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Average time spent per visit decreased for more than half of the top 30 global news websites in May compared to last year, according to the latest Nielsen data. The trend mirrors the drops seen at the top newspaper sites.

The biggest gains came from two non-traditional news sources. Google News upped the average time spent on its site to over 22 minutes, a gain of over ten minutes from May 2008. Similarly, the average visitor stayed on the Huffington Post for about 15 minutes, an increase of more than six minutes.

The Washington Times is hosting a two-day symposium in New York today and tomorrow to discuss the topic of the 'individuated newspaper.' Peter Vandevanter, vice president of the Denver-based Media News Group, coined the term after researching ways that newspapers can resist the threats of the ailing industry.

"There are two kinds of content now. You choose it, or it's chosen for you. The idea here is self-selection of the news, delivered to any platform, at any time," Peter Vandevanter was quoted saying in The Washington Times today.

When the Ann Arbor News ceases printing in July, Ann Arbor will become the first US city with no daily newspaper. The publication as it exists now will disappear completely, although a new venture, AnnArbor.com, is set to take over local news on the web and will produce a print product two days a week.

In a column for Poynter's The Biz Blog, Rick Edmunds postulates on what factors led to the decline of the News in Ann Arbor, whose vibrant, educated community would appear to be the ideal location for a newspaper. Edmunds even goes so far as to suggest starting over with AnnArbor.com might not be such a bad idea.

Seventeen of the top 30 US newspaper websites showed a decline in the average time users spent on their sites in May versus the same period last year, according to an exclusive article in Editor & Publisher. The data come from Nielson Online, which keeps track of the most widely read newspaper sites based on number of unique visitors.

On the bright side, that means nearly half of the sites posted gains year-over-year, some of them fairly significant. The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, a paper struggling to get out of bankruptcy, added 20 minutes to the time readers spend on the site - at an average of over 47 minutes per user, it's also the newspaper site that users stay on the longest. The San Francisco Chronicle and SFGate.com also recorded sizeable gains, jumping to 21 minutes this year compared to 12 minutes in May 2008.

The latest issue of Courrier International to hit French newsstands gathers translated newspaper articles themed on the uncertain future of the press. From Washington, in a lengthy set of extracts from the New Republic, Paul Starr makes three strong cases for why democracy will be endangered without a newspaper. He hints that American democracy may already have been slighted seeing that national, regional and local newspapers are dwindling in terms of content they can run since printing costs have caused them to scale back on the numbers of pages they print.

He opens his debate by lamenting the fact that Americans have taken [American] journalism (in the form of a printed newspaper) for granted as newspapers have been such an ''integral part of daily life in America, so central to politics and culture and business, and so powerful and profitable in their own right, that it is easy to forget what a remarkable historical invention they are.''

We live in a world, not a village

The directors of international journalism courses talked about the importance of internationalisation and giving students a chance to interact with other students from around the world in a bid to understand the effects of global media in a local context.

According to Eric Scherer at AFP, the future of journalism will lie in enterprising journalists and their efforts to come up with journalistic solutions that will facilitate the communication process and continuously revise the business models in place. He also believes that a new mindset will eventually need to replace the typical journalist's attitude of today, as well as in the value of a broad general knowledge base - something that internationalisation makes possible.

The Daily Telegraph will publish uncensored details of each of the 646 MP's expenses in a free supplement along with its print edition on Sat., June 20.

The much-anticipated, 68-page magazine supplement, The Complete Expenses Files, arrives just two days after the House of Commons published its own heavily censored list of MPs' expenses on June 18. The list of the members of Parliament and their respective budget, allowances and expense can be seen at the UK Parliament website.

The launch of a cross-party select committee's investigation into the future of newspapers in the UK today was overshadowed by the ominous prediction that half of the nation's local and regional papers will be lost within the next five years.

The predictions are based on research conducted by the media analysts, Enders Media.  Its founder, Claire Enders, voiced her concerns in front of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee this morning:  

"We are expecting that up to half of all the 1,300 titles will close in the next five years."  

