Newspaper Next (project by the American Press Institute) attempts to transplant the winning strategies of an industry leader to the newspaper industry. As different as the two markets may be, here is what Toyota ‘does’ that newspapers should be doing.

Here a few of Newspaper Next’s choices are selected. Not surprisingly, many newspapers have already started to implement analogous strategies. Simply replace the word ‘Toyota’ by ‘successful newspapers’:

“Toyota sees itself as a portfolio company, and it understands the “long tail” concept.”
Many papers already do this, diversifying into media companies and offering niche products.

“Toyota keeps a relentless focus on customer jobs to be done.”
“Toyota invests in customer feedback loops.”
This is one thing newspapers lacked for a long time, and are just starting to implement. Use your reader’s feedback, read comments, ask the reader’s editor to regularly report.

The Greeley Tribune has apparently been stealing stories from its competing Colorado newspapers for years, and crediting them to the Associated Press (AP). The Tribune apologized, but Follow the Media (FTM) examines what seems to be a widespread – and tolerated - practice.

Since in practice the AP redistributes content from one member to another on demand anyway, FTM writer Philip Stone contends, perhaps ironically, that “all Greeley did was save the AP some work.”

More troublesome is the fact that this practice has gone unnoticed for several years, while Chris Cobler was the Tribune’s editor.

The real irony is that Cobler just started on his new job, as managing editor of Poynter Online – just about one of the US’ references in terms of journalism schools and etiquette. Now what does that say about journalism in general?

Well, Stone continues, it just says that this is widespread, recognized, and accepted practice in the journalism and media world. He recalls his budding career on Fleet Street in London.

“And it wasn’t just with text; it was just as bad with pictures. More often than not there was no credit line at all, but there were times when the newspaper would actually take credit for the picture and even times when they would give one of their own photographers credit for the picture.”

The Times-Picayune and several other newspapers were denied access to a high school basketball championship, after they refused to sign a waver limiting their rights to sell to the public only photos published in print.

Newspapers usually post photo galleries online and offer to sell prints to family members or such.

"We believe we have the right to decide what to do with our photographs," said Jim Amoss, editor of The Times-Picayune. "In our view, there is no difference whether we choose to publish a photo in print or on the Web."

The Louisiana High School Athletic Association (LHSAA) requires of all press photographers to sign a form that allow only photographs published in newsprint to be sold to the public.

The LHSAA has an exclusive contract with Musemeche Photography to sell pictures online.

"These are high school games, played in a public setting and open to the public. We are the representatives of the public and have a right to cover the event and use our material as we see fit," said Kathy Spurlock, executive editor of the Monroe News-Star.

The LHSAA’s decision poses two threats to press freedom: that of the public aspect of the event covered, and a restraint to the press body’s choice of distribution.

US magazines, newspapers and other periodicals distributed via mail are likely to face higher costs as a result of the new postal rate increases. The Postal Regulatory Commission decided to increase rates by as much as 18.3%.

"More analysis is necessary, but it appears that the efforts of our Washington counsel and our testifying members have prevented 20% and higher increases that would have resulted from the other proposals," said Gordon Hughes, president-CEO of American Business Media.

The new postal rates go as follows:

_first-class rate will increase two cents to 41 cents.
_11.7% increase for out-of-county periodicals.
_18.3% increase for in-county periodicals.

Source: MediaPost

The Blair administration has called for an investigation into News Corporation’s media interests. The investigation will focus on BskyB’s satellite TV monopoly and 17.9% stake in UK’s main commercial broadcaster ITV. Chances are justice will also probe News Corp.’s press interests.

Trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling has asked the telecomm regulator Ofcom to review News Corp.’s stake in ITV, to decide whether it "raises public interest concerns about the number of different owners of media enterprises."

The remit could also allow legal scrutiny of Murdoch’s four national newspapers – The Times, Sunday Times, The Sun and News of the World. Combined, these papers reach 37% of the nation’s readership.

Controversy has sparked over the possible political causes of this investigation, but ministers have insisted it was conducted on legal grounds.

House representatives acclaimed the decision. It is "a pivotal moment in British broadcasting when finally a government minister has had the courage to stand up to Mr Murdoch," said MP John Grogan.

On the other side, BSkyB CFO Jeremy Darroch thought that "this is very negative in terms of the investment climate for this business."

As many newspapers in the US complain about Craiglist and online portals ‘stealing’ their jobs classifieds, two French newspapers have partnered and are about to launch a whole print supplement of job classifieds. Le Figaro and l’Express will distribute over 800,000 copies of the supplement, starting March 12.

Réussir – ‘Succeed’ – will be jointly published on Monday in the Figaro and on Thursday in l’Express, and is designed to reach over 3 million readers, to offer “the most powerful print employment classifieds platform in French press,” said the newspapers in a communiqué.

Interestingly, while many newspapers long for past classified revenues and focus on building online databases, Le Figaro and L’Express are counting on the traditional quality service of paper.

