Monitoring Change in Journalism - November 2009 Archive

28 November 


Germany: Paid-for Magazine Received Positive Reviews
A new paid-for magazine, eMag, owned by the publishing conglomerate Axel Springer, was launched on  27 November. eMag is the supplementary weekly magazine of the German ‘quality' Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag. The creator, Jördis Guzmán Bulla is confident that most audiences are prepared to pay €1.50 for its ‘high quality'. Media analysts predict that if eMag is successful, it will set a new business model for the publishing industry.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2009/11/welt_am_sonntag_makes_presence_felt_onli.php

UK: £5.5m Raised to Launch London Freesheet
While  British freesheets have ceased publications in the past few months (see previous MCJ), a group of unknown investors from the Global Publishing Group raised £5.5m to launch a  new  weekly freesheet, London Weekly. Despite the economic downturn, the publishing group expects to publish 250, 000 copies to be distributed twice a week outside rail and tube stations in London. It also plans to charge the optimistic prices for its full-page advert at £5, 250 and £9, 291 for double-page spread.  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/30/freesheet-launch-london-weekly


US: AOL to Employ 3,000 Freelancers to Run its ‘Popular' News
AOL, the global media company owned by Timed Warner announced the launch of its news site, employing around 3, 000 freelancer editors to produce news articles, videos and photos. The news topics will be predetermined by a system that can analyse the most popular topics from data collected from the AOL subscribers. Freelancers then will make the ‘more palatable' articles to match the marketers. Final article will be edited by the editors after it has gone through an automated system to screen its grammar, spelling and plagiarism. There will also be an automated tracking system tracing the secondary use of the news, which could provide additional remuneration for the freelancers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/nov/30/digital-media-aol


26 November


France: Financial Daily "Les Echos" First to Merge Newsrooms According to « Hadopi » Law
Management and trade union SNJ at French financial daily Les Echos agreed on a merger of the newsrooms of the paper version and the online   version, following the implementation of the « hadopi » law stating that « the collaboration between a company and a professional journalist concerns all platforms of the media ». The merger was negotiated with the unions who welcomed the agreement and the fact that journalists are « linked to a title » and will not be asked to work for other titles of the same company. Journalists will earn around 600€ per year for authors' rights and a new professional category of "web editors" will be created. However unions deplored the risks that the merger will leave less time for investigative journalism.
http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2009/11/26/le-quotidien-les-echos-fusionne-sa-redaction-avec-ses-equipes-internet_1272482_3236.html#ens_id=1244166

UK:
- Mixed Tendencies as Media Companies Records Drastic Drop in Profit
Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT), one of the largest media companies in Europe, recorded a 23% fall in profits for the year ending  4 October. Associated Newspapers (AN), recorded a year on year decline of 11% while digital revenues of the AN websites recorded an annual growth of 11%. However its flagship newspaper, the Daily Mail, reported the second-highest profits in its history despite the economic recession and the structural change in the media industry. The UK magazine publisher, Future, also recorded a 61% fall in profit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/26/future-profits-fall-us-operation
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/26/daily-mail-general-trust-profit

-More Papers Erect Paywall
The UK regional newspaper publisher, Johnston Press, announced plans to erect paywalls at six of its weekly newspaper websites from next Monday. Users have to pay £5 subscription fee for three months. Johnston Press is the second largest newspaper owner in the UK, owning 147 weekly paid-for titles and 116 free titles. The move to paid content model is to experiment the reaction of readers and advertisers to its six chosen news sites.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/25/johnston-press-charging-for-content

US: Media Lawyer Calls for ‘Compulsory Licensing Fee System' for News Aggregators
Gerry Byrne, the media lawyer called for the introduction of a ‘compulsory licensing fee system' for news aggregators or re-distributors like Google to protect online content. The compulsory licensing fee system will provide the legal certainty for newspaper publishers to require news aggregators like Google to pay a portion of the profits.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/newspaper/2009/11/copyright_law_reform_as_a_novel_way_to_p.php