A lobbying campaign in the UK has called for the government to up the penalties for online filesharing, a practice in which over 7million UK residents regularly partake. The campaign, echoing that of the French government, takes an economical outlook, claiming that illegal filesharing is costing thousands of jobs in the UK and is denting the Kingdom's already slumping GDP. Is this a similar phenomenon to that which is causing UK and Western newspapers to shed staff at an unprecedented rate? Can newspapers, whose bottom line many consider to be suffering from digital content, learn from the plight of the music and entertainment industries affected by filesharing?

Yes and no. 

The National Union of Journalists has urged the new Culture, Media and Sport Minister, Ben Bradshaw to take action in the campaign to reinvigorate local journalism in the UK.  General Secretary, Jeremy Dear has also requested a meeting with the Minister to discuss the specific issue of industry job cuts.

The minister, who only assumed the role last week through a ministerial reshuffle, is under pressure from the NUJ to support an economic stimulus package designed to boost the newspaper industry.   The need for a comprehensive financial policy is evident; regional newsrooms across the UK have been subjected to sizeable staff cuts and reduced budgets as they strive to cope with the double burden of the recession and the decline in circulation.

In an interview with the Telegraph, Tina Brown expresses her views on the future of newspapers and the professional journalist.   The once queen bee of the high-end glossy magazine industry has now completely embraced the digital medium as editor in chief of the New York Daily Beast. Brown is now advising fellow journalists to recognise the need for 'innovative approaches' to the delivery of news and the varying business models to maintain them financially. 

Emphasising the 'parlous condition' of the New York Times, and the worrying health of other significant US local papers such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, Brown maintained that resources should be placed on preserving the intent and purposes of journalism per se, rather than on saving printed newspapers, "It's more important to preserve journalism than it is to preserve newspapers, frankly."

According to the Press Gazette, the Scottish government is set to back an initiative aimed at boosting newspaper readership among the young.

The proposed scheme was first suggested by the Menzies Group, a newspaper distributer, who contacted Scotland's enterprise minister, Jim Mather, with the idea. While the group is still waiting on a response, it is expected that the government is likely to react favourably.

Scotland's six national daily and Sunday newspapers have seen a steep decline in sales over the past decade, with their combined figure currently standing at roughly half of the heights they reached ten years ago. According to the Guardian, now just half of Scots read a daily, compared with three quarters previously, and just one third of those are national titles.

Scottish newspapers hit their peak when the Scottish parliament opened in 1999, and at the time journalists such as Kenneth Roy saw this as the beginning of a golden era for the Scottish media. "I foresaw this great flowering of Scottish journalism which would accompany the devolution process," he now explains.

According to a study by BIA, local advertising is set to slump over the next four years - however it predicts that local mobile advertising will saw. A drop of approximately $10 billion is foreseen for local advertising across newspapers, direct mail, TV, radio, yellow pages, outdoor, magazines and online, but BIA forecasts a $1.5 billion increase for mobile advertising in the same period.

The figures are indicative of the changing nature of news; digital and online advertising are included with newspapers in terms of an advertising decline, whilst it is mobile devices which currently seem to have the brightest future. The Associated Press has just revealed that a year after the launch of its mobile site, 55 million local stories have been read on it. The advent of e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle, as well as the wide range of news applications on iPhones and Blackberries have undoubtedly had an impact on these figures.

Source: Media Buyer Planner

A special report by Editor & Publisher has examined the situation which a growing number of American newspaper publishers are finding themselves in: bankruptcy. Amongst those that have filed for Chapter 11 in the US are the Tribune Co., the Sun-Times Media Group and the Journal Register Co.

During this difficult economic period, bankruptcies are increasingly common - in the US, they are up 38% when compared year on year. However, the troubles of the American newspaper industry in general add to the uncertainty surrounding newspaper applications for Chapter 11.

Lawrence Roberts, prolific investigative editor at the Washington Post since 2004, has been employed by the Huffington Post to lead its nascent Investigative Fund, it was revealed this morning.   The announcement was made by Arianna Huffington,  Chair of the Fund's Advisory Board and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post, and Nick Penniman, Executive Director of the Fund.  Huffington said:

"We are delighted to have Larry on board. Larry's background in investigative journalism -- including being part of three Pulitzer-winning teams -- as well as his experience in online journalism make him an ideal pick to spearhead the Investigative Fund. Plus, his experience as a business editor is perfectly aligned with the Investigative Funds initial focus on covering the economic crisis."

