In a press release issued late Thursday, USA Today announced it would be undertaking a major organizational restructuring effective today.

USA Today publisher Dave Hunke told the AP the publication would lay off 130 people, or about 9 percent of its total workforce of 1,500 employees. The changes represent the biggest organizational shift in USA Today‘s 28-year history, as the Gannett flagship moves away from print and toward mobile.

“This significant restructuring reflects USA Today‘s evolution from a newspaper company to a multi-platform media company,” Hunke said in the news release. “When USA Today first launched in 1982, we led the news and information industry in aligning our content with readers and advertisers. I’m confident these key executive appointments in new and current departments will continue our legacy as a vital, valuable media brand across print, digital and mobile platforms.”

USA Today‘s print edition is still the big bread-winner for the organization, but the changes represent a focus on emerging platforms such as smart phones and tablets. These tech-friendly platforms present a new way to sell subscriptions and advertising.

Furthermore, USA Today‘s advertising revenue has dropped by nearly 50 percent since 2006 (the publication sold 580 ad pages in the most recent quarter ending in June compared to 1,098 during the same period four years ago). USA Today‘s circulation has also dropped from 2.3 million subscribers in 2007 to 1.83 million for the six months ending in March.

To address falling revenue, a decline in subscriptions and opportunities on new platforms, USA Today has announced new appointments in circulation, finance and news and five new departments have been established. As PaidContent explains, USA Today is moving toward content hubs instead of four traditional departments (news, money, life and sports).

The changes were announced internally Thursday and are being implemented today. The management and executive changes include:

• Rudd Davis will be VP of Business Development, overseeing new business opportunities and partnerships including brand licensing, content syndication, acquisitions and joint ventures. Davis will also assume oversight of USA Today‘s retail, hotel and education-based partnerships. Davis was previously President and Founder of BNQT.
• Jeff Dionise is now VP of Product Development and Design. Dionise will oversee research and development of USA Today products across all of the brand’s networks. Dionise was previously Director of Design for usatoday.com.
• Heather Frank will become VP of Vertical Development. Frank will be in charge of creating, implemented and managing new and existing content verticals.  overseeing the department dedicated to the creation and implementation of new as well as existing vertical content areas. Frank was previously General Manager of USA Today‘s “Your Life” health and lifestyle vertical, which launches in September.
• Steve Kurtz is now VP of Digital Development. Kurtz will focus on developing and maintaining technology and systems to support the publication’s website, mobile, iPhone and iPad platforms. Kurtz will also oversee the development as well as acquisition of digital and emerging platform space. Kurtz was previously Director of Digital Information Technology for usatoday.com.

USA Today will get rid of the separate managing editors who oversee the publication’s News, Sports, Money and Life sections and divide the newsroom into 13 “content rings.”

The content rings will consist of Your Life, Travel, Breaking News,  Investigative, National, Washington/Economy, World, Environment/Science, Aviation, Personal Finance, Autos, Entertainment and Tech. The Sports division will be a separate business headed by Ross Schaufelberger who has been named VP and General Manager of the new USA Today Sports.

USA today also appointed a number of new executives. Check out the press release for full details.

The massive content hub that has become the talk of the online world is planning to go public. Today, Demand Media filed an S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) which is the first step to an IPO.

As All Things D notes, it doesn’t include info on the value Demand Media thinks it can get when it goes public, but it’s the first time the outside world has seen numbers within this private company.

According to financial disclosures, Demand Media is making lots of money, but it’s not yet profitable.

For the year ended December 31, 2009 and the six months ended June 30, 2010, Demand Media reported revenue of $198 million and $114 million, respectively. For these same periods, the company reported net losses of $22 million and $6 million, respectively.

According to the SEC filing, Demand Media generates a substantial portion of its revenue from selling ads and through domain name registrations. There are more than 10,000 Demand media contributors now and content they create is syndicated to Demand Media sites such as eHow, Trails.com, Cracked, and Livestrong.com.

And as Danny Sullivan pointed out, revenue generated from search engines are a big part of its business; 26 percent of Demand Media’s income this year came from Google, up from 18 percent a year ago.

The SEC filing points to specific agreements with Google that expire in 2011 and 2012:

We use Google for cost-per-click advertising and search results on our owned and operated websites and on our network of customer websites, and receive a portion of the revenue generated by advertisements provided by Google on those websites. Our Google cost-per-click agreement for our developed websites, such as eHow, expires in the second quarter of 2012 and our Google cost-per-click agreement for our undeveloped websites expires in the first quarter of 2011. In addition, we also engage Google’s DoubleClick ad-serving platform to deliver advertisements to our developed websites and have another revenue-sharing agreement with respect to revenue generated by our content posted on Google’s Youtube.com, both of which are currently on year to year terms that expire in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Demand Media also notes potential areas where change can bring about a big hit to its bottom line, noting:

Our failure to successfully manage our SEO strategy could result in a substantial decrease in traffic to our owned and operated websites and to our customer websites through which we distribute our content, which would result in substantial decreases in conversion rates and repeat business, as well as increased costs if we were to replace free traffic with paid traffic. Any or all of these results would adversely affect our business, revenue, financial condition and results of operations.

If you want to see Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt describe his business himself, here is a sit-down with Kara Swisher at the D8 conference:

According to a new study by the University of Southern California’s School for Communication and Journalism, half of all Americans have used a Web application such as Twitter, but none of them would be willing to pay to use them.

The study called “Surveying the Digital Future” found that Americans have a strong negative reaction when it comes to paying for online services.

The study, now in its tenth year, found 49 percent of Web users have used services such as Twitter but when asked if they would pay to continue doing so, zero percent said yes.

“Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free,” said Jeffrey I. Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism in a press release (opens in PDF). “Twitter has no plans to charge its users, but this result illustrates, beyond any doubt, the tremendous problem of transforming free users into paying users. Online providers face major challenges to get customers to pay for services they now receive for free.”

Twitter is just one example of a service respondents said they wouldn’t pay to continue using. In fact, the Digital Future Study found 55 percent would rather see advertising in front of them than pay for content. Furthermore, the study discovered half of all Web users never click on advertising and 70 percent called it “annoying.”

“Internet users can obtain content in three ways: They can steal it, or pay for it, or accept advertising on the Web pages they view,” said Cole. “Users express strong negative views about online advertising, but they still prefer seeing ads as an alternative to paying for content. Consumers really want free content without advertising, but ultimately they understand that content has to be paid for — one way or another.”

The paying-for-Web-services issue was one of 180 explored in the study. In addition to social media habits, the survey also looked at general Web browsing, e-commerce, politics and media consumption.

According to USC’s Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, nearly two-thirds of Americans now buy online; most households now use broadband; a majority of families own two or more computers; and large percentages of users say the Internet is important in political campaigns.

Despite increased online activity, many Americans also say they deeply distrust online information and many feel the Internet does not give them more political power. In addition, the number of people who believe technology makes the world a better place is on the decline.

The study also noted the following key findings:

• For the first time, the Internet is used by more than 80 percent of Americans (it’s now 82 percent).
• The average time online has reached 19 hours per week.
• Internet use is higher among younger people, with 100 percent of those under age 24 going online.
• 19 percent of respondents between the ages of 46 and 55 said they do not use the Internet and 15 percent of respondents between the ages of 36 to 45 are not online.
• New media is used by large percentages of younger demographics, but large percentages of Internet users never go online for instant messaging (50 percent), to work on a blog (79 percent), to participate in chat rooms (80 percent), or to make or receive phone calls (85 percent).
• 61 percent of Internet users said online purchasing has reduced their buying in traditional retail stores. The top 10 online purchases: 59 percent of Internet users said they purchase books or clothes online, followed by gifts (55 percent), travel (53 percent), electronics/appliances (47 percent), videos (46 percent), computers or peripherals (41 percent), software or games (40 percent), CDs (40 percent), and products for hobbies (38 percent).

Media consumption habits:

According to the study, newspapers rank below the Web and TV as a source of information. A total of 56 percent of Web users ranked newspapers as “important” or “very important” sources of info, representing a decrease from 60 percent in 2008.

Furthermore, 18 percent of Internet users stopped a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they get the same or related content online. The study’s author concludes this represents a “…strong indication print newspapers can be sacrificed by a significant percentage of Internet users.”

In addition, 22 percent of Web users who read newspapers said they would not miss the print edition if it was no longer available.

“The downward spiral in print newspaper circulation no doubt will be accelerated by advances in online delivery of news content through e-readers or other handheld electronic devices,” said Cole. “After years of aborted attempts, these advances finally appear to be practical and affordable methods of providing electronic news content to readers. If so, what will that mean for the future of the traditional print newspaper?”

Media giant Gannett today announced a local advertising partnership with Yahoo. The partnership aims to combine Gannett’s local media brands, sales capabilities and audience with Yahoo’s advertising experience and technology.

As part of the agreement, Gannett’s 81 local publishing organizations and seven of its Broadcasting Division sites will sell Yahoo ads as part of their inventory solution.

The partnership aims to give local advertisers better reach and targeting capabilities based on geography, demographics and interests. Gannet will tap into Yahoo’s targeting and ad ordering capabilities.

According to a press release issued by the two organizations, Gannett’s local media reach will cover as much as 80 percent of the digital audience in each market.

“This partnership builds on the strength of Gannett’s growing digital business and powerful local brands,” Gracia Martore said in a press release. Martore is the president, chief operating officer and chief financial officer at Gannett. “Working with Yahoo will allow us to offer targeted advertising messages with unmatched local audience reach.”

The agreement also positions Yahoo to get select local content from Gannett.

“Local advertising continues to be an important area of focus for us, and Yahoo! is committed to helping local businesses reach high quality target audiences,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president, Yahoo! Americas. “This partnership significantly expands our local offering and gives advertisers the technology and scale they need to reach online consumers.”

A phased rollout will begin this quarter and will continue into 2011.

Google has finally disclosed its revenue cut with publishers who use AdSense. In a blog post‘s VP of Product Management, Neal Mohan, writes:

In the spirit of greater transparency with AdSense publishers, we’re sharing the revenue shares for our two main AdSense products — AdSense for content and AdSense for search.

So what’s the split? For content publishers, it’s 68 percent rev share. That means Google pays 68 percent of the revenue it collects from advertisers to content publishers. For AdSense search, Google pays out 51 percent of ad revenue to search partners.

Google provides some detail on how they came to these numbers. For AdSense for content:

The remaining portion that we keep reflects Google’s costs for our continued investment in AdSense — including the development of new technologies, products and features that help maximize the earnings you generate from these ads. It also reflects the costs we incur in building products and features that enable our AdWords advertisers to serve ads on our AdSense partner sites. Since launching AdSense for content in 2003, this revenue share has never changed.

and for search:

As with AdSense for content, the proportion of revenue that we keep reflects our costs, including the significant expense, research and development involved in building and enhancing our core search and AdWords technologies. The AdSense for search revenue share has remained the same since 2005, when we increased it.

As media pundit Jeff Jarvis notes, Google is not revealing the rev split for YouTube, nor is it disclosing separate agreements it has with large publishers.