Web Publishing Roll Up News & Articles

This week, newspapers employ a variety of strategies, from independent funding to niche topics to SEO to help them stay alive.  And Google acquires AdMob. 

This week in web publishing the focus has been on newspapers, layoffs and paid content. But let's start with the good news.

This week in web publishing: revenue-generating schemes, be it Twitter or CNN.

This week, the newspaper industry tries to solve its crisis with micropayments and syndicated feeds, while iVillage.com continues to evolve to keep up with what women want.

In this week's installment, online advertising gets a lift, newspapers get schooled and MSNBC goes hyperlocal.

What are you doing reading the Web Publishing Roll Up? You should be out there hoarding free news from the Wall Street Journal or New York Times. They are just giving the stuff away -- but not for long! So hurry and get it while you can.

Rupert Murdoch has been talking again and this time he's saying that come 2010 his newspapers will be charging fees for reading the paper online. It's a move to save his empire from more financial losses and an effort to take back the newspaper from the endangered species list. He's in "to win" but he doesn't say at what cost. So go, go, go. Get all the news while you still can.

This week, the web publishing roll up is letting our content hang out. Consider us the bizarro version of Associated Press, who, last we checked, was busy policing the Web and developing "a system to track content distributed online to determine if it is being legally used.” Apparently that didn't work out to well because now the AP has set out to create a news registry to protect their online content from copyright violations.

Web publishing is alive with activity. From acquisitions to spending advertising dollars, the industry can be up one day and down the next. Same is true for journalism. One day it will be saved, the next it's extinct. Today, web publishing promises some optimism about the future of journalism, advertising and social media. 

There's no rest for the weary when it comes to web publishing. From Twitter to mobile news to YouTube, the news industry has many issues to consider when evaluating their presence in news media.

Let's Begin with Twitter. 

Many newspapers already have Twitter feeds with hundreds of thousands of followers. But they're only now just figuring out what it all means. Editor & Publisher recently reported about the ways newspapers are using Twitter to get news out and how they are using others' to get news in.

What's happening in the world of web publishing this week?

• Twitter Makes the AP Stylebook
• Scribd.com Offers eBooks
• The Chronicles of Journalism

What comes first: creativity or technology? Some say you can't have one without the other, while others might claim they are entirely separate concepts. Yet, when it comes to web publishing, it seems that creative technologies go hand in hand. Just ask the New York Times or the Medill School of Journalism. 

Americans are traditionally sentimental towards newspapers. They represent democracy, freedom and all that America was built upon. Yet, in these changing and challenging times, newspapers are no longer reliable employers. Nor are they able to generate revenue. This week, newspapers get a government intervention and are upstaged by new media.

This week in web publishing offers a point, a counterpoint and if needed, an escape plan.

While you were Googling, AOL named a new CEO and chairman. Tim Armstrong, who headed up ad sales in the Americas for Google, will replace Randy Falco as chairman and CEO. As well, AOL President and COO Ron Grant is leaving the company. Perhaps Armstrong was in need of a challenge, as AOL does not have the strength of either Google or even Yahoo in terms of advertising assets or traffic. Now things will get interesting. Everything you knew about AOL is about to change.

It's been a week or two since our last round-up of all things web publishing, and it is with pride that we announce that newspapers are still alive.

Setting Records

Earlier this week, newspaper pros gathered in Las Vegas for the Newspaper Association of America's first annual mediaXchange conference. Data from Nielsen Online was presented to indicate that average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper Web sites grew by over 7.9 million in January to 74.8 million visitors -- an increase of 11.9 percent over the same period a year ago.