Fort Collins (Colo.) is set to lose its investigative weekly paper, Fort Collins Now, the most recent paper to perish in the current economic climate, reports Editor&Publisher.

Dwight Brown, the paper's publisher announced the closure on Monday on its website "the slump that has hit the newspaper industry in recent years has swallowed yet another newspaper: The one you are currently reading."

The Economist has made the news industry the special focus of its business section for its latest edition. "Established" news is described as "being blown away" but news in general is otherwise considered to be "thriving."

In an opening paragraph which does not bode well for advocates of traditional media, the Economist ponders if "the surest sign that newspapers are doomed is that politicians, so often their targets, are beginning to feel sorry for them," in reference to Barack Obama's pledge to newspapers last weekend at an industry dinner in Washington, as well as Massachusetts senator, John Kerry's commitment to help the "endangered species" and, in particular, his region's beloved Boston Globe.

According to what appears to be a Wall Street Journal article published on Post Bulletin earlier this week, America's local newspapers are faring better than the country's national titles.

The article, entitled "Smaller newspapers dodge the downturn" refers to a series of interventions on the part of some wealthy individuals who have offered to buy local newspapers in a bid to save them from apparent closure.

Last Wednesday, May 6, the US Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet held a hearing to review the plight of the newspaper industry, to better understand new media and the new model emerging, and to assess the role that government should play in the media as it evolves. The Future of Journalism hearing was presided over by Subcommittee chair Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who called the hearing in response to the threatened closure of his local paper, the Boston Globe, and the troubles facing newspapers across the country as advertising and circulation decline and the Internet replaces traditional media.

In his opening statement, Kerry says the committee has met to discuss not only the jolting condition of the newspaper, but also its implications for the future of journalism and the country. He believes it is important to "preserve the core society function served by independent and diverse media" and questions whether online journalism will "sustain the values of professional journalism the way the newspaper industry has." The committee invited five prominent representatives of various types of media to express their views about the Future of Journalism and offer their solutions.

"Why is the government interested?" asks Kerry. "We do have a responsibility for the licensing of broadcast. We have a responsibility for the regulatory oversight of ownership of cable, satellite, other issues with respect to communications; and needless to say, how the American people get their information--what the structure of ownership is--is of enormous interest to all of us because it is the foundation of our democracy." Is there even any government role at all, he wonders, or is this simply a normal transition in the marketplace?

Considering the nonprofit model

Before it heard from the media representatives, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin spoke to the committee about his Newspaper Revitalization Act, which proposes a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) status for newspapers. Cardin stresses that online journalism does not supply the in-depth reporting and investigative journalism provided by traditional newsrooms that are essential to a free and democratic society. His bill would provide an opportunity for local supporters--whether individuals, foundations, or educational institutions--to come together to preserve their community newspaper.

The major criticism of Cardin's bill is that it could threaten a newspaper's freedom of speech: 501(c)(3) status allows editorializing but prohibits a paper from endorsing political candidates. The independence of journalism from government is crucial to its role as watchdog, and it is undesirable for a newspaper to have the government involved in judging its content. However, in their addresses to the Committee, both Steve Coll, former managing editor of the Washington Post, and former newspaperman David Simon, say that while they seriously oppose government interference in newspapers, they are intrigued by the nonprofit model.

Newsrooms provide an important public service, so why shouldn't the government give them the tax exempt benefit of becoming non-profits? After all, the danger of government interference in content could be exaggerated. Any single politician or political party attempting to manipulate a publication would be immediately exposed through other media outlets, and the threat is not much greater than private ownership where powerful investors might maneuver the paper to serve their own interests. Nonetheless, the greatest issue faced by nonprofit newspapers and their investors will be where to draw the line between endorsing and editorializing. If a newspaper's responsibility is to provide the public with unbiased information, then blatant political endorsements seem in violation of that role anyway, but nonprofit status could limit criticism and commentary on politicians and legislation that might reduce the media's role as watchdog.

