The Russian daily Rossiyskaya Gazeta has created an iPad app, Touch Russia, for its English-language Russia Beyond the Headlines (RBTH) initiative, as The Editors Weblog recently reported.

Olga Ivanova, Mobile Projects Director for RBTH took the time to talk to us about the changing Russian media landscape, the challenges of making an app for the international market and the global reaction to the Touch Russia app.

Russian media is not the most responsive of sectors in the industry; the "Russian media are generally a year, sometimes two years behind world media trends, especially when it comes to digital," Ivanova told WAN-IFRA.

Across the globe, the problem of developing a successful payment model in the digital age has lead firms to hesitate before plunging into the digital market - Russia is no exception to this trend: "Most brands are afraid to invest in mobile and develop expensive sophisticated apps because it is not clear how to monetize those products, especially in Russian economy. But I feel that everyone understands the importance of being on mobile platforms and expanding digital presence, " Ivanova explained.

Once upon a time, people may have stereotyped of The Economist as a dry, formal publication, which aged company executives would leaf through in their dusty studies. But if those days ever existed, they are certainly confined to the past now.

The international magazine currently has over 100,000 digital-only subscribers and more than a million monthly mobile readers. Economist readers have downloaded more than 3 million apps since their launch and online traffic has grown by 45% since September of last year. The publication now has 7 million online users.

These figures were reported in the interim financial report released by The Economist Group today, which shows a run of spectacular success for the publication. The report announces a 6% year-on-year rise in operating profits, totaling £26.2 million, and a revenue increase of 4%, to £164.3 million.

In the report, Economist Chairman Rupert Pennant-Rea remarks on the positive uptake of The Economist on new media, saying that "the demand for digital editions have exceeded our expectations". But the success story also translates to print: circulation of the print edition increased 3% in the first half of 2011, compared to the same period last year (maybe some of those executives are still leafing?).

In the race to go digital, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney have taken some giant strides ahead with their "News24" initiative: the papers have completely restructured their newsrooms to prioritise digital content. The newsroom will now have one central, round-the-clock multimedia centre, known as the "superbench," that will edit and curate the papers' multimedia products on all platforms.

Editor of The Daily Telegraph, Paul Whittaker, told WAN-IFRA about why the new night-and-day newsroom was necessary.

The aim is to bring the digital products offered by two longstanding and top-selling newspapers up to the same exacting standards expected in the print publication by enforcing "the same discipline and structure around the digital operation that has long existed in the print product" in a bid to "respond to the changing reading and viewing habits of our audience".

As digital media grows and print revenue shrinks, papers around the world are struggling to find ways to make online news pay. One of the most obvious - and most controversial - solutions has been the paywall. But getting people to pay for content is no easy task if they feel they can the same thing for free elsewhere.

Bill Mitchell, Head of Entrepreneurial and International Programs at the Poynter Institute, offers his expert opinion here. He talks about how "charging today for something that was free yesterday is fundamentally a non-starter". Yet paywalls can work if papers invest in flexible systems, exploit their journalists' expertise in niche areas, and, crucially, offer readers their money's worth in terms of new value.

Mitchell will be speaking at the 18th World Editors Forum in Vienna about paid online content from the perspective of the newsroom.

WAN-IFRA: News organisations have different paywall systems, from The New York Times' metered paywall to the more or less straightforward paywall of The Times of London. What's the best model?