In a move that could be a sign of Zimbabwe opening up to more media freedom, the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe has been given leave by the government to resume its operations.

After a five year ban, the Associated Newspapers of Zimbabwe has had its operating license reinstated by the Information Ministry. The government has also eased some of its restrictions on the BBC, which is definitely a step toward more transparency in the Zimbabwean government.

This easing of restrictions is likely the result of pressures on the unity government formed by Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai earlier in the year. Due to economic and humanitarian pressures, the Zimbabwean government has had to demonstrate commitment to political reforms in order to receive foreign aid. Part of these reforms has been the establishment of the Zimbabwe Media Commission, which will oversee the implementation of new policies concerning media accreditation in Zimbabwe.

This is the best news for newspapers in Zimbabwe for a long time, with strict licensing laws having been enacted in 2002 by Mugabe’s government. The exact situation in Zimbabwe has been difficult to report on for many years now, so it will be intriguing to see what the newspapers will report on, as they may be concerned about the possibility of getting shut down once more.

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Readers of The New York Post are set to become little Shakespeares, with a new online service encouraging them to create new words. Whether this will be a case of a million monkeys at a million typewriters creating Hamlet is yet to be seen.

The New York Post is introducing the Addictionary service, which asks users to create words and then define them. Other users may then rate and comment on those words. More popular words could potentially end up in common usage, especially if large swathes of New York Post readers become exposed to them.

Addictionary has been used successfully on some other websites, such as the Comedy Central site and at Dictionary.com. What The New York Post and SpectrumDNA, creators of the Addictionary platform, hope the service will do is increase the word-of-mouth knowledge of the newspaper. With many newspapers struggling in the current economy, finding ways to get people talking about your newspaper has become a focus of many of the bigger newspaper companies.

The hope is that greater awareness of The New York Post and its website will lead to more traffic and thus more temptation for advertisers. Newspapers rely on advertiser revenues, which have gone down tremendously in the current economy. Finding ways to increase circulation can allow newspapers to charge more for their advertising space.

This tactic of getting users to make up new words seems a bit too gimmicky to be helpful in raising advertising revenue, but as The New York Post intends to release various merchandise based on Addictionary in the future, it may also be looking to expand into new revenue streams.

With rumours abounding about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi having parties with call girls, two Italian newspapers have released tapes that allegedly contain audio of Berlusconi talking to call girls.

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As Google is possibly the largest and most widely used news aggregator on the planet, newspapers have been trying to put pressure on it to pay aggregation payments for some time. Publisher overtures to lawmakers recently have Google slightly puzzled, as the Google News manager Josh Cohen has suggested that news sites who do not want Google to index them should simply block the Google spiders with two simple lines of code.

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The Newspaper Licensing Agency apparently has plans to expand its mandate to cover online use of news articles, angering the Chartered Institute of Public Relations.

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A UK tabloid has been forced to pay £20,000 in damages to actress Kate Beckinsale for claiming she was axed from the remake of Barbarella in favour of Rose McGowan, and also for making comments that her career is in decline.

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The British Library has catapulted the 19th century into the age of the World Wide Web by putting its 19th century newspaper archives online.

Over 2 million pages of material have been posted online, from 49 national and regional newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. While the British Library has had hard copy versions that have been hard to access for many years, this archive provides a powerful search feature that makes it much easier to find the most important stories of the times these newspapers were printed.

Some of the important events that the newspapers cover include reportage of the first England-Australia Test Match as well as coverage of India’s First War of Independence, or the Indian Mutiny as it is known to some. Many more key historical events are also covered, providing historians both professional and amateur with an invaluable online resource for research into the 19th century.

While freely searchable, the British Library newspaper archives are not freely readable to the general public. Those in higher education in the UK have free access to articles, as well as members of some libraries. Members of the general public, however, will need to register and purchase a 24-hour or 7-day pass in order to gain access to articles in the archive.

The archive could be a valuable tool for genealogists, historians of 19th century Britain, as well as newspaper historians. Authors may also be interested in using the archive in order to develop a better understanding of the writing style and language used in the period.

News Group has reportedly paid out £1 million to settle cases surrounding the alleged hacking of celebrity phones.

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Just to get the ball rolling, here’s a simple list of newspapers available in the UK.

Just a couple of UK newspapers

• BBC News Sky News
• BBC ‘On This Day’
• ITN NewsNow CNN
• Reuters Google News
• Times
• The Guardian Observer
• Independent
• Sunday Times
• Daily Telegraph
• Financial Times
• Daily Express Daily Mail
• Daily Mirror Sunday Mirror
• Daily Star
• News of The World
• The Sun