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.
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
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.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
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)
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Last week Pressdisplay.com mailed me and said they had chosen to give me unlimited personal access to their new system.- And I must say I am impressed. I have just read my local tabloid, Jerusalem Post and The Guardian in full versions on my tablet-pc with a bunch of features that makes newspaper reading much more fun and integrated with what else I do. I can blog a specific article as an image with link to the full original article for my readers to view, I can have articles read by a female machine voice if I prefer and I can setup a subscription system locally on my laptop that automatically downloads my preferred newspapers among more than 200. The system also stores my downloaded newspapers for up to 60 days.
Let me show you how it works.
Pressdisplay lets you access more than 200 newspapers from one site and with one subscription. When you subscribe you can read your newspapers before it appears in newsstands and before it is even printed! As a subscriber you can read your newspapers online and/or download the PressReader, a program that lets you read and manage newspapers for offline reading and more convenient page browsing.
Interestingly the Pressdisplay browser really makes the regular print newspaper format browsable. Specially if you use a vertical screen like a tilt LCD or tablet pc. I use the PressReader on my tablet PC, but there is a version for smartphones as well running the Windows Mobile platform 5.0.
When logged in to my account I can browse newspapers by language, title or country. I can pick a newspaper and its front page will appear in full screen size. At the bottom of the screen some tools for surfing, zooming and other things show up. At the right thumbnails of the issues other pages are listed. One click and that page shows up. Pages can also be flipped by clicking the corners of the pages.
This is yesterdays edition of The Guardian, viewed with PressReader online. This is also here I can choose newspapers for my off line PressReader.
Here is the downloaded version on a tablet. All pages is listed at the right sidebar.
If I chose to hear the words of an article spoken I just click the loudspeaker icon next to the headline of an article and a player starts.
I choose to save The Guardian for offline reading.
The Guardian now shows among my other preferred newspapers in the PressReader display, it is fully downloaded and I can start reading.
Most of the time I read in single page full screen view. It takes a few minutes to get used to the navigation. One click zooms in and four-way scrolling is done by holding the pen down on the screen. Here you see full page view, the text is too small for reading articles.
First level zoom is perfect for reading four columns, that makes up The Guardians Berliner format.
If I find something interesting, that I would like to share I can send a number of articles each month to friends and theres a blogging feature that allows subscribers to publish directly from the system to blogs. WordPress, Blogger, Livejournal and MSN Spaces are supported.
PressDisplay has a range of subscription models. There is a free sign up, where you can view front pages and buy single editions for USD 2.75. for USD 10 you can have monthly access to 31 newspapers of your own choice etc. There is also some corporate solutions and plans for libraries and hotels.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
This week I will finish the translations Newspaper Index in Korean, Russian, Malay and Vietnamese. The Korean version is online now: Link
Next step, probably in june, will be to translate the site into Thai, Hindi, Polish and Finish. Later Portuguese and Dutch will be added and the site will be translated into the 23 most widespread languages on the Internet.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
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.
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.
