Independent News & Media has at last agreed a financial restructuring with its bondholders ‘after months of negotiations that will see the lenders take control of the publisher’, reports the Financial Times. INM’s banks have yet formally to agree to the restructuring plan, however. Full story at this link…

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A weird one this, picked up by Malcolm Coles, who has found (at least) 10 sites whose terms and conditions allow you to print a page from their website, but forbid photocopying them – including the Financial Times and Conde Net.

Answers as to why on the back of a postcard or in the comments below please.

Full story at this link…

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Quick link post rounding up some of this weekend’s chatter following Rupert Murdoch’s latest decision that News Corp properties will start charging for access to online news by 2010.

Kevin Anderson on Guardian.co.uk asks what news organisations can learn from the music, video and games industries when it comes to charging for online – especially relevant given the Financial Time’s announcement that it is considering introducing a ‘pay-per-article’ system.

On econsultancy Malcolm Coles address the frequently voiced arguments against Murdoch’s plans (e.g. it won’t work unless all sites start charging) in a mythbusting post.

(Backing up Coles points that people, outside of WSJ and FT readers will pay for content, is Press Gazette’s report that Which? increased online subscriptions by 11 per cent in the year to the end of June.)

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Journalism.co.uk is trialling a new service via the Editors’ Blog: a daily round-up of all the content published on the Journalism.co.uk site.

We hope you’ll find it useful as a quick digest of what’s gone on during the day (similar to our e-newsletter) and to check that you haven’t missed a posting.

We’ll be testing it out for a couple of weeks, so you can subscribe to the feed for the Journalism Daily here.

Let us know what you think – all feedback much appreciated.

News and features

• New clippings service launched by Financial Times
• Geoff Hill to manage CNN International Europe & Africa desk in London

Ed’s picks at this link

• Channel 4 cuts, data journalism, Le Figaro and paid content, George Alagiah and Fairtrade, US journalists released from North Korea

Tip of the Day

• Curating content

#FollowJourn

• #FollowJourn: @jonmwelch/reporter

On the Editors’ Blog

• How sticky are UK newspaper sites? 62.8 per cent of users look at just one page, says Alexa
• The Independent’s new iPhone news app

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More from Lionel Barber on the future as paid-for, following his speech at an industry event last month in which the FT editor predicted almost all news organisations would charge for online content in the next 12 months.

In an interview with Channel 4 News’ Benjamin Cohen, Barber explains how the FT’s part-free/part-subscription model could be replicated by other news organsiations; and gives his views on the BBC’s recent video plans.

“I think there is an inexorable momentum behind charging for content (…) What I would say to the competition and to the rest of the world is that it’s getting late. If we move now we can assure ourselves of a prosperous future.”

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John Gapper’s column on FT.com asks whether it is time for the Ochs-Sulzberger family to sell the New York Times. No, Gapper says: “They would be crazy to cap their run of poorly timed transactions by selling in the trough of the recession, amid mayhem in the industry.”

As part of the commentary he also makes this claim:

“Meanwhile, it [the New York Times] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

Emily Bell, director of digital content at Guardian.co.uk responds in the comments: “It is a pity an interesting piece was spoiled by such a sloppy and inaccurate piece of reporting,” she says. We have reproduced an extract from her lengthy comment below (yes, cut and pasted):

“John, in your column you asset [sic] that the Guardian has grown its online audience primarily by aggregating and cutting and pasting other people’s stories. This is demonstrably not true. If you look at our site on any given day (www.guardian.co.uk), you will I am sure find stories which are either from a wire feed (rather as the FT uses) or which reporters have picked up from other sources, again as does the BBC, FT, Times , even sometime the hallowed NYT. But this is not the core of what we do and it is certainly not how we have grown our audience…”

“(…)We have built our traffic on a higher investment in original multimedia journalism than most if not all of our peers. We have an active policy NOT to routinely aggregate high-grossing showbusiness, celebrity or ‘weird’ stories from elsewhere, which is common practice among some newspaper websites.”

And Gapper quickly responds (Journalism.co.uk wonders what is happening to journalism: shouldn’t they be in the pub by now on a Friday evening?):

“In fact, I don’t assert that. What I wrote was:

“”Meanwhile, it [the NYT] produces more original stories than most rivals put together. The UK’s Guardian is another paper that has built a global brand from what was a regional paper, but it relies more on cut-and-pasting (or aggregating) from others.”

“So I am comparing the Guardian’s ratio with that of the NYT, not claiming that the Guardian contains more aggregated than original content. I do not believe the latter, and would not write it.”

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Great post from Telegraph assistant editor Justin Williams on changes to production under the Financial Times’ Newsroom 2009 project and the Tele’s own trials with new sub-editing processes.

But, says Williams:

“What has and continues to hold this up is the technology. Editorial CMS suppliers continue to market products that, although making the process of web publishing easier and faster, still rely upon the buyers maintaining large production departments to manage the print pages.”

Spelling, grammar, style checks, page construction and more should be automated, he argues.

Full post at this link…

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An outline of the Financial Times’ ‘Newsroom 2009′ project has been leaked to document-sharing site Scribd by user Garciaripples (hat tip to @shanerichmond). Read the documents in full below or Journalism.co.uk’s digest of the plans:

An FAQ on the plans was also posted:

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As part of a scheme called Newsroom 2009, Financial Times reporters will be responsible for sub-editing parts of their own stories, adding hyperlinks and writing draft headlines.

Full story at this link…

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Content from titles to be made available on Plastic Logic e-reader – to be launched end of 2009.

Full story at this link…

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