The Evening Standard in London is readying for its relaunch on Monday. The paper will be less tabloid-prone, with more analytical content and a clearer look.

"Remember the reader doesn't want to be coshed by doom and disaster stories as they struggle home on Tubes, trains and buses. However, they do want to rely on the Standard for serious news and analysis," said deputy editor Andrew Bordiss in a memo to staff.

There will be more business content and increased interaction between the print edition and the Standard’s new online edition.

This new approach may come in response to the cheerier tone of the London Paper and London Lite, which have brought serious competition to the Standard since their launch a year ago.

The Standard’s stories and pictures will be a "notch more upmarket," and headlines will be more subtle. "Subtle word play in headlines, which should still tell you the story, rather than crushing puns," says Bordiss in the memo.

The design changes will also be subtle, and “not discernible to the average reader, but will include a new typeface,” reported the Guardian.

The latest ABCe figures for national newspaper websites show that the Guardian remains well ahead in traffic. The Sun Online and the Telegraph registered the strongest growth.

The Sun grew its audience by more than 10%; from 9.4 million unique visitors in July to 10.6 million in August. It thus overtook Times Online, where numbers fell from 10.5 million in July to 10.2 million in August.

Interestingly though, the Sun Online totaled 239 million page views in August, compared to the Times Online’s 77 million.

Telegraph.co.uk also increased its traffic by nearly 10%, up to nearly 9.8 million unique visitors in August, and closing in onto the Times.

The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday websites recorded 11.6 million unique visitors in the same period.

Guardian Unlimited is still the most-visited newspaper site in the UK, with 15.8 million unique visitors in August, slightly down from 16.1 million in July.

Source: Brand Republic

A few weeks ago, USA Today announced the launch of widgets. The Washington Post launched its first widgets only two months ago. Both newspapers, which tend to be at the edge of multimedia innovation, plan on rolling out more widgets in the weeks to come. For those who haven’t caught on to the craze, washingtonpost.com’s Executive Editor, Jim Brady, and USA Today’s Executive Producer, Joel Sucherman, describe their use and advantages for newspapers.

Some background:

What’s a widget? "A widget is a simplified app," says Maurice Boissiere, vice president of client services of the widget development firm Clearspring Technologies. "They can have dynamic functionality, like the ability to make content fresh and relevant, but not the two-way communication of a deep application that's fully integrated into a social graph like Facebook.”

A study conducted by Deutsche Bank analysts reveals that newspapers’ deal with Yahoo could lead to a surprisingly quick surge in online revenue.

Right now, about 17 companies and 400 newspapers have joined the deal with Yahoo. Partnering newspapers use Yahoo to post job classifieds, and their content and local ads can be found on the Yahoo network. In exchange, Yahoo provides newspapers with local event listings, maps, online technology and more.

"We believe the benefits from the Yahoo deal could move the revenue and EBITDA inflection points forward, positively surprising the market," wrote analysts.

As early as 2009, the analysts project a potential increase of 20 points in the current online revenue growth rate, from 20% to 40%.

Taking Lee Enterprises as an example, the publisher’s online revenues has soared 62% on average through July, compared to 49% from June 2006 through February 2007.

The Deutsche Bank predicts that the biggest benefits of the deal will relate to increased traffic, better behavioral targeting, and revenues from the HotJobs site.

This more than positive news could be hindered by the projected 6% decline in print ad revenue and 3% drop in circulation revenue for 2008.

But the Deutsche Bank analysts came up with three scenarios for newspapers that have entered the deal with Yahoo:

According to the Press Gazette, Rupert Murdoch is making his presence felt at the Wall Street Journal. Among the changes he wishes for: snappier news on the front page and more Washington coverage.

The New York Observer reported that Murdoch has taken to walk through the Journal’s editorial offices and talk to staffers.

“Some stories are no longer “jumping” from page one to inside pages,” reported the Press Gazette. “Several times recently, he (Murdoch) has said he would like to see shorter, snappier and more newsy stories on the Journal’s front page.”

The main change in editorial policy is expected to revolve around Washington coverage though. Last May, Murdoch told the NY Times he would like to see it grow if he acquired the Journal.

No doubt there will be more substantial – and durable – changes once Murdoch has finalized his acquisition of the paper. Right now, the media mogul is busy preparing the launch of the Fox TV Business Network on Oct. 15.

Wall Street Journal reporters will be major contributors to the new network, which is expected to have 30 million viewers – initially.

Source : Press Gazette

Seeking Alpha takes a look at Gannett’s ‘Web 3.0’ online holdings, which are its only operations that are currently growing. Thanks to online initiatives, Gannett has recaptured revenues that were once – but no longer are – a given for newspapers.

In July 2007, revenue at all of Gannett’s branches declined. All but one, online properties. Online revenues grew 37.3% in the same period, and classified online revenues now represent about 50% of domestic community newspaper online revenues, according to Seeking Alpha.

