The Wall Street Journal is to move away from its 119-old home in lower Manhattan to join the offices of corporate parent News Corporation. The Journal is also planning to start a sports page.

The Journal’s newsroom is to move, along with a few other Dow Jones offices. According to The New York Times, this would be one of Rupert Murdoch’s reforms that would please Journal staffers.

Murdoch also wants to expand non-business coverage, in areas including politics, government and entertainment.

In recent years, the paper has already extended its lifestyle and consumer reporting, and created sections that deal with softer news.

Late night sports coverage could be difficult for the Journal though, since it goes to press much earlier than other major newspapers.

If the print schedule were to remain the same, the Wall Street Journal’s sports page would probably contain mostly features, commentary and analysis.

Source: New York Times

Many US editors have written to the Associated Press to complain about its planned overhaul of pricing in 2009, as well as changes in news coverage practices.

According to AP, the new pricing structure will allow new personalized services and result in decreased costs for many newspapers, but editors argue that the changes will actually increase fees.

Under the current AP pricing structure, each paper pays for a package of AP stories based on the paper’s location and size. Under the new structure, members will receive all breaking news worldwide, as well as breaking news for sports, business and entertainment. Other non-breaking news would be available at an additional cost a la carte.

"The AP fees have been set by the board after careful structuring," said AP President Tom Curley, and "about 80% would get a cutback, 10% will remain the same and 10% would go up."

Editors from across the US have complained that AP carried out plans to change pricing without consultation of its members, at a time when most of these are shrinking budgets.

"The failure of Associated Press to cut its rates is especially mystifying given that AP itself seems to be expanding, most recently adding to its already robust, admirably strong foreign coverage, even as its newspaper members undergo rigorous and continuous belt-tightening," the letter states.

The Guardian boasts UK’s most popular newspaper site, yet its newsroom has been traditionally non-integrated – till the paper moves to its new premises next fall. In Part 2, several Guardian editors described the paper’s somewhat atypical approach toward its online redesign, video, blogs and user interaction.

Site redesign

Guardian Unlimited (GU) is currently undergoing a two-year-long incremental redesign. A team of as many as 50 staffers works part-time on the redesign. The new Travel section has led to a 100% increase in traffic, simply because most of the content is now packaged in sticky way (see below).

Content management systems

As part of the site redesign, the Guardian is also updating its content management system, which was developed in-house years ago, in a ‘now-forgotten’ programming language.

One of the priorities of the new CMS was to extensively tag all editorial – and non-editorial – items, so that “every piece of content has a relationship inside the system,” said Neil McIntosh, head of editorial development at GU. This saves a lot of time for Guardian staffers and plays a major role in GU’s popularity (also discussed at the end of this piece with the Associated Press).

La Tribuna, a Spanish-language weekly launched by the Greeley Tribune three years ago, will be merged with a sister publication, Greeley Now.

Starting on Feb. 13, Greeley Now will include content in Spanish and English.

Greeley Now is a free weekly delivered to 20,000 local households. It is delivered specifically to non-subscribers of the Greeley Tribune.

More than editorial, the reasons for the move were business-based because the 9,000 copies of La Tribuna didn’t attract enough advertisers.

Although many foreign-language papers were launched in the US in the 1990s and recent years, and while the market is still growing, many newspaper publishers have also had to scrap their projects for these niche papers.

Source: Greeley Tribune through IFRA Executive News Service

In the latest Nieman Report, Poynter Institute media analyst Rick Edmonds tries to make sense and point out the nonsense of newspapers’ hyperlocal strategies: hyperlocal content is sometimes news, but often not, business models so far aren’t very encouraging, and trimming down the traditional print edition can be risky.

This last decade, Gannett’s 85 papers launched more than 1,000 local specialty publications. A year ago, Gannett adopted a strategy to transform its newsrooms into “local information centers” and develop niche audience sites, as well as local databases. Tribune Co. has developed its own version of local news with Triblocal, which seems to be faring successfully, although Edmonds notes that the service has done little service to the newspapers apart from offering “directives to eliminate bureaus, cut staff, and trim newsroom expenses.”

As far as the business of local coverage goes, investors are still waiting to see the potential benefits. Gannett stock is off 50% from its high in early 2004.

Newspapers were once, and still are, a preferred medium for political campaign advertising. But now Google is tapping those ad dollars, as all frontrunners have signed up to use Google's Adwords and AdSense targeted advertising programs.

Google opened a dedicated political ad sales office, with 25 staffers, in Washington DC. The candidates typically buy ads to appear next to relevant search results.

