Brazil: More turn to independent media after newsroom layoffs

Developments in the Brazilian news industry have given weight to the Pew Research Center’s theory that cutting journalism investments will kill readership. Following mass media layoffs, it appears citizens are increasingly turning to independent news sources for coverage of the soccer riots.

Page 3 politics and the representation of women in the media

June 2013 has proven to be an interesting time for the portrayal of women in the news media. In the same week that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was feted by Forbes as the world’s most powerful woman and second most powerful person, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard found herself ridiculed for an Australian Women’s Weekly shoot that shows her knitting with a dog at her feet. The day after the article was published, Gillard was ousted as the leader of the Labor party.

Sponsored content weasels into print

The latest “life-saving” proposition for newspapers: sponsored content in print, as suggested by Scott Karp, founder and CEO of Publish2.

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.

Vanity Fair France makes its debut

Vanity Fair France found its way on to kiosks around the Hexagone on Wednesday morning, nine months after Condé Nast first announced its intention to develop a French version of its flagship publication.

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.