European Free-sheets Closing Down

Dato, the first free-sheet to close down in Denmark is followed by similar German shut-downs. Germany Business News, the free business paper by Holtzbrinck (Handelsblatt) is published this week for the last time. The paper started in August 2006 as the successor of the cheap tabloid News, and had a circulation of 110,000 in the beginning of this year. It was delivered to more than a hundred businesses. Lack of advertising income was the main reason for the closure. The BusinessNews website however will carry on.In April the free sports paper Sportzeitung closed down. This paper was available on Lufthansa flights and had a circulation of 13,000. Also in this case lack of advertising caused the problems. In 1999-2001 the Norwegian publisher Schibsted tried to introduce the 20 Minutes concept in Cologne but was forced from the market after Alex Springer and a local publisher launched competing free papers of their own. Three small free dailies remain: Süddeutsche Zeitung Primetime, Handelsblatt am Abend, FTD Kompakt; all of them distributed on Lufthansa flights or ICE trains. Also a part of the circulation of Welt Kompakt is distruted for free ion trains. Combined circulation of these titles is less than 60,000.

Thanks to http://www.newspaperinnovation.com for this info.

21 things to improve news sites

Matthew Buckland, blogging at WAN South Africa, posted this list:

1.Focus on local content and news
2.Stress immediacy
3.User-generated content
4.User comments
5.User rankings and networking on your site
6.Embrace RSS
7.Use other web services to promote your site (eg: SecondLife, MySpace, Facebook)
8.Facilitate blogging of content for readers (and try not to get your pants sued off)
9.Homogenous branding
10.Complement the print edition (I guess so)
11.Increase the use of photography
12.Design internal/article pages as landing pages (huge traffic comes via deeplinks)
13.Give blogs to journalists
14.Link to external sources of information (link, link, link!!!)
15.Personalise for the readers
16.Manage relationships online
17.Tag clouds
18.Create a lite edition
19.Increase the content niches relevant to your community (well if you have the budget)
20.Create select audio and video casts
21.Use the web as a content laboratory

Via http://www.trinetizen.com/blog/ 

Global Newspapers Circulation increased 4.61 percent in 2006

Newspaper circulations world-wide rose 2.3 percent in 2006 while newspaper advertising revenues showed substantial gains, the World Association of Newspapers announced today.

WAN said global newspaper sales were up +2.3 percent over the year, and had increased +9.48 percent over the past five years. Newspaper sales increased year-on-year in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, with North America the sole continent to register a decline.

When free dailies are added to the paid newspaper circulation, global circulation increased +4.61 percent last year, and +14.76 percent over the past five years. Free dailies now account for nearly 8 percent percent of all global newspaper circulation and 31.94 percent in Europe alone.

“Newspapers in developing markets continue to increase circulation by leaps and bounds, and in mature markets are showing remarkable resilience against the onslaught of digital media. Even in many developed nations the industry is maintaining or even increasing sales,” said Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of the Paris-based WAN . “At the same time, newspapers are exploiting to the full all the new opportunities provided by the digital distribution channels to increase their audiences.

Paid daily newspaper circulations were up in 31 percent of the countries surveyed in 2006, stable in half the countries and down in 19 percent. Over the past five years, newspaper circulations were up in more than half of the countries surveyed and stable in 20 percent.

  More than 515 million people buy a newspaper every day, up from 488 million in 2002. Average readership is estimated to be more than 1.4 billion people each day.

  Seven of 10 of the world’s 100 best selling dailies are now published in Asia. China, Japan and India account for 60 of them.

  The five largest markets for newspapers are: China, with 98.7 million copies sold daily; India, with 88.9 million copies daily; Japan, with 69.1 million copies daily; the United States, with 52.3 million; and Germany, 21.1 million.

