NaiDunia Media has launched a national edition of its daily newspaper, NaiDunia, and will launch a weekly newspaper and magazine combo, Sunday NaiDunia, in nine state capitals.
More US based newspapers may start outsourcing to other countries, following a trend started by newspapers offshoring editorial work to India, a few years ago.
We could hardly resist putting this pretty map up here, and the motive behind its design makes it even better. The reason is arrived in our inboxes today is because the Economist is inviting the world to vote in the American presidential election in its Global Electoral College (GEC) – we can dream that it would have an impact, at least.
Now, this isn’t some kind of ‘let’s influence the silly Americans’ à la the Guardian’s G2 2004, but a rather nice re-drawing of the electoral map. In the new version 195 of the world’s countries get a say in the outcome of the next presidential election.
“America’s presidential campaign has fascinated people around the world, the Economist.com’s editor, Daniel Franklin said In the release accompanying the map. “Maddeningly, though, only Americans get to vote. But what if the entire world had a say?”
Although based on the American system, it aims to put pay to the significance of the swing vote (‘there are few countries whose votes in the GEC are a foregone conclusion’). The vote closes November 2 2008 when the results will be announced live in New York.
Online, users can look at the world map to see how each of candidates is doing on a global, and country-by-country basis, and find links to the Economist’s election analysis. Right now it’s looking pretty good for Obama. For starters he has 94 per cent of votes in India, 88 per cent of votes in Britain, and 86 per cent support him in China.
It gets more complicated than this, so visit the website for more details.
The Musalman, which is handwritten by Islamic calligraphers, is surviving despite the onslaught of mass and multimedia publishing in India.
Vogue India uses controversial images in their August issue – the season’s expensive accessories modelled by ordinary Indians.
Boys as young as eight years old are selling BBC Magazines in India for as little as 12p a day, according to a Sunday Times report.
Interesting comparison by Daniel Bennett of mainstream media coverage and a Twitter account of today’s bombings in Bangalore, India.
Bennett points out that updates to the microblogging tool by technology entrepreneur Mukund Mohan show the changing nature of breaking news (the oldest is at the moment):
Mohan’s details of telephone lines being down and news of evacuations, show how news organisations can harness the tool in emergencies.
Felix Dennis, the man behind Dennis Publishing and magazines Stuff and The Week, is planning to launch an Australian edition of The Week in October.
Future plans also involve editions for India and Canada.
“I don’t care if I’m investing in a so-called sunset industry. The sun is setting very, very slowly. And there are only two types of businesses: the well run and the badly run. The well run will survive a recession,” he said.
The online consumption of newspapers has risen by 20% in the last year and by 100% over the last three years, according to stats released at the World Association of Newspapers (WAN) conference.
The World Digital Media Trends report – collected by 71 research companies and covering 232 countries – also suggested a 13.77% rise in the number of newspaper websites in the world bringing the total to 4,500.
52% of readers who view newspaper websites spend the same amount of time reading newspapers, according to the stats; while 35% say the time they spend with either print or online newspapers has increased.
Figures presented for print circulation worldwide presented an equally positive picture.
The circulation of paid for print dailies rose by 2.98% last year with the total number of titles increasing by 27.22%.
573,235,00 paid and free newspapers are distributed every day and 1.75 billion people read a print edition a day.
Print circulation in China, India and Latin America also showed growth.
Presenting the figures, WAN chairman Timothy Balding said these were just the facts, without sentiment or analysis.
And while figures pointing out that revenue in the advertising industry is still dominated by the print went hand in hand with the positivity of the circulation figures, follow-up sessions at the conference on integration and the challenges of web 2.0 to newspapers will perhaps paint a more cautious picture.
As Christophe Pleitgen, head of news for Reuters UK, told delegates in a later session:
“We are living on borrowed time. In a sense, some of us may have more time, while colleagues in the US would say it is high time. It’s great that newspaper editors are optimistic about the future. They have gotten on with integrating their newsrooms – doing that is more urgent than most of us think.”