25 November

US

-More Newspapers Consider Blocking Google Search
MediaNews Group, one of the largest newspaper companies in the US, considers blocking Google News when it starts charging online content for its newspapers in Pennsylvania and California. However, it free online content will still be available through Google search.  Early this month, the media conglomerate News Corporation also announced that it will block Google search from its news website once the pay wall is set (see MCJ 9 Nov).
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aRVlZEzbmNu0&pos=13#

- Magazine Publishers in Talk to Set up Digital Newsstand
Magazine publishers including the Time Inc. and Conde Nast are in talk to set up an online newsstand for their digital magazines. The online newsstand will be like an ‘iTunes for magazines', which makes it easier to buy print and electronic copies of publications. As the media industry is in transition from print to online publishing, magazine publishers want to get hold of its digital readers by providing easy access to readers. Some newspaper owners also expressed their interests the online newsstand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/25/business/media/25mag.html?ref=media

24 November


Portugal: Motorpress to Lay off 28 Jobs
The publishing company Motorpress announced to lay off 28 jobs and cease the publications of its journals Auto Loan and Maxi Tuning. Early this year, Motorpress already made seven jobs redundant and cut its staff's salaries as a result of the financial crisis. The journalists union in Portugal, Sindicato dos Journalistas, expressed its concern over the restructuring plan and the working conditions of the journalists.
http://www.jornalistas.online.pt/noticia.asp?id=7697&idselect=3&idCanal=3&p=0

Spain: Paid Online News Site ‘Factual' Lanches
The Spanish journalist, Arcadi Espada, who is currently working as a columnist for the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, announced his venture on launching the paid online news website Factual on 30 November. Factual will have a start-up budget of €250, 000 and it plans to charge readers an annual fee of €50 for unlimited access to all of its content online. Some media critics are skeptical about the prospect of the pay online news site as the award-winning Spanish news site Soitu just announced its closure (see MCJ 28 Oct) due to its unsustainable business model.
http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2009/11/17/comunicacion/1258470215.html

23 November


US: First Joint Reporting by Ohio Newspaper Groups to be Published

In response to the changing media landscape, a group of Ohio newspapers decided to corporate and share their resources with each other instead of competing. The first joint reporting project investigating pensions of public employees will be published on 29 November by the seven Ohio newspapers (The Columbus, the Dispatch, the Repository, the Plain Dealer, the Akron Beacon Journal, The Blade of Toledo, the Dayton Daily News and The Vindicator) involved in the consortium, the Ohio News Orgainsation (ONO). Newspapers in the ONO started working together since 2008 after complaints about the coverage by the Associated Press on some of the local issues.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004044375


UK: BBC Changes to Longer Headlines to Reach ‘Search Engine Optimisation'
The changing patterns of how readers consume news (through news aggregators and social media) have also changed how news is produced today. The BBC announced today that its news website will change its short headlines to longer ones. As the BBC explained, there are a growing number of readers who are using search engines, news aggregators, Twitter and other media to consume news, longer headlines will enable readers to retrieved BBC news via search engines easily.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/11/changing_headlines.html

20 November


UK: News Corp Sets its Priority on Entertainment over Journalism
James Murdoch, head of the media conglomerate News Corporation, said that journalism no longer plays a big role in the corporation's future. Talking the future business plan of the Corporation, he said the Corporation will focus on the profitable entertainment. He also signaled that the Corporation is working with publishers to speed up the process of transition from print to online media and developing a wholesale market place for digital journalism.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44672&c=1

US: AP Confirms 90 Layoffs
The Associated Press (AP) confirmed today it laid off 90 news employees worldwide after it was reported that 71 AP union members has been laid off on Tuesday (see MCJ 17 Sept). In October 2008, the AP set a target of reducing 10% of its annual payroll costs to compensate the reduction in the subscription fees for newspapers and broadcasters. Recently, it was reported that around 130 newspapers submitted their cancellation notices to the AP (see MCJ 6 Nov).
http://www.ap.org/pages/about/whatsnew/wn_111909a.html

