A refreshing study of media habits in the Philippines has demonstrated that newspaper reading is in fact on the increase, particularly amongst the higher socio-economic classes. Moreover, largely because of the loyalty of the wealthier demographic to print, newspapers are still one of the "stickiest" media terrains for advertising.

The conclusions were drawn in the fourth annual Synovate Media Atlas, which conducted a survey of 8,000 Filipinos selected from across the country. At a press conference yesterday, the global executive director for media at Synovate, Steve Garton expressed some strong convictions, "We have to once and for all debunk the myth that newspapers are dying. They are not".

The figures are indeed soothing for both advertising and readership concerns. They show that 56% of Filipinos still chose to read advertisements in newspapers and magazines above other forms of media. The value of this exposure, or rather the "stickiness", was underlined by the socio-economic situation of the majority of this readership. Filipinos in the "A" and "B" categories- those with the greatest amounts of disposable income, are in fact reading newspapers more this year. Within this category of those surveyed, this year 64% are reading newspapers, a significant increase from the 2007-2008 percent of 56.

"Many marketers are talking about a flight to quality, and newspapers are showing their increased importance as a good medium to reach those who have money to spend," explained Garton.

Today's media landscape is truly visual; news sites are constantly seeking to develop their video and photographic features, to both corroborate their stories and entertain. The posting of purposefully filmed video obituaries, as pioneered by the New York Times is a rather unusual method of capitalising on this social and media evolution.

The New York Times posted its first video obituary back in 2007. The "Last Word" feature was composed of a pre-recorded presentation by humorist Art Buchwald, in which he expressed his views on life and death, with the intention that the video would be released online after he passed. Buchwald was followed by NYT photographer Dith Pran, musician Odetta, and philanthropist Stewart Mott. An interview conducted by Editor and Publisher with the NYT's senior producer for news and documentary, David Rummel, has served to further underline the diverse paths in which news publishers are innovating their content to satisfy the demands of the modern news-seeker, whilst allowing certain public figures to secure their posthumous legacies.

Online "news piracy" is highly damaging to global media agencies. The latter invariably experience "financial and non-financial losses" when a pirate news site republishes material without making reference to the original source. Such was the consensus of American and Russian media insiders when they convened to discuss the issue of online news and copyright.

The Moscow-Washington video link-up was hosted by leading Russian publisher, Ria Novosti. The points raised by the panel of media law experts and industry representatives underscored the grave consequences of unauthorised reproduction of original news content by pirate news sites.

Primarily, as U.S. media law expert David Marburger indicated, the reproduction of material is considerably less expensive than the actual production of original content. The continuation of this market force could in effect, "kill" the generators of original news, engendering large-scale redundancies among journalists.

Moreover, pirate news sites often offer cheap advertising space on their websites, which takes advertising revenue away from original content providers. The haemorrhage of advertising revenue is currently a serious problem for print and online news editions alike, hit by the simultaneous blows of the global economic slump and the challenge of rival news sites undercutting the prices of advertising space.

Yet another article questioning the value of a journalism education has recently surfaced on the Internet. The Village Voice article entitled, "You Just Graduated from Journalism School. What Were You Thinking?" is not as pessimistic as the headline makes it sound. Rather, it reveals the sunny - yet somewhat cautious - disposition of the millennial generation who recently graduated from Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Highly qualified and armed with internships with big-dog multinationals like The Wall Street Journal and some with actual work experience chez MTV, ABC News and Google News, and some of whom having taken to starting their own blogs, the positive attitudes of this mob of aspiring journalists seem justified. There are challenges in their way, like repaying student loans and being obliged to relocate to less competitive markets, but this tenacious bunch refuses to be discouraged.

According to the Evening Standard columnist Andrew Gilligan, the situation for London local media is becoming more and more like that in former East Germany: the only newspapers that can survive are state-run rags, which can offer taxpayer-subsidized ad rates and free delivery to every household. In addition to completely positive coverage of local government affairs, these publications give readers everything else they might expect in a newspaper - property listings, features, puzzles - rendering the independently-run competition virtually obsolete.

Nine London boroughs currently produce council-run newspapers far flashier and on a far more frequent basis than the informative publications of yesteryear. Three in particular draw Gilligan's ire, for the amount of taxpayer money spent, the effect on independent local papers, and even blatant bias and misrepresentation of facts.

Greenwich Time, which used to come out a few times a year, now appears weekly. The council paper employs a former editor and popular columnist from rival indie the Mercury. Gilligan claims Greenwich Time's cost to taxpayers is £532,000 a year.

The future for the newspaper industry is brighter than analysts expected, according to John Rogers, CEO of Ariel Investments in Chicago. Rogers represents one of the leading investors in the US newspaper market, and the largest investor in Gannett production, USA Today.

Rogers expressed his conviction to Bloomberg that advertisers will return to print, encouraged by the recent announcements that publishers Gannett and McClatchy had experienced results, which exceeded expectations.

