Less than a month ago, rumours concerning the possible closure of The Observer, the world's oldest Sunday newspaper, were rife. In its annual results the Guardian Media Group, the publisher of the Observer, Guardian and guardian.co.uk, revealed a shocking loss of £36.8m after tax. The group's executive Carolyn McCall, warned that the respective publications could not sustain the current level of losses "for the next three years."

In an about turn yesterday however, GNM quashed negative speculation with the news that The Observer would not be closed as part of the group's ongoing strategic review, and announced further integration between the editorial teams at the Guardian and Observer - both publications already having integrated sports and business desks and well as various other news "pods".

The New York Post, the News Corp-owned NYC tabloid, has rolled out a new version of its website that offers easier navigation and highlights more local content. Multimedia and web-exclusive features also get a boost with the redesign.

The top navigation bar now divides content into the four main sections of the newspaper: news, Page Six (gossip), sports and entertainment. When visitors scroll over the category title, a window appears with links to the top stories and a further breakdown into sub-sections. Also interesting to note is the hidden ad appearing at the bottom of each rollover window.

Side navigation on the NYPost.com homepage is aimed at New Yorkers, with a list of the top news and events from each borough. There are also separate pages dedicated to each neighborhood of the city. In a further example of specialized local content, the site also promotes itself as a source for information on high school sports.

For each story, the Post includes separate tabs to show off associated multimedia content. In addition, the new site makes it easier to browse the paper's collection of photos, videos and blogs.

American public radio network National Public Radio has introduced a revamped version of its website NPR.org that aims to put more of a focus on written reporting rather than just audio. NPR's new motto, 'always on,' seems to be aiming to provide the news to users wherever they are, not just when they have the radio switched on.

An editor's note on NPR.org stresses that "We want NPR.org to be your source for NPR news, analysis, arts & life stories and music that is always fresh and up-to-date" and hopes that now its audience will "find it easier to combine listening and reading, to follow breaking news, to comment on our work and share it, and easier to find programming from your NPR station." Mobile applications with an emphasis on news content will be released later this summer.

Zach Brand, in charge of technology for NPR's only efforts, wrote on NPR's InsideNPR blog that there were three goals behind the redesign. The first was to allow "greater freedom in how editorial staff could present content." The second was to improve the site's aesthetic design and make it more user friendly, and the third was to make publishing more efficient for journalists. According to his colleague Andy Carvin, the relaunch took 15 months to prepare. The tech team used Twiitter to provide a constant stream of updates during the roll out of the launch, and received comments from users.

After the Hartford Courant redesigned its format last September, the response to the front page's new look was extremely negative. The paper's decision to move the nameplate from a traditional, horizontal position to a vertical orientation displeased enough readers that management decided to do something about it.

An informal online poll asked readers to choose their preferred look for the Courant from among three options. The results overwhelmingly favored a horizontal nameplate, and the paper has since reverted to the more traditional format.

Readers also dismissed an option which would have made the front-page logo much more colorful, opting instead for classic muted tones.

The latest feedback confirms the survey's results, senior vice president and director of content Jeff Levine told Poynter's Sara Dickenson Quinn. Furthermore, the traditional orientation offers designers a great deal more freedom when placing stories on the front page.

Another new feature for the Courant's page one, dubbed "Quick Take," provides a meatier version of the newspaper at a glance. It consists of 10 article summaries of stories found inside the paper.