19 November


Spain:

-More than 5,000 Unemployed Journalists in Spain

The media industry in Spain is still facing tough times with La Opinión de Granada announcing 45 jobs cuts (25 of them are journalists) on the top of the 3, 000 redundancies made  in the last twelve months. The IFJ affiliate, the Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España (FAPE) has created an Observatory for the Crisis and its member, the Asociación de la Prensa de Madrid (APM) just recorded 5,155 unemployed journalists registered with the National Institute for Employment (INEM). The APM will publish a report regarding the situation of the journalists' profession in the middle of December.
http://www.fape.es/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1632&Itemid=125
http://www.fape.es


-New Draft Broadcasting Law Will Put 10, 000 Jobs at Risks
The Forum of Journalists Organisations (Foro de Organizaciones de Periodistas) revealed that a new draft broadcasting law, concerning the scrapping of fourteen audiovisual laws and a wider privatisation plan, could put 10,000 jobs at risk. Journalists working in the public broadcasting sectors will be the most affected by the draft law. Wider privatisation means that it will become easier for media tycoons to merge with other media and worsen the situation of media concentration in Spain. This will pose further threat to media pluralism in Spain and in Europe.
http://hl47.dinaserver.com/hosting/foroperiodistas.com/index.php?lang=es
http://www.fesp.org
http://www.fsc.ccoo.es/webfsc/menu.do?Inicio:67537

UK: ITN Is to Cut 20 Jobs
The Independent Television News (ITN), the UK news and content provider, is to cut around 20 staff posts as part of its restructuring plan to tackle its £39.9 million pension deficit. The company has already decided to close its final pension salary scheme and a decision will be made by March 2010 regarding its future pension plan.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/19/itn-job-cuts

Japan
Launches Manga Style Newspapers
Japan launches two manga style newspaper websites, Manga no Shimbun and Nihon IT Manga Shimbun, presenting news in a comical perspective. The manga style newspapers put complicated news such as politics, economics and social issues in a simple narrative to attract young readers. The two newspapers also plan to translate their content into different languages (such as English, French and Korean) in the future, depending on the readers' responses and demands.
http://www.sfnblog.com/circulation_and_readership/2009/11/two_comic-book_style_newspapers_launched.php#more


18 November


US: ‘Computational Journalism' to Help Holding Media Accountable

As the media landscape is deeply affected by the technological advancement, a report published by DeWitt Wallace Centre for Media and Democracy advocates the use of ‘computational journalism' (CJ) to hold media accountable  and improve reporting of corruption, for example . According to the report, ‘computational journalism' could promote media accountability by enabling reporters and citizens to interact with news through the computer tools (e.g. text from scanned government documents , tools to create information timelines, databases and alerts) and reduce the costs for investigative journalism. Further, this will engage new ‘players' such as citizens and NGOs as watchdogs. It also suggests a ‘customisable Google News' service for ‘beat reporters' to update them on the latest news from different media platforms (including the traditional media and social media).
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/5728

http://dewitt.sanford.duke.edu/index.php/about/area-of-research/computational_journalism


17 November


France
: "Le Parisien" to Axe 100 Jobs

A special meeting of the works council at the French daily LeParisien will decide on 26 November on major staff restructuring including cutting one hundred jobs -25 in national news and the rest in local editions. Sales of the first semester in 2009 decreased by 7% compared with the previous year, whereas commercial income dropped by 20%. Journalists fear their paper will become a "super freely" without relevant local news.
http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2009/11/17/la-direction-du-parisien-veut-supprimer-une-centaine-de-postes_1268484_3236.html#ens_id=1268479


