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Despite promising growth forecasts made by many in the industry, staffing cuts at news organizations big and small indicate that the news media industry is not yet out of the woods.  

Today, Journalism.co.uk reported that BBC's Global News division is undergoing restructuring that will result in the elimination of a number of management positions.  And smaller but still significant Channel M, the Manchester regional TV station owned by Guardian Media Group (GMG), will be losing 29 positions--a reduction of 88 percent.

The BBC will be losing a laundry list of high-level positions, including the directorial positions of BBC World News, BBC World Service and BBC World Service English.

The results of the UK Association of Online Publishers' 2010 census, released today, show a surprisingly optimistic growth forecast for 10 percent growth in revenue over the next year coming from more than half of its 37 respondents.  The census results come at a time when the industry is beginning to stabilize, with losses in ad revenue slowing and many publishers working to create new revenue streams.

With members such as Channel 4, Guardian Media Group, Telegraph Media Group, and Financial Times, the AOP's annual census, now in its seventh year, offers a clear depiction of trends across the publishing industry.

Tim Faircliff, AOP's Chairman and general manager of consumer media at member organization Thomson Reuters, sees the census as a good indicator of the reality in the market today.

Al Jazeera English - the English-language arm of the Qatari news channel - has teamed up with YouTube to cover a wide range of Iraqi voices and their opinion on their country's democracy on the day of Iraq's first nationwide parliamentary election since 2005, according to the Official YouTube blog.

The short videos give us an insight into the Iraqi voices that are rarely heard in news coverage coming from that area. One video shows one Iraqi who showed up for voting, but found out his name was not on the list. Another one shows another Iraqi complaining that not all candidates are honest.

The "Year of the Paywall" is upon us and in a time where most newspapers seem to be gearing up to build one around their websites - the New York Times and the News Corporation Wapping publications are just a couple of examples - some executives believe there is still room for other revenue models to coexist with paid content.   

The head of digital media at News Corporation, Jonathan Miller, told delegates at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit that "dual revenue streams" are likely to co-exist as media organizations try ways of making money online, according to Guardian.

The headquarters of Agora, Poland's biggest media concern, in a southern district of Warsaw, have huge windows as a façade, and inside, terraces on every floor. The whole configuration seems to facilitate contact between the different editorial units housed in this imposing building. They are numerous and varied, from flagship daily Gazeta Wyborcza to freesheet Metro, from talk-news radio Tok FM to countless Internet portals and the administrative departments. Their members or contributors don't need to go to the basement, to the cafeteria, to see people from other platforms or professional cultures. The in-house newsstand and bookstore, which sell not only the group's productions, also remind them they are not alone in the industry.

Agora, which also has a strong presence in magazine, book and DVD publishing, in music-film production and in outdoor advertising, has more than half of its 3,150-odd employees based in this "horizontal skyscraper". The architecture building that is longer than it is tall, with stretching, low wall corridors, may reflect the interaction between separate units. Ironically however, it also contradicts the term "vertical", often heard in this four-storey building and applied to some of the integrated online activities.

"We are in all media platforms except television," says Grzegorz Piechota, the special projects editor for Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's leading quality newspaper.  "For a decade, we have been particularly active in extending our expertise in Internet, finding synergies between online and print operations. Agora is in everything except porn, instant messaging and mapping!"

The group, whose operations are essentially Polish, counts more than 80 portals (more than Germany's Axel Springer for example, another media titan but at a world level). Agora's main portal gazeta.pl, fed by an independent newsroom integrated with radio Tok FM, is complemented by webradio tuba.fm and many other stand-alone verticals. These cover all sorts of issues, including sport, business, education, recruitment and real-estate. Most of them are leaders in their niche, and their combined audience is sixth right after Google, Polish equivalents of Facebook (nasza-klasa.pl) and E-bay (allegro.pl), and the two leaders onet.pl and Wirtualna Polska. Nearly two thirds of Poland's 17 million Internet users regularly visit gazeta.pl and its affiliated portals. Wyborcza.pl, the flagship daily's e-edition, attracts three million users and brought in  24% of the daily's advertising revenues in 2009.

Agora has been particularly proactive in looking for synergies and complementary activities made possible by the Internet. The group has implemented a multi-brand strategy which is adjusted according to the fields covered. Gazeta Wyborcza, for instance, is fully integrated only in areas that make it more appropriate, with the verticals sport.pl (launched in 2006) or wyborcza.biz (created last year).

This business portal was editorially independent from the daily when it started, in order to be more flexible than print journalists, who were considered "too serious and slow". It was filled with gossips on economic players, which was a mistake, Agora's executives admitted. "It was not the right way to attract a loyal audience. The people we target, let's say graduate readers in their 30s, with minimum 1,000 euros monthly income, have no time and are in search of serious news," explains Leszek Olszanski, the head of wyborcza.pl. "Advertisers also want to reach them through non-trivial material, which is why we work with seasoned print editors. We realized there are complementary abilities between online rapidity on one hand, and thoughtful coverage of an industry on the other."

Thanks to this integration, top economic columnists of Gazeta Wyborcza now write more. They allegedly enjoy having more space for their texts, and having the possibility to work on breaking news in real-time. The portal benefits from the credibility conferred by the paper, which in turn has become more analytical rather than news-driven. "We try to wait for the print edition for exclusivities, if possible. These scoops can be accompanied in the website's pages by teasers before, and follow-ups after," Olszanski notes.

Wyborcza.biz  has become a strong brand, along with its associated portal money.pl. Financial institutions, in particular, compete to be advertised in their pages. This year, the online revenues of the economic section should represent 50% of print earnings. Like the in-house newsstand, the sales forces also market ads for other business sites. It is in Agora's philosophy to tap into all potential income sources - not only news driven - and on the cooperative character of the Internet. "On the Net, you do business with your competitors. There is a business reason to build networks to cover them, and our expertise also includes sales to advertisers," Piechota explained.

Agora does not only play with complementarities rooted on its traditional print activities. The 50-person team managed by Pawel Stremski, as gazeta.pl/Tok FM's chief editor, is half web and half radio. Last January his unit added another website to Agora's e-basket, with the launch of tok-fm.pl, which is not a webradio (a station by the same name, broadcast in Poland's nine main cities, was already accessible on the webradio portal tuba.fm). Agora did not create another website for the sake of it, but saw Tok FM's recognized brand as an opportunity for Internet too. "The same team fills gazeta.pl for a mass market audience, and tok-fm.pl for politics and business with some entertainment content. People can follow a major hearing by a politician live, in a video coverage on tok-fm.pl, and get a summary in the other portals," Stremski says.

The website's beta version was successful in having radio journalists send in their notes, according to its promoters. Conscious of brand impact, these reporters see it as a more dynamic, immediate way to publish their stories. Gazeta Wyborcza's central newsroom is not a tok-fm.pl contributor, but its local editors are. They are based in 20 bureaus out of Warsaw, and can publish their non-print productions in the new portal. They receive no extra pay for these contributions, but they have an incentive: there is an award each month for the best exclusive story.

"We have to be fast, entertaining and multimedia, finding the way to be different," Stremski says. "There is room for good profitable journalism in Internet. By going multimedia, you get more informers, your story is not stuck on page 6, even though the credibility conferred by print remains essential."

Another advantage of creating tok-fm.pl is that in Poland's competitive media environment, newspapers not belonging to Agora are less reluctant to refer to Tok FM as a source, rather than Gazeta Wyborcza. Having many brands gives more possibilities to be quoted for scoops, and to be profitable too. "We cannot expect to make money with every website. A lifestyle or a local news website is more likely to be cost-effective from the start than a general news portal," Stremski notes.

Agora's online operations have gone even more vertical in the past months, with the majority takeover of AdTaily. This start-up company based in Krakow provides a widget-based system for advertising monetization of Internet services (including those offered by the group's platforms which at the moment house about 130,000 bloggers). "AdTaily developed a universal tool that can be used for cooperation with external customers," commented Tomasz Jozefacki, Agora's director of Internet operations. "Currently its system is used by 80% of our online media."