Dutch kidney giveaway TV show was a hoax

A Dutch TV show featuring a dying woman deciding which of three candidates would receive her kidney turned out to be a hoax Friday, in a stunt to highlight the need for more organ donors. In the last minutes of the live show which had attracted worldwide attention, right before the fake donor was about to make her choice known, presenter Patrick Lodiers revealed all. ‘We are not giving away a kidney here, that is going too far, even for us,’ he told the audience. The woman, introduced as potential donor Lisa, 37, with an incurable brain tumour, was actually an actress, the BNN public channel said. The three kidney patients who were presented as candidates were real - but they were in on the hoax and wanted to cooperate to motivate people to register as donors, BNN said. The original premise of the show had sparked uproar in the Netherlands and abroad, with many condemning it as unethical to make entertainment out of a life-and-death situation. Journalists and television crews from all over the world had flocked to the Dutch television studio where the show was held. The channel, which has built up a following of predominantly young viewers through controversial programming, screened the show on the fifth anniversary of the death of its founder, Bart de Graaff, who had waited years for a kidney transplant. The publicity stunt was dreamed up by BNN and producer Endemol, the creators of the ‘Big Brother’ reality show. (AFP via Middle East Times)

Dispute over European medical TV-channel

Four of the world’s biggest pharmaceutical companies are considering launching an interactive TV channel in Europe. The prospect has caused outrage among some consumer groups, because advertising prescription drugs directly to patients in the European Union is illegal. They warn that the pharmaceutical giants will find it impossible to give unbiased advice about their own products. But the drug companies involved - Pfizer, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson and Procter & Gamble - insist they are only interested in giving reliable high quality health information which would help patients when they were discussing their treatments with doctors. They have even made a ten-minute DVD of what the new interactive TV channel might look like - although a spokesman for one of the firms concerned said the plan was at a very early stage. ‘The European Patient Information Channel is simply a name given to an interactive information tool,’ he says. ‘It does not exist, nor is it in development. The purpose of creating this model was to provide an example of how quality information might be provided to Europeans in the future. The drug companies also insist they have no wish to challenge the current ban on advertising prescription drugs directly to patients in Europe. Those regulations are currently being reviewed by the European Commission. (BBC News)

Company will track and ‘fingerprint’ AP content on the web

The Associated Press is moving to protect its content by partnering with the technology company Attributor, which will track AP material across the Internet. The arrangement will allow Attributor to ‘fingerprint’ AP copy down to a level where it can be identified anywhere on the Web. ‘Our goal is to get a feeling for some of the useful ways to monitor content,’ said Srinandan Kasi, vice president, general counsel and secretary at the AP. ‘We are looking at it not just to protect our rights but to derive some intelligence.’ The Redwood City, Calif.-based Attributor can keep tabs on text but extracting what Attributor CEO and co-founder Jim Brock calls the ‘DNA’ of the material, which boils down to a specific paragraph or a few sentences. With that information, Attributor can watch where the content is going in turn giving publishers a map. Publishers can then determine where, how, and when the content is used. For now, AP is using Attributor’s platform to first monitor use of text across the web but eventually it will test out video and still images with Attributor. (Editor and Publisher)

Gorbachev launches new book by slain Putin critic

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Wednesday hosted the launch of a new book by murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, the first by her to be widely available in her native land and language. Politkovskaya, a critic of President Vladimir Putin and reporter of human rights abuses in Chechnya, was shot dead last October. Investigators say her unsolved murder was linked to her reporting. Gorbachev, 76, hosted the launch at his political institute in Moscow alongside Politkovskaya’s son, daughter and estranged husband, who edited the book. Politkovskaya’s death sparked outrage in the West but little emotion in Russia, where previous books by her were never properly published. Her reports appeared only in the fringe intellectual newspaper ‘Novaya Gazeta’, part owned by Gorbachev. The 988-page hardback book, entitled ‘What for’ and priced at around 600 roubles (EUR 17), arranges work by Politkovskaya around different themes. Friends and colleagues at the launch criticized the slow pace of the investigation into her death. ‘It’s essential that the investigation is brought to a swift conclusion, the killers are found, they are prosecuted and justice is delivered,’ said Aidan White, General-Secretary of the worldwide journalists’ union the International Federation of Journalists, to applause from Gorbachev and others. White was in Moscow to attend a conference which called on governments to do more to catch reporters’ killers. (Reuters via ABC News)