Americas: "Black Tuesday" at AP
Dozens of Associated Press (AP) staff were laid off on Tuesday 17 November, as the company plans to achieve a ten percent payroll reduction by the end of 2009. According to estimations of the Newspaper Guild, more than 38 terminations took place in the US, affecting managers, reporters, editors, photographers, and editorial assistants. The company has not yet provided formal notice to the union and it is still unknown how many non-US employees are affected. Earlier in the year, about 100 employees accepted a voluntary early retirement package. In early November, the Puerto Rico branch of AP laid off eight staff, who learned of the reductions from clients before being informed by AP.
http://newsmediaguild.org/newsroom/news_releases/black_tuesday_at_ap

News Organisations Can Now Call for ‘Citizen Reporting ' through Youtube Direct
Youtube, the popular video sharing website owned by Google Inc, launches a new feature called Youtube Direct that enables news organisations to ‘request, review and re-broadcast user-submitted videos' directly. Youtube Direct will serve as a platform for news organisations, non-profit orangisations and businesses to call for ‘citizen journalists' and amateurs to submit their ‘breaking news' and ‘promotional videos'. US Media organisations like the Huffington Post, the National Public Radio (NPR), Politico, the San Francisco Chronicle and some of Boston TV stations are testing the service. Meanwhile, the largest Spanish-language television network, Univision, agreed to feature its programmes in the US on Youtube (including the latest programmes and archives). In return, Univision will receive most of the advertising revenues.
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/5824 
http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKTRE5AF4QT20091117

Europe: Mecom Records 18% Fall in Ad revenue
Mecom, the Pan-European publishing Group which owns around 300 titles has recorded a massive drop of 18% in its advertising revenue for the third quarter of this year. Its operations in the Netherlands suffered a decline of 20% in advertising revenue year on year.  So far this year, Mecom has made €115m cuts. However, the group still has to meet its 11% of cost-cutting target year on year to make up the fall in advertising revenue.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/17/mecom-ad-revenue-down

UK:
-The Times to Be the First National Newspaper to Charge Online  Content
At the Society of Editors' conference, the Times editor James Harding revealed the plan to charge its online content by early next year and admitted that the Times ‘had contributed to the culture of free'.  The planned paywall package will include a subscription service for loyal readers and a 24 hour access for less frequent readers. However, the Times has not decided the pricing level.  Once the plan is implemented, the Times will become the first national newspaper in the UK to charge its online content and end the ‘culture of free' in the UK newspaper industry.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44649&c=1

-Closure of Media Week Will Cost 18 Jobs
The weekly magazine, Media Week, owned by the Haymarket Group, announced its closure and redundancies of 18 editorial staff.  Affected staff are undergoing a consultation with Haymarket. Other titles in the Haymarket Group are also affected by the business restructuring plan. The monthly publication, Revolution, will become a quarterly supplement within Marketing. A ‘centralised hub' of reporters is expected to be formed to cover the media, advertising and marketing sectors across the weekly titles within the Brand Republic portal of the Haymarket Group.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/17/media-week-to-close


16 November


Europe: Online Ad Spending to Increase More than 7% in 2010
In the recent report, the Marketers' Internet Ad Barometer, conducted by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA), predicts that online advertising spending across Europe will be increased by 7.6% yearly. Meanwhile, traditional TV advertising spending will certainly follow an opposite tendency.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/16/online-ad-spend-climb-2010

Europe/US: Europeans More Likely to Pay for Online News as Americans
A study conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that 48% of American internet users would pay for online news at an average rate of $3 a month. However, respondents from European countries showed a higher percent (around 60%) of support for online paid content.  The Italians would pay an average of $7 for online news. John Rose, head of the BCG explained that the low percentage of Americans who would pay for online news is due to the vast and rich amount of free online news that are available to them than to their European counterparts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/16/business/media/16paywall.html?_r=1&ref=media


