Competition between The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal is heating up as the U.S economy sours. The Journal's expanded news coverage and new lifestyle magazine are starting to attract wealthy consumers and luxury advertisers from the NYT, such as Saks, a Times advertiser since 1924. Dolce & Gabbana SpA and LVMH Moet Hennessy have also started advertising in the Journal. Circulation at both papers is also shifting. The Journal's average individually paid circ rose 2.4% to 1.4 million as of September, compared to a year ago, per the ABC. The Times' slid 5.5% to 858,985 on …

Workers who have recently been let go from media companies can try blaming consumers for not buying more American cars in the last year, and auto companies for spending less to convince them. Car companies' spending cuts of 10% in the first half of 2008, per Nielsen, confirms all the anecdotal evidence media companies have been offering up throughout the year. It also means that the numbers for the second half of the year -- when the economy really collapsed -- are going to be brutal. That explains why everyone from Time Warner's Time Inc. to NBC is …

Since becoming MTV chief executive in 2004, Judy McGrath has pushed her company to grow in new ways, raising the number of countries that receive MTV's television programming to 162. To diversify revenue sources, she has pushed for designing and selling toys and clothing that tie into its shows. Plus, she embraced the potential of video games. But in the contest for the attention of her young audience, the Internet is a stubborn rival. MYV has expanded its digital offerings, but it is not yet clear if it will be able to change fast enough to fit its …

Here's another out-of-the-box idea for struggling newspapers. They should act as local ad agencies, helping local businesses buy key words for Google AdWords and place Facebook ads. Stephen Gray, former managing publisher of The Christian Science Monitor and now a director of the American Press Institute, thinks it would work. Gray says a key problem is that most newspapers cede all local search to Google or Yahoo, which tend to do it badly. Audiences have split in a million directions. By definition, regional newspapers are in a local market with the job of helping local businesses succeed. If …

Zinio, a vendor of digital magazines, is launching a service that enables publishers and users to search for content within digital magazine products. It then allows people to send the layout of the magazine page to others via email. The service -- which is free to users and publishers that have an account with Zinio -- also lets users post replicas of magazine pages on Web sites, blogs and social networking sites like Facebook. While the search and the individual pages are free, the service makes money by selling single issues and one-year subscriptions of the digital …

If anything could slow the decline of evening news viewership, it should have been this year's riveting presidential campaign. The cable news networks benefited mightily, more than doubling their prime-time audiences this fall. But the overall number of people watching the network evening newscasts actually shrank slightly in the last months of the presidential campaign, despite the programs' heavy political focus. Viewership was down 280,000 since Sept. 22 compared with the same period last year, per Nielsen. Of the three programs, the top-rated "NBC Nightly News" was the only one to register an uptick in audience, growing …

With notable exceptions, people generally spent less time per visit on newspaper Web sites in October 2008 compared to October 2007, per Nielsen. Overall, the number of unique visitors soared. Just a few sites enjoyed significant boosts in the length of visits, year over year. Politico, which increased its monthly uniques 178%, upped the time spent on the site from 9 minutes to almost 19 minutes. The Houston Chronicle doubled the average time spent to 30 minutes. The New York Times went from 35 minutes last year to 40 minutes this year. Among major newspapers that saw …

Two separate paths are open to business-to-business publishers, and companies should pick one and organize their mission, staffing and technology accordingly, says a new Booz & Co. study. "A Roadmap for Profitable Revenue Growth," was presented at the American Business Media meeting. The first path focuses on marketers and includes advertising, marketing and custom services. The second path focuses on end-users and includes content, data, applications and services. In today's harsh marketplace it is too complex to try to follow both paths simultaneously, says the report. Of the two paths, an emphasis on end-users has a bit more …