Companies

CALGARY – The tabloid market in Alberta got more crowded today when Torstar Corp. (TSX: TS.B) and Metro International SA announced the launch of free Metro daily newspapers in Calgary and Edmonton, raising the stakes in a battle with CanWest and Sun Media to attract readers in Canada's rapidly growing energy heartland. The Torstar-Metro announcement comes a day after CanWest MediaWorks...

(February 20, 2007) — My suggestion for publishers, editors and news managers dealing daily with the cost-cutting that plagues newsrooms around the country is to fire someone. But don’t fire a reporter, copy editor, or a photog. What I’m proposing might not win me any friends at the major wire services. I’m certainly not going to win any popularity contests. But allow me to get a few points across...

European publishers have offered an olive branch to Google in a bid to end copycat copyright challenges to the internet search engine's news service. Google lost a court battle with a Belgian newspaper association Copiepresse in a landmark ruling on Monday and was ordered was ordered to remove content or face daily fines. Belgium's ruling came as other lawsuits loom for the popular search engine...

The Mail & Guardian Online launched The News in Photos earlier this week, a new service which leverages what new media pundits term Web 2.0 technologies. Allowing readers to submit their own photographs and comment and interact with each other, the website organises news photographs into galleries accessible via a multimedia interface. “This is our most visible step so far to embracing audience...

NEW YORK, Feb 16 (Reuters) - The AtlantaJournal-Constitution plans to eliminate about 80 newsroom jobs and cut its circulation 5 percent, it said on Friday, in the latest restructuring to hit the struggling newspaper industry. The AJC, which is owned by privately-held Cox Enterprises, is restructuring the newsroom to balance its resources between its print paper and its Web site, following similar...

US newspapers that spend more money on their newsrooms will be able to make more money, according to a study released Wednesday, which also questioned the wisdom of the media industry's trend of cutting jobs to save costs. A woman exits the New York Times building in Manhattan in 2006. The Internet is causing something of an earthquake in the US media industry, which last year reported a nearly...

LONDON - Dennis Publishing is to sell off Maxim around the world, including the UK, as part of a divestment strategy being studied by its US arm. The sale includes every US title apart from The Week. Dennis Publishing Inc has appointed investment bank Allen & Company to explore options "including a possible sale of the company". However, a spokesman said the US version of The Week would not be up...

The men's magazine market has crashed, with even the once-buoyant weekly lads' magazine's suffering, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures for July to December. The sector sold 14.4% fewer magazines year on year, selling a combined average of 1,978,166 copies each issue. To the six months to the end of December 2005 it was selling 2,310,423. Emap's upmarket men's magazine Arena had...

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Carl Icahn, taking advantage of a rise in share price he helped cause, sold Time Warner Inc. stock worth about $880 million in the fourth quarter. Funds owned by Icahn reduced their holdings in the New York-based company to 25 million shares from about 69 million during the period, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SAC Capital...

IBM has warned of a looming crisis with old and new media on a collision course over how and where content such as TV, news and user-created will be carried, and says billions of dollars in revenue are at risk. The report, to be released later today in New York, warns that the conflict between traditional and new media is seeing the emergence of a media divide that could erase hundreds of billions...