The US Department of Defense will end its $1.5 million contract with the contentious PR firm that created extensive profiles of journalists wishing to embed with troops, Stars and Stripes reports. Last week, the newspaper published an article contending that the military used The Rendon Group's reports to decide whether or not to allow a journalist to be embedded and to shape reporters' coverage, something Pentagon spokespeople repeatedly denied.

In an email sent to Stars and Stripes, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith wrote: "I have been here since early June and at no time has anyone who worked for me ever conducted themselves in a manner as your newspaper alleged. I cannot and will not speculate on the past, although I have found no systemic issues with fairness or equity in the way U.S. forces have run their media embed program."

Indonesian daily Merdeka published its last issue on Saturday 29 August, reported the Jakarta Post. The move was financially motivated, according to chief editor Mulyana W. Kusumah, and the Jakarta Post reported that Merdeka's publisher was implicated in a high profile murder case.

Kusumah's statement in the newspaper's final edition was entitled "Final notes" Merdeka will never die," and stressed that Merdeka's journalists were committed to their pledge to publish a "national progressive" newspaper and described the closure as a 'rest.'

The newspaper had been running since 1945, founded by Boerhanoeddin Mohammad Diah, a former ambassador. According to the Jakarta Post, it launched the careers of various prominent Indonesian journalists.

Merkeka's editorial said that the newspaper industry would eventually succumb to the Internet, and quoted Rupert Murdoch on this issue. As the Internet becomes more prevalent in emerging markets and use is expected to rise sharply, this is likely to have a significant impact on these countries' newspaper industries.

In celebration of International Literacy Day on 8 September, the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers is offering newspapers a free serialised children's story. The story aims to teach children aged around 9 to 12 about newspaper journalism and is accompanied by lesson ideas. The initiative is part of WAN-IFRA's Newspapers in Education Development Project supported by Norske Skog, the Norway-based global paper producer.

"Newspapers and literacy have gone hand in hand for eons," said Aralynn McMane, director of WAN-IFRA young readership development. "In many countries, teachers use newspapers to teach both children and adults how to read, and we constantly hear of new ways newspapers are working with , or even creating libraries. A serial story remains a great tool for all involved."

This week, London police opened a 24-hour helpline for journalists covering two major metropolitan events - the weeklong environmental protest Camp for Climate Action and the annual Notting Hill Carnival. Certified members of the press can call the designated number to request assistance from a police press officer if they are having difficulties in reporting at the events.

The new helpline follows a report released in June criticizing police treatment of journalists at the G20 protests in April. In several incidents, police prevented reporters from crossing cordons, a direct violation of the Association of Chief Police Officers' guidelines for dealing with the press.

Regardless of how often the helpline is used, it is certainly a positive step in improving relations between the police and the press.

Meanwhile, attendees of Climate Camp received a crash course in citizen journalism yesterday as they learned how to "shoot, edit and distribute a 60-second report in less than 10 minutes" using a mobile phone. Workshop organizers Hamish Campbell and Richard Hering of visionOntv emphasized the importance of producing a quality clip quickly, particularly if police become rough with protesters and confiscate or smash their recording devices.

Italian antitrust regulators are investigating Google after the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEG: Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali) complained that Google News is reducing publishers' ability to attract traffic to their sites. This complaint is nothing new, but what is interesting (and disputable) is their claim that asking to be removed from Google News results in exclusion from the standard Google search engine.

Corriere della Sera quoted the antitrust authority's statement which noted that this state of affairs amounts to "an extremely damaging condition [for publishers]: presence on Google's search engine is crucial in helping a website to attract visitors and therefore to obtain income from advertising, given the extremely widespread presence of this search engine."

The preliminary investigation will look at whether Google's behaviour "which is made possible by its undisputed dominance of the search market" amounts to undue control of competition in the online advertising market, "with the further effect of consolidating its position as an intermediary in this." The investigation will be carried out in collaboration with the financial police service, ANSA reported.

According to documents obtained by Stars and Stripes, a controversial public relations firm contracted by the American military routinely reviews the coverage of embedded journalists in Afghanistan and categorizes the work as "positive," "negative" or "neutral." This information is then used to steer reporters towards certain stories or sources in order to produce more positive coverage.

Pentagon officials and representatives of The Rendon Group, the PR firm, had previously denied such a practice still existed, stating journalist profiles were now conducted to determine accuracy and familiarize the military with new reporters. However, the leaked documents showed the ranking system existed at least as late as May of this year.

