Obama, Lagarde, Romney to provide keynotes at NAA mediaXchange

Three names that regularly appear in the nation's newspapers now appear in the NAA mediaXchange 2012 lineup. President Barack Obama and International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde are speaking at The Associated Press Annual Meeting on April 3, while former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is addressing the NAA/ASNE Annual Luncheon on April 4. NAA mediaXchange runs April 2-5 at the Marriott Wardman Park in Washington, D.C. Visit mediaxchange.naa.org for the complete schedule and registration details.More

Is Procter & Gamble losing its edge?
Advertising Age
While Procter & Gamble has gotten plenty of media play lately over its digital ambitions, it faces growing questions about how much good digital marketing can do amid broader signs P&G is losing its edge. Some analysts and competitors question whether P&G can digitize its way out of its deeper issues, or enjoy the same scale advantages in a digital world that it had in traditional marketing.More

Mobile barcodes drive traffic to brand sites from print
eMarketer
Only 4 percent of U.S. print ads contained 2-D mobile barcodes in 2011, but their use is growing, according to advertising tracking firm Competitrack. A recent report by the company found that well-planned campaigns put mobile barcodes in attention-grabbing places, and then gave customers a clear call to action to lead them to content.More

Why do magazines look so terrible on the new iPad?
Mashable
Among the biggest complaints with the new iPad: Magazines look terrible on its high-resolution display. The problem has to do with the way the files are exported. What used to work on the one-screen-size versions of the iPad is now inferior on new iPads.More

AOL prepping weekly iPad magazine called Huffington
Forbes
Top editors at the Huffington Post Media Group are moving forward with plans for a new digital magazine called Huffington, created expressly for the iPad and other tablets. Like The Daily, News Corp.'s tablet newspaper, Huffington will take the form of an app rather than a mobile-optimized website.More

Despite growing social media ad spend, TV still dominates
Advertising Age
While social media are getting a lot of attention and spending, the big bucks are going where they've always gone — TV. Social-budget dollars are coming from print, radio and other Web properties. Magna Global's estimate for ad spending in the first quarter is print down about 5.6 percent, radio down 0.3 percent, outdoor up 5 percent and TV up 4.5 percent.More

Patch ignored early advice about one journalist-per-town model
Newspaper Turnaround
Quinnipiac University journalism professor Rich Hanley said Patch expanded too fast, and without a solid plan for local advertising sales. "The second flaw was they didn't promote the sites enough," he said, wondering why they didn't do things like sponsor the high school football field scoreboards in Patch towns.More

Amazon set to launch trio of tablets
The Next Web
Online retail giant Amazon is set to expand its Kindle tablet range with the launch of three new models in 2012, debuting two new 7-inch devices and an 8.9-inch tablet that target low, medium and high-end markets.More

Globe debuts digital facsimile of print version
The Boston Globe
The ePaper allows subscribers to read the newspaper electronically exactly as they would the print version, but on a laptop, tablet or mobile phone. The new ePaper is formatted the same as the print version, with sections, articles and photographs laid out just as they are in the paper, meaning readers are able to browse through it in the same familiar fashion but by using digital scroll features.More

The Wall Street Journal shares memorable quotes on Pinterest
10,000 Words
Recently, the venerable news organization started experimenting with how to use Pinterest and created a quotes board. Each pin is an image of a quote from a recent WSJ story shown floating over a column of blurred-out text. A short description accompanies each pin, allowing the quote to stand alone. By clicking on an individual quote, readers/pinners are taken to the original story.More

App puts local spin on Masters golf
NetNewsCheck
The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, hometown paper of The Masters with a print circulation of around 65,000, always believed that its coverage of the golf tournament — a marquee effort for the newsroom for the past 76 years — could hold its own next to the big guns. So to prove it, the paper launched an app putting its best game on the fairway.More