Readers and Viewers

Time Magazine's announcement that it will shift publication dates -- hitting the newsstands before the weekend instead of Monday to appeal to busy readers -- is emblematic of a dilemma facing media companies' bottom lines: What to do with the news? As news organizations put more breaking news online -- from news about terrorism plots to the latest celebrity wedding -- tabloids and serious...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. newsstands sold fewer magazines in the first half of 2006 compared with a year ago, data showed on Monday, as some markets were saturated with too many offerings while others had to compete with the Web. Newsstand, or “single-copy,” sales of magazines fell more than 4 percent to about 48.7 million copies in the first half of 2006, according to preliminary figures provided...

Hong Kong --- Amid mounting concern that the Internet might make newspapers obsolete, Chinese propaganda officials and editors of leading dailies are drafting a five-year plan to provide direction for the industry. Newspaper circulation and advertising revenues have been falling in China, as they face increasing competition from the Internet and other new media for advertising dollar, according to...

TOTAL newspaper readership in Australia has declined by just 0.8 per cent in the past 12 months despite intensifying competition from other media. News Limited, publisher of about 70 per cent of the nation's newspapers, said the decline appeared mainly due to readers shifting from printed newspapers to websites. News chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said: "Despite often quoted concerns...

When Time, Inc.'s Teen People shuts down its print edition this September and moves online for good, it will be migrating to where an increasing number of teens are spending their time. But Teen People online will be facing a whole new set of challenges in attracting the young set, in some ways more daunting than those it faced competing for their attention in print. True, teens spend an...

NEW YORK: A new report from the Bivings Group finds that newspaper publishers are aggressively focusing their efforts on the Internet, rather than trying to compete with it. The study, which focused on 100 American newspapers, found that newspaper publishers were largely forward-thinking in their approach to the Web, and have been taking advantage of online features like podcasts, blogs, and RSS...

JERUSALEM - In a land of divided faiths and loyalties, people have been separated at times by walls, by checkpoints and now, in time of war, by sound bites. Every hour on the hour, Israeli Jews in this ancient city tune their radios to government-run broadcasts about the battle against Hezbollah, a radical Shiite Muslim group, in Lebanon. At night they turn to three Hebrew-language television...

TOTAL newspaper readership in Australia has declined by just 0.8 per cent in the past 12 months despite intensifying competition from other media. News Limited, publisher of about 70 per cent of the nation's newspapers, said the decline appeared mainly due to readers shifting from printed newspapers to websites. News chairman and chief executive John Hartigan said: "Despite often quoted concerns...

CAIRO, Egypt -- For Arab news media, the war between Israel and Hezbollah is a fresh chapter in a tale with strong emotional pull and well-defined enemies, and has pushed Iraq to the back of newscasts and off front pages. "Iraqi news has not been ignored by the Arab satellite channels' newscast, it still exists, but has decreased sharply in the last two weeks," said Sameeha Dahroug, the former...

NEW YORK: A white paper relased by the Kelsey Group suggests that newspapers would be well advised to form online partnerships in order to stay competitive. The report notes that this strategy has worked in the past. The report suggests that newspapers adapt their Web sites to attract customers who research products on the Web but then buy the items at a store. It suggested that newspapers take...