News

25 September 2006

Microsoft launches effort to woo advertisers

Microsoft launched on Monday an effort that combines its various global ad products and services under one umbrella for advertisers. With its new Digital Advertising Solutions, Microsoft will deliver companies' ads to Windows Live, Xbox Live, Office Online, Live Search and MSN users via computers, smart phones, handheld computers and Xbox game consoles. "As today's consumers spend more and more...

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25 September 2006

Do newspapers have a future?

It seems hopeless. How can the newspaper industry survive the Internet? On the one hand, newspapers are expected to supply their content free on the Web. On the other hand, their most profitable advertising--classifieds--is being lost to sites like Craigslist. And display advertising is close behind. Meanwhile, there is the blog terror: people are getting their understanding of the world from...

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25 September 2006

To heat up profits, mags put freeze on hiring

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Magazine publishers striving to make or beat their annual numbers are digging out an old tool for late-year cost containment: the hiring freeze. Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., where ad pages through August are down 6.1%, according to TNS Media Intelligence, has a freeze under way. And at Time Inc., where pages are off 2.9% through August, the heads of finance and human...

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25 September 2006

Daily newspaper goes print in Russia

MOSCOW (RNWire) - OAO RBC Information Systems (RTS, MICEX: RBCI) has published the debut issue of a full-color business newspaper RBC Daily today, which was previously accessible to Internet users only. The newspaper RBC Daily accumulates RBC's broad experience in providing financial and economic news, which is essential for any successful business. Using RBC's resources, the newspaper will give...

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25 September 2006

Hezbollah's defiant TV

Beirut, 25 Sept. (AKI) - Throughout the war in July and August, when Israel mercilessly bombarded Lebanon and Lebanese Hezbollah militias fired rockets into northern Israel one of Israel's main targets was al-Manar, a satellite channel part owned by Hezbollah. The network, which offers 40 percent news programmes, managed to broadcast almost uninterrupted from a secret location. But now that there...

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24 September 2006

What counts, sales or readers? Go figure

There are two ways of calculating a publication's success. One is counting sales (the ABC way). The other is by a massive poll (the National Readership Survey way). But polling - as the NRS's own client services manager admits - has its problems: 'Our estimates are based on a relatively large sample of 36,000 adults per annum but, as with any other survey ... those estimates are subject to...

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23 September 2006

Google publishes Belgian court ruling on website

Earlier this week a Belgian court ruled that Google could not use material from French-language Belgian news sites without paying a fee. The ruling followed a case brought by Belgium's Association of Newspaper editors challenging the right of Google to run their news aggregator under the current copyright laws. While Google removed the newspapers Le Soir, La Libre Belgique and La Derniere from its...

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23 September 2006

Jury finds journalist defamed photographer

CELEBRITY photographer Jamie Fawcett has won round one in a legal battle against Fairfax newspapers, with a jury finding yesterday he was defamed by a gossip columnist over the alleged bugging of Nicole Kidman's Sydney home. The former private detective sued over a January 20 article by Annette Sharp in The Sun-Herald's entertainment section. In what Fawcett's barrister Bruce McClintock described...

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23 September 2006

In Iraq, a journalist in limbo

Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi photographer who helped the Associated Press win a Pulitzer Prize last year, is now in his sixth month in a U.S. Army prison in Iraq. He doesn't understand why he's there, and neither do his AP colleagues. The Army says it thinks Bilal has too many contacts among insurgents. He has taken pictures the Army thinks could have been made only with the connivance of insurgents...

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22 September 2006

Integrated FT opens for business

The Financial Times' multimedia newsroom - the much-planned fusion of its print and online operations - will launch in 10 days' time, said editor Lionel Barber. The project will see all print and online news desks integrate: the production system will come fully online and journalists will work an extended rota with more early morning shifts. "We will launch the new newsroom on October 1," Mr...

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