In other words, the group is taking advantage of the blogosphere's innovations and income potentials, including e-commerce for web entrepreneurs who want to monetize their social media. "Agora realized that to be online, you need to acquire the bright guys who are in the business, and can help you to be more efficient in new platforms. Our expertise is not just about gathering news; we have to think wide," Piechota says.

AdTaily is based on the assumption that anybody can be an advertiser. It has developed a self-service ad tool designed for niche blogs, giving advertisers the opportunity to reach narrowly-targeted audiences. Its promoters insist that their system allows 70% of the ad revenues to go directly to the bloggers, with an easy to understand flat fee, unlike Google's  AdSense. "It is a great instrument for hyperlocal news websites, covering towns or districts with around 10,000 residents, where they can advertise the local shoe shops," says Jakub Krzych, one of the start-up's co-founders. "It would not make sense for Agora to buy a website on white boots or on a Krakow district. But through AdTaily, it can indirectly get some revenue streams from very specialized news websites."

Will Agora be successful with its online activism and verticalism? The group is at least trying to be as active as possible in new media platforms, and in a way that is not too costly. The investment in AdTaily also reveals that it does not believe in the online pay walls envisaged by Rupert Murdoch or the New York Times, as most contents are being commoditized. Its multi-brand strategy invites the editorial units to fill the empty spots that appear on the Net. "The publishing business used to be easy!" Piechota joked.

The Associated Press has named former New York Times executive Nick Ascheim as general manager of its digital division. Ascheim will also lead their new strategic business unit, AP Gateway, the newswire announced Tuesday.

Ascheim previously served as CEO of TheSquare Inc, an online social network for college students, and as editorial director of FoxNews.com before joining NYTimes.com as director of entertainment and video in 2004. Ascheim was promoted to vice president of the Times' website in 2007.

The BBC will be teaming up with the non-profit blogging network of citizen journalists, Global Voices, to offer a "different range of perspectives and commentary from around the world," according to the BBC.

Content from Global Voices will be incorporated into the BBC's SuperPower season coverage, a special series on the Internet and the impact it has on our lives.

The BBC will be selecting and linking to some Global Voices stories, as well as asking GV editors to give their views on how the mainstream media handle the news. The editor of the BBC's News website, Steve Herrmann, explained that he believes Global Voices and the wide range of opinions they feature could add an "interesting dimension to some of (the BBC's) news coverage."

Just last week the BBC came under fire from The Newspaper Publishers Association following news that the corporation is to launch three iPhone apps from April 2010. The NPA is adamant that such a move will step on the toes of traditional print publications seeking to generate revenue in the mobile news arena.

Perhaps then, the New York Times is looking to get one over on the broadcasting corporations muscling in on print territory. Daily Finance has reported that the newspaper is to launch a daily webcast in the same vein as the Wall Street Journal - which has been doing a twice-daily online newscast of its own, called The News Hub, since September.

Specific details regarding the New York Times' offering are still uncertain, although it is expected to go live in less than a few months' time. The daily newscast is expected to be transmitted around lunch time, when video traffic peaks. A face for the show has yet to be chosen, although a staffer at NYT has hinted that it is unlikely to be Jane Bornemeier, the newspapers current TV and Radio Senior Editor.

Source: Daily Finance

The date has been set for the release of Apple's iPad in the US: the first Wi-Fi only version will be shipped on 3 April, slightly later than the time period that was initially specified, possibly due to manufacturing difficulties. The 3G-enabled product will launch at the end of April, and both will become available in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK in late April.

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Sony is planning to take on Apple with a new line of handheld products. One of these is a portable device that "shares characteristics of netbooks, electronic-book readers and handheld-game machines." It sounds just like the iPad, and the WSJ reported that unnamed sources said that it is intended as a competitor. 

El Mundo is to launch a paid service for reading its content online or on a smartphone, Agence France-Presse reported. The Spanish daily's standard website - which is the world's most visited Spanish-language news site - will remain free, however.

