You don’t read good news about the news industry every day. But the April/May edition of the American Journalism Review featured an article about the American media that was full of optimism. The piece was by Paul Steinle and Sara Brown, who have just published a full-length report about the American newspaper business based on visits to 50 papers across all 50 US states.

Summarising this research, Steinle and Brown suggested that, “the newspaper business' core financial challenges have not yet been solved, but many initiatives are producing new, digitally enabled products to support news operations.

“Despite the challenges, there is optimism the new revenue centers will grow, and confidence newsprint-generated revenue will be sufficient to finance professional news operations during this transition.”

The article acknowledges that there are plenty of challenges facing the news industry: "No single 'silver bullet' revenue source has been discovered," “The 2008-2011 economic downturn still hurts,” “Selecting new digital tools is daunting,” and “Digital news delivery requires newsroom reorganization,” are just a few of the points it picks up. Yet it focuses on the positives of the news industry too, and asserts that, “newspapers have unique compelling attributes” that will continue to attract readers.

The newspaper industry is in a time of upheaval, with mainstream newspapers looking for innovative strategies to survive and thrive, to re-affirm their importance and their role in the news landscape.

Cost cutting is increasingly prevalent throughout news organisations in Europe and the US, with many publications putting more and more emphasis on digital products as they lose print readers.

Launching a new print publication in 2009 might have seemed therefore like a risky step, but it's exactly what Italian journalists Marco Travaglio, Antonio Padellaro and Peter Gomez decided to do. Il Fatto Quotidiano was launched in September 2009 and in the past two years it has managed to both establish itself as a respected newspaper brand and actually make some money, with a profit of €5.8 million in 2010.

How has it achieved this?
The story from the beginning: some dates and figures

Il Fatto Quotidiano - "The Daily Fact" - a daily printed paper published from Tuesday to Sunday, was launched on September 23, 2009. 150,000 copies of the first edition were printed, 32,000 of these being destined for subscribers.

Following up on its 2006 report on newspapers' troubles, The Economist published a new 14-page special report on the future of news today.

"Who killed the news?" dominated The Economist's cover five years ago, and the following report was about as bleak as the headline. The report chronicled the industry's loss of advertising revenue, declining circulation, and competition with citizen journalists and bloggers. One article went so far as to claim, "Newspapers have not yet started to shut down in large numbers, but is only a matter of time."

Things seem to be looking up this time around. In this week's special edition, titled "Back to the coffee house", The Economist admits that its last report may have jumped the gun. American and European newspapers still face the same problems, but little by little they are adapting to current circumstances. Reinvention is key to survival.

Larry Kilman, the executive director of Communications and Public affairs for WAN-IFRA, was quoted as saying, "The [news] audience is bigger than ever, if you include all platforms. It's not an audience problem - it's a revenue problem."

Just a few months after the launch of Lettera43, the Italian online-only news panorama welcomes a new arrival. Linkiesta.it, the new Italian digital newspaper, went online today in beta. In spring 2011 it will be replaced by a definitive version, along with an iPad app.

Interestingly, the launch was promoted through daily updates on Linkiesta's Facebook page and by a video.

The news of the launch was also reported by other newspapers, blogs and media commentators.
The paper will focus on investigation as well as partecipatory and on demand journalism.

The Società Editoriale Linkiesta, the news publisher, is a start-up comprising journalists and businessmen. It is a public company with about 70 shareholders who have put in an investment between €10,000 and €50,000. The governance rules state that nobody can own more than 5% of the capital stock. "In order to provide transparency, a full list of shareholders is published on the website", the newspaper announced.