is more suited to create a newsworthy press release than a newspaper reporter, Willhoit said.

A press release "molds brand identity," she continued, and if it is to be picked up by media outlets, must be crafted properly by keeping the intended audience in mind.  Using both free and paid press release services gives their clients "visibility," the site claims, and provides "instant traffic."  

Willhoit has also included resources to help those "on a tight budget" write and distribute their own press releases.

Source:  Free Press Releases

According to Media Bistro, The Politico has now decided publish five days a week when Congress is in session.  The decision to increase is due to the reaction of the new congressional schedule in which Congress plans to vote on numerous Fridays.

Politico had announced earlier this year that they were going to increase to four days a week. 

Dow Jones & Co. has announced that it has added new content and multimedia features to Dow Jones Factiva.  The additions include 4,000 blogs and 12,000 websites, which brings together more than 25,000 businesses and news sources, according to Editor & Publisher.  The new content is designed to reflect the growing influence of social media around the globe.

The goal of the enhancements is to "provide a comprehensive local and global view that addresses the content needs of our customer base and provides researchers and knowledge workers with the information they need to make informed business decisions," according to Dennis Cahill, chief product officer at Dow Jones. 

Ten weekly titles and one monthly community newspaper are facing closure threats from Newsquest, according to Hold the Front Page.

The company is also proposing a series of changes, including creating three regional production hubs, which will be responsible for all sub-editing work.

Newspaper planning, according to a memo by regional managing director Chris Hughes, will be centralized for all of the North West titles, but the news gathering operation will not be affected "in most cases."

The titles in the North West division are undergoing a period of "consultation with affected staff," according to Hughes, but it is not known how many will be made redundant.

The moves are being considered with the objective of "realigning the company's cost base, with the expectation that revenues will continue to decline in 2009," the memo states.

The restructuring is a matter of efficiency, according to the memo, and is expected that the company will "continue to produce first class newspapers, both in print and online."

Source:  Hold the Front Page

News International is set to relaunch the mobile sites for The Sun, the News of the World and The Times in the coming weeks.

The new Sun mobile site will include "increased focus on interactivity on its news, sports and showbiz sections" and users will now be able to rate and send stories, according to Media Week.  The new site will also contain more graphics.

With the help of the Internet and other new technologies, Chinese journalists are "pushing the envelope, even if taboos remain," according to AFP.  With the help of mobile phones and the use of the Internet, Chinese journalists are able to cover more topics, yet they still remain under control of government regulations.   

Recently the Chinese media has become increasingly critical of the government.  One instance was when China's Internet media criticized the government of a city in central Henan province for hiring several vice mayors in what was called a "waste of money."

The Globe & Mail announced that it will launch new interactive books website on January 10, 2009.  In addition it plans to enhance the weekly Books section that will move into the Focus section on Saturdays.

According to editor in chief, Ed Greenspon, "The Globe and Mail is committed to investing in Books coverage and expanding its reader audience. Book lovers will have greater access to even more thought provoking reviews, as well as engaging commentary and other new elements on the books website."

Media Guardian blogger Roy Greenslade cites four separate pieces in the Financial Times as "required reading for journalists," providing an insight into the mounting crisis in the newspaper industry.

A new Deloitte report says the "impossible" market for newspapers and magazines will make one in 10 newspapers "either shut, move online only or cut publication frequency by more than half."

Paid Content speculates that the most recent and heavy round of layoffs in the UK will not be enough to save the industry--instead, the report says, "publishers should reduce print frequency."

The washingtonpost.com launched On Leadership, a section offering "inspiration and practical advice on how to be an effective, successful leader in a political, financial and technological environment that is rapidly changing."

The section features a video series with interviews from top executives and leadership experts hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning Post Columnist Steven Pearlstein and Former Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.

The 13th annual Webby Awards, hailed by the New York Times as the "Internet's highest honor," is calling for entries for the Best Newspaper Site.

The awards honor international "excellence on the Internet," including Websites, online film and video, interactive advertising and mobile websites.  Videos are showcased on the Webby site.

A special creative campaign has been launched with exclusive videos by the likes of Barely Political, You Suck at Photoshop and Jake and Amir to promote the awards.

Readers shouldn't lollygag to nominate their favorite sites--they have until December 19th to enter work in more than 100 categories, including Best Newspaper Site, via www.webbyawards.com.  Nominees will be announced in April 2009 followed by an award "gala" in June.

Presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, last year's awards received 10,000 entries from more than 60 countries.