As Coll and Alberto Ibargüen, President of the Knight Foundation, point out, nonprofit is not a universal remedy nor will it solve newspapers' profit problems. The initiative could be viewed less as a savior of the newspaper entity and more as a bridge to preserve local journalism during a transitional period. Ibarguen says that relieving profit pressures with nonprofit status might help newspapers "extend their useful life until we figure out what's next and what online model can afford professional journalism."

Relaxing antitrust could help publishers charge for online content

The other great appeal for government intervention in newspapers has been the request for changes to media ownership and antitrust policy. Last month the Justice Department rejected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's request to change the boundaries of media antitrust to include all media in a geographic area--including radio, TV, and newspapers--when deciding whether a sale is anticompetitive.

Pelosi's antitrust proposal raised obvious criticism about the independence of newspapers and consolidation of ownership. However, at the Senate hearing, Simon and James Moroney, publisher and CEO of the Dallas Morning News, approached antitrust from a different angle: they urged the Committee to give newspapers an antitrust exemption so that industry leaders could convene to discuss copyrighting from aggregators and charging for content online.

Unable to foresee the digital future, at the advent of the Internet newspaper publishers made the mistake of offering content free online. Now readers are accessing that content for free, not through the publisher's site, but through aggregators like Google News, which also does not pay publishers for content. Marissa Mayer, vice president of Search Products and User Experience at Google Inc., defends Google to the committee, calling it a "conduit" for journalism that provides a free service to online newspapers by driving traffic to their sites.

However, Simon and Moroney argue that aggregators do not provide adequate compensation for the revenue generated from publishers' original content. They contend that as of now, the profits publishers make from online advertising are not enough to sustain the quality journalism newsrooms have been providing. There must be an industry wide initiative to charge for content online, says Simon, as no individual can swim against the tide. According to Moroney, under the current antitrust laws, publishers cannot even begin to have a conversation about possibilities for pricing or charging aggregators.

If the government does relax antitrust to allow for this industry wide "conversation," it could possibly lead to major publications placing a pay wall around content, charging users and aggregators, but does such a pay wall threaten the free market? One of the virtues of the Internet is the accessibility of information, so where do pay walls and content hoarding fit in? A generation of Internet users already views information as a free commodity, and charging online users for content will significantly reduce traffic, which will in turn reduce advertising revenue. Even if industry leaders can convene and discuss, they still might find themselves at a loss for a viable solution.

Experimentation and innovation rather than government intervention

The hearing's last speaker, Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post, opposed antitrust exemptions, paywalls, or really any government intervention. In fact, she countered some speaker's doom and gloom position with the opening statement, "Journalism will not only survive, it will thrive." Her main point is that the industry has changed and moved forward and there is no going back.

Huffington says, "The future is to be found elsewhere: it's a linked economy, it's search engines, it's online advertising, it's citizen journalism, and the foundations supporting investigative journalism. That's where the future is, and if you can't find your way to that, then you just can't find your way."

Ibargüen, Mayer, and Huffington all support embracing new media and encouraging experimentation and business models that promote digital possibilities. For Ibargüen that means providing universal, affordable digital action and adoption in the US and more inclusive public media that reaches every American. Neither he nor Huffington mourn the decline of investigative journalism, and both praise the efforts of nonprofits like ProPublica and the Knight Foundation supported Voices of San Diego for providing quality journalism outside the traditional newsroom.

According to Mayer, "The structure of the web has caused the basic unit--the atom of consumption--to migrate from the newspaper to the individual article," and because of the Web's ability to operate in real time, this allows for "living" instead of "static" stories that are constantly changed and updated like Wikipedia or the New York Times' "Times Topics." These changes to the way information is viewed, insist Mayer and Huffington, mean a different approach to monetization is necessary, which requires innovation and creativity. The solution for newspaper publishers is not to appeal to the government for a handout to preserve the old ways, but to adapt quickly and direct their time and resources into experimenting with the monetization of traffic through advertising.

