Shares rallied at the start of trading on the ASX after APN successfully raised A$160 million through a rights issue.

COMMENT: Two media giants into one? Changed market makes NZME-Fairfax tie-up a real prospect.

Fairfax Media's New Zealand business is worth just 5 Australian cents to the cmpany's stock price, a brockerage says.

Australia's APN and rival publisher Fairfax say they are in talks to merge their NZ businesses which would create the biggest stand-alone media company.

APN News & Media and its NZME unit in New Zealand would become more attractive takeover targets after demerging.

APN News and Media and Fairfax Media are in "exclusive talks" to fold their local operations - NZME and Fairfax NZ - into a listed NZ media company.

The proposed merger is tipped as building a business with the scale needed to compete with global media platforms.

Shares in the Australian parent of Herald publishers NZME are in a trading halt pending the release of an announcement to the market.

Fairfax Media's New Zealand division posted a 12 percent drop in first-half earnings as online revenue gains didn't offset the ongoing advertising decline in print publications.

Dozens of New Zealand jobs are in the air after Fairfax Media decided to end an experiment sharing work between its Australian and New Zealand operations.

NZ's big media players have formed a new advertising exchange.

It has been a spluttering start for the Paul Henry show and alarm bells should be ringing at MediaWorks, writes John Drinnan.

Around 20 editorial jobs look likely to go at Fairfax Media New Zealand under the latest restructuring plans.

Rich-lister Stephen Jennings has launched defamation action against Fairfax Media and a senior journalist Michael Field about Jennings' business activities in Russia and Kenya.

Fairfax Media's decision to ship up to eight million historic NZ news photographs and negatives to Little Rock, Arkansas, for "digitising" has proved perilous.

The fate of an invaluable archive of up to 8 million historic New Zealand newspaper photographs and negatives is before the courts in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Fairfax Media reversed a slide in earnings from its NZ business as cost cutting helped make up from a continued decline in advertising and circulation.

Fairfax Media has reached agreement with rival APN News & Media to have its newspapers printed at APN's modernised print facility in Auckland.

Campbell Live has been on a ratings high, providing advertising dollars to match critical acclaim, writes John Drinnan. But in my opinion it's in danger of getting carried away with itself.

Fairfax Media is set to scrap Computerworld, NZ PC World and Reseller News magazines next week, writes John Drinnan. "They have been marginal for some time," said Fairfax Magazines general manager Lynley Belton.

Brian Rudman asks: "Should we be shipping this cultural heritage off to a commercial collector of photographic libraries in the United States for safe-keeping?"

Hosking cosies up to the PM, Wallace Chapman returns to advertorial, the future of Fairfax's Auckland Now and Maori TV launches a website.