Source:  Press Release

The New York Times announced the launch of Times Widgets in beta.  The new online platform allows users to create customized widgets using The Times' RSS feeds.

The widgets can be created from section specific feeds or specific topic pages and users can embed them on their own websites.

An Editor and Publisher column by Ted Knutson detailed his voyage as a consumer of news from print, to online, to print again after realizing how much he was missing in the online news world.  

The UK's Mail on Sunday has announced plans to launch its own record label, Mail On Sunday Sounds.

According to editor, Peter Wright, the paper wants to "put something back into the music industry" by providing original content because "it is closer to what we do in the newspaper - we don't publish other people's stories. We are original content providers. If we can move into that area with music, it is very exciting."

The CNN Newspaper Summit to promote the channel's upcoming wire service was an overall success, the representatives of 30 newspapers in attendance said, but failed to provide specifics or formal plans for future subscribers, according to Paid Content.

The idea of the three-day conference was to "canvass" editors to help design and customize the service.  Among the demands by editors were more photo options, and access to national, international and breaking news.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international association that develops Internet standards, reported that its mobileOK checker will provide tools to help authors and authoring technology developers to create "clean" content, according to W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee. According to the mobileOK website, the tools are also used to determine the "level of mobile-friendliness" that is attributed to Web content.

The W3C mobileOK checker is based on the Basic Tests 1.0 Recommendation, a standard that was recently established. The portal is already being employed by the Wordpress mobile plug-in, making it "easier" the international mobile community, Market Watch wrote.

MobileOK destinations include certain newspaper sites, content portals, phone books, search engines like Google and the mobile edition of Wikipedia.

Source: Market Watch

Despite the multitude of changes in the approach to news delivery, a facet of newsgathering remains the same, regional newspaper editors and executives said at an industry conference.

Shorthand is a "core skill" for journalists, and essential for fast-breaking online news, Manchester Evening News editor Paul Horrocks said at the NCTJ skills conference on Friday.

In April the washingtonpost.com partnered with multimedia technology firm, Apture to allow readers to view links with a pop up rather than leaving the page.  The new technology has now been applied to the washingtonpost.com political data, congressional records, video, news and abstracts.

According to Editor & Publisher, Apture's "Media Hub is a Web-editing interface that sources, captures and delivers relevant resources in any format -- video, audio, map, documents, photos, reference guides -- that producers want to share."  Media hub allows "editors to easily include rich media content of their choice from more than 25 sources, including YouTube videos, Wikipedia content, Google Maps, or in-house archives, to add richness and depth to stories."

The Pulitzer Prize Board announced Monday that it will be expanding all of its 14 jornalism categories to feature "text-based newspapers and news organizations that publish only on the Internet," AFP reported.

With the evidence growing that readers want customisation instead of pre-packaged portfolios, the newspaper sector is challenged to develop alternative publishing formats (see Part 1 and Part 2 of our eReader series). A recent McKinsey survey (August 2007 newsletter) revealed the growing habit of 'brand promiscuity', with consumers using up to 16 different news sources weekly. Moreover, readers classified internet as much more useful compared to established media such as print. Modern news junkies go for convenience, comprehensiveness and timeliness rather than the traditional quality standards.

Is the print industry taking up the challenge? Not really. When it comes to using the Net, many newspapers feel more comfortable with direct transfer of existing copy onto the new medium. Companies like NewspaperDirect make a business out it; from next year on this company will start its PressDisplay news portal for delivery of associated papers on e-readers, tapping directly into the pre-print workflow and keeping the trusted appearance.

Not surprisingly, the innovative formats come from media outsiders. These startups have one thing in common, they believe in the electronic newspaper as a composite product, made up of a variety of professional and non-professional sources, tailored to the requirements and profiles of the individual news consumer. The New York-based start-up Daylife, which experiments with new editorial and financial models for online news, offers a mix of traditional and innovative formats for news distribution. A range of reputed titles is already using this platform for additional content delivery, but the site itself features an attractive and constantly updated news overview, produced by an amalgamation of contributors. Already closer to the network-driven medium of the future is FeedJournal, an RSS syndicating newspaper producing a digital daily building on defined user preferences. A comparable initiative, but now based on profile-steered net-crawling, is Newser. This service delivers summaries of hot news from across the globe and links to the original stories. The Radus New Media Platform follows the same philosophy, be it that additionally social networking sites are integrated: Personal highlights blend in with world events.

