The initiative began in Mountain View, then expanded into places like Santa Monica, Chicago, New York and Boston.

About a month ago, Google announced that it was kicking off its North American tour for the series, with dates in Portland, Victoria, New Orleans, and Albuquerque.

Today, Google announced a more global initiative for the series. Events will be coming to Amsterdam, Bogota, Melbourne and Vienna.

“There’s plenty more to come in 2012 as well, when we’ll be visiting Auckland, Berlin, Buenos Aires, London, Mexico City, Paris, and Sydney, just to name a few,” says Arlene Lee of Google’s Inside AdSense team. “Members of the AdSense team will share the latest product updates and offer 1-to-1 optimization consultations, and you’ll hear from experts on areas such as DFP Small Business, Mobile, YouTube, and Webmaster Tools. You’ll also have the chance to meet other local publishers during the day to share your experiences.”

If you need an invite to an event, Google has a form here you can fill out to request one.

The company’s publishing segment operating revenue was down 5.3% year-over-year to $1.01 billion for the quarter. Ad revenues were $670.7 million in the quarter compared to $722.3 million in the fourth quarter last year.

Digital revenues in the Publishing segment, however, were up 6.9% in the quarter.

Here’s the part of the report that pertains to Gannett’s digital business:

Digital segment operating revenues were 9.4 percent higher in the quarter and totaled $181.5 million due primarily to strong revenue growth at CareerBuilder. Digital Segment operating expenses increased 10.6 percent to $142.8 million reflecting significantly higher sales incentive and bonus costs associated with higher revenue levels for CareerBuilder. Due to substantially higher year-over-year revenue as the quarter progressed, a significant number of sales personnel exceeded their annual sales goals very late in the quarter, and were therefore entitled to incremental commissions and bonuses. There were also incremental costs for new initiatives and new product development by PointRoll and ShopLocal. These incremental costs for CareerBuilder, PointRoll and ShopLocal together totaled approximately $9 million for the quarter. Digital segment operating income was 5.3 percent higher on a reported basis and was up 2.5 percent on a non-GAAP basis. Operating cash flow was $46.6 million, an increase of 3.2 percent.

USATODAY.com is one of the most popular newspaper sites on the Web and the USA TODAY app is now a top news app with more than 11 million downloads including those across iPad, iPhone, Android and Windows. In December, Gannett’s consolidated domestic Internet audience share was 50.8 million unique visitors reaching 23.0 percent of the Internet audience, according to Comscore Media Metrix. Newsquest is also an Internet leader in the UK where its network of web sites attracted 66.3 million monthly page impressions from approximately 8.7 million unique users in December 2011. CareerBuilder’s unique visitors in the fourth quarter averaged 21.2 million.

“The challenge for anybody running a media company these days can be described in one word, and it’s ‘revenue’,” says Curley in the above video. “Finding the new products that keep you relevant that drive new types of revenue, is absolutely the challenge.”

“Tom Curley was the perfect leader to guide AP through the roughest times the media industry has ever seen,” said William Dean Singleton, chairman of the AP Board of Directors. “He was a visionary who understood the need for AP to quickly adapt to new digital times, a transformative leader who created innovative new business opportunities for our industry and an indefatigable newsman who made sure AP remained the definitive trusted source for breaking news.”

“I told the board some time ago when I would be retiring, but it is hard to think about leaving this special organization,” said Curley. “There is this passion, this commitment to journalism in its purest form that makes it unique on the planet. Nowhere else does anyone have such a direct opportunity to commit journalism and have as much impact as they do here. I got to be a part of it, and play a role in its mission to break news first from around the world. I’ve been honored to work for AP.”

Curley is credited with “charting AP’s move into the digital space”. Interestingly, the AP’s interaction with that space has been the subject of a great deal of criticism over the years, as the AP has battled news aggregation and linking to their content.

It will be interesting to see Curley’s replacement’s approach in this area. The Huffington Post shared an email Curley sent to AP Staff. In that, he says:

The battles we have fought – for accountability by elected and appointed leaders, for the protection of content often obtained at personal price or for leading the evolution in how the public is informed – will require your vigilance long after I leave. I have enjoyed the fight, and been grateful for your inspired support. No place is better equipped to continue it than AP.

While these are turbulent times in media, AP is in a good place to make a transition. Our biggest projects, including new technology platforms and creative new products, will start rolling out over the next weeks. Nearly all major contracts are signed. We have one of the most tested and innovative management teams in media. And we are fortunate to be guided by a board composed of savvy leaders thoroughly committed to extending AP’s mission and upholding its values.

On that note about new technology platforms, the AP is heavily involved with NewsRight, content “protection” platform that 29 news organizations teamed up on. We’re still waiting to see how that plays out. It’s already drawn comparisons to Righthaven, though NewsRight rejects such comparisons.

AdSense had some issues on Friday, where ads were not loading. People took to Google’s AdSense Help Forum to complain. One thread began with a post:

There have been many threads in the forum by publishers, who are seeing blank spaces where AdSense ads should be. The accounts are in good standing, and there has been no communication from Google regarding the account or discontinuation of ad serving to specific sites.

At least the no communication part eventually changed. Google employee “AdSensePro Chris” eventually chimed in:

Thanks for posting about this here. I’m working to get you more info on what happened, but in looking at many sites it does appear that ad serving has been restored.

Thanks for your patience.

Pamela Parker, writing for MarketingLand, shared the following statement from Google:

“There is currently an issue with AdSense for Content ads not showing on a small number of publishers’ sites. Our engineers are working to investigate and resolve the issue as quickly as possible.”

The issue is still on the “known issues” page in Google’s AdSense help center. It says:

Details: We are aware that AdSense ads were not displaying on some partners’ sites early this morning (Pacific time). The issue has been resolved for many partners, and we will continue to provide updates here as soon as we can.

Another known issue listed is: Ads not displaying on HP TouchPads or in Kindle Fire’s Silk browser. For that one, Google says:

Details: We are aware that AdSense ads are not currently displaying on the HP TouchPad or Kindle Fire’s Silk browser. Our engineers are aware of the issue and are working on a solution.

As Barry Schwartz points out, some publishers are complaining about losing income from ads not being shown. Google hasn’t really addressed this.

[Image credit: kawanet]

The Poynter Institute, whose mission it is to make sure “communities have access to excellent journalism,” has posted an interesting series of articles pointing out journalism’s failures with regards to former Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno.

Paterno is reportedly in serious condition in a hospital in State College, PA, but is still alive. However, Penn State student news site Onward State reported that Paterno died last night. Once that initial report came out, various other news organizations jumped on the story and started falsely reporting his death too.

While it’s been deleted now, CBS News tweeted that he had died, apparently based on the Onward State report, but without attribution. Poynter shows the embed.

In another of the Poynter articles, Craig Silverman points out how “journalists’ hunger for glory” can get them in trouble. “The tension between speed and accuracy is always highlighted in these cases,” he writes.

“Journalists need to do a better job calculating the risk of being first, rather than focusing on the benefit,” Silverman writes. “How many people would have recalled — or cared — that Onward State broke the news? Aside from some journalists, I’d wager very few people. This kind of breaking news report spreads quickly, and whatever credit that may have gone to Onward State in the early minutes would have disappeared once the information was confirmed and widespread.”

The speed vs. accuracy issue has become more of a challenge for reporters thanks to the realtime nature of today’s web. This seems to be brought to light when false death reports emerge, then are proven wrong. Remember when this happened with Jon Bon Jovi recently?

It does make you wonder how many other falsities are being taken as truths, with stories that don’t demand as much attention as the death of a celebrity.

Onward State’s managing editor has resigned. He posted the following apology:

Earlier this evening, Onward State reported that Joe Paterno had passed away; however, the mountain of evidence stacked opposite that report became too much to ignore. At this time, I would like to issue an official retraction of our earlier tweets.

Devon Edwards

Apple more or less confirmed those reports today when it began sending out invitations to an event in New York City on January 19th at 10 AM in the Guggenheim Museum. The invitation is quite short on details – which is not at all surprising – but at the very least we can probably expect Apple to announce that it is bringing textbooks into iBooks.

We will definitely be paying attention to this event, and will let you know what Apple announces next week.

The publication announced that it will come pre-loaded on the Android-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and other tablets, including the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7, after that.

Devices will also get the app with an update to the software.

A message on The Daily’s site says:

The Daily comes loaded on the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, with more tablets to come. If you own one of these devices you’ll find The Daily in your apps—just open it to enjoy a free week for free. Choose between monthly ($3.99/month) or annual ($39.99/year—a 15% savings) subscriptions, conveniently charged directly through your Verizon Wireless bill.

“Verizon Wireless has been a key partner since we launched on iPad, and we’re thrilled to now be available to Android customers as we continue to expand and grow throughout the mobile space,” says publisher Greg Clayman.

The Daily was the number 3 top grossing iPad app in 2011.

The problem, as it’s always been, however, is that there’s a lot of gray area between these organizations’ demands, historically, and the reality of how online news actually works. For example, remember the AP’s attempts to outlaw search engine links? Linking, which last I checked is largely how news aggregation works, is not something a lot of sites are going to be willing to pay to do. Links are kind of what make the web a web.

This collaboration is called NewsRight, and it’s being led by former ABC News President David Westin, who has assumed the CEO role.

The 29 organizations include: the Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The McClatchy Company, Hearst Newspapers (see the entire list at the end of this article). Combined, the organizations account for 841 websites representing newspapers accounting for a combined circulation of over 147 million Americans, and 170 million web readers.

“More news is available more ways than ever in history. But if reliable information is to continue to flourish, the companies investing in creating content need efficient ways to license it as broadly as possible,” says Westin. “NewsRight’s mission is to make sure consumers continue to benefit from the all the original news reporting they want while ensuring those who republish content do so with integrity. ”

“Working with NewsRight benefits digital innovators because they can license news content in their applications quickly and easily; news organizations that provide the content for those applications benefit because they can more efficiently license their content to a broader range of uses; and consumers benefit because they will have assured access to a robust supply of credible news and information in new and exciting ways,” he says.

On the licensing front, in short, NewsRight aims to make it easy for third-parties to obtain legal clearance to use content from the participating publishers. By paying, obviously.

The question is, will they pay? Will things really change? I guess we’ll see. Another question is really, who all do they expect to pay? If a site is running their content in its entirety, then yes, payment makes sense. But what about a blog or other news site pulling a quote for a story? What about the same in a Google+ post?

NewsRight reportedly intends to encode its stories with data that will let the organization know where it’s being used, as well as who is reading it. It’s unclear how much of the content has to be used to trigger this.

NewsRight’s initial investors include: Advance Publications, The Associated Press, Axel Springer Group, A.H.Belo Management Services, Belo Management Services, Business Wire, Community Newspaper Holdings, El Dia, Galveston Newspapers, Gatehouse Media, The Gazette Company, Hearst Newspapers, Journal Communications, Landmark Media Enterprises, The McClatchy Company, Media General, MediaNews Group, Morris Communications, Morris Multimedia, NPG Newspapers, The New York Times Company, Ogden Newspapers, Pioneer Newspapers, Schurz Communications, The E.W. Scripps Company, Stephens Media, Swift Communications, Times Publishing Co. and The Washington Post Company.

We’ll be following this story in the future. NewsRight deems itself “the right path for news on the web.” Do you agree?

All Things D first reported the event, and Tech Crunch later added their own confirmation, saying that the announcement would take place in New York City and would revolve around the iBooks platform. The announcement was also said to be “minor” in scale.

Fox News’ Clayton Morris is now reporting that his sources have revealed that the announcement will be “small in size but large in scope; a big announcement in a demure space.” He says that he expects two fairly large announcements to occur that deal with Apple’s role in the education space.

MacRumors has received some information that might corroborate reports that Apple is planning on throwing their weight behind digital textbooks.

Adding to the speculation about textbooks perhaps playing a role in the upcoming announcement is information we’ve received from a source indicating that Apple last month filmed a series of short interviews with textbook industry executives. The interviews are said to have been of the type that would be used in one of Apple’s promotional overview videos for a new product or service.

Our source cautions us that there is no direct evidence tying the interviews to the upcoming media event and that Apple frequently films promotional video segments and commercials that never see the light of the day, but the timing of the filming seems to be in line with possible preparations for the media event.

Of course, Steve Jobs biographer and bestselling author Walter Isaacson has said on multiple occasions that Jobs wanted to do something about textbooks – to make them an important feature of the iPad.

The second part of the media event could focus on self-publishing, according to ereader site goodereader.

Apple is going to be holding an exclusive event in New York city later this month to possibly launch a new program for their iBooks and Publishing platform. Sources close to the matter have told us that they intend on launching a new digital self-publishing platform to get peoples content into the iBookstore. This is a huge step forward for Apple to compete with Amazon (DTP) and Barnes and Noble (Pubit).

This program would utilize EPUB 3, the IDPF’s open standard for e-books.

So, part one: Textbooks, and part two: self-publishing. Certainly two announcements that could be seen as small in size but large in scope.

Together, all of these reports give us a look into what Apple could be planning for the end of the month. While this is all still a bunch of speculations from various sources, one thing everyone can agree on is that the event will probably have nothing to do with any new hardware.

“We’ve added a critical piece to our puzzle with the acquisition of Toolbox.com,” said Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah. “The IT community relies on itself to make decisions and be informed. Owning the leading professional networking site is a significant strategic advantage for Ziff Davis.”

Toolbox.com will become part of Ziff Davis’ B2B Focus, which was formed when the company acquired Focus Research.

This makes the fourth acquisition for Ziff Davis in the past year.

Toolbox.com has 2.3 million registered members.

Ziff Davis sites already reach 40 million per month. Properties include: PCMag, BuyerBase, LogicBuy, Geek.com, ExtremeTech, AppScout and B2B Focus.