Prior to Rendon's current $1.5 million contract with the Defense Department, the firm became known for its help in the creation of the Iraqi National Congress, a group responsible for distributing a lot of the bogus claims about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

One solution to newspapers' falling advertising revenue could be a change in tactic: rather than simply placing marketing messages on their websites, they should try to encourage readers to fill out forms providing personal information such as their name and email address, according to a report by advertising broker and technology firm Pontiflex.

Forbes reported the report's conclusion that marketers will pay publishers an average price of $2.27 for each reader who provides details of their name, email address and other personal data. This information could be gathered from polls and surveys: Pontiflex designs arrangements for publishers to displays ads for these and calculated the value of marketing leads by analysing pricing data from publishers who use Pontiflex's services.

Obviously it is hard to estimate how many readers actually would provide this personal information and whether, therefore, it would produce more income than placing traditional ads. But with low CPMs currently widespread, it would seem the time to experiment.

Source: Forbes

At first glance, the tagline and premise for Tewspaper - "The online newspaper with no writers" - might ruffle some mainstream media feathers. Another online aggregator coming to mine my content as it pleases? That hardly seems right.

Upon closer examination, however, Tewspaper actually could help drive traffic to the sources it uses. That's because the site aggregates not news articles but tweets - tweets mostly from major news organizations, keeping in tact the shortened links to the original articles. What the user sees is exactly what the media source sent out, just organized in a way Tewspaper chooses.

So far, the Tewspaper is available for five US cities: New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles. The idea is to search through the millions of posts on Twitter to find reliable and relevant news for each city. Presumably more locations will roll out shortly, as the "What is Tewspaper?" section incorrectly states there are currently 10 city pages.

Tewspaper only uses what founder Jared Lamb calls "trusted authorities," i.e. predominantly major news organizations and not just any New Yorker with a Twitter account. Not surprisingly, the New York page is dominated by The New York Times' Twitter feeds, and the LA page by those of the Los Angeles Times.

What will the media landscape look like in five years? That's the question Media Week asked a sampling of industry insiders and researchers representing a variety of media fields. Assuming media innovation continues at the same swift pace it's been going since 2004, the average consumer's daily media interaction will look much different by 2014.

While some predictions recall high-tech fads first seen on the Jetsons - like concerts beamed around the world in 3D - others are not so hard to fathom, with early developments already starting to appear.

For one analyst, e-readers are clearly the best bet for newspapers, since they most closely resemble the print product and can be used virtually anywhere. Sony's announcement yesterday of its new Reader Daily Edition, which is better designed for e-papers than previous Readers, marks a new addition to an increasingly crowded field. It is possible that with more competition and improved technology the cost for consumers for e-readers will become much less prohibitive in the next five years.

In a new advertising initiative, Gannett newspapers will begin using web software to automate obituaries and celebration notices. The obits are paid ads appearing in the classified section, not the brief news sketches on which US cub reporters traditionally cut their journalistic teeth.

The software, provided by UK-based firm Wave2, will make it easier for the ad departments to compile information and for funeral directors to submit relevant details. Perhaps the program will produce a little extra cash for the publications. On the other hand, it is not yet clear whether the automating of this task will lead to any job cuts.

The Indianapolis Star will be the first to implement the new system, with 10 other Gannett papers - all in the compay's Interstate Group - following by the end of the year.

At the other end of the spectrum from Gannett's automation plans is The New York Times' video obits, an innovation that first appeared a few years ago but recently garnered some attention. These audiovisual features seek to make obits more personal, and require much more work from staffers.

Source: Gannettoid

A period of uncertainty for the Observer, the UK paper which is generally seen as the Guardian's Sunday edition, began in early August when parent company the Guardian Media Group confirmed that its future was coming under consideration. Widespread rumours suggested that the title might be closed. Press Gazette has launched an "Observer SOS" campaign to argue the case for keeping the paper open, and reportedly Observer journalists are planning a public campaign with the same aim.

In an article announcing its campaign, Press Gazette writer Dominic Ponsford noted that the Observer is the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world and "hasn't just survived two World Wars but also the Suez, Crimean and Napoleonic conflicts to boot." PG believes that as "one of Britain's great and iconic news brands," "closing the Observer would be a disaster for British journalism." It proposes that the paper's owners, the Scott Trust, should offer it up for sale rather than closing it.