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Newspapers survive financial fallout by cost-cutting

A recent report issued by the OECD paints a gloomy picture for the future of newspapers. However, according to The Economist, the publisher of Bild and Die Welt “recently recorded the most profitable first quarter in its history”, with a profit margin showing a startling 27%. Maybe that’s good news for the German publisher but it is an exception as declining readership, especially amongst the young, can be attributed to gathering news from the internet, especially in the US, the UK, Greece, Italy, Canada and Spain. In the US, after disastrous results, the New York Times reported a first-quarter profit of US$83.3 million, up from US16.4 million year-on-year, but total revenues were down 3.2 percent year-on-year, and job losses in the industry have been especially severe in the US, the UK, the Netherlands and Spain. The Newspaper Association of America reported that print and online advertising has fallen by 35% since the first quarter of 2008 and that circulation had dropped alarmingly, yet almost all newspapers have survived. Primarily, newspapers have needed to cut costs so as to find a way out of the financial crisis by reducing payroll costs by up to 25%.

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Newspapers survive financial fallout by cost-cutting

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President Obama calls iPad a toy

With prices and dates released today for the UK launch of the iPad, Apple’s huge-selling tablet computer has been criticised by President Obama for being a mere “distraction.” In a widely-discussed commencement speech at Hampton University in Virginia, the President poured scorn on popular consumer devices, including “iPods and iPads; Xboxes and PlayStations,” for being “a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation.” Apple fans have predictably come out in force over the President lumping Apple’s multi-faceted tablet together with devices intended solely for entertainment. Writing for CNET News, Brooke Crothers points out that, despite the prominence of entertainment applications on the iPad apps page , users can also download a plethora of education tools. From iBooks to apps such as ‘The Elements’ and ‘Shakespeare Pro’, it seems the President may have been short-sighted in his derision of the new technology’s educational value, though it remains to be seen whether the iPad can achieve recognition as a useful reading platform and educational tool. The good news for UK Apple fanatics eager to try out the much-touted tablet for themselves is that the delayed UK iPad launch is now close at hand. The tablets are expected to hit Apple stores in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and Switzerland by 28 May, and customers can now pre-order their iPad to avoid the store running out of tablets on launch day . According to TechCrunch, the prices for various iPad options will range from

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Opera downloads double, thanks to Microsoft

Opera Software has announced that downloads of its latest web browser product have increased significantly since the introduction of Microsoft’s browser choice screen for Windows users at the beginning of the month. The Norwegian company is reporting that more than half of all browser downloads in Europe currently originate at Microsoft’s ballot screen, which was introduced following a ruling from the European Commission to limit Microsoft’s dominance and increase competition in the web browser market. According to figures from TechCrunch, Poland is the country with the greatest increase in Opera downloads from Microsoft’s choice screen, with a 328 per cent increase accounting for 77 per cent of all Opera 10.5 downloads in that nation.

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Opera downloads double, thanks to Microsoft

italy

Google News subject to antitrust investigation in Italy

Google has become the subject of an antitrust investigation after publishers in Italy accused the Mountain View giant of dropping their sites from its search engine . The Times reports that Google’s increasing dominance across online markets makes them a target of constant scrutiny by antitrust authorities. This latest complaint was directed by Italian newspapers who claim to have witnessed their websites rapidly falling off Google’s radar after they declined to allow their stories to be published to the Google News service.

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Google News subject to antitrust investigation in Italy