A week ago the notorious whistleblower website Wikileaks released the largest classified military leak in history: The Iraq War Logs, consisting of 391,832 US military field reports from 2004 to 2009. The reports, which were given to a range of media organisations as well as some being published on Wikileaks' site, detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, compared to Wikileaks' previous release of the Afghan War Diaries, which detailed about 20,000 deaths.

The Afghan War Diaries were made available in advance of their release to three newspapers: the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, all known for their investigative work. The advance access was intended to increase the impact of the data at the time of its release. For the Iraq logs, Wikileaks decided that it was worth including more news organisations in the process, and worked specifically with the UK Bureau of Investigative Journalism to achieve its aims.

The Associated Press' revenue from newspapers has declined by one third since 2008, from US$220 million a year to about $140 million, Poynter.org revealed. Newspapers' contribution to the wire service's revenue is now only 20 percent.

"We expect it will continue to drop another $5 million to $7 million a year" starting in 2011 and thereafter, said AP Chief Executive Officer and President Tom Curley, explaining that the company is subsidising "offerings with more profitable lines of business."

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Stefano Hatfield has been appointed executive editor of the Independent with "special responsibility" for the new daily i, the Independent reported. He will report to the Independent's editor-in-chief Simon Kelner, when he starts on 1 November. i launched on Tuesday.

Hatfield was formerly editor of News International freesheet the London Paper, which closed last year, and before that he was editor-in-chief of Metro in New York, noted the Guardian. Are his previous roles likely to draw speculation that i will be competing with London's other free dailies, Metro and the Evening Standard, the latter of which is also owned by Alexander Lebedev?

"I am delighted to appoint Stefano, who is a major addition to our senior team," said Kelner in the announcement on the Independent's website, "Stefano will be responsible for i, and his energy and experience will be vital in building on what has been a tremendously successful launch."

News Corp is considering denying coverage of films starring artists who refuse to give interviews to its outlets as part of an effort to fight back against the power of publicists, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. News Ltd entertainment editor-at-large, Rebekah Devlin, told the Caxtons advertising conference that News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch was drawing up a strategy to deal with this.

Publicists "are very quickly becoming the most powerful people in the world," Devlin said, adding that more and more actors have contracts that say they don't want to do publicity for a film.

Now News Corp is prepared to unite and say to studios "OK, if you don't want the help of the Fox network then let's see how your film goes," the SMH quoted Devlin as saying. It must be noted that News Corp has its own film studio, 20th Century Fox.

Would depriving films of coverage in News Corp outlets be enough to encourage studios to push their stars to talk? Do publicists have too much power, and would such a threat be justified?

Although no official numbers have been released by Times and Sunday Times owner News International, audience research company Nielsen has estimated that an average of 362,000 UK web users went behind the papers' paywalls between July and September, reported the Guardian.

Nielsen estimates that 1.78 million monthly unique visitors from the UK went to the two papers' homepages, meaning that of these, just over one-fifth are going on to access subscription content, the Guardian added. In the three months until June 2010, the traffic to the Times Online site, predecessor to TheTimes.co.uk and SundayTimes.co.uk, was just over 3 million.

Print subscribers for the Times and Sunday Times have free access to the websites: the Times has 107,000 subscribers and the Sunday Times 112,000, the Guardian noted. So it is unclear how many people are paying for an online subscription only.

The numbers do suggest, however, that traffic going through to individual stories has fallen by just over 88% since the paywall was implemented. This is in line with previous reports of News International's expectations.

Dawit Isaak, a founder of Eritrea's first independent newspaper who has been imprisoned for the past nine years without charge or trial, has been awarded the 2011 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

Mr Isaak, who has dual Eritrean-Swedish citizenship, was imprisoned following a September 2001 suppression of the independent media in Eritrea, one of the worst countries in the world for press freedom. The country has no private newspapers, radio or television stations.

Mr Isaak, who turned 46 on Wednesday (27 October), has not been formally charged with any crime, and his whereabouts remain an open question.

"Dawit Isaak, who was forced to flee his native land for Sweden but returned because of his dedication to an independent press and democratic principles, should be celebrated for his actions. Eritrea's rulers, among the most repressive in the world, have chosen to imprison him instead," the Board of WAN-IFRA said in making the award.

"Mr Isaak has faced enormous hardships, yet his commitment to press freedom and human rights has never diminished. It takes courage for a journalist to work and not compromise under such circumstances, and Mr Isaak serves as an inspiration to press people everywhere," the Board said.

Google Inc has given $2 million to the Knight Foundation, it was announced yesterday, and the search giant has said it will invest $3 million more in journalism projects outside the US, "through a similar partnership." More details will be available early next year, according to a post on Google's blog by Nikesh Arora, President, Global Sales Operations and Business Development.

The money to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation is intended to support the foundation's digital media innovation work, and half will go to the Knight News Challenge, while the remaining $1 million will to other grants around news innovation which will be announced later.

The Knight Foundation quoted Arora as saying that "Journalism is fundamental to a functioning democracy, and we want to do our part to help fulfill the promise of journalism in the digital age. There is no better partner to support innovation and experimentation in digital journalism than Knight Foundation."

"We're eager to play our part on the technology side," Arora said on the Google Blog, highlighting the new ways to present news online and the tools that Google has developed.

Politico plans to launch a subscription news service on what Congress, federal agencies and trade associations are doing concerning health care, energy and technology, reported the New York Times. Politico Pro will launch early next year and will cost $1,495 to $2,500 for the first topic and $1000 for each subsequent one, the NYT said.

The new service will involve hiring 50 people, 40 of them journalists.

The Washington DC-based political news site saw an opening in a market which executive editor Jim VandeHei believes is wrongly perceived as overserved, according to the NYT. The target audience would presumably be lobbyists and government offices, similar, the NYT noted, to publications like Congressional Quarterly and National Journal.

The hope is that Politico Pro will provide another significant source of revenue for Politico, which makes a good deal of its income from advertising in its print edition: available free in locations around Capitol Hill and Washington DC. Politico's owner Allbritton Communications started a local news site in Washington this summer, TBD.com.

The Independent's new daily i launches today. Billed as the first quality daily to launch in Britain in 25 years, it aims to provide a full news service "in a way that is fully accessible," Independent deputy editor Adam Leigh told the Editors Weblog. It is not a new paper in terms of content, rather will almost entirely consist of repurposed and repackaged Independent content, presented in a new and more concise format. Media commentator for the Guardian Roy Greenslade described it as "quite simply, a populist alter ego to the Independent."

"Daily briefing is a phrase that we've used a lot while we've been developing it," said Leigh, who will be specifically involved with i, while the Independent's other deputy editor Dan Gledhill focuses on the main edition of the Independent. However, he stressed, it is more than that, it is "a newspaper first and foremost and it will cover a range of different content for a range of moments throughout the day." Many of the news stories near the front of the paper will only be one paragraph long, but throughout the 56-page paper there will also be longer pieces, or "places to pause," as Leigh put it.

"In essence, it's a different way to consume Independent content: a different mechanism for getting the same stuff," said Leigh.

PaidContent.org revealed that Amazon will soon be allowing all newspaper and magazine subscriptions bought for the Kindle to be accessed on any digital platform that runs Kindle apps.

According to paidContent.org, the new feature is scheduled to start within the next few weeks and will work on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, with Android apps planned for "down the road." For the time being, publications purchased on the Kindle can only be read using the device.

It makes sense for readers and for Amazon, says paidContent's Stacy Kramer, but does it makes sense for publishers, she asks? The new feature may not be the best idea for those already selling their own multi-platform subscriptions or who want to control their brands on other devices. The Wall Street Journal will not partake in the digital content exchange, and The New York Times has been less than forthright about its plans for being included, saying "We'll be announcing our bundle details when we launch the details of our paid model."

In the midst of News Corporation's shelving of its 'Project Alesia' due to over running costs, Rupert Murdoch showed support for the British government's rigorous spending cuts as well as defended independent professional journalism and free market economics, PressGazette.co.uk reports.

According to Press Gazette, Murdoch's speech comes in light of heavy opposition from the BBC and rival publications who fear that News Corp's possible control over the remaining 61 percent of BSkyB that it doesn't already own, will make the company "too big and powerful in the UK."

But Murdoch stressed that journalism needs to stay perseverant, independent and "hard-driving" in order to expand and cater to the new world of modern mass communication. He emphasized the idea that no matter how prominent digital media becomes, there will always be the need for credible sources and "a professional seeking to uncover facts no matter how uncomfortable."