Axel Springer sells its regional papers to Funke Mediengruppe in 920 million euro deal

German publishing houses Axel Springer and Funke Mediengruppe said yesterday (25 July) they have reached an agreement whereby Funke will acquire Axel Springer’s regional newspapers, TV program guides and women’s magazines.

WSJ: Interactivity will become the norm

Though The Wall Street Journal’s interactive, first-person point-of-view video on the Affordable Care Act generated lots of buzz earlier this month, such features will soon become the norm at the newspaper, Neal Mann, multimedia innovations editor, told Journalism.co.uk.

ABC emulates BBC with links to commercial news sites

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) will pilot a new service designed to funnel its online audience to other news media sites. Managing director of the ABC Mark Scott will unveil the plans in a speech to the Australia American Chamber of Commerce in Sydney, reports The Australian, which managed to get an advanced copy of Scott’s announcement.

What Google’s just-announced Chromecast means for news orgs

Google’s recently-announced Chromecast dongle will bring Internet video to TV for just US$ 35, giving traditional news organizations a chance to establish themselves as video providers and better compete with broadcast news.

Print investment makes future seem bright at Orange County Register

This week marks the first anniversary of the introduction at the Orange County Register of a radical series of expansion and investment policies that bucked an industry-wide trend for cuts and closure. The Guardian reports that one year on the risk seems to be paying off.

La Nación multimedia editor: Innovation is the ‘antidote’ to journalism crisis

As newsrooms trim budgets and staff, La Nación in Argentina has poured resources into expanding its NACION Data team. Since its creation in 2011, LN Data has exposed corruption in Senate spending, unearthed hard-to-access census data and hosted the first DATAFEST in Argentina. NACION Data was nominated in two categories at this year’s Data Journalism Awards and took home a title for its Senate expenses research, which found officials were being reimbursed for trips they never took.

The royal baby: birth of a modern media phenomenon

The fortunes of the British royal family are inevitably engulfed by a flurry of news reports, gossip columns and speculation, but as the first major royal born in the new media age the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s baby received unprecedented amounts of press coverage from around the world. Yet in the rush to be first to report on the latest developments, some news organisations forgot that sometimes less is more.

Publishers pressured to promise ad viewability after study finds half of ads do not appear

Following a comScore study that found more than half of display ads go unseen, advertisers are demanding promises of viewability that publishers have explicitly been told not to provide.

Native advertising isn’t what you think it is

The media industry has been using the phrases “native advertising,” “sponsored content,” “advertorials,” “branded content” and “content marketing” interchangeably, but there are important distinctions between the terms. It might seem nitpicky to insist that proper definitions are established and followed, but unless the industry can agree on the lingo then it may never be on the same page in important discussions on the ethics of content marketing.

Mediapart update: interview with co-founder François Bonnet

When we first reported that the Cour d’appel de Versailles [Court of Appeal of Versailles] had ordered the removal of all content related to the Bettencourt tapes from Mediapart and Le Point’s websites, it was clear that decision wouldn’t be accepted without a fight. Within the first few hours of the ruling influential players in the French press, including Rue89 and Libération, had released messages of wholehearted support for their fellow journalists and Mediapart’s Edwy Plenel announced his intention to appeal the decision.