News

Tension between Google and German publishers continues

Following the controversial ‘Google tax’ law passed by the German parliament in March which intends to make search engines pay royalties to publishers for showing extracts of their articles in search results, Google has hit back with a blog post asking the German news businesses to sign “declarations” that renounce their intellectual rights and hence agree to continue having their articles shown on Google News free of charge.

Augmented reality: business, if not editorial, advantages are clear

In May 2008 the IT research and advisory company Gartner Inc. predicted that augmented reality would become one of the top 10 most disruptive technologies for the period 2008-2012. Sure enough, in the newspaper world at least, AR has experienced a meteoric rise in popularity, with many seeing its ability to connect print and digital as a much-needed lifeline for the paper press.

Beyond advertising: 3 ways to monetise mobile

Mobile now accounts for more than 50 percent of traffic at many North American and European news organisations, but the majority of publishers remain clueless about how to monetise it

L’Equipe reinvents itself in a bid to stay afloat

French sports daily L’Equipe has revamped its image in effort to “regain control of time and avoid falling victim to the temporality of the web,” says the newspaper’s editorial director, Fabrice Jouhaud. To combat declining kiosk sales and suffering advertising revenue, L’Equipe is repositioning itself within the news marketplace by rebuilding its editorial content.

Finnish magazine co-creates journalism with readers

Amidst a push for user-generated content and audience engagement, Finnish women’s magazine Olivia is co-creating stories with readers using a unique, game-style platform.

Huffington Post expands into Africa with Al Huffington Post Maghreb

Only a month after its first foray into Asia with Huffington Post Japan, Arianna Huffington’s news site launched its first African edition on Tuesday – the French-language Al Huffington Post Maghreb.

New multilingual news organisation aims for global reach through Internet, apps

From 1 July, the Israel-based i24 news will attempt to take on the likes of Al Jazeera, the BBC and France 24 with a tri-lingual 24 hour television channel that will be accessible in its entirety on the web and through mobile apps.

Crowdfunding promising for mainstream media, too

A journalism industry counting pennies and cutting staff salivated at the idea of crowdfunding, which declared itself as a viable business model for journalism last year. But the strategy seemed out of reach for mainstream media organisations — until recently.

Could Facebook’s mobile news service fill the gap left by Google Reader?

Having introduced Poke as a rival to Snapchat and Instagram’s new video service to take on Vine, as well as rolling out its own brand of Twitter-inspired hashtags, Facebook is reportedly now set to offer a challenge to Flipboard and Pulse with a news aggregation app for smartphones and tablets.

Why newsrooms need smart TV apps

If your news organization doesn’t have a smart TV app, designing one should be a top priority, data from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism suggests.