13 November


US: More Job Cuts at the NYT and Change of Strategy at CNN


The New York Times Service is to cut around 28 jobs in the editorial team and move its office for services to Florida. Non-union employees were also told that contributions to their pensions will be stopped at the end of this year. They will only receive an additional 3% of their salaries as the new pension contribution scheme. In October, the New York Times already announced its plan to cut 100 jobs by the end of this year (see MCJ 20 Oct). In broadcasting, CNN has taken ‘cost-effective' measures cutting back its web video production and laid off four web anchors. The management claims that the current practice at CNN.com is not ‘cost-effective' and that the company will put more resources to on-demand video. Under the new plan, seven employees will be hired for the production of on-demand video.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/business/media/13times.html?ref=media

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/13/business/media/13anchor.html?_r=1&ref=media


12 November


France
: French Broadcasting Giant Announces over 50% Drop of Revenues
The largest French private television, TF1, announced a drastic drop of 54% of overall revenues since the beginning of this year. Compared to last year's figure, the economic contraction led to a 19% decrease of advertising revenues in TF1. Contrary to many observers, the recent removal of advertising on public broadcasters did not boost revenues of private broadcasters.  
http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2009/11/10/le-benefice-de-tf1-en-baisse-de-54-sur-neuf-mois_1265493_3236.html#ens_id=1264772

Finland: YLE May Resort to Cutting Jobs or Channels to Cut Costs
One the sanctuary of the public broadcasting in Europe, the Finnish public broadcasting Yleisradio (YLE), may resort to cutting jobs or channels to meet its €31 savings scheme by 2012. Faced with decreasing general revenues, the financial condition of YLE was further worsened by the replacing of the television licence fee by a lower "media fee". Currently the YLE is cutting its number of imported programmes and giving up some of its expensive sports broadcasting rights to cut costs.
http://www.yle.fi/uutiset/news/2009/11/yles_cost-cutting_plan_may_cut_channels_1152699.html

US: New York Times Publishes ‘Community-Funded' Reporting
The New York Time published an investigative article on the pollution in the Pacific Ocean, which was reported by the ‘self-identified' freelance journalist Lindsey Hoshaw. Hoshaw has raised $6000 over the past three months from more than 100 donors through the community-funded reporting project Spot.Us, a project of the non-profit Centre for Media Change. Concretely this means that people can donate money for stories they want to be investigated and "journalists" would receive up to $1,400 for their reports.
http://spot.us/

UK: Drop in GNM's Revenues Results in More than 100 Job Cuts and Reshuffling at Observer
The Guardian News and Media (GNM) announced to cut more than 100 jobs due to ‘worse-than-anticipated' drop of revenues by £33m. The cuts will affect its staff in the editorial and commercial departments but according to the management "only around 8% to 10% of editorial staff would leave" after voluntary redundancies and redeployment. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) expressed ‘extreme concern' over its plans as they ‘have not seen any creative plans taken by the GNM'.
Part of the plan is also to integrate the Observer's four monthly magazines (Observer Food Monthly, Observer, Observer Sport Monthly, Music Monthly and Observer Woman) into a single four-section paper. Affected journalists at the Observer will be integrated into GNM's other titles, the Guardian and its website guardian.co.uk.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/10/observer-sections-redesign
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/11/guardian-news-and-media#start-of-comments
NUJ's response: http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=1416

Birmingham Post Publishes its First 180-page Weekly for Just £1
After the reshuffling in Trinity Mirror's news groups in Midlands (see MCJ 21 Oct), the Birmingham Post launched its first weekly offering its 180-page comprehensive coverage at £1 only. In addition to the weekly, dozens of regional reports will be uploaded to its website birminghampost.net. Online readers can also subscribe to its daily news update E-zine for breaking news service in a daily basis. So far 15, 000 readers subscribed to this service. Online readers can also print or download the news to their Kindle e-book. 
http://www.birminghampost.net/news/west-midlands-news/2009/11/12/historic-first-for-birmingham-post-65233-25151443/


