As you may recall, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch began talking about blocking search engines and news aggregators a couple months ago. This escalated discussions that have essentially been going on for over a decade about the online news industry and fair use.

Leading publishers are getting together for what is widely being considered something of a "Hulu for magazines." Publishers involved include Conde Nast, Hearst, Meredith, News Corporation and Time Inc.

As you’ve more than likely heard by now, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch in an interview last week talked about the possibility of blocking search engines from indexing News Corp. publications’ content. While this may or may not actually happen, it is one of the latest (and biggest) examples of a publisher taking the position of search engines hurting them rather than helping them.

Bing appears to be either testing or rolling out a new feature for news sites in its search results. The feature brings up a few of the most recent posts from a news source, when that source itself is the query.

I say this is either a test or a gradual roll out, because it is not happening in my own searches. TechCrunch has a piece about the feature (and a screenshot), which shows it, so evidently some people have it.

An interesting topic was discussed at the BlogWorld Expo in a session called the "Death and Rebirth of Journalism," which WebProNews attended.

The Washington Post has sent a memo to its editors/journalists outlining the publication’s social media policies. They don’t leave too many options for what is actually allowed to take place on social networks. This is an issue that never really seems to go away, and is brought up every time a publication’s social media policies are discovered.

Paid Content UK conducted a Poll with Harris Interactive, asking respondents how much they would pay for online news, and what they would do if they’re favorite news sites started charging. The findings, perhaps not so shocking, indicate that users basically don’t really want to pay.

Google has announced the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, which it refers to as a real-time marketplace for helping online publishers and ad networks/agencies buy and sell display ad space. Prices in the marketplace are set in a real-time auction.

Google says it has three principles for its approach to display advertising:

Google News is now labeling certain publications as blogs in search results. I’m not sure exactly how long it has been like this, but I noticed it for the first time today. In the past they have separated "news" and "blogs" on some results pages, but in what I’m talking about now, the results are mixed together, but some publications have "(blog)" written beside their names.

You can see a few examples here:

I thought that one of the more interesting topics addressed at Search Engine Strategies San Jose a while back was that of SEO and the publishing industry. This is an industry seemingly at war with entities like Google (at least partially), even though there are clearly measures publishers could take, which would make Google and Google News in particular work to their advantage.

Comments on blogs posts and articles have in the past generally been a good measurement of how people have engaged with content, but as the web becomes more social and "real-time," the conversation is going all over the place, and there are other ways that people are engaging in conversation about content (this is why shareability is so important by the way).

At the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, WebProNews attended the session on how SEO can help save the publishing industry, a quite interesting topic, considering the controversy the industry has been experiencing of late. Do you think SEO can help publishers save their businesses? Share your thoughts here.

Jim Spanfeller, President and CEO of Forbes.com, who also happens to be treasurer of the Online Publishers Association and Chairman Emeritus of the Interactive Advertising Bureau spoke his mind on the state of the online advertising industry in a guest post at PaidContent.org.

WebMediaBrands (formerly JupiterMedia) has just announced that it is selling Internet.com for $18 million to QuinStreet Inc. QuinStreet calls itself the leader in online performance-based vertical marketing.

There has been a lot of talk about the DiggBar and its handling of URLs this week, after the company implemented some changes in its service. To clear the air, Digg has addressed the situation.

Digg CEO Jay Adelson issued the following statement on Digg the Blog:

Google has posted a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for publishers who either have their content picked up by Google News or are looking to do so. On the page Google answers questions regarding acceptance, content inclusion, sitemaps, and errors.

Last month Compete.com launched with a new look. WebProNews had a few words with Compete’s Director of Market Development, Aaron Prebluda who talked a little bit about the new design. Have you used Compete since its relaunch? What do you think about it? Share your thoughts.

Forrester research has an interesting blog post up looking at the question, "What happens when online CPMs get so close to zero that they make ad-supported businesses unsustainable?" Online publishers might not like some of the answers that can be given in response.

Suppose that, just in order to get an idea of how much money you’re making, you had to look up an ever-changing conversion rate and multiply a pair of numbers on a daily basis.  Well, overseas AdSense publishers have been doing this for some time, but thanks to a new move on Google’s part, the process is getting much simpler.