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There was a decline in the average time spent per person on newspaper websites in October compared to last year, according to a Nielson Online report.

While monthly uniques increased, the data followed a similar September trend of a decrease in time spent on some sites.

The New York Times, the leader in time spent on newspaper's websites, saw an increase from 35 minutes in October 2007 to 40 minutes this year, the report says.  Politico increased its time spent from 9 minutes to 19, while its monthly uniques increased 178%.

Source:  Editor and Publisher

Unlike those he decries as "misguided cynics," global media mogul Rupert Murdoch believes that newspapers will reach "new heights" in the 21st century.

Although the print newspaper is going to face changes, "it will always be around," Murdoch said, in one version or another.

After a series of "rapid launches of free dailies between August and October 2006," two more of Denmark's editions of 24timer have closed, according to MediaWatch.

The latest closures in Odense and Aalberg on Friday mark a trend in the Danish newspaper market, which has been in a circulation decline since 1997.

In 2006, Denmark had 10 different free dailies with "20 editions and a total circulation of more than two million."  After a series of shutdowns, 24timer, Metro and Urban are the three that remain, each with only 3 editions and a circulation of less than 600,000.  Odense and Aalberg each had a circulation of 20,000.

Paid circulation in Denmark "dropped almost 25% in the last ten years," and free circulation is going down "even faster."

Source:  Newspaper Innovation 

Columnist Steve Outing reports that in order to save print newspapers, "publishers must improve them with the older print loyalists in mind."  

With publications shutting down print services from a seven day-a-week schedule to weekly, cutting staff, or slimming their number of pages, the crisis for print news could be solved not by redesign but by quality improvement, Outing says, and leveraging digital offerings in print editions.

According to PaidContent, although ad revenue is down 19 percent and interest expenses on $2.1 billion of debt, newspaper companies are still profitable.  

McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt believes that ad revenue declines are cyclical and newspapers will not go out of business.

PaidContent's Lauren Rich Fine offers this advice, "For an industry that well understands it serves the greater good, come to terms with lower margins. And then go private!"

Source: PaidContent

In her most recent article, Emily Bell, director of digital content for the Guardian, talks about the future of the media industry within the context of the financial crisis.  

In her last article, Bell described her prediction for the western media as "carnage."  When asked what the carnage might look like, she stated, "at worst you could take about 25% of titles out of the national press, if there really was an unprecedented set of economic and market conditions. This means around five or six titles disappearing or consolidating with others."

Bell also described the media as being "delusional" about their own business for thinking that they can escape the financial crisis, unaffected, while everyone else is suffering the consequences.

Investor's Business Daily is a national business newspaper that has been published since 1984 by investor and entrepreneur William O'Neil.  The paper has more than 150,000 subscribers and won a Pulitzer Prize last year for editorial cartoons.

However, according to The Big Money in an article titled, America's Strangest Newspaper, it is "the biggest newspaper no one has ever heard of."

O'Neil founded the paper because he wanted to publish a paper that presented his personal investment philosophy on stock picking. 

According to Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times, there is a shift in the balance-of-power of journalism; the power is shifting in favor of new media. Barber believes the "mainstream press lost touch with its audience at the very moment when technology, via the Internet, was dramatically lowering the barriers to entry."

According to Barber, "the imperial status of the mainstream media - the television networks, big metropolitan dailies and lofty commentators - has been shaken.  The lay-offs of hundreds of US newspaper journalists this summer are a symptom of a wider malaise."

He continued, "we are witnessing a shift in the balance of power towards new media, with wholesale repercussions for the practice of journalism."

The Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano, the 147-year old newspaper of record will now carry international news stories and more articles written by women according to the Wall Street Journal. The paper's publisher, Pope Benedict XVI is said to have requested the changes.

When the paper was founded in 1861, it was the "mouthpiece" for Vatican news and reported on the daily happenings of the pope.  

The paper has long been a subject of criticism; in 1961 Cardinal Montini, who became Pope Paul VI wrote, "a serious newspaper, a grave newspaper, but who would ever read it on the tram or at the bar, who would ever strike up a discussion about it?"

In a recent speech, former of the editor of The Age, Michael Gawenda, gave his opinions about the newspaper industry.  Gawenda believes that changes taking place in the news industry are causing more problems and they are failing to "produce newspapers that attract the sort of fierce and life-long loyalty they once attracted."

Gawenda believes that "it is a failure of imagination and commitment, a result of a lack of experience and knowledge and love of newspapers" that is causing content, readership and revenue to decline.  

He went on to stress the importance of change in the industry, "but for real change, courage is needed, and vision and risk-taking and, above all, a commitment to newspapers and journalism that, frankly, I do not see at the moment."

Bertrand Pecquerie wrote in an article in Le Monde yesterday that the French newspaper industry is in crisis and, worryingly, turning to the State for help. Newspapers have been subsidized in France for the past ten years and, in those ten years, the situation has not improved, it has actually worsened.

Pecquerie believes that there are four core problems facing the industry and these are not being addressed. The four core issues are method, diagnosis, objective and means.

For the first time, European readership of free dailies has gone down. At the end of 2007 it was 27,300,000 - now it's 27,000,000.

The decline is not significant, but is it a sign of a new trend?