On Monday, for a price of €14.99 per month or 60cents per day, a new application called El Mundo en Orbyt will offer full access to the paper edition as well as a range of other services including archives, pop-up video reports, access to regional editions and supplements, commenting, the opportunity to communicate with the newsroom and special offers, according to a video on the site. The paper is already developing an app for Apple's iPad, AFP said.

T. Christian Miller of the independent, non-profit news organization ProPublica recently won the prestigious 2010 Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting. Editor & Publisher reports that it was a collaboration between The Los Angeles Times and the non-profit news outfit that produced Miller's winning report into abuses of insurance coverage for private contractors in war zones.

Just last week, the winners of the George Polk Awards in Journalism - usually given to courageous and skillful reporting - were announced, NPR's On the Media explains. Among the usual big media winners was a surprising win - the anonymous Iranians or Iranian who captured the death of the 26-year old protestor Neda Agha-Soltan on tape in the violent aftermath of the Islamic Republic's contested elections of June 2009.

The Minnesota Society of Professional Journalists is arranging a 'speed dating' event for freelancers to meet editors, reported MinnPost. For $30 (or $20 for SPJ members), freelancers can attend 'Freelance Love' on March 11 and have five minutes of "guaranteed face time" with editors from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press and several magazines, according to the MNSPJ website.

SPJ board member Amanda Theisen told MinnPost that "Many of our members have been asking us to do something along those lines. ... The freelancer can pitch a story idea, or simply introduce themselves to the editor and show them some of their work.  Then, after five minutes, the freelancer moves onto the next editor, then the next, then the next...you get the idea!" When they register, freelancers are asked if they are interested in working for newspaper, online, magazines, or with photography or video.

Should journalists have to pay to meet potential employers? It seems an unusual move but one that definitely offers convenience. As news outlets suffer from lack of ad revenue, more journalists are left out of work and looking for freelance assignments, and more publications are looking for freelancers to fill the gaps that shrinking newsrooms have left.

Source: MinnPost, MNSPJ 

Paris-based French daily Le Parisien and its national arm Aujourd'hui have developed a user-generated section of their site, in conjunction with Citizenside, a citizen photo journalism agency that recently launched similar projects with the French branch of free daily Metro, and French radio station RTL.

The new site, You, invites readers to provide text, photo and video contributions, or to alert the community of a specific event.  Items are immediately published on the site, but Le Parisien staff will check the authenticity of contributions (using Citizenside's technology) and then mark them as 'verified.'

The Newspaper Publishers Association (the representative body for all big UK publishers) is stirring up a backlash against the BBC, following news that the corporation is to launch three iPhone apps from April 2010. The NPA is adamant that such a move will step on the toes of traditional print publications seeking to generate revenue in the mobile news arena.

In a staunch statement emailed to paidContent:UK, the NPA's director Director David Newell wrote:

"Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers.

Anyone paying close attention to Steve Jobs' iPad demo last month would have noticed a blank space in the middle of The New York Times home page. As most technology pundits were quick to point out, it was caused by the iPad's glaring omission of Flash, the Adobe animation software used by newspapers like the Times and The Wall Street Journal for interactive graphics and video on their websites.

Earlier this month, Jobs travelled to New York for secret meetings with representatives of the Times and the Journal, presumably to demonstrate how the iPad works to staff and answer questions. Details emerged Thursday about what exactly Jobs had to say during his demo in the News Corporation building for Journal staff, in a report published in Gawker.

The BBC has confirmed it is to launch three iPhone applications from April 2010, with versions for the Blackberry and phones running Google's Android software becoming available soon thereafter.  The announcement was made today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The apps will be free of charge and provide news and sport coverage from the BBC website, including audio and video elements.


The Guardian reports that the News app will be available from April and the Sport app in May. There will be UK and international versions of each.

Three publications have teamed up for an ongoing investigative report into New Orleans and its police department, Editor and Publisher reports. They are non-profit investigative journalism project ProPublica, daily newspaper The Times-Picayune of New Orleans and public affairs television program Frontline.