Rather than suffering predicted losses, McClatchy reported a 43% quarter net income increase on last year, while Gannet enjoyed a second-quarter profit of $70.5m, a considerable improvement on the $2.29bn loss inflicted by asset write-downs reported in the last note.

Roger enthused: "with all the cost cutting, you just have to have some reasonable growth in revenue and you'll have spectacular earnings growth. This economy is going to recover and people are going to advertise again."

Source: Brand Republic

It has been known for some time that the New York Times is considering a membership scheme as a way to bring in more revenue for the paper, whose financial difficulties have been widely publicised. Subscribers have been surveyed to see if they would be willing to pay for online news or other services, and Gawker has published information from one of the user surveys on proposed Silver and Gold membership programs.

The details have not been finalised but the survey offers an idea of what the Times is considering. Both of the suggested schemes include BackStory and FirstLook: access to videos of reporters telling "the story behind the story" and access to some stories before they are published, as well as a personalised weekly email with links to "our best online content."

Both offers also include TimesWire, a news feed of all NYT content as it is published, a service which is currently available to all users of the Times' website but would presumably be taken off. TimesMachine is another component of both proposals, allowing members to access digital images of the actual pages of the newspaper from any day in the Times' history.

Twitter has redesigned its homepage in a way that emphasises its real-time search capability and intends to make the social networking site more accessible to first-time users.

The site's former home page simply asked users "what are you doing ?" and described itself as a communication service based on answers to this question, which did not give new visitors much of an idea about what the site could offer them. Now, the most prominent section of the page is a search box with the tagline "See what people are saying about..." The Twitter blog highlights the new home page's attempt to attract more users as "demonstrating the power of Twitter as a discovery engine for what is happening right now" is likely to prompt more interest.

This appeal of the search function is enhanced the lists shown on the page of the most popular topics by minute, day and week that are being discussed on Twitter. Clicking on any of the topics takes the user to the search results page showing all the tweets that have mentioned that topic. This is a fascinating resource for anybody who would like to get an idea of what the social network's enthusiastic Internet-savvy community is discussing. It also reflects what the Twitter blog describes as the site's move "from simple social networking into a new kind of communication and a valuable source of timely information." This move was not planned by its founders, rather "the service has taught us what it wants to be."

If a journalist is a master of communication, can a great communicator simply pass his or herself of as a journalist? This is question that web professional, Sandra Ordonez poses in the introduction to a rounding up piece on the project conducted by OurBook.com concerning the future of journalism.

The proliferation of social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook as circulators and generators of the news, and the popular trend of citizen journalism, which has been encouraged by mainstream publications, as well as designated start-ups, have all served to somewhat blur the definitions of a reporter and a communicator, professional or amateur. Or have they?

Ordonez recalls how as a communications students in the late 1990s, there was a strong awareness of the difference between the disciplines of communications and journalism, even though a raison d'etre of the journalist is obviously to communicate their information. Interestingly, unlike other courses, the journalist training had a grounding in ethics, and was seen as particularly rigorous. Yet, in 2009 it appears that the Internet is radically changing the face of the journalism profession. The consequences of this evolution on future standards, and even the existence of newspapers, however, is debatable, and there are many conflicting opinions circulating the industry as to its value and power.

Suspicions of exaggeration and embellishment are reactions that journalists strive to dispel in their writings, yet as photographs are increasingly used as complements to printed and online stories, or sometimes as the story itself, the spotlight of scrutiny is now on their authenticity. Readers, it appears, are today more sensitive and sceptical to the visual "proof" that is put in front of them, and are raising these concerns to the editors.

The Los Angeles Times reports a noticeable increase in the number of reader inquiries into the authenticity of its published photographs. A recent reader query about the physical realities of an urban landscape has prompted the paper to discuss the reasons for this rising reader distrust. In this incident, the doubts over whether the photo had been altered were quashed with the photographer's clarification that he had used a long lens, which "compresses the view", thereby fitting more features into a image than a standard lens would allow.

The BBC's announcement that it is to share video news with UK newspapers has been met with opposition by several media organisations. News International, the UK arm of News Corp, the Press Association and ITN have all expressed concern at the deal announced yesterday with the Daily Mail, the Guardian, the Independent and the Telegraph.

News International, which owns the Times, the Sun and the News of the World, said it had rejected the BBC's proposal to provide free online video content because of the "onerous marketing conditions" that promote the corporation, according to the Guardian. A spokeswoman said that the content would in effect not be provided at no cost because it would provide marketing for the BBC. The content would appear in a BBC-branded video player and links would lead back to the BBC's website.

"News International assessed the BBC's proposals and found that they not only impose onerous marketing conditions, but also offer little differentiation or benefit to customers of our websites," the Guardian reported the spokeswoman as saying. As well as providing marketing for the BBC, News International was concerned that the move "is likely to bring about a greater sameness of video content on a range of sites."