Google is to offer users copies of novels past copyright such as Dante's Inferno for free download and printing. Google's plan to scan the world's books has been in the works for some time and includes partners such as Harvard, Oxford and the New York Public Library.

It has received criticism from several publishers whom will have a more difficult time arguing against Google's right to digitally distribute works no longer under legal protection.

Google will not provide books still under copyright for free, but will offer bibliographies and extracts.

Source: BBC

Credit Suisse has recommended that Dow Jones invest heavily in its digital operations to make the company's offerings half print and half digital. Having been looking to sell six of its smaller print publications of subsidiary Ottaway Newspapers, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal could soon have some money to invest in such a venture.

Source:Forbes

The summer waiting period is over. The London freesheet war has begun as Associated Newspapers launches its afternoon cover price-less paper, London Lite, days ahead of News International's planned thelondonpaper. On the same day, Associated has spiked the price of its long-running Evening Standard by 25%, bringing it up to 50%. What does this mean for the future of a bastion of London evenings?

The Guardian reports that the price rise is an "attempt to offset declining income resulting from falling readership." But there is the distant possibility that it is preparation for the folding of the paper. Two reasons why:

Glasgow PM and Manchester Evening News are the latest additions to the United Kingdom’s mounting pile of free papers. Glasgow PM (including a bar of chocolate) is offered in the afternoon for 15 pence while the Manchester Evening News is given away for free in the city center.

Peter Cole of the Independent muses on the curiosity of the freesheet wars: Critics are constantly predicting the death of print while an endless stream of free papers is developed. Cole downplays the drama in London (between London Lite and Thelondonpaper), explaining that conclusions are drawn too easily in the media world where “hysteria dominates.”

Steve Auckland, managing director of the Associated Newspapers’ Metro papers as well as London Lite, is an authority on the freesheet. He has helped to build an empire that takes in £10m a year. According to Auckland, one must distribute papers to a prime advertising public. In Metro’s case this public was comprised of young professionals on their way to work.

Newspapers are experiencing an upsurge in South Africa, with most daily newspapers increasing readership. The publisher Media 24 has two English-language star papers to its name: the Sunday Sun and the Daily Sun. The Sunday Sun is up 10% in the past 3 months, and the Daily Sun 4%.

Both Media 24 papers are relatively new: the Sunday Sun was founded 5 years ago and the Daily Sun came about just 3 years back.

Media 24 chalks up the success of its papers to its aggressive distribution to lower-income readers, heretofore ignored by newspaper marketers.

Isolezwe, a Zulu paper based out of Durban, has also shown encouraging numbers. The paper’s readership has grown to 644,000 in just 4 years, making it the most-read Zulu paper. The paper boasts an impressive 41% female readership.

There is one cloud on the horizon for the South African press. New legislation threatens to allow censorship through the Film and Publications Board, on such fronts as sexual material, war propaganda, incitement of violence or advocacy of hatred. The National Editor’s Forum and Freedom of Expression Institute are working against this possibility.

Keeping readers on their sites is perhaps the biggest problem for individual newspapers on the Web. If readers have the print product in hand, it is likely it will be the only publication they will read. But online, choice is abundant and interests are fleeting.

Much online news is found through news aggregators that direct readers to one article of a publication. Their browser’s ‘back button’ means that there is a good chance readers will ignore the rest of the paper’s content and return to the compilation of news from numerous sources.

The principle problem with this is that advertisers don’t pay as much online because it is expected that readers will not spend as much time seeing their banner ads.

Solution? Newspapers need to make their websites stickier.

The real puzzle is how.

Online readers find their general news through aggregators because they know they’ll find what they’re looking for. They are not necessarily dedicated to one site or another; they just want to know what’s going on. So if you’re a provider of general news, you have your work cut out for you.

But if you cater to niche or local interests, you have a better chance at making your site sticky. Readers who visit your site probably didn’t find it through Google or Yahoo News. They’re probably looking for something very specific be it news about a particular topic or news about their area that they can’t find anywhere else.

The New York Times Company has acquired Baseline StudioSystems, a subscription TV and film database service used by Hollywood and video production companies. The site will be used to add depth to the company's entertainment reporting and blogs through biographies and other features that Baseline provides.

Vivian Schiller, SVP and General Manager of nytimes.com, reacted favorably to the news, commenting, "The Baseline data, in terms of film and TV credits and biographies together with our movie and TV criticism, is a home run. The more traffic we have, the more visibility we have, and the happier our advertisers will be."

The acquisition could help boost Hollywood advertising for NYT.com as Tinseltown strays increasingly from print to announcing its upcoming releases on the Internet.

PaidContent reports that the deal will bring the Times Co. more subscription revenue which it expects to reach $6 million this year.

The information in Baseline could also tie in nicely with the Times feature TimesTopics which highlights names and events in an article that when clicked on deliver the reader to a page containing relevant information as well as all Times articles concerning the subject.

E-consultancy reports that the latest study by Outsell analysts has determined that a "perfect storm" of falling circulations, waning print advertising and the increasing popularity of online news will plunge American newspapers into a $20 billion hole by 2010.

Circulation will accelerate over the next few years and by 2010 could fall as much as 19.5%. Growing online revenues will not compensate for this loss.

Analyst Ken Doctor said, "The estimated shortfall is even larger than newspaper executives have acknowledged. The business of news faces an unprecedented transformation as these trends likely accelerate over the next five years.”

Source: e-consultancy

Seemingly attacked on all sides from traditional publishers, search engine giant Google declared that its principal functions will remain just that: search. A representative from the Mountainview-based dotcom said Tuesday that Google has no intentions of producing original content, preferring to continue "getting users where they want to go."

Source: Reuters

The leader of this week's Economist presents yet another doomsday prediction for our beloved print medium: "Newspapers have not yet started to shut down in large numbers, but it is only a matter of time. Over the next few decades, half the rich world's general papers may fold."

SOME MAIN POINTS:

- Classifieds, once referred to as a "river of gold" by Rupert Murdoch are seeing their "river dry up" - according to one estimate, 25% of print classifieds will be lost to the Web over the next ten years.

- Most newspaper companies still aren't sure how to adapt to the changing media landscape, for example, they haven't decided wether it is better to meld print and online newsrooms into one or keep them separate.

- There are some online success stories - Norwegian publisher Schibsted brings in 35% of its operating profits from the Web; the Guardian has effectively spread its readership, half of which now comes from the US, and the paper's online revenue is growing at 50% a year

- Online has become important enough that a paper's top journalists are now reserved for or implicated in Web publishing, unlike before where Web assignments were reserved for lower journalists.

- Newspaper companies need to experiment with new business models online as well as extend themselves into other services to create more revenue.

The Los Angeles Times is a prime example of a major American metro newspaper whose national and international news is trumped by news agencies and larger papers like the New York Times while its regional coverage remains inferior to local publications. Currently faced with huge losses in circulation coupled with pressure from shareholders, LAT is struggling to redefine itself in order to maintain its relevancy. A two-pronged approach is necessary: exploit local resources and diversity while overhauling the substandard website.

LAT’s recent announcement that it would launch an investigation into its own future has set the media blogosphere afire. The ambitiously named “Manhattan Project” has charged nine of the paper’s own reporters and editors with determining how to re-engage readers in these challenging times.

Although comparing the project to the United States’ efforts to create an A-bomb during WWII is overly superlative, there is some apocalyptic frenzy to the speculation that has erupted on blogs and in newspapers. Jeff Jarvis called the endless theorizing a “parlor game.” Perhaps a parlor game, but one with grave consequences for the newspaper industry.