The future of newsrooms is multimedia integration and a "pay for information" model, said the editors in the survey 2010 Newsroom Barometer presented by McKinsey & Company partner Eric Hazan at the 17th World Editors Forum today in Hamburg. These days it's clear to editors that "multimedia reshapes the newsroom".

The 2010 Newsroom Barometer questioned 525 senior newspaper editors around the world between April and June. They were more optimistic than expected, Hazan noted, with three-quarters of respondents saying they were very optimistic or somewhat optimistic about the future of their newspapers, a figure virtually unchanged from previous year. However, Hazan added that there is a big divide between the generations of editors.

According to this global survey, editors-in-chief and other senior newsroom personnel foresee a multi-platform publication model, maintaining print, and more payment for news.There was no clear view on what form "pay for information" model would take. Editors from emerging countries favored subscription models and European editors though some form of sponsorship would be the norm. There are some editors (35%) who thought information would continue to be mostly free, and 17% were unsure.

In the wake of the failing newspaper industry throughout more developed countries, newspapers in at least one country are going strong: India. For example, the country's largest English-language paper, the Times of India has a circulation of 4 million and is "one of the world's top ten publications by circulation," as stated in an article by Groundreport.com from the beginning of this year.

This has created a "newspaper renaissance," where there are "new titles and fatter editions appearing by the month," said an AFP article. According to a survey by the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, paid newspapers in India have gone up 44 percent since 2005 to total 2,700 papers. This puts India ahead of the United States, which has 1,397 paid-for daily newspapers and China, which has about 1,000 papers.

"India also has the world's highest paid-for daily circulation, having surpassed China for the first time in 2008," according to the AFP article.

Circulation of dailies in Latin America is expected to grow during the next five years, generating more than US$7.5 billion in revenues, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers' Media & Entertainment Outlook for 2010-2014, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas reported yesterday.

The growth will be lead by Brazil and Argentina, expected to see an increase of 2.2 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively. However, countries like Colombia and Venezuela are expected to see declines between 0.8 and 0.2 percent, La Nacion revealed.

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The Financial Times Group announced that the Financial Times has kicked off the first half of 2010 in the black with much credit going to its digital readership. Marjorie Scardino, CEO of the paper's parent company Pearson Plc, reported that online readership grew 27% up to 149,000 viewers within the last six months. Registered users also climbed 77% to 2.5 million subscriptions. While most of Pearson Plc's profits were driven by its educational and book publishing operations, Scardino was pleased to announce that FT group turned over operating profits with digital revenues contributing more than 25% of the total.

A significant amount of the FT's success is due to its iPad app. Last month, the Financial Times's iPad application received an award for "Best iPad App" at the 2010 Apple design awards. The application's merit goes beyond rhetoric, as it has been downloaded by roughly 250,000 users. Furthermore, Scardino cited that users of the Financial Times's iPad application spend an average of 25 minutes on the application.