The aggregation game is on - so much is clear. But these applications don't change the content itself. Ultimately, the very nature of news needs to be reexamined and adjusted to the principles of digital delivery. Research at the Poynter Institute pointed out that alternative story forms are more effective than classical narrative, especially in an electronic information context. An equally interesting study was conducted by Associated Press. AP worked out 'A New Model for News' after observing the reading habits of a group of young-adults, the generation that has meanwhile grown up with or migrated to the Net. The study demonstrated that consumers are accessing the news from a range of different entry points, as much by chance as by design. The need for multiple entry points challenges the conventional container approach and article architecture. The AP model moves news into a new space - a universe of stories made up from different spheres, each ranging in size and scope (facts, updates, back stories, spin offs) - and readers interacting with story particles from different entry points and platforms. What these 'spheres' exactly should look like needs to worked out in practice.

One project exploring the journalistic formats for multi-entry news is the Dutch MePaper project. In a design studio jointly manned by journalists and researchers, key concepts are being developed and tested with proofreader panels. The project uses the term 'collection' to describe the journalistic raw material of the digital era, a loosely defined and ever changing combination of story elements. Quite a contrast with the well-defined nature of the standard article. News collections can be combined into news clouds, according to readers' general preferences and actual reading habits. This leads to four types of newspapers based on:
1. the editor's choice
2. the personal profile
3. the reading pattern of the preferred social network
4. the most read stories at a given time.
While reading, you can switch from one type of newspaper to another. The traditional line up of story titles is replaced by revolving cylinders in which stories, pictures and video are grouped according to theme or genre. In the test groups, the net-native proof readers almost intuitively roamed the presented information space.

Clearly there will be more solutions and design principles popping up. The main thing is that newspaper publishers stop with the easy repackaging and start digging for authentic formats which fully exploit the vast opportunities of electronic news delivery. Things can only get better, eh?

Director of the Euorpean Centre for Digital Communications and long-time journalist, Jan Bierhoff is currently conducting studies on e-reader technology and the consumer trends that will define their use.

Newspaper and television organization the Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy on Monday, with owner Samuel Zell promising there would be "no effect" on employees' payroll and benefits.

The news organization, which publishes The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, is $13 billion in debt, faced what Zell called the "perfect storm" of a failing economy and advertising market.

Zell announced the decision less than a year after taking control of the organization of 12 newspapers, 23 television stations, a national cable channel and other media holdings.

Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute, said that Zell took on "a huge amount of debt at just the wrong time," and that Tribune's heavy debt burden is "unusual" and not an indication for what's to come for the newspaper industry.

The cost of covering global health issues is expensive which means that news organizations have been cutting back on their reporting.  In order to ensure coverage of their work in the health industry, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has offered a grant of $3.5 million to The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

The donation will help its correspondents produce 40 to 50 reports over three years on topics such as malaria, AIDS, tuberculosis, measles, neglected diseases and other global health issues, according to The New York Times.

Weekly newspaper, The Gazette & Herald after 200 years has put the kibosh on its broadsheet format and has switched to a tabloid.

According to Gazette editor Chris Buxton, "We set out to create a slightly up-market tabloid version of what was a highly-respected broadsheet.  The aim was to modernize the look without losing the unique local feel of the paper. We're very pleased with the end result and the reception it has received."

Source: Hold the Front Page

Le Figaro and French mobile operator Orange, have launched a new daily show, Le Buzz, available on the Internet and mobile phones.  The show will cover the happenings in the media industry.

The show will air on Monday through Friday and will decipher the increasingly complex news concerning communication.  Each day, leaders from all different sectors of the media will reveal and react to the day's subjects.

Josh Korr of Publishing 2 believes that "newsrooms have to rethink the kind of stories they cover and the way they tell those stories, or all the new technologies could be wasted on news that readers don't find relevant or interesting."

In an age of Twitter, blogs, the Internet and mobile access at our finger tips, it seems that most people feel obligated to write on everything because they might miss out on the "big news."  Instead they are missing out on the process of filtering news and information.  By not filtering and being more punctilious about selecting what to report on, many non-news items flood newspapers and the Internet.

Wirtschafts Blatt has launched a new design, but rather than redesigning the entire paper, they have only redone the front page.  

The new front page features better navigation, increased use of color and more headlines.

Bill Keller, the New York Times' executive editor, told NPR's Steve Inskeep that, "there's a real shortage of the kind of information that I would call quality journalism."

In a comment about the financial health of the newspaper industry and the rise of blogs, "Good journalism does not come cheap. And, therefore, you're not going to find a lot of blogs or nonprofit Web sites that are going to build a Baghdad bureau."

He also said that the venerated newspaper is, "Competing for audience with different people." Keller went on to say the Times sometimes gets "tarred with the condition of the industry that we're in."

Source: NPR

As of December 8, the Seattle Times will be presented in three sections, rather than four on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.

The first section will remain unchanged aside from the addition of the Opinion page.  The third section, Sports, will also remain the same.

The UK Government's Treasury Committee is planning to conduct an investigation into the banking crisis to examine, "the role of the media in financial stability and whether journalists should operate under any form of reporting restrictions during banking crises".

Financial journalists have responded negatively to the idea that financial journalism could be subject to reporting restrictions.

After the BBC recently ran a false Twitter rumor concerning the Mumbai terrorist attacks they have been increasingly under fire for "paying too much attention to Twitter."

The BBC responded by admitting it should have been more punctilious.  According to the BBC's online news editor Steve Herrmann, "Should we have tried to check it and then reported back later, if only to say that we hadn't found any confirmation? I think in this case we should have, and we've learned a lesson."

Mississippi's Natchez Democrat relaunched with a new design and narrower format.  They have reduced the width by two inches in an effort to reduce expenses, according to the paper's website.

The paper decided to reduce its size in order to avoid cutting staff or content.

Source: The Natchez Democrat

The Sunday Source, a weekend entertainment and lifestyle supplement to the Washington Post will no longer be published as of December 21, 2008.

The Sunday Source was launched five years ago and featured items such as Road Trip, EcoWise, TredSpotter and listings.  These sections will be placed within the newspaper.

Source: Washington City Paper via Poynter

Eurostat - the statistics wing of the European Commission - published results this week on internet access across the European Union. For the first time, a European country has seen a decline in internet access per household. The percentage of Italian households with Internet access fell from 43 percent, in 2007, to 42 percent in 2008.

Michael Wolff's recently launched biography of Rupert Murdoch, "The Man Who Owns the News," looks into Murdoch's personal life, his desire to acquire The New York Times and his dislike of Arthur Sulzberger.

As Wolff puts it, the NYT is Murdoch's "favorite train wreck," and goes on to state "I've watched [Murdoch] go through the numbers, plot out a Times merger with the Journal's backroom operations.  He has conjured, too, how in Murdoch style, he might convince the Sulzbergers to let him in, if he promises to leave Arthur in charge--and how he could then make Arthur his puppet."

Media analyst Lauren Rich Fine believes that newspapers can avoid "dying a painful death" by liquidating their assets and being reclassified as not-for-profits.

According to Fine, even though "converting to a not-for-profit won't improve the financials, it would allow the paper to ask for philanthropic support, not unlike public radio or television stations." 

Online venture Spot.Us, an experiment in crowdfunding investigative reporting, is launching a new technique to pitch story ideas:  widgets.

Action, Lebanon's second French-language newspaper was launched by Integra Marketing and Public Solutions, the same company that publishes the Lebanese newspaper, Al-Balad.

According to Integra general manager Gilbert Tigot, the new daily paper is going to be "revolutionary and comprehensive."

The first French language paper in Lebanon was L'Orient-Le Jour.

Source: Zawya

The Huffington Post's recently launched World News page will contain content from "editorial partners with correspondents in more than 50 countries" including "foreign policy experts and advocates," according to Media Bistro.

Arianna Huffington believes that, "As the recent Mumbai attacks made so painfully clear, the international community is now more interconnected than ever, and readers around the world are keen to know what's happening beyond their borders."

Robert Thomson, the Managing Editor of the Wall Street Journal, reports that Dow Jones is planning to launch a Japanese-language website in the first half of next year.

Thomson made the statement at the Reuters Media Summit in New York yesterday.

The financial newswire is owned by News Corporation and already has a foreign exchange information service in Japan which Thomson said is the fastest-growing revenue source for the company.

Source: Press Gazette

After the initial financial crisis, The Wall Street Journal's managing editor Robert Thomson is predicting a resurgence of newspaper advertising.

Advertisers may be seeking more "conservative, comfortable outlets to make their case to buyers," Thomson said at the Reuters Media Summit in New York, and will spend money where success has been proven.

CNN has eliminated its seven-person unit covering science, the environment and technology, according to The New York Times.

Curtis Brainard of the Columbia Journalim Review online believes "The decision to eliminate the positions seems particularly misguided at a time when world events would seem to warrant expanding science and environmental staff."