The resulting project is called Law & Disorder and features video, social networking tools, photos and documents to report on several cases involving New Orleans police and civilians in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The collaboration came about when Frontline was searching for stories to coincide with the five-year anniversary of the hurricane and turned to ProPublica for help, while the Times-Picayune editor had seen ProPublica's piece about a New Orleans hospital published in The New York Times magazine. The newspaper and ProPublica then discovered that they had been working on some of the same stories. Times-Picayune managing editor Peter Kovacs told Editor and Publisher that he wanted to see this information in his newspaper.

From the loss of advertising revenue for newspapers to the emergence of a slew of multi-functional, deluxe e-readers, times are changing for the print industry - and they are doing so quickly.

So, what can we expect for the future of the printed word in the next couple years? Some media insiders spoke to CNN to offer some insight on what could be in store for newspapers.

The Paris-based citizen photojournalism agency Citizenside has partnered with Metro International to launch a new website for citizen reporting.

The site, MetroReporter, allows readers to upload and share their news photos and video. All contributions are vetted by editors before being posted. If they are published in print or on Metro's primary site, the member is paid between €10 and €70. Membership of MetroReporter is free and Metro has agreed to purchase and publish user contributions on a regular basis. This means that an international publication has plans to regularly pay its audience to contribute content, rather than expecting user-generated content to be free.

New stories from the Associated Press (AP) have started showing up on Google again, after a seven-week hiatus, The Wall Street Journal reports.

New AP stories have not been hosted on Google since just before Christmas. The two companies have been in negotiations to continue the publication of AP articles on Google News, an arrangement that has been in place since 2007. It is understood that AP's efforts to more closely monitor the flow of articles to and through Google and other portals have impeded progress.

All reporters at the Journal-Register Co. (JRC) will get video cameras, under an ambitious plan to bring the newspaper into the digital age, the company's 3,100 employees have been told. The company's new CEO John Paton has also told staff that they now work for a 'media company', not a 'newspaper company'. Appropriately enough, he announced the news in a seven-minute slideshow, emailed companywide, the New Haven Independent reports.

"We're not looking to make any cuts," Paton told the Independent. "We need to improve [local coverage]. We don't need to make it worse." The company, which runs 19 daily and 150 other newspapers, including the flagship New Haven Register, filed for bankruptcy last February.

The Press Association, the national news agency in the UK, will send its largest-ever Winter Olympics team to this month's games in Vancouver, Hold the Front Page reports.

PA Sport sent two reporters to the last winter Games in Turin in 2006, but will send 13 this time, including, for the first time, two video journalists.

The founding director of a Political Management master's degree program at the George Washington University surveyed 371 print and web journalists from September to October of last year, with the aim of establishing to what extent social media tools are used in the research and distribution of articles.

The results of the online survey, reported on the university's newspaper website, found that 56 percent of those surveyed said that social media was important or somewhat important for reporting and producing stories, with the overwhelming majority citing the internet as the starting point for their research- despite the fact that 84 percent said news and information delivered via social media was slightly less or much less reliable than news delivered via traditional media.

The Australian media regulatory body is set to start using social media, having appointed a former newspaper editor to create its social media strategy.

Tom Burton, former executive editor of broadsheet newspaper the Sydney Morning Herald, has been appointed to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to oversee its government 2.0 and social engagement strategies.

Burton was previously working in the US as the Communications and On-Line Director of The Center for American Progress. His role involved implementing web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 practices, that is, changing how the government used social networking sites, blogs, video sharing sites and wikis to interact with the public. He has also worked as a ministerial adviser to a former Australian Minister for Communications.

After months of much hype and speculation, Steve Jobs finally took to the stage to unveil Apple's new highly anticipated tablet computer - the iPad.

With its official introduction at an event in San Francisco yesterday, Steve Jobs has finally laid many rumors about what the electronic device can do to rest, while igniting hopes about the iPad's ability to bring new life to 'old media' and to revamp the e-reader market.