After struggling for the better part of 2010, France's newspaper France-Soir is aggressively taking action to be perceived as a credible source of news. In an interview with Alexandre Pugachev, the owner of the publication, he commented to Le Figaro on his vision to give France-Soir a new voice by increasing its journalistic standards.

The new makeover required that Pugachev relieve Christian de Villeneuve of his position of editor-in-chief at France-Soir. Villeneuve previously worked at the Parisian and the Journal du Dimanche, and apparently his vision for France-Soir was clouded by his previous employments, according to the interview in Le Figaro. For Pugachev, France-Soir was merely an imitation of other newspapers and did not have its own personality, which caused the tabloid-like paper to lose its credibility. Villeneuve was dismissed only after 5 months of employment.

Recent reports from web metrics company Alexia show that traffic is down 10.6 percent on the BBC News website. However, according to website editor Steve Herrmann, "Reverting to the old design is not something we're considering."

Some of the features repeatedly reported as annoying include the increased need to scroll, the double menu bar (although a carryover from the previous version), the abundance of white space, and most notably: the idea of change in itself!

According to a comment by one viewer, "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Another explains the general feeling more exquisitely: "it's like going to your usual supermarket to find they've rearranged all the shelves & you can't find anything." (sic)

Some users however agree that the change was due coming and everyone will be fine once they can adjust to the new look.

In replying to comments received since the launch of the new design, Hermann assured users that reviews and changes would be made and admitted to "a few things not yet working exactly the way they should be."

The BBC is about to redesign its news website, according to the site's editor Steve Herrmann in a blog post. "We have focused on design and navigation, looking to see how we can make all the existing content we produce each day easier for you to find, use and share," he wrote. It is the biggest redesign of the site since 2003.

The BBC asked users about how they use the site and decided on areas to improve, such as indicating which are the newest stories on the homepage by flagging them with a 'New' badge. There will also be more space for the main stories of the day On story pages, it will be more clearly indicated what other latest top news there is. Local UK news will be easier to find, and video features will be more accessible with a bigger video player and better quality video, placed at the top of the front page. It will also be easier to quickly share stories on Facebook and Twitter.

A North American edition of the site will also be launched, appearing automatically for those users in the US or Canada. The editorial team in the BBC's DC office will tailor the front page for that region, but the edition will continue to contain existing content.

Herrmann also explained that the BBC has completely rebuilt its content production system to make it easier to use, quicker and more flexible.

Google's latest move in its ongoing campaign to "save the newspaper industry" is the addition of a sophisticated personalization system across all its Google News sites. As the NYT's Nick Bilton explains, "What if you woke up every morning to find a customized newspaper on your doorstep?" The system, called "News for you", offers a stream of local, customized and socially edited content. Google's announcement follows a series of free, powerful, new features that the company has been adding to Google News over the last two years. Past upgrades included the ability to digitally flip swiftly through articles from different sources and a quadrupling of its archive of historic news. See the end of this article for a video walk-through of the "News for You" feature-set.
Google's announcement included the following breakdown of system featues: