20051101   

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Wikipedia, an online internet-user written encyclopedia (more info here) is quickly outdoing the New York Times in internet traffic, according to Alexa.

On the same topic, this MediaDailyNews article says 2005 will go down as one of the worst newspaper years in history:

The only really good news for publishers is that [investment firm Goldman Sachs] believes the cost of newsprint, which has risen recently, is likely to fall slightly in 2006, as demand falls more quickly than production capacity. The report said newsprint prices would peak and then slowly recede in the second half of the year.

Even so, this good news is scant relief for an industry besieged by flat ad revenues, falling stocks, and fleeing subscribers. Last week, Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer for Publicis Groupe, told a newspaper--the Chicago Tribune--"newspapers are at a tipping point," in which online media will start to take more readership and more ad dollars. He added that newspapers are in the worst situation of all news media for growth as "the least visually engaging and least youth oriented" medium.

Interestingly enough, the founder of Wikipedia wants to make material available to developing nations in print:

"I have always liked the idea of going to print because a big part of what we are about is to disseminate knowledge throughout the world and not just to people who have broadband,"

Some 350,000 people have contributed terms, background, context or simply corrected spellings for more than 2 million Wikipedia entries in more than 25 active languages. About 800,000 entries are in English.

via micropersuasion.com.