“If the Internet developed itself as a job classified platform, the qualities of print press remain unequivocal to defend the value of a company and attract the best employee profiles,” says the communiqué.

Yet the companies aren’t launching into a blindfolded venture. The supplement will carry popular job ads coming from Express.fr and Figaro.fr, but also from specialized job ad websites Cadremploi, Keljob.com and Cmonjob. These websites combined represent roughly 3.4 million unique visitors per month.

Paid-for newspaper revenues have been declining, due in part to the significant decrease in single-copy sales. Editor & Publisher considers how to boost the sales of a still-important aspect for newspaper revenue.

According to the Newspaper Association of America, single-copy sales have dropped by about 5% in the six-month period ending September 2006.

"Single copy has been more of an issue than home delivery," says Prudential Equity Research analyst Steven Barlow.

While home-delivery subscriptions count for nearly 76% of circulation in the US, boosting single-copy sales is still an important focus for newspaper companies.

"The days of throwing a box out on the street and selling papers out of that box are gone. We have to adjust to retailers and use our space wisely and promote our product," says Hugh McGarry, chair of the NAA's single-copy committee and senior vice president of circulation at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

So how do newspapers readjust and improve their single-copy sales?

One solution, based on the Sacramento Bee’s approach, is to make the newspaper available in more locations.

As newspapers already competed with Google and Yahoo in the online ad business – then partnered with these to get a share of profits – a new rival has appeared on the market. Quigo, though still a small adversary, is rapidly conquering shares.

In the last year and a half, Quigo has signed on some large names such as ESPN.com and FoxNews.com. Although it still has less than 10% of the contextual ad business, its growing success has convinced Google to reform its way of selling sponsored link ads.

According to The New York Times, Quigo has the advantage of offering “transparency and control in what can often be an opaque business,” by giving “advertisers not only the list of specific sites where their ads have appeared but also the opportunity to buy only on specific Web sites or particular pages on those sites.”

(Google and Yahoo don’t tell their advertisers where their ads are placed, on the basis that the rates depend only upon clicks.)

Quigo’s growth has been so spectacular that even Google is considering how to change its AdSense program, and others, based on the Quigo model.

Online contextual ads generated about $2 billion in revenue last year.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive (WPNI) officially unveiled its blog ad network, Blogroll. Blogroll is designed to appeal to niche marketers and Lufthansa is its first sponsor, appearing on travel-centric blogs.

WPNI used the services of Adify to implement Blogroll.

"WashingtonPost.com has been around for years and it has established teams for advertising. But when they're going to serve advertising across a network of 1,500 blogs, there's a whole new set of challenges," said Adify CEO and co-founder Larry Braitman.

WPNI’s work is to publicize the blog ad network, while Adify does much of the ad serving, account management and customer support.

WPNI outsourced the job to stay focused on its core competence of news content delivery.

"This type of endeavor -- combining our ad space with that of third-party publishers into new ad units -- is a media industry first and we sought a partner that could remove the complexity of quickly getting it off the ground," said Jeff Burkett, director of business development for WPNI.

Source: Clickz.com

The first bilingual newspaper in Scotland for the Polish community is to be launched next week. Gazeta z Highland will be free and have an initial distribution of 20,000 copies.

The paper will be a 16-page full-color tabloid and all articles will be written in Polish, sided by an English translation.

Between 8,000 and 10,000 Polish immigrants live in the Highlands.

The tabloid will be published by the Northern Times weekly in Golspie, and will be edited by Alison Cameron, deputy editor and advertising manager of the Northern Times.

Last November, The Reading Chronicle had decided to prolong the printing of a Polish-language weekly edition in the UK.

In the same way Spanish-language newspapers strive in the US, bilingual newspapers are starting to emerge in Europe, as publishers follow their consumers’ migrations.

Source: allmediaScotland.com

According to Chris Cobler, publisher of greeleytrib.com, all newspaper journalists should blog. Here’s why journalists should blog, and how to avoid ignorant legal entanglements.

“Blogging helps you better understand your audience. The hallmark of any blog is the ability for readers to post comments to what you write. By having this regular conversation with readers, you learn what hits and what misses.”

“For newspapers that are rapidly becoming irrelevant to a growing number of people, this is a huge issue. If you write post after post that garners no response, then it ought to be telling you something.”

“In print, we’ve been able to kid ourselves for decades that every reader is savoring every word of our prose. Online, it’s painfully clear what readers do and don’t care about.”

It’s true that as far as feedback and reader interaction, the blog experience opens a whole new channel for newspaper-reader communication. Yet feedback and blog comments can also be a misleading indicator: those readers who leave comments on blogs are not always representative of those who read news stories, and so forth. And if journalists spend all their time blogging and analyzing comments, they’ll have little time to work on the ‘real’ newspaper content.

Cobler answers back:

“The short answer is how do you find the time not to? Do you really want to become irrelevant?”