10 November


US: Star Tribune to Cut 100 jobs

Star Tribune
, the largest daily newspaper in the U.S. state of Minnesota announced to cut 100 jobs. The newspaper was deeply affected by the recession and the structural changes in the media industry, which forced it to file bankruptcy in January. Its number of staff has shrunk by nearly 40% since 2006. The cut is due to the continuous falling circulation and advertising revenue.
http://www.startribune.com/business/69570982.html?page=2&c=y


9 November


Canada:Toronto Star to Replace Editors with Outsourced Contract Workers
The Toronto Star, Canada's most widely circulated paper, plans to replace one third of its editors (up to 100 people) with contract workers, maybe even outside the country. The management of the paper announced voluntary buyouts to its 1,300 employees in all divisions. "Star readers will be shocked to hear that core aspects of its daily journalism, that vital role in our society, are now to be farmed out" said Maureen Dawson, the head of the Star's union. The Toronto Star has already moved circulation jobs to India and classified-call-centre jobs to Buffalo, USA.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601082&sid=afWQnj2nAp_A
http://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/?q=en/node/5704

Global: Google Launches Digitalised Magazine Stand While News Corp. Considers Blocking Searches for Google News
Google launched its digitalised magazine stand displaying a comprehensive list of magazine archives including the Life, the Liberty, the Popular Science and many others for free. Users can browse magazine covers and read the original articles or the entire issue of magazines in full colour through Google Book Search. At the same time, Rupert Murdoch announced that he  was considering blocking Google searches from displaying its news content. Murdoch said its media groups, the Sun, the Times and the Wall Street Journal, will block Google entirely once they enacted plans to charge their content, Guardian reported. Murdoch also criticised news aggregators and Google as ‘parasites' for stealing away its news content without paying for it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/nov/09/murdoch-google
http://www.observer.com/2009/media/google-books-whacky-magazine-archives


6 November


UK
:First Newspaper owned by its Employees

The West Highland Free Press, a left-wing weekly local newspaper in Scotland becomes the first newspaper in the UK owned by its staff. The ten staff in the Free Press become shareholders in the trust that now owns the paper. Despite the economic downturn and the media crisis, its staff show faith and optimism in the paper by putting their stake in the shares of the paper.  

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/05/local-newspapers-scotland

Global:
-  AP to Revise Fee Structure as 130 Submitted Cancellation Notices 
The news wire agency, Associated Press (AP), is to revise its fee structure for 2010 to maintain its sales as many newspapers filed their cancellation notices.  Around 130 newspapers submitted the two-year required notices to the AP that they may not subscribe to its news wire service as it has become too costly for them. The AP announced that it will revise its fee and its members will benefit from a savings of $65. Recently, 50 newspapers just rescinded their cancellation notices. But this week, the Chicago Tribune and other Tribune Co. newspapers are experimenting AP-less week without running any news from the AP.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004033067 

  - Google  Pushes for More Convergence but Remains Unclear about its Role
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google believes the future of news will rest on further integration and convergence of different news media and technology. In an interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, a foundation funded by the Harvey University, Schmidt  repeated that  he believes ‘new media ' that emerge out of ‘a deep convergence of text, video and audio' will change journalism fundamentally. Moreover, the sources of revenue have to be from both advertising and subscription. However, when he was asked about the responsibility of Google in the play of the news' future , Schmidt said Google has ‘not yet figured out how to exercise that responsibility'.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2009/nov/05/local-newspapers-scotland


5 November


Europe: Stand Up for Journalism Day, Campaigning for Change in Europe
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and its members, unions and associations of journalists across the region, marked the  Stand Up for Journalism Day, an annual event which takes place on 5 November. The Stand Up for Journalism campaign was launched in 2007 on issues of concern to all who value media and democracy - decent jobs and professional rights for journalists. On this day, journalists across Europe focus on the challenges they meet in their daily work through debates, statements, demonstrations or collective actions.
http://europe.ifj.org/en/pages/efj-campaigns-stand-up-for-journalism 