"You can geotarget as finely as a zip code, so almost to within a mile or so radius of where the voter is. If you want to reach a voter in New Hampshire it means you're not wasting media spend on users in Vermont who can't vote. Refine it even more if you just want to reach women by running on sites like MarthaStewart.com," said Peter Greenberger, head of elections and issue advocacy at Google's Washington office.

"If you're buying television to reach New Hampshire, you have to buy Boston TV. But 75% of their viewers are in Massachusetts so that's 75% of every dollar wasted. That's not the case on the internet."

Political ad spend for 2008 is expected to reach around $65million. About 2.4% will be online. Total spend during the campaign is expected to top $1 billion.

Newspapers better ramp up their offers for local online advertising.

Source: Guardian

Iran’s leading women’s magazine, Zanan, was forced to close after 16 years of publication, after being accused of depicting Iran negatively.

Zanan's founder Shahla Sherkat was accused of ‘offering a dark picture of the Islamic Republic through the pages of Zanan’ and of ‘compromising the psyche and the mental health’ of readers.

For years, the magazine has hosted discussions of controversial topics, from domestic violence to cosmetic surgery and relationships, and has been at the forefront of women’s struggle in Iran.

Source: AKI News (picture) through European Journalism Centre

According to news site MediaPart, the French regional daily press (PQR) could be in talks with the government to benefit from some of France 3’s resources, in the wake of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s announcement that advertising would be suppressed on France Télévisions.

The PQR is reportedly seeking to acquire control of midday news and the time window between 6:30pm and 8:30pm. The programs aired would contain commercials, which could help both the television station and the regional press.

The National Syndicate of Journalists has until now been very cautious about Sarkozy’s intent to end commercials on public television:

“If this scheme were to be retained, it would simply mean the end of news on France 3. Proof, if needed, that the presidential announcement about the end of advertising on public television is only the tree that hides the forest of a shrinking audiovisual landscape,” said the Syndicate in a statement.

Source: Le Monde - MediaPart

According to interviews and surveys, not only are young viewers turning to sources such as YouTube, Facebook, and late-night comedy shows like "The Daily Show" for their news instead of from traditional media, they also rely on their friends and social networks to receive their news. Essentially, a social filter is replacing the professional filter, such as reading a paper or surfing through news sites.

"There are lots of times where I'll read an interesting story online and send the U.R.L. to 10 friends. I'd rather read an e-mail from a friend with an attached story than search through a newspaper to find the story," said Lauren Wolfe, President of College Democrats of America.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 4 out of 10 young people have watched candidate speeches, interviews, commercials, and debates online, which is more than people who are 30 and older.

An example of this technological "word of mouth" is Barack Obama's YouTube response to President Bush's final State of the Union address. Though the newspaper and television reporters paid little attention to this in January, the video received over 1.3 million views on YouTube and has been linked by more than 500 blogs.

The New York Times has launched a new text messaging service that delivers latest news, as well as features and columns from the paper and Times Magazine to mobile devices.

“With our mobile site experiencing triple-digit growth, this is the next step in our efforts to make full use of this medium,“ said Rob Larson, vice president, product development and management, NYTimes.com.

“We intend to use every available platform to disseminate The Times's quality news and information.“

The service is free to use.

Users can access most sections of the paper by sending one of the following keywords to 698698 (NYTNYT):

Front Page - Latest
Business - Business
World News - World
National - National
New York Metro - Metro
Science - Science
Technology - Technology
Politics - Political
Health - Health
Sports - Sports
Style - Style
Dining - Dining
Week in Review - Week
Arts - Arts
Magazine - Magazine
Most E-mailed - Emailed

Users can also get access to content from columnists and reporters by sending in their last name as keyword. See a more comprehensive list of keywords below.

The latest Nieman Report examines the widespread trend towards local and hyperlocal news. The Atlantic Journal-Constitution (AJC) decided to kill its traditional sections and reorganize into two content departments, News & Information and Enterprise, while two production departments are specialized in developing products for Print and Digital. The paper also refocused on local news.

The AJC has been through one of the most innovative newsroom reorganizations in the US, as previously discussed by the America Journalism Review and Columbia Journalism Review.

The AJC started by adopting a stance still hard for newspapers to accept. “But we did decide to quit chasing marginal readers in print. Instead we would tailor the newspaper for people who we know still want a newspaper, while working to grow our Web site to be metro Atlanta’s leading source for breaking news and information,” said Shawn McIntosh, director of culture and change at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and ajc.com.