Metro Newpaper

Another great initiative from Dentsu London.

They've taken returned copies of the Metro, screenprinted them and given them to Borough Market stallholders to wrap their wares over the Christmas spending spree.

Great design, green as hell and giving something to the community. What's not to like?

More detail from the Dentsu website.

Politico isn't a newspaper. But it might be the future of print.

Interesting article in yesterday's Observer by Peter Preston, commenting on the US political news specialist that employs 175 people to broadcast in print, on video and over the internet.  And according to Preston, in doing this, it focuses on subject, not medium - and makes a profit doing so.

For the full article go to:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/07/peter-preston-politico

The Newspaper is dead! Long Live the Newspaper!

We've talked previously about the (unwinnable?) paywall battle about to be fought between major news corporations and Google as newspapers struggle to address circulation decline and the loss of advertising revenue through other charging models but here's another possible solution to the problem.

Coming from Berlin, long a hotbed of innovation, comes Niiu, who have partnered with (so far) 17 German and International newspapers (including both the New York Times and Washington Post) to provide tailored content in a 24 page newspaper individualised to your own taste. Customers can choose which page or section from the selected titles they would like included along with RSS feed from hundreds of online sources. If this seems too much like hard work, you can also choose from pre-defined profiles. Order before 2pm and your individualised publication is delivered to your door next morning for only 1.8 euros.

Cofounder Wanja Oberhof told Time : "It's an individualized paper which has a wide appeal because people, especially students who grew up with the Web, want to get their news from different sources." Apparently, despite the diversity of media they're familiar with their target readers still prefer print. He told The Editor's Weblog: "We asked this target group which is the most comfortable and which is the best distribution channel; is it an e-paper, is it only on mobile, is it printed or online? The feedback was that for now, paper is still the best distribution channel."

This isn't the first Web-to-Print initiative we've seen but it's interesting to see the apparent enthusiastic backing from traditional newspaper publishers who might have seen this as competition. One to watch.

News Corp or News Corpse?

After a long late summer (it was summer wasn't it?) layoff we're back. Sorry for the hiatus but we've been immersed in all sorts of interesting stuff. More of which to follow.

First off though, Rupert Murdoch's alleged deal with Microsoft to "de-index" News Corp content from Google in favour of an exclusive paid-content deal with Bing.

Does this set the scene for a search enginge battle which provides a ray of light for the ailing newspaper industry. Some things worth thinking about:

Will the extra money News Corp gets from Microsoft outweigh the lost traffic from Google?
Can News Corp afford to jeopardize it's online share of voice?
Is this a sustainable business model for Microsoft?
Will searchers even notice the difference if Google doesn't list News Corp content?
If this battle ensures, what does it mean for the future of search?

Some seemingly well informed comment from Business Week here:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc20091124_203544.htm

Interested to hear your views.