To celebrate the recent launch of Metroland's Connecting With Your Community initiative, they will be giving away prizes to their online fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Prizes include two tickets to a Toronto Blue Jays game on Aug.

Congratulations to the team at the Goderich Signal-Star who rallied this week after a horrific trucking accident that seriously injured its occupants and destroyed 300,000 flyers destined for homes throughout Huron County. Advertising Manager Kevin Shrier told OCNA how everyone pulled together over three days to contact the clients, get flyers produced, shipped, and distributed to readers without missing a beat. The accident happened on a stretch of Hwy 8 between Stratford and Mitchell and caused the truck to burst into flames.

The Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism released the ninth edition of its Digital Future Project this week. The Digital Future Report, which has tracked a non-representative sample of Internet users in the U.S. since 2000, has identified an assortment of findings on the influence of the Internet and online technology.

At the July meeting the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) board of directors voted to expand its list of North American directors from 36 to 38 with one new Canadian newspaper publisher and advertiser or ad agency representative. Shelagh Stoneham, vice president brand and marketing communications at Rogers Communications Inc., will represent Canadian advertisers.

When news strikes in your community, do you stop to consider its impact on other locales? What about collaborating with other community newspapers to cover the story from a different angle? With the success of this year’s Community Newspaper Review program, which saw the inclusion of out-of-province publications for the first time, OCNA hopes to encourage further collaboration between community newspapers both within Ontario and across the country.

Like all humans, journalists are far from perfect. It is inevitable that typos will be made, names misspelled, or sources misquoted (and in some cases, a wildly blatant error such as the Chicago Tribune’s 1948 headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” could be made).

After recessions end, employers start hiring again. The increase in hiring demand creates opportunities not only for those looking for jobs, but companies that provide services to employers. A whitepaper prepared by WANTED Technologies Corporation, a real-time employment analytics company based in Quebec City, has examined ten different ways newspapers and other suppliers can take advantage of the hiring boom when it comes.

Two days after closing a $1.1 billion sale with Canwest to acquire its print and online assets (11 major daily and 26 community newspapers, including some of Canada’s largest dailies), recently formed Postmedia Network has announced its executive team.

In order to discourage the posting of inappropriate comments about stories on its website, The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts has adopted a new policy regarding online commenting. An announcement was made on TheSunChronicle.com on Wednesday, which stated those who wished to comment would be required to pay a 99-cent fee to register, and use their real name for posting privileges on the site.