Readers and Viewers

NEW YORK, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The average number of monthly visitors to U.S. newspaper Web sites rose by nearly a third in the first half of 2006, a study released on Wednesday said, though print readership at some larger U.S. newspapers fell. The study, released by the Newspaper Association of America, underscores the Internet's importance to papers beset by falling circulation and advertising...

Was a time in my life when waiting for the newspaper boy to deliver my copy of The Hindu was the most agonizing wait of the day. It's not that the delivery boy was late but because I was early and anxious to know the close-of-play score in some test match being played in some other part of the world. Remember these were days before ESPN / Star Sports and the Internet. And yet, when I said "my copy...

Samar is one of those whom I call a “friend of newspapers”. He is well read, has a keen interest in public affairs and has periodically penned very readable book reviews and useful pieces on information technology. So when he confessed over the phone that he had virtually stopped reading newspapers seriously, I knew it was time to worry. It’s not that he had actually stopped buying a newspaper. In...

PARIS (AFP) - France's emblematic left-wing daily Liberation, crippled by falling reader numbers and mounting losses, may be forced to shed up to a third of its workforce as part of a last-ditch rescue plan to be unveiled on Wednesday. Founded in the wake of the 1968 student protests by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, the paper, long an icon of the French left, has been pushed to the verge of...

PARIS: The unlikely marriage between a Rothschild heir and Liberation, the left-wing tabloid born in the rubble of France's 1968 student riots, is already on the rocks. Edouard de Rothschild, who last year paid €20 million (US$26 million) to become the newspaper's biggest shareholder, is to present a "last chance" turnaround plan to staff representatives and other board members Wednesday, amid...

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...

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...

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...

Half of all high school students get news online at least once a week, but teens rate TV the easiest-to-use news source — and the most accurate, says a study out Friday. In the Future of the First Amendment study, which surveyed 14,498 students and 882 teachers at 34 high schools last spring, 45% of teens say TV is the best overall source of news, 44% think it's the most accurate and 43% think it...

NEW YORK: A new study by Google and Marketwatch finds that the Internet is now more important than newspapers in helping moviegoers decide which film to go to. The report, entitled "The Internet and Moviegoing: A Benchmark Study on Influences and Opportunities," which surveyed approximately 2,100 moviegoers between the ages 13 to 49, found that while moviegoers initially become aware of new films...