World circulation is still up by 2%, largely because of launches in South America and Asia.

Source: Newspaper Innovation

According to ABCe, a non-profit organization that publishes studies on the media, The Guardian is once again the UK's most popular news website.  According to Brand Republic, The Times Online reported the highest growth, 20.1% month to month.

Guardian.co.uk reported 23.1 million unique visitors, a 12% monthly increase.  The Guardian also has the highest number of unique users in the UK, 8.7 million.

Times Online reported 19.6 million unique users, an increase of 92% since August 2007.  Also according to the report, of those users, only 6 million were based in the U.K.  Editor in chief Anne Spackman claimed that the steady rise in TO's "global audience is testament to the power of the Times brand and the strength of our coverage."

How objective and spin-free is our news? There is much conjecture that media spin is damaging the relationship newspapers have with their audience, with a recent UK survey indicating that just 43% of the population trust newspapers. With the armies of Communication Directors, PR professionals, lobby groups and political parties battling the press with dizzying budgets and ready-made press releases, is the truth getting through?

With this problem in mind, a new online tool called "SpinSpotter" has been launched. It promises to - once it is fully launched and out of beta testing - scan articles and expose bias, misreporting and spin in the news online, for example a political piece that gives a one sided story or uses colourful language that exaggerates the facts.

Once downloaded, the SpinSpotter Spinoculars appear on your Web browser toolbar and "flags" any bias in an article you are reading with a red icon. Users with the software can highlight and comment on questionable content using a guide to potential inaccuracies and biases created by a panel of journalists compensated by the company. Only people with the Spinoculars program installed on their PCs will see other users' comments. The company is using the Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics and input from an advisory board of journalists to police and judge each allegation.

The innovation was launched by ex Microsoft boss Todd Herman and John Atcheson, the founder/CEO of both MusicNet and Ads.com.

The Editors Weblog managed to pin down Todd Herman for a brief chat before he dashed off to promote - and maybe spin? - the new software.

EW: How do you think newspapers will react to SpinSpottter?

TH: Journalists tend to approach us with skepticism, as they should, and some worry that their work might come under attack. But their attitude quickly changes when they realize that SpinSpotter also can protect them against vague, unfounded accusations of bias since users have to be very specific about "why" they think something is inaccurate or biased and must work within a carefully constructed set of rules based on the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists.

They are also pleased to learn that we have all sorts of safeguards to ensure people don't abuse the system, from a Journalism Advisory Board of journalists, writers and academics; to a layer of referees who are mostly graduate students at journalism schools; to a trust rating system that gives more weight to the judgments of users who have proven to be objective in finding spin, vs. those who are showing themselves to be too biased or partisan.

Once the service is officially launched (we are still in beta-testing mode) I wouldn't be surprised if some newspapers started to use SpinSpotter as an internal tool or asked us to develop custom services for their own use.
 
EW: Do you think this product is performing a task that editors and newspapers should be doing themselves?

TH: Most editors do perform this task, and perform it quite well. But it is extremely hard to be 100 percent objective 100 percent of the time -- especially in an era of declining advertising revenue when editors and reporters are expected to do more with less. And then, of course, there is the small minority of reporters and editors who are simply not as vigilant against bias as they should.

EW: What inspired you to launch SpinSpotter?

TH: Although my CEO and I have opposing political viewpoints -- I am conservative and he is liberal -- we both agree on one thing: A free, independent and trusted press is critical for a democracy.  We both admire courageous journalism but are disappointed to see the press lose credibility with readers. According to Pew Research, 66 percent of Americans think the U.S. press is one-sided.
 
EW: What technology is powering your device and how does it work?

TH: At heart, we are a user-driven system.  Our SpinSpotter Spinoculars make it easy for people to identify, share and edit any signs of bias or inaccuracy they find online.  Right now we are in beta, meaning we are still testing and refining the service.

SpinSpotter is not a place for people to hurl vague accusations of media bias, however.  If they want their markers to be seen by other people using the service, they must clearly label which "rule" the journalist has violated (these are drawn from the Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists and interpreted by our Journalism Advisory Board and team of referees) and back-up their assertions. Otherwise, their trust rating will decline and their entries will be all but invisible.

EW: How do you envision SpinSpotter developing in the future?

TH: The topic of media bias is much too important to take lightly. We hope our service will raise the level of discourse on the subject by encouraging people to be much more specific and rigorous in their analysis of bias in the press. And as the service fosters that debate, we think the service will grow and evolve. For example, we envision giving editors and reporters special access to respond to users' "spin-markers" and engage in dialog over their choice of words or sources.

We can also imagine newsrooms and journalism schools using the service as a tool to encourage fair and balanced reporting. Lastly, we can foresee a day where SpinSpotter helps people make choices about what they read based upon the level of "spin" any given article contains.

EW: It is obviously early days for your device, but how has the take up been so far?

TH: If passion counts for anything, the response has been great. But, these are *very* early days.  In fact, we are in what is called an early beta phase, meaning all of our current users are actually helping us test the service's technology and refine its algorithms through their usage.

UK regional publisher Newsquest announces that it will adopt a mixture of free and paid distribution to its weekly paid paper the Richmond & Twickenham Times, following in the footsteps of the Manchester Evening News according to Hold The Front Page.