During the past few years, Tribune Co. has watched its returns slip and stockholders become increasingly unsettled. It was time for CEO Dennis FitzSimons to make a change — and make a change he did, announcing this week the company would borrow $2 million to buy back up to 25 percent of its stock, sell $500 million of noncore assets and cut costs by $200 million.

Then there’s the online world. When FitzSimons took over Tribune Co. three years ago, he had taken the newspaper publishing company into the broadcast realm. Now, he wants to throw investment into “interactive” assets, the Wall Street Journal reports, like CareerBuilder.com. Right now, Tribune’s interactive ad revenue makes up 6 percent of the company’s publishing ad revenue, and FitzSimons wants to up that to somewhere between 12 and 15 percent in three years.

A day after a court delivered two Jordanian editors two-month jail sentences for printing the infamous Mohammed cartoons in their newspapers, the Jordanian government said Wednesday it plans to reintroduce a bill to end prison sentences for journalism-related crimes, AFP reported.

If the bill is passed, it could have significant implications in Jordan for press freedom. King Abdullah II stands behind the measure, government spokesman Nasser Jawdeh told AFP.

“The government is committed to legally abolishing prison sentences for journalists in press and publications-related offenses,” Jawdeh said. “This policy has been clearly expressed by the king on a number of occasions.”

The editors, Jihad Momani and Hisham al-Khalidi, are free on bail until their appeal is heard.

Source: AFP (through European Journalism Centre)

America’s international news providers will soon face heightened competition from the UK. The BBC plans to launch a 24-hour cable network in the U.S. to vie with CNN and Fox News — an announcement that comes just one week after The Times of London made public its plans to print a US edition starting June 6 in New York.

The BBC is running a $1 million campaign to promote its World News network in the U.S., the New York Times reported yesterday, and Cablevision Systems Corporation already picked up the network in New York. An initial 10,000 copies of the News Corp-run, Murdoch-owned Times will be printed in the U.S. starting Tuesday.

Online advertising is frequently perceived as a major threat to newspapers, luring advertisers away from traditional print format — and in the UK, the fear seems to be justified. Web advertising is predicted to overtake ad spending in national newspapers by the end of the year, according to a report by GroupM that will be released next month.

GroupM, responsible for 30 percent of global media buying, put Net advertising at 13.3 percent of total UK advertising this year, compared with national newspapers at 13.2 percent. And the 13.3 percent is a conservative estimate, the Guardian reported.

The implications are big for the UK’s national newspapers, which receive 25 percent of their revenue from classified ads. As GroupM’s report explains, “Jobseekers know they don’t need to buy nationals any more.”

The report comes at the same time as comments from Craigslist chief executive Jim Buckmaster dismissing anxieties that his free classified advertising site will be the downfall of the US newspaper industry.

The real problem for newspapers? The stock market, Buckmaster says.

A print edition designed with online features in mind: that’s the future of The Wall Street Journal, and it’s called Journal 3.0. L. Gordon Crovitz, three months of running The Journal’s print and online operations under his belt, is behind the Web-centric plan.

The Journal has already taken into account Web readership patterns and incorporated certain elements into its print edition, but Journal 3.0 looks to go even further. Potential changes include smaller editions, more “what it means” stories and themed content.

Others in the media think it’s a smart move.

A fundamental principle fought for and treasured by journalists, freedom of the press might soon be extended to an untraditional segment of society: bloggers.

Last week, a Californian appeals court ruled in favor of two Web sites being sued by Apple for posting confidential information about several of its products. The appeals court judge would not draw a distinction between “legitimate and illegitimate” news sources, according to Reporters Without Borders, extending California’s “shield law” — which protects the identity of journalists’ sources — to those affiliated with the Web sites.

The decision reached in Apple v. Does may give greater legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the law, to bloggers who function similarly to journalists.

Source: Reporters Without Borders