What will the Senate decide?

Despite Kerry and Cardin's concern for the American newspaper, more than one of the subcommittee's senators held up a Blackberry during the hearing, proving themselves a part of the new digital audience. The general consensus of both the senators and media representatives seemed to be that their priority is not to save newspapers but to promote policies that sustain journalism.

How enlightening were the testimonies of the media representatives? Though certainly thorough in unveiling all the problems facing the media today, they failed to provide the government with a cure-all solution as to how it should proceed.

It seems fairly likely that the Senate could pursue the nonprofit solution as it seems basically harmless and might help some local newspapers stay on their feet at least long enough to find another answer. Relaxing antitrust could prove more risky, giving industry leaders the occasion to consolidate prices and possibly restrict information in a move that could prove more harmful than helpful to their own purpose.

The testimonies may have encouraged the Senate to do nothing at all for the newspaper but instead to accept that the audience and the market is evolving and no legislation can hold it back. If this is the case, then publishers will be faced with only one choice: innovate or fail. Instead of resisting change, they must get a grasp on technology and the new audience, paying attention to the success of others, then find ways to provide creative content and advertising solutions. As a few of the speakers said, this is still a transitional period for old media and new media, and there is still immense possibility for originality and advances. Though certain publications might lament their own fate, it is too early to be mourning the future of journalism.  

Charging for online publications is looking more appealing among publishers as we see News Corporation, and The New York Times Company leaning towards the idea of putting up pay walls either for part or all of their websites.

Tough advocate for paid online content, Rupert Murdoch announced News Corp is considering charging within a year. "That it is possible to charge for content on the web is obvious from the Wall Street Journal's experience," he said in reference to growing WSJ.com subscription revenues. He said that they might start the moves in the next year.

Appearing before MPs earlier this week, a number of editors from some of the country's most
established newspapers warned of the "chilling" costs of legal action which were discouraging many newspapers from the business of investigative journalism, the Guardian has reported.

The editors were invited to demonstrate how privacy, libel and press standards were impacting the day-to-day business of running their newspapers, as part of a review on the part of the culture, media and sport select committee.

In anticipation of the Senate Commerce Committee hearings that will be held later today to address the future of the US newspaper industry, NPR's Diane Rehm interviews media and journalism analysts to examine the fate of journalism in the midst of recession and changing media.

In the interview Rehm speaks with Associate Professor of Journalism at American University Jane Hall, former newspaper editor and Reflections of a Newsosaur blogger Alan Mutter, Editor and Senior Vice President of the American Journalism Review Rem Reider, and Editor of the Milwaukee-Journal Sentinel and new President of ASNE Martin Keiser. The four journalists agree on essential points that echo what many media analysts have said before: economic recession and decreased circulation and readership are leading to the decline of newspapers; the issue at hand is more about preserving quality journalism than about saving the printed newspaper; the development of a new business model is crucial to the survival of journalism; and government intervention is risky because it might conflict with the media's role as watchdog.

What is the "Fifth Estate?" By definition, it could be any class or group in society outside the clergy, the nobility, the commoners, and the press--anything from trade unions to the poor to organized crime--and is often used in reference to media, especially in reference to outlets who consider themselves in opposition to mainstream media. In his book, Arthur Hayes claims Press Critics are the Fifth Estate: Media Watchdogs in America, whereas Stephen Cooper's book is titled Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate and in The Political Pundits, Dan Nimmo and James Combs say that pundits constitute the Fifth Estate.

In his article "Who is the Fifth Estate and What is Its Role in Journalism's Future?" Poynter journalist Roy Clark discusses what he believes is, or should be, the Fifth Estate in the US: "a frame that sees that the freedoms and responsibilities of the First Amendment empower not just a professional caste of news gatherers and distributers, but potentially every citizen."

TechCrunch writer, Erick Schonfeld, declared online advertising is now officially in a recession. Online ad revenue has been slowing in the past quarters, however this quarter showed the first time revenues are actually declining. The total online advertising revenues were 2 percent lower than a year ago and 7 percent lower than the fourth quarter, wrote Schonfeld.