Germany: Süddeutsche and B.Z. go for Paid Content Model
Two German newspapers Süddeutsche and B.Z. announced plans to adopt the paid content model in charging for its articles and photographs online. B.Z., the most popular tabloid in Berlin plans to charge a one-off fee of just 79 cents for users to have access to all its content. Mobile phone users can also subscribe to its content. Süddeutsche will also offer a monthly subscription fee of €1.58 from the middle of November to online subscribers.
http://www.editorsweblog.org/multimedia/2009/11/paid_content_model_prevails_in_germany.php
http://www.turi2.de/2009/10/30/heute2-b-z-sz-setzen-zusatzerloese-aufs-iphone-7275553/

UK
- Investigative Journalists are in Demand
Faced with the crisis in the media industry, the public needs more investigative journalists than ever before. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a non-profit organisation founded by a group of experienced journalists in the UK (including veterans Phillip Knightley and Nick Davies) to support investigative journalism announced it is going to recruit up to 20 journalists for its investigative teams. The Bureau recently received a substantial sum of £2 million from the David and Elaine Potter Foundation founded by former Sunday Times journalists Elaine Potter . 
http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/536362.php
http://www.investigationsfund.org/

- More Job Cuts, Merseyside Journalists to Ballot on Industrial Action 
The Trinity Mirror group announced 17 further job cust in the newsrooms. The cuts will affect seven multi-media journalists' posts, four photographers, the copy-taking unit and the electronic picture desk. Journalists from Merseyside start the balloting process for industrial actions since the same Trinity Mirror already axed around 150 jobs since 2008. The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) regards the cuts as ‘relentless' and ‘damaging' to the quality of the papers and websites, and to the local economy.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=1&storycode=44563&c=1
NUJ Campaign

Europe: Stand Up for Journalism Day, Campaigning for Change in Europe

The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and its members, unions and associations of journalists across the region, marked the  Stand Up for Journalism Day, an annual event which takes place on 5 November. The Stand Up for Journalism campaign was launched in 2007 on issues of concern to all who value media and democracy - decent jobs and professional rights for journalists. On this day, journalists across Europe focus on the challenges they meet in their daily work through debates, statements, demonstrations or collective actions.
http://europe.ifj.org/en/pages/efj-campaigns-stand-up-for-journalism

3 November


Global: Newspaper Sites Record Sharp Decline of ‘Unique Visitors'

New statistical analysis from Mediacafe, created by Jeff Mignon,  a  product strategist, and Nancy Wong,  a business strategist suggests a sharp decline in ‘unique visitors' (UV - measuring a unit of traffic to a Website). The findings show all major US newspapers (including the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, etc) recording a sharp decline of UV since October 2008. Major news sites for national newspapers in France (i.e. Le Monde, Le Figaro, Libération , etc), Canada (i.e. Globe & Mail, La Presse, Toronto Star & National Post) and the UK (the Guardian, Times Online, the Independent, the Scotsman & the Telegraph) also experienced a decline of UV. The findings ultimately point to the saturation of online audience and the high penetration of local news sites in the competitive online market.
http://mediacafe.blogspot.com/2009/10/unique-audience-for-newspapers-going.html

US: Freedom To Close Pulitzer-Winning Newspaper
Freedom communication Inc., the US publishing group which owns more than 100 daily and weekly newspapers announced the closure of its Pulitzer-winning newspaper East Valley Tribune. Earlier this year, the Tribune was awarded the Pulitzer prize for local reporting despite its ‘limited resources' after Freedom filed for bankruptcy protection at the end of August after recording $770 million in debt. The closure of Tribune will affect 140 employees.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1004032453