A quick look at Gannett’s online assets quickly reveals that the newspaper company has extended its operations far beyond the reach of its newspaper websites.

Interestingly though, many of these diversified operations still revolve around a revenue source that once was solely on newspapers’ turf: classifieds.

Gannett owns Classified Ventures, in partnership with Belo Corporation, The McClatchy Company, Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company. Classifieds Ventures groups a wide range of websites that sell classifieds.

Gannett thus has stake in CareerBuilder, which was founded in 1995, and serves as a centralized classifieds jobs site jointly owned with Tribune and McClatchy. CareerBuilder is now the number one job site in the US, with over 21 million monthly unique visitors and about 1.5 million job postings per month.

The Huffintgon Post confirmed its established success by securing an additional $5 million in funding, and its next step will be to become an all-inclusive digital newspaper.

In two and half years, the Huffington Post has risen to its founders’ expectations. It now counts 43 full-time employees and 1,800 bloggers (including some well-known names).

According to USA Today and Technorati, the Huff Post is the fifth-most-linked-to blog on the Internet. The Post is supposed to become profitable by next year, and its audience could potentially double as US readers prepare for the 2008 elections.

The Post remains a politics-oriented news site, with a strong anti-war stance, but its founder Arianna Huffington plans on transforming it into an all-purpose digital newspaper.

According to her, she would love to have more conservative voices represented - even former White House aide Karl Rove.

Newspapers better closely watch the evolution of the Huffington Post, which is starting to take the shape of the next generation of online newspapers.

"People are looking for places that pull together the best information into one place," Jupiter Research analyst Barry Parr tells USA Today. "This gives them a focused way to get it."

There’s no better way to encourage staff than with a well-deserved reward. The Washington Post has come up with its own: coupons to the nearby popcorn stand.

Post editors and managers can reward their employees by giving them tickets for either a free box of popcorn or a free 16-ounce cup of coffee. They must purchase the tickets by batches of 10.

It’s $11 for the popcorn batch and $15.50 for the coffee batch. If these incentives truly work – which they very well could – it sounds like an easy and cheap way to boost the staff’s morale.

Source: Washingtonian through Media Bistro

The Wall Street Journal is merging its New York tech bureau with its Media & Marketing group, in light of industry changes and the diversified activities of tech and media companies.

“The tech group oversees a broad swath of coverage, with particular focus on telecom, internet and cable. Increasingly, though, the business models of those industries are being transformed as lines blur between content and distribution,” said Deputy Managing Editor Bill Grueskin and Managing Editor Marcus Brauchli in a memo.

“It will enable us to create or modify beats to more fully reflect how people watch or create video, read news and communicate with each other.”

As big companies create bigger conglomerates and diversify their operations, other papers may want to reconsider the way they split their business coverage.

Source: Editor & Publisher

A weekly newspaper in the UK, The Forester, is setting an example about good use of multimedia and video, with the launch of its own Internet video service, Ftv.

Breaking news is accompanied by video footage. Video coverage has included stories about drugs raids, a train crash and barn fires.

The Forester has also extended video coverage to sports and summer events, such as carnivals.

This emphasis on video has delivered results in terms of traffic. The video report on the train crash, which was put on YouTube, was the 12th most watched video in the UK, and the 50th most viewed news and politics video in the world that day.

“I’m absolutely delighted that my news team have shown such enthusiasm for the multi-media approach which is really putting The Forester on the map. It has certainly enhanced their experience of journalism and should prove useful to them in future,” says Viv Hargreaves, editor of The Forester.

The Forester relied on advice given by television journalist Patrick O’Hagan. Its journalists in charge of video continue to carry out print journalism duties alongside video-producing tasks, managing their time accordingly, showing how a relatively small paper can be at the edge of technology and forward-thinking.

Source: holdthefrontpage.co.uk through IFRA Executive News Service

In a Q&A, veteran journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh predicts the emergence of quality, online-only newspapers, while acknowledging that online journalism has also hatched a number of muckrakers.

Among discussions about his anti-Bush views and outlook on US politics, Hersh makes a few insightful statements about the future of the press.

First, he acknowledges the current transformation of journalism with online technologies, and predicts the emergence of quality online (only) newspapers.

“We are eventually -- and I hate to tell this to The New York Times or the Washington Post -- we are going to have online newspapers, and they are going to be spectacular,” says Hersh.

Not only will newspapers be online, he predicts that “they are really going to cut into daily journalism,” thanks to the “vibrant, new way of communicating in America.”

Illustrating the power of these new vibrant channels, Hersh had to contact the Associated Press and The New York Times in the past, to publicize a big story he had written for The New Yorker. With the power of the Internet, the story gets hundreds of thousand of hits within days. “Once it's online, we just get flooded,” says Hersh.

On the other hand, “I don't think much of a lot of the stuff that is out there (on the Internet),” he says. “But there are